'Joking apart…': A 'processual' approach to researching self-help groups

It is well known that 'feminist research methodologies' reject the traditional and positivistic insistence on detached objectivity, favouring instead a situated and empathic responsiveness to particular research contexts. In practice, however, interviewees often have a justifiable interest in maintaining a communicative distance between researcher and researched, thereby retaining a degree of control over the research process. Although the nature and function of this communicative distancing change over time it may (initially at least) emphasize the boundaries between the respondents' 'insider' and the researcher's 'outsider' status. This phenomenon seems especially pertinent where those researched comprise a tightly knit group with shared interests and experiences such as self-help groups for those suffering from specific disabilities. This paper reflects on my own experiences interviewing agoraphobic women members of two such groups in Central Scotland and discusses the manner in which humour acted as an indicator and facilitator of these changing communicative distances. It concludes that a processual methodology is required in circumstances where managing the research process is often as much a matter of coping with as directing change.     

LAND EVALUATION: REVIEW

Land Evaluation - Papers of a C.S.I.R.O. Symposium Organized in Co-Operation with UNESCO, Canbera, 26–31 August, 1968, edited by G.A. Stewart     

Access to Health Care Among Three Cohorts of Older Americans Residing in a Rural State

Three cohorts of older Americans are examined to determine how they perceive the likelihood of being able to access health care in the future. A modified Andersen (1968) model provides the framework for the study. A representative sample of 2,404 noninstitutionalized midwestern older persons separated into three age cohorts (60–69, 70–79, and 80+) was used. Predisposing, enabling, and need factors were examined by logistic regression. Significant differences were found between age cohorts, with the perceptions of the oldest-old and the youngest-old appearing to be markedly more sensitive than those of the middle-old. Need factors of health and the respondents' perceptions of help they needed with instrumental activities of daily living, and enabling factors of community size and the barrier imposed by lack of transportation, combined to explain the perceptions of the oldest-old. For the youngest-old, the significant variables were bills, gender, barriers imposed by inadequate insurance, lack of transportation, and a perception that physicians charged more than allowed by Medicare. Recommendations are made for health care policy with respect to different age cohorts among the elderly, their families, and the rurality of the population.     

Commoner Power: A Case Study from the Classic Period Collapse on the Oaxaca Coast

This article argues that the agency of commoners has not been adequately theorized in archaeological studies of the political dynamics of complex societies. Recent developments in social theory emphasize that political relations are produced through social negotiations involving commoners as well as elites. This paper considers the role of commoners in the Classic period collapse in the lower Río Verde Valley, Oaxaca, Mexico. Regional survey and excavation data demonstrate that the Classic-to-Postclassic transition was marked by dramatic changes in settlement patterns and sociopolitical organization, including the decline of the Late Classic regional center of Río Viejo. The research indicates that rather than passively reacting to the sociopolitical developments of the Classic-to-Postclassic transition, commoners actively rejected many of the ruling institutions and symbols that were central to the dominant ideology of the Late Classic state. Early Postclassic people reused and reinterpreted the sacred spaces and objects of the Río Viejo state such as carved stone monuments and public buildings. The evidence from the lower Verde is examined in the context of an emerging theoretical perspective in archaeology that considers commoner power. We argue that commoners contribute to the social negotiation of dominant discourses through three overlapping forms of social interaction: engagement, avoidance, and resistance.