Cooperation without Consensus: Midwives’ Collaborations across Political Distance

Abstract

What happens when people not only talk to one another but collaborate closely and form strong relationships in conditions of political heterogeneity? This article analyzes data from ethnographic research in seven states with homebirth midwives who, reflecting the "strange coalition" of feminists and traditionalists that analysts have long described in this community, self-identify with a wide range of partisan political affiliations and with divergent positions on the key issue of professional midwifery licensure. Results show that this community's use of a shared model of care as a boundary object to facilitate collaboration without consensus relies upon a focus on sameness and a bracketing of the ideological commitments that undergird practitioners' investment in the model of care. When difference is directly engaged, collaboration across political difference becomes difficult to sustain. I argue that bridging ideological divides using boundary objects is politically costly. Collaborative relationships and coalitions are made precarious and risk depoliticizing shared concerns when they are bound by a weakly structured, network-level object whose use demands the allocation of attention to sameness and the bracketing of difference and political disagreement.