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]
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