Data and Methods

Introduction

This chapter describes the empirical data and methods of this study. The dissertation is based on two different research methods. One is the analysis of the secondary literature about the historical and contemporary contexts of voluntary association and gender order in Russia, which is presented in Part II of the dissertation. The results of the study of the secondary literature about the military draft policy in post-Soviet Russia are presented in chapter 10. The second method is an empirical qualitative case study of the SOMO NGOs, which is presented in Part III. As I explain in more detail, the empirical study includes a pilot study of the HR NGOs and a main study of the HR SOMO NGOs. The results of the pilot study are incorporated both in Part II and Part III of the dissertation.

This chapter begins by describing the way in which I collected my empirical data. Secondly, I explain and discuss the strategies and procedures of my analysis. In addition, I explain the strategies of representing the results of the study. Finally, I discuss some ethical issues in relation to my qualitative interviews and participant observations and, in a broader sense concerned with the potential impact of my qualitative study upon the respondents’ self-perceptions.

1. Data Collection

Sampling

I chose the setting of the HR SOMO for my empirical study through a two-step procedure of within-case sampling; in the pilot study of the HR NGOs and subsequently in the main

study. The sampling strategies evolved during the early phase of the data collection, which allowed me to take advantage of some unexpected findings, as I explain below.

The Pilot Study of the HR NGOs

In 2000, the relevant secondary sources which I consulted did not address the problems of civic activism from the perspective of its participants. It was a relatively new area in post- communist studies. My research therefore started with an explorative pilot study. The preliminary research questions included who became a civic activist and how; the way in which organizations were formed and sustained; in which ways they were useful to its members, and how the meaning of civic activism was produced.

The identification and selection of informants was made through strategic convenience sampling and snowballing. After consultations with several Russian sociologists who specialized in the research of civil society, I chose to study the human rights NGOs. This category of NGOs is more politically oriented and critical towards the political elites than the associations which deal with charity, self-help, or other issues (Sungurov 1999a). This suited my research problem.

The case of the human rights NGOs may be seen as ‘theory-based’ (Miles and Huberman 1994: 28). In other words, the HR NGOs were identified as empirical instances, or cases of my theoretical understanding of what constitutes a social movement organization. The organizations were chosen as cases of the same issue (social movement organization) as a result of the interaction between my ideas and the available empirical evidence (Ragin 1997: 10).

The setting was also chosen based on practical considerations. As I lacked personal contacts among the NGOs activists, which was important to gain access to the field, I asked a Russian sociologist to introduce me to the NGO leaders with whom she had good contact. My research subject and my background as a Russian and a sociologist from a Swedish research institution made a good impression on the leaders. In addition, I knew that this setting was not the only case; I could easily find other human rights organizations in the same city, as well as in other cities. The setting was thus suitable and feasible for research purposes.

Sampling within the setting of the HR NGOs occurred by the means of snowballing. The interviewees gave tips and information about additional organizations and activists.

Snowballing is useful for identifying key informants in social contexts which are difficult to access. It may provide background information which helps to choose analytically useful respondents (Gustafson 2002: 44). The problem with this method, however, is that it might exclude informants outside the social network used by the researcher (ibid.). The initial idea of my pilot study was to identify important common patterns in the human rights activists’ self-organization. I thus strived to achieve a maximum variation among the informants who represented different HR NGOs (Miles and Huberman 1994: 28, 29; Ryen 2004: 78). In order to minimize the bias of the snowballing, I specifically asked the respondents to recommend organizations and activists, who differ on certain factors. This allowed me to include respondents of various ages (“young” HR-defenders as opposed to a generation of former Soviet dissidents), working by different methods (analytical, practical), and in various social spheres (the mass media, migration, the army, prisons, and others). The respondents included 20 females and 16 males ranging from 22 to 60 years old with different professional occupations.

The Case of the HR SOMO NGOs

Within the setting of the HR NGOs, I chose the case of the SOMO NGOs based on three different criteria of sampling: The SOMO is a confirming case which allows elaboration on the initial analysis of the HR NGOs. Further, it meets some key criteria: It represents a social movement, it is rooted in the local constituency, and it works using practical methods. Finally, the case is opportunistic as it follows a new lead and allows taking advantage of the unexpected, which I had discovered in the pilot study: the significance of gender (see Miles and Huberman 1994: 28). The factor of gender was not initially a part of the research design, but was added in the later phase of my study in 2003-2005.

