Gauging the Gatekeepers: Negotiating Anthropological Research in a Tertiary Level Australian Hospital: Failure, Fallout, and a Change in Direction for Paediatric Cardiac Research

• Published in: Zeitschrift für Ethnologie 2018-01, Vol.143 (2), p.137-152
• Main Author: Hunter, Cynthia L
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Anthropology; Appreciation; Biomedicine; Cardiology; Collaboration; Ethics; Ethnographic research; Ethnography; Families & family life; Field study; Heart surgery; Hospitals; Humanities; Intensive care; Medical anthropology; Medical research; Medicine; Multiculturalism & pluralism; Negotiation; Paradigms; Patients; Pediatrics; Population; Power; Professionals; Qualitative research; Recruitment; Reflexivity; Researchers; Resilience; Resistance; Social capital; Social groups; Social power; Social sciences; Social scientists; Teaching; Teams
• ISSN: 0044-2666

This article describes and comments on the process, subsequent machinations and failure to negotiate an ethnographic research project in a tertiary level teaching hospital in Australia. For social scientists and those from the humanities who attempt to fully engage with the biomedical domain, the engagement is not always seamless (Hume et al. 2018; van der Geest & Finkler 2004; Barnett 1985). The differences between hard scientific paradigms and the social sciences or humanities paradigms (Cassell 2002), and a lack of appreciation and understanding of one for the other is often an issue that continues to pose ethical and moral challenges. Ethics and medical anthropology are increasingly discussed and debated; in particular where two different social groups in an unequal power relationship (social capital) interface, for example, the ethnographic researcher with medical and hospital professionals (Mapedzahama and Dune 2017; Fainzang 2015). Nor is the impact of a failed project invisible or disaffective on the qualitative research team or principal researcher. There is emotional fallout at a personal and professional level that requires reflexivity, resistance and resilience before any moving forward can be accomplished; nevertheless, moving on can be achieved.