Marlot Kuiper

99 On Ethnography ing Harrington (2003) argued that to gain acceptance in the field, the researcher needs to find some common ground upon which to relate with his or her field members. I tried to build these relationships in different ways. Sometimes, finding common ground could be small talk about weekend plans or sports games. But more importantly, as a researcher, I tried to be very clear and open about the goal of the research project. When talking to respondents, I did not mention ‘ethnography’, I simply stated that “I just want to see how you do your work”, and with this open approach, I gained trust in the field and respondents were more than willing to show me their work. I assume there are two main reasons for this. Firstly, with an open approach I was not conceived as judgmental or offensive. Especially in a time were media scrutiny was commonplace, I even had the feeling that respondents sometimes desperately wanted to show me what they were doing, since media reports were often considered ‘shallow’ and not painting a true picture. Secondly, I suspect it also just had to do with the novelty of having an outsider profess fascination with the particulars of your everyday work. In consolidating relationships, I sometimes encountered difficulties in on the one hand striving for complete openness, but on the other hand not becoming the professionals’ spokesperson (Crowley, 2007). Every now and then, I had the feeling that professionals – unconsciously – tried to use me as a spokesperson to tell their side of the story, to counter media reports. In conversations, I therefore often tried to emphasize my role as a researcher and my aim to get grip on ‘how things are done’. 4.4.5 Getting to know a closed world Since I was trained as a social scientist, and thus an ‘outsider’ to the field, it was of crucial importance to quickly get to know the closed world of surgical care. At the start of this chapter I already presented ‘personal affinity of the researcher with the field’ as a side reason to select surgical care as a research setting. Because of this personal interest, I had read many books about this domain and had various personal relationships with people working in medical care, and surgical care more specifically. Therefore, I already did possess some of the professional vocabulary, and was able to pick up some more of it quite easily. A prime example of picking up the vocabulary is when I once fainted shortly after the anaesthesiologist in training administered an epidural (Yes, I know… but it is said to happen more often!) she said to me: “Did you have a vagal nerve 4