Two separate SOMO organizations located in different large cities were included in the case. The core activists in the organizations are women and both organizations mobilize around the issue of the human rights in the military draft arena. They have, however, developed different ideologies and group cultures. This sampling was not driven by a concern for representativeness of the case such as for the civil society or women’s movement in post-Soviet Russia. The choices of respondents and interactions were instead driven by a conceptual question about forms and sense-making of grassroots

women’s/mothers’ civic activism. I needed to see different instances of the construct of maternal activism, in different places, with different people (see Miles and Huberman 1994: 29). I sought to generate ideographic knowledge, which focuses on culturally unique features in the object of study (Ryen 2004: 26). The intention was not to generalize the findings to other settings.

Interviews

In the pilot study, from November 2000 to May 2001, I carried out 36 explorative and semi-structured qualitative interviews with members of 14 HR NGOs, located in two different large cities.6_{The duration of the interviews varied from 40 to 90 minutes. All} interviews were taped and partly transcribed.

In the main study, 22 interviews with 17 activists of the SOMO NGOs, 2 men and 15 women, were conducted in five rounds during my trips to Russia in 2000-2005. In one SOMO organization I interviewed 7 members and in the other I interviewed 10 activists. Some activists were interviewed twice. As not all the activists were involved in the routine daily work or they were involved only during certain periods of time, I did not have the chance to meet all members of organizations.

The majority of the interviews were carried out on the NGO premises during working hours, except for two interviews, which were carried out at home and at a café. The activists have a high workload and it was hard for them to find time for the interviews. It was therefore often not possible to make very long in-depth interviews. The interviews were sometimes interrupted by long-distance phone calls from other cities or abroad. They lasted from three quarters to an hour and a half. All interviews were taped and transcribed.

Several informal and formal interviews with young draftees and mothers of draftees who visited the SOMO were conducted. These interviews highlighted the organizations from a different perspective and helped to understand the complexity of the phenomenon.

6_{I have interviewed members of organizations of Memorial, Civic Watch, Moscow Helsinki Group, Independent} Legal Expert Commission, Centre for Development of Democracy and Human Rights, the Committee for Civil Rights, Interregional Foundation for Civil Society, Foundation of Glasnost Defense, Young People’s Centre of Human Rights, Civil Assistance, Youth Centre of Human Rights and Legal Culture, Forum of Migration Organizations, All-Russian Social Movement "For Human Rights", and the Centre in Memory of Andrei Sakharov.

The first round of the interviews with the SOMO activists was explorative and open- ended: a conversation with a structure and a goal (Kvale 1996: 13). The respondents were asked about 1) biographical paths into and their motivations for activism 2) current tasks carried out in the organization 3) routine strategies, events, and the experienced difficulties in the organizations. Not all activists were equally willing to talk at length about their personal lives. Many of them had been interviewed before by journalists, who had seemed primarily interested in dramatic stories of the activists’ sons-soldiers. For example, one of the activists, who perhaps thought that I was also curious about her son’s story, refused be interviewed. Some activists were more open about their past, while others were very brief in their personal tales. This rendered the interpretation and analysis of the activists’ biographical paths difficult.

In the second round, the interviews were semi-structured and focused on certain themes, which were identified through a preliminary analysis of the first round of interviews. The respondents were asked about five-six topics concerning their interactions with 1) the constituency of mothers and soldiers 2) the state and military institutions 3) journalists 4) Western donors, and foreign organizations 5) other NGOs, and 6) gender as a factor in their socio-political activism. The activists in both organizations had divided various kinds of work among themselves. Not every respondent could talk with detail and precision on all five-six topics. For example, Western donors and organizations from abroad were contacted mainly by leaders, who in both cases were the only people who knew English. Some members were mainly preoccupied with meeting their constituency on a daily basis, others worked exclusively with the legal aspects of individual cases. I slightly revised and adapted the interview questionnaire in each interview and followed up the activists’ individual perspectives. The purpose of the interviews was not to compare the narratives of the respondents. I asked, however, most respondents about all five-six topics and discovered different viewpoints on different aspects of their movement. I evaluated the consistency of the respondents’ narratives and reconstructed a common story of each organization.