HINSIDES FORESTILLINGEN OM DET FORUDSIGELIGE: Om at være drikkende ikke-alkoholiker blandt ikke-drikkende alkoholikere

Resumé

Vibeke Steffen: Beyond the Notion of Predictability

- on Being a Drinking Non-

Alcoholic among Non-Drinking Alcoholics

This article argues that anthropological fieldwork

is betler understood as a research strategy

than as a standard set of methods. Based

on the author’s experience as a participantobserver

in a treatment program for alcoholism

in Denmark, the article describes how

the interaction with informants and the character

of the study to a great extent determined

the actual research process. The meaning

of participation became especially central as

informants insisted on the researcher’s active

participation in therapy. This leads to a discussion

of the meaning of participation as a

way of sharing experience and the importance

of unplanned communication as a way of

obtaining information. The kind of relationships

that informants are prepared to share

with us as researchers, and the kind of relationships

that we as researchers are prepared to

enter into with our informants, are seen as an

ongoing process of negotiation creating the

basic conditions for knowledge. Thus, the

author concludes that it makes no sense to try

to describe anthropological methods as

techniques of data collection separate from

the concrete research process.