The analysis in a qualitative study is not a linear, but an “iterative” process. It does not start and end at certain points in the research process, but is ongoing during all phases (Ryen 2004: 116). In the pilot study of the HR NGOs, the transcribed and taped interviews were analyzed using techniques of coding and identification of recurrent themes (ibid.). Including a wide range of various organizations in the pilot study encouraged me to think comparatively and to identify similarities and differences in the activists’ accounts. The material shows a variety of activists’ individual motivations, biographical, and social circumstances of joining the NGOs. A set of themes crystallized in the interviews, including:
x The relationship between the civil society and the state, as two separate and interrelated entities
x The memory of the Soviet civic resistance and passivity
x The role of the Third Sector of NGOs: Is it charity or civil society?
x How a ‘voice’ of the local community is represented by the activists-intelligentsia x Western donors in the sphere of NGOs and their cultural, political, financial
influences
x The varying access of activists to material resources depending on education, age, and place of residence
Based on the findings of the pilot study I refined the research questions in the dissertation.
In the study of the SOMO NGOs, analysis started when I began to make observations and conduct interviews in the field. I brought into the field some of the concepts from existing theories and empirical studies about civil society, NGOs, and women’s movement in Russia, which I had read.
The next step in the analysis occurred as the taped interviews were transcribed. I made as exact transcriptions as possible, noting pauses and expressions of feelings. Listening again and writing down the activists’ narratives helped to identify the key elements in their collective stories. It was a beginning to find a pattern in the recurrent themes in the data.
When I read and reread the transcribed the narratives of the interviews and the activists’ documents, I tried to understand what the written words might mean and represent. Some terms were subsequently given a significance of key words (codes) and were put together under a number of rubrics or categories. These rubrics and the contents which they covered guided my synthesis of theoretical notions. With the help of a theoretical perspective I tried to analyze what the respondents’ words represented. Interpretations were reconsidered, deepened, or changed.
Coding is a step in which the analysis of the data is organized to become familiar with the settings and the events occurring within it, as well as with the research participants. “Codes are active, immediate and short. They focus on defining action, explicating implicit assumptions, and seeing process” (Charmaz 2005: 521). Civic activism may have
many meanings. The focus is on action: what do research participants see as routine? What do they define as problems? (ibid.: 523) I broke down the interviewees´ “stories” and based on the data accounts, I defined and organized the major aspects of the SOMO’s patterned action of civic activism. Data was compared with data, data with category and category with category. I focused on meaning and process by addressing subjective, situational and social levels (see ibid.: 522).
In the following example I illustrate how the category “courage in the NGO sphere” was identified and interpreted in the data. The codes which have been identified in the interviews and put together under this category are presented in the left column of the table:
“Builder of life” (in vivo concept) – the goal is not organizational survival or PR-techniques
“not passive,” such as large and bureaucratic advocacy non-profit organizations
represent “grassroots” constituency, respond to the individual grievances
“effective action,” getting along with the authorities
“are limited” by the official political authorities
When an organization exists for the sake of receiving grants, it becomes skilful in
transforming a little success into a great victory and selling it to a good price. But our technique is different. We are the builders of life. (Interview with the SOMO activist, 2003) Many other large, and good organizations including international organizations such as Human Rights Watch, are observers. Their [passive] position [can be often expressed like] I am sick, I did not understand, I do not feel like it at the moment. And it is not a big deal, because they stand at the side, because it is not a matter of human lives. (Ibid.)
When you are included in this, and the lives and freedom of humans depend on you, you certainly chose this individual grievance. Only when something accumulates, and takes form, you starts to see things … (Ibid.)
We work very efficiently with them, and we get along with the authorities, we can resolve any individual complaints, even the most
complicated. (Interview with the SOMO activist, 2005)
They set a line of absolute limit for us: You may go up to here, we allow you to work with the individual complaints. Some time ago, we could pressure the Duma to adopt amnesty [for soldiers-runaways] or an amendment to the law. But now, they have cut our wings. We became a kind of Ambulance, but our strategic goal actually is to abolish the conscription system.
A series of codes referred to sense-making of activism, such as related to maternal identity and grievance, a range of emotions, strategies for networking with other NGOs, organizational survival and finding sponsors, interacting with the authorities, “bridging” with women’s movements, and others were identified. The links between codes and categories were created.
The categories were compared with models in existing empirical studies about maternal movements and the concepts from the gender-theoretical and theoretical perspectives on social movements. For example, I found some similarities between my data and existing empirical models of maternal movements in Russia, such as created by Zdravomyslova (1999), Caiazza (2002), Hojer (2004), Oushakine (2004), and Sundstrom (2006a). In addition, I find similarities between my data and existing theories about reframing in social movements within a “repressive” regime (Flam 2000), women’s movements in the transnational context (Mohanty 2003), construction of gender in the maternal movements (Ruddick 1989, 2004; Taylor 1999), and the gendered civil society of NGOs in the post-Soviet context (Salmenniemi 2005). At the same time, as explained in the final chapter of the dissertation, my findings suggest a few possible expansions and revisions of existing empirically based models and theoretical concepts.