Uncomfortable Care: Feeling through Ways of “Being With” as a Doula-Ethnographer

Feeling through Ways of “Being With” as a Doula-Ethnographer

Abstract

When doing research at the beginning and end of life, ethnographers often feel the urge to engage in the care of the people they are studying. In this paper, I reflect on my attempts to provide care as a volunteer doula, a non-medical birth support person, while conducting ethnographic eldwork on childbirth in two midwifery clinics in Bali, Indonesia. Becoming a doula-ethnographer meant going beyond silent observation – what might be called being 'there' – 'to be with' women in labour. In this article, I explore this mode of being with, and show how it centres on witnessing, letting things happen, and not going in with an agenda. As my experiences show, caring in the mode of being with was also often uncomfortable and riddled with complex ethical considerations. In this paper, I stay with and reflect on this discomfort to show how the aective negotiations of my attempts to care for women in labour led me to crucial ethnographic insights.