Well last week was a bit of a struggle.
I have a publisher deadline that is way overdue already. The publishers kindly
extended the deadline until Christmas. As I write this week’s blog, Christmas
Day is just nine days away, and truthfully, apart from a chapter summary, there
is not a single word yet committed to paper. Now I’m not struggling because I
don’t know what to write, but because every day I seem to be running out of
time. Yes, I know it’s a poor excuse and probably one I’ve heard a million
times from my students, but I have convinced myself that it’s true.
The chapter is an academic text
that looks at health and social care through the lens of anthropology. It is
also a second edition and one of the co-editors for the original publication
was a PhD student of mine, who sadly died, much too soon, from a very
aggressive liver cancer. So, there is a special reason for being part of the
second edition, and the focus is right up my street – it’s a chapter that looks
at health and social care organisational culture and politics. My PhD
supervisor, the late, but very great Professor Joel Richman, introduced me to
anthropology. He also introduced me to medical sociology, critical psychology
and Coronation Street. Whilst I have pursued my interest in social and cultural
anthropology, and sociology, I kicked critical psychology and Coronation Street
into touch.
It was Professor Richman that got
me interested in exploring organisations, the people that make them work and
the nature of human relationships. He opened my eyes (and mind) to the world of
organisational politics, rhetoric and the art of transcendental leadership. My
PhD thesis looked at all these aspects through the development of an ethnography
set in the world of GP fundholding (yes, I am that old) which focused on
contractual and non-contractual relationship behaviours. It was entitled ‘Custom
and Contracts in the NHS’ – which at the time I thought was a clever borrow
from Max Gluckman’s book ‘Custom and Conflicts in Africa’. The latter was
published in 1955 and was essentially a collection of six presentations he had
made on the BBC Third Programme (now Radio 3). The fourth of these was a presentation
entitled: the ‘Logic of Witchcraft’. This conceptualisation of social organisation
and social cohesion absolutely resonated with my data analysis. So, I pinched
it and used it as the metaphorical framework for my thesis. Big mistake!
When the time came for my viva,
the two examiners ripped my thesis to pieces, partly because the logic of
witchcraft was, in any event, not a well thought through conceptualisation of
how to manage conflict and change, but mainly because it simply didn’t work as a
metaphor. Eventually, I used the metaphor of the family (the family of the family
practitioner) which thankfully did work. All of which is a rather long-winded
way of saying I know the subject I should be writing about, I have published
several papers in this area, but I have been struggling over the last few weeks
to put pen to paper. It didn’t seem to matter how early I got up in the morning
or how late I left it before going to bed, so many other things stole my time
away from me.
It might well have been self-applied
distraction therapy. I bet many readers have done this. You know, you can’t
start writing until your desk is tidy, your pencils are all sharpened, you have
a cuppa in hand served in your favourite mug and so on. I thought about this a
bit last week in the context of politics with a big P. This blog is not the
place for me to voice an opinion one way or the other over how we got to where
we are with Brexit or run my political affiliations up the proverbial flag pole.
However, I greatly admired the energy, commitment and resilience of those politicians
(and their teams of advisors) who last week were so resolutely engaged in trying
to deal with the conflict and lack of agreement over the direction the UK
should be taking next year.
Some might reasonably see last
week as a drama of desperation politics, but I wondered where that energy came
from, how time seemed to be ‘borrowed’ to travel, discuss, argue and challenge
the opinions of others. One of the outcomes noted in my PhD study was that successful
changes to organisations (such as the NHS or Europe) seldom result from purposeful
political action. Likewise, the complexity of the issues facing everyone around
Brexit, whilst seemingly leading to rebellion, have not resulted in revolution.
When the dust finally settles over the whole Brexit affair, I do wonder what
customs (anthropological not border security) will remain and what future
conflicts will be more difficult to resolve without the cohesion of likeminded citizens
to draw upon. Just as I have no words on my chapter paper, I have no easy
answers to this question either.
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