Teun Zuiderent-Jerak
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780262029384
- eISBN:
- 9780262329439
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262029384.003.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Health, Illness, and Medicine
This chapter explores the relationship between sociologists and their fields. This relation is strongly shaped by a dual fear that runs through the history of sociology: that of either losing ...
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This chapter explores the relationship between sociologists and their fields. This relation is strongly shaped by a dual fear that runs through the history of sociology: that of either losing epistemic distance and sociological identity trough over-involvement, or that of insufficient engagement through over-detachment from issues of concern. This dual fear dates back to positions of Weber and Marx and regularly resurfaces through e.g. discussions on Public Sociology. After reviewing such debates, this chapter introduces the emerging scholarly approach of situated intervention as an alternative way of relating sociologists and their fields. Drawing on the work of Ian Hacking on the importance of interlocking representing and intervening in the sciences, on the position proposed by Howard Becker of combining attachment with avoiding sentimentality, and on discussions within Science and Technology Studies on scholarly involvement, intervention is not presented as a matter of engagement but rather as an approach to producing sociological knowledge and normativity. Experiments with the organization of care thereby reclaim the notion of intervention from static understandings of objectivity and ethics.Less
This chapter explores the relationship between sociologists and their fields. This relation is strongly shaped by a dual fear that runs through the history of sociology: that of either losing epistemic distance and sociological identity trough over-involvement, or that of insufficient engagement through over-detachment from issues of concern. This dual fear dates back to positions of Weber and Marx and regularly resurfaces through e.g. discussions on Public Sociology. After reviewing such debates, this chapter introduces the emerging scholarly approach of situated intervention as an alternative way of relating sociologists and their fields. Drawing on the work of Ian Hacking on the importance of interlocking representing and intervening in the sciences, on the position proposed by Howard Becker of combining attachment with avoiding sentimentality, and on discussions within Science and Technology Studies on scholarly involvement, intervention is not presented as a matter of engagement but rather as an approach to producing sociological knowledge and normativity. Experiments with the organization of care thereby reclaim the notion of intervention from static understandings of objectivity and ethics.
Teun Zuiderent-Jerak
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780262029384
- eISBN:
- 9780262329439
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262029384.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Health, Illness, and Medicine
This book considers the question of how the direct involvement of social scientists in the practices they study can lead to the production of interesting sociological knowledge. It draws together two ...
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This book considers the question of how the direct involvement of social scientists in the practices they study can lead to the production of interesting sociological knowledge. It draws together two activities that are often seen as belonging to different realms: intervening in practices and furthering sociological understanding of them. The common separation of these domains partly stems from disciplinary self-understandings within sociology as either ‘detached’ or ‘engaged’. Situated Intervention proposes that this debate is unproductive for discussing the role of social sciences in relation to their fields. Philosophers of science such as Ian Hacking have argued that natural sciences benefited tremendously from broadening their scholarly mode from theorizing about the world to intervening through experiments Adhering to an objectivist and theorizing image of scholarship within sociology thereby risks loosing a mode of knowledge production that has proven highly productive in the natural sciences. Furthermore, experimental interventions prove relevant for discussions about the normativity of sociological research. These matters are explored by analyzing organizational change projects in healthcare: the development of a hemophilia care center, pathways for hematology and oncology at an outpatient clinic, redesigning oncology care and elective surgery in sixteen hospitals, and evaluating a quality improvement collaborative in long-term care. These experiments invariably lead to the surprising production of sociological knowledge as well as producing novel normativities. The analysis thereby shows that, through situated intervention, sociology not only has more to offer to the practices it studies, but also has more to learn from it.Less
This book considers the question of how the direct involvement of social scientists in the practices they study can lead to the production of interesting sociological knowledge. It draws together two activities that are often seen as belonging to different realms: intervening in practices and furthering sociological understanding of them. The common separation of these domains partly stems from disciplinary self-understandings within sociology as either ‘detached’ or ‘engaged’. Situated Intervention proposes that this debate is unproductive for discussing the role of social sciences in relation to their fields. Philosophers of science such as Ian Hacking have argued that natural sciences benefited tremendously from broadening their scholarly mode from theorizing about the world to intervening through experiments Adhering to an objectivist and theorizing image of scholarship within sociology thereby risks loosing a mode of knowledge production that has proven highly productive in the natural sciences. Furthermore, experimental interventions prove relevant for discussions about the normativity of sociological research. These matters are explored by analyzing organizational change projects in healthcare: the development of a hemophilia care center, pathways for hematology and oncology at an outpatient clinic, redesigning oncology care and elective surgery in sixteen hospitals, and evaluating a quality improvement collaborative in long-term care. These experiments invariably lead to the surprising production of sociological knowledge as well as producing novel normativities. The analysis thereby shows that, through situated intervention, sociology not only has more to offer to the practices it studies, but also has more to learn from it.
