Interventionist-research and seduction in the post-natal ward

Abstract

Based in Science and Technology Studies and particularly the most known perspective in this field, Actor Network Theory, the paper argues that accreditation in public health care and more precisely in a post-natal ward produces multiple networks and incoherence among nurses. The analytical strategy taken in the paper is to reflect on the researchers ambitions, not only to describe practices, but to intervene in those practices in order to produce reconciliation among doctors, nurses and managers. The researcher’s intervention is throughout the paper constructed as discussions and reflections in so-called local-interactional spaces. This method is argued to make a virtue out of the interference, which is always an implication in ethnography. The analysis demonstrates that it is difficult to maintain the research agenda, when weaved into the normative choices of a number of participants in the field studied. This awareness leads to identification of a number of orders that are produced as a consequence of the ongoing modernization of the ward. Traditionalists; Vanguards and Hypocrites are argued to be orders and effects of the difficult ambitions on the side of the managerial-political administration to transform the post-natal ward. The paper argues that seduction is a fruitful analytical notion, which is helpful in opening and analysing the complexity of ambitions on the side of the researcher to intervene in the studied practice. Not only does the researcher bring with him certain engagements, he is also attracted and persuaded by a number of agendas in the field studied. Moreover, actors in the field invite the researcher and attempt to make alliances with him in order to strengthen their own ambitions. The paper argues that even though researchers have their own preconceptions, their points of views and engagements are effects produced through manyway-causation in the studied field.