 |
 |
Hi All In terms of Mairian's protocols - I feel partially responsible for escalating this debate into a major conflict becasue I should have emailed my questions about Shelly's motivations off list. For that I appologise. In terms of the writes and wrongs of Shelly's emails - well again they might have been better put in a private email but I often feel 'ok lets get it all out on the table and make appologies later if required'. I hope Mairian and Shelly can sort things out off the list now that things have come to a head. I certainly wouldn't want to fall into the trap of pathologising Shelly becasue she is angry (I'm interpreting her email to mean that she is). I think its more important to understand why people are angry and keep the dialogue going. I know that Mairian has done this several times with me before (and I said a lot of things worse than Shelly's email) and we've a chapter coming out in Russ and Devva's book 'engaging anthropology in disability studies' which discusses how by analysing our disagreements we learnt things about our research approach and our own personal prejudices which gave us an insight into the similar difficulties which the children we were working with encountered on a daily basis and problems with social structural approaches to disability studies. Now we are the best of friends and there didn't have to be any winners or loosers, just a lot of very tense dialogue untill we understood our differences. What I found was that no one is perfect and its very difficult to always practice what you preach but its important not to give up trying and to give each other the occasional second chance, even though it takes a lot of energy. best wishes John Dr John M Davis Research Unit in Health and Behavioural Change The University of Edinburgh Medical School Teviot Place Edinburgh EH8 9AG tele 0131 651 1206 fax 0131 650 6902 email [log in to unmask] %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%