Teun Zuiderent-Jerak
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780262029384
- eISBN:
- 9780262329439
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262029384.003.0004
- Subject:
- Sociology, Health, Illness, and Medicine
This chapter explores the consequences of situated standardization for the relation between standardization and patient-centeredness. In the medical sociological literature, ‘standardization’ and ...
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This chapter explores the consequences of situated standardization for the relation between standardization and patient-centeredness. In the medical sociological literature, ‘standardization’ and ‘patient-centered care’ have been positioned as perfect conceptual opposites. This chapter explore the specificities of this opposition, their limitations, and in which sense a reconceptualization of both concepts could lead to their pragmatic commensurability. Drawing empirically upon the development of patient-centered care pathways, and particularly on the disconcerting moments within empirical instances of biomedicalized and patient-centered care, situated standardization proves helpful for redefining patient-centeredness from a change in professional attitude toward ‘wholeness’, or a procedural focus on patient participation, to a material and organizational characteristic. This proves particularly important because other definitions of patient-centeredness can allow doctors to exert unprecedented power over their patients. By putting center stage the issues patients, care professionals and organizations face, care can be made patient-centered in more substantial, contestable and located ways.Less
This chapter explores the consequences of situated standardization for the relation between standardization and patient-centeredness. In the medical sociological literature, ‘standardization’ and ‘patient-centered care’ have been positioned as perfect conceptual opposites. This chapter explore the specificities of this opposition, their limitations, and in which sense a reconceptualization of both concepts could lead to their pragmatic commensurability. Drawing empirically upon the development of patient-centered care pathways, and particularly on the disconcerting moments within empirical instances of biomedicalized and patient-centered care, situated standardization proves helpful for redefining patient-centeredness from a change in professional attitude toward ‘wholeness’, or a procedural focus on patient participation, to a material and organizational characteristic. This proves particularly important because other definitions of patient-centeredness can allow doctors to exert unprecedented power over their patients. By putting center stage the issues patients, care professionals and organizations face, care can be made patient-centered in more substantial, contestable and located ways.
Charles E. Rosenberg
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780262019682
- eISBN:
- 9780262317245
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262019682.003.0001
- Subject:
- Biology, Bioethics
Since the 19th century, we have come to think of disease in terms of specific entities--entities defined and legitimated in terms of characteristic somatic mechanisms. Since the last third of that ...
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Since the 19th century, we have come to think of disease in terms of specific entities--entities defined and legitimated in terms of characteristic somatic mechanisms. Since the last third of that century, we have expanded would-be disease categories to include an ever-broader variety of emotional pain, idiosyncrasy, and culturally unsettling behaviors. Psychiatry has been the residuary legatee of these developments, developments that have always been contested at the ever-shifting boundary between disease and deviance, feeling and symptom, the random and the determined, the stigmatized and the value-free. Even in our era of reductionist hopes, psychopharmaceutical practice, and corporate strategies, the legitimacy of many putative disease categories will remain contested. The use of the specific disease entity model will always be a reductionist means to achieve necessarily holistic ends, both in terms of cultural norms and the needs of suffering individuals. Bureaucratic rigidities and stakeholder conflicts structure and intensify such boundary conflicts, as do the interests and activism of an interested lay public.Less
Since the 19th century, we have come to think of disease in terms of specific entities--entities defined and legitimated in terms of characteristic somatic mechanisms. Since the last third of that century, we have expanded would-be disease categories to include an ever-broader variety of emotional pain, idiosyncrasy, and culturally unsettling behaviors. Psychiatry has been the residuary legatee of these developments, developments that have always been contested at the ever-shifting boundary between disease and deviance, feeling and symptom, the random and the determined, the stigmatized and the value-free. Even in our era of reductionist hopes, psychopharmaceutical practice, and corporate strategies, the legitimacy of many putative disease categories will remain contested. The use of the specific disease entity model will always be a reductionist means to achieve necessarily holistic ends, both in terms of cultural norms and the needs of suffering individuals. Bureaucratic rigidities and stakeholder conflicts structure and intensify such boundary conflicts, as do the interests and activism of an interested lay public.
