Boys in White: Student Culture in Medical School.

Accounting to the end of life. Scarcity, performance and death

“…The sensitiveness of the subject means that our own cultural being cannot be overlooked. With this in mind, we followed the symbolic interactionists (Geer et al, 1961;Glaser & Strauss, 1965;1968;Strauss & Glaser, 1970;Hughes, 1971;Becker, 1998) who insist on the researcher constantly asking herself "How come…?" (Becker, 1998), to exercise empathy, to be willing to be disturbed or unsettled.…”

“…What makes a life worth living? The prolongation of life, the idea that life could be extended beyond its 'natural' boundaries, is probably the greatest 'miracle' achieved by modern medicine (Hughes, 1956;Geer et al, 1961). Technological advances create such unprecedented possibilities that the question emerges of what should constitute acceptable boundaries to the prolongation of life.…”

Un-learning to labour? Activating the unemployed in a former industrial community

“…By nature, when the write-up is due, the researcher must often make sense of a wide range of empirical material, such as fieldnotes from observations, interview recordings, textual documents, images, videos, and one's own diaries and memos. As I stated above, this results from the fact that the ethnographic process is traditionally characterised by way of 'muddling through' (Lindblom 1959), rather than a pre-conceived, clear-cut research design (Holmqvist 2018; see also Jahoda et al 2014Jahoda et al [1933; Becker et al 1977). Hence, a challenge for me has been to select, analyse, and then present the empirical material in a way that constitutes a narrative of Milltown's attempts to implement the active society locally.…”

A catalyst for change: Developing a collaborative reflexive ethnographic approach to research with hospital doctors during the COVID-19 pandemic

“…Within this conceptualisation of a field, ethnographies also need not be multi-positional to give a rich and holistic view; many ethnographic works considered classic have focussed on the particular vantage points of small and specific groups within the context of their activities within a field of their specific social space and capital, particularly in healthcare (e.g. Becker et al, 1961).…”