Re-reading written data : on the interpretability of transcripts of talk about multiple sclerosis
The thesis has as its consistent theme the questioning of the nature of empirically based sociological inquiry. Deriving its initial impetus from the Social Studies of Scientific Knowledge, Part I pursues the methodological implications of the problematic of reflexivity through an empirical research project - what counts for lay people, non-scientists, as knowledge - via the analysis of interviews with people for whom the irruption of Multiple Sclerosis has breached their belief in the nature and efficacy of medical science. The failed 'solution' of Part I's culminating chapter however - to embody reflexivity in the form of analytic writing - begins the turn of the thesis against its original grounds. In a pivotal central chapter, it is recognised that the transformative acts of recording and transcription means the transcripts (upon which the analysis has been based) are irrecoverably different from the original speech. The object of analysis is not talk, but texts. Attention shifts from the question of analysis to the data as writing, texts whose value for research depends on their being different from either fiction or pure speculation (philosophy). Drawing then on contemporary work in philosophy and literary
Wynne, Anna
Philosophy and illness
Re-reading written data : on the interpretability of transcripts of talk about multiple sclerosis. The thesis has as its consistent theme the questioning of the nature of empirically based sociological inquiry. Deriving its initial impetus from the Social Studies of Scientific Knowledge, Part I pursues the methodological implications of the problematic of reflexivity through an empirical research project - what counts for lay people, non-scientists, as knowledge - via the analysis of interviews with people for whom the irruption of Multiple Sclerosis has breached their belief in the nature and efficacy of medical science. The failed 'solution' of Part I's culminating chapter however - to embody reflexivity in the form of analytic writing - begins the turn of the thesis against its original grounds. In a pivotal central chapter, it is recognised that the transformative acts of recording and transcription means the transcripts (upon which the analysis has been based) are irrecoverably different from the original speech. The object of analysis is not talk, but texts. Attention shifts from the question of analysis to the data as writing, texts whose value for research depends on their being different from either fiction or pure speculation (philosophy). Drawing then on contemporary work in philosophy and literary
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