Marlot Kuiper

114 Connective Routines I used theory to structure and inform the fieldwork. From there, I tried to relate the empirical findings to the preliminary theories (induction), with the ultimate goal however, to move from ‘rich points’ in the data to the development of new theories and concepts (abduction) (Agar, 1996). 4.6 Textwork: Writing it up The third main activity of ethnography is textwork. Following Van Maanen (2011), I use the term text work to convey that writing is a labour-intensive craft that represents a great deal of what ethnographers are doing. Just like headwork and fieldwork, textwork involves making difficult choices. For instance: what voice to use, whether or not to include the author in the text, whether or not to reflect professional jargon, and so on. I needed to find ways to communicate my findings to my audience, written text still is the most common vehicle to do so. In writing up ethnographic texts, the ultimate goal – and challenge – is to explore and exemplify the general through the local and the particular (Van Hulst et al., 2017). Therefore, I needed to place the reader at the scene, and by providing thick descriptions take the readers along with processual interpretations of happenings in the field (Jarzabkowski et al., 2014). The fieldnotes – assembled in analytic codes – became the building blocks for the textual reports. However, I constantly moved back from my codes to the raw data, to not miss out on the detailed descriptions of events or conversations in my field notes. Transforming fieldnotes into a comprehensible text is a daunting task. To give the reader ‘access to the experience’ (see Jarzabkowski et al., 2014) I for example had to complement direct quotes with descriptions of the environment, explanations of medical jargon in the field, and emotional experiences such as joking or anger. Additionally, I had to translate the findings that were collected in a Dutch context into English language. In doing so, I aimed to stay as close to the original text as possible. Still, some quotes were hard to translate without compromising on their linguistic power, for example because of alliterations. In these instances I decided to also include the original text between brackets; “channel your work versus excessive registration of your work” [original: “kanaliseren versus kapot proctolleren”].