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Tett på profesjon, arbeid og politikk
Get PDFResearchers engage in increasingly complex relationships with society and business in the process of conducting research. Can qualitative research produce high-quality results when there are close ties between the researchers and those being researched, or between research institutions, those who commission research, and user groups? This is a question that researchers should actively address, but which many are not always aware of.
With examples from qualitative studies in healthcare, policing, bureaucracy and politics, the anthology’s contributors provide a comprehensive presentation of challenges researchers face when they are close to those they are researching, as well as tools that can be used to contend with certain challenges.
Proximity to Professions, Work and Politics will be of particular interest to students and researchers working with studies of professional life, organisations, work and politics, either through commissioned research or other research projects
Making the ship work: An ethnography of maritime labour in global shipping
Get PDFThis dissertation is an anthropological study of the organisation of maritime work and life among seafarers in different parts of the world. It discusses the labour experiences of seafarers, whose everyday work within a highly regulated, spatially bounded, and ethnically stratified work environment is an integral—even crucial—part of the global economy. Up to 90 percent of world trade is carried by the international shipping industry (George, 2013; ICS, n.d.a), which means that without movement and circulation at sea, ‘half the world would starve, and the other half would freeze’ (ICS, n.d.a). Despite the essential role that seafarers play in what is arguably the most globalised of all industries, the (non-) attention given to them and their work in operating the ships that carry goods across the world’s oceans is disproportionate to their importance. Based on ethnographic research conducted aboard a contemporary cargo vessel crewed by seafarers of mixed nationalities, this dissertation sheds light on the labour required to make a ship ‘work’ and demonstrates how explorations of the tensions between the standardised, formalised, and theoretical measures of work on the one hand and the individual, personal, experiential, and practical aspects of work on the other hand can offer a new perspective on maritime work. By investigating labour standardisation and bureaucratisation in shipping labour and the way in which this labour is organised and structured, this dissertation elucidates the ‘invisible’ work undertaken by seafarers, as well as the multiple ideologies that surround their work and work practices, and the everyday strategies that they implement to render their time at sea more bearable and sustainable. One of the central arguments of this study is that the formal structure of shipboard labour and its institutionalised organisation on the one hand and the informal structure of shipboard labour and its social organisation on the other hand intersect with and are interconnected with one another. In my exploration and analysis of onboard social relations and the everyday negotiation and organisation of work, I reveal how seafarers—despite their unequally distributed positions, power, and conditions of employment—manage to keep a vessel afloat and contribute to the apparently unimpeded transportation of goods.
Denne avhandlingen er en antropologisk studie av organiseringen av maritimt arbeid og liv blant sjøfolk på et lasteskip. Studien diskuterer arbeidserfaringene til sjøfolk, hvis daglige arbeid foregår innenfor et høyt regulert, romlig avgrenset og etnisk stratifisert arbeidsmiljø om bord skipet. Arbeidet er en integrert - til og med avgjørende - del av verdensøkonomien hvor opptil 90 prosent av verdenshandelen bæres av den internasjonale skipsfartsindustrien (George, 2013; ICS, n.d.a). Til tross for den viktige rollen sjøfolk spiller i det som er verdens mest globaliserte næringer er arbeidet de gjør om bord skipene som frakter varer over verdenshavene understudert. Gjennom etnografisk forskning utført ombord på et internasjonalt bemannet lasteskip, belyser denne avhandlingen det arbeidet som kreves for å få et skip til å ‘fungere’ og demonstrerer hvordan utforskninger av spenningene mellom standardiserte, formaliserte og teoretiske forståelser av arbeid, og de individuelle, personlige, erfaringsmessige og praktiske aspektene av arbeidet kan gi et nytt perspektiv på maritimt arbeid. Ved å undersøke arbeidsstandardisering og byråkratisering innen maritimt arbeid og måten dette arbeidet er organisert og strukturert på, belyser denne avhandlingen det ‘usynlige’ arbeidet som utføres av sjøfolk samt de mange ideologiene som omgir deres arbeid og arbeidspraksis, og de daglige strategiene de iverksetter for å gjøre tiden til sjøs mer utholdelig og bærekraftig. Et sentralt argument i avhandlingen er at den formelle strukturen for skipsarbeid om bord og dens institusjonaliserte organisering er nær forbundet med den uformelle strukturen for arbeid om bord og dens sosiale organisering. I min analyse av sosiale relasjoner om bord og den daglige forhandlingen og organiseringen av arbeidet, viser jeg hvordan sjøfolk – til tross for sine ulikt fordelte posisjoner, makt og ansettelsesvilkår – klarer å holde et fartøy flytende samt bidra til den tilsynelatende uhindrede flyten av global varetransport.publishedVersio
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
The knowing body and a body of knowledge: an ethnographic study of professional knowledge in use in clinical nursing
No full textThis thesis is an ethnographic study of nursing knowledge from the perspective of its use, exploring how professional knowledge evolves in work by taking clinical cancer nursing as its case. Cancer nursing requires a complex interplay between biomedical, clinical and patient knowledge in caring for patients’ acute and prolonged physical and mental problems. It thus provides a case that reveals the heterogeneous body of theoretical knowledge and complex practical skills that comprise clinical nursing. The nature and status of these different forms of knowledge and their usefulness for clinical practice in modern healthcare contexts have been discussed in great detail in the nursing literature, more recently related to questions of academisation and evidence-based practice. These discussions reflect the essential role ascribed to knowledge in defining and exploring what professions are, and what they do, in the sociology of professions and the literature on expertise. Despite this interest in understanding what knowledge is, and what role different forms of knowledge play in professional practice, few studies have aimed to envision and explore how different types of knowledge and modes of knowing are interconnected in professional decision-making at a micro-level, and how knowledge thus develops through use. These questions are explored in this thesis by analysing data from five months of fieldwork followed by formal interviews with registered nurses in a cancer ward in a Norwegian hospital. Observations revealed how nurses’ professional knowledge and clinical expertise emerged in clinical decision-making through practices of sensing, sharing and caring, as they aimed to evaluate, define and meet cancer patients’ overall care needs. These practices were further explored and analysed by combining perspectives from the sociology of professions and knowledge in policy with sociological and anthropological notions on embodiment, translation and temporality. On this basis the thesis addresses the question of how knowledge is acquired, shared and structured in nurses’ clinical practice and how it is moulded in its circulation through enactments in an organisational context. Based on the three empirical articles, the thesis demonstrates, firstly, how nursing knowledge develops through the building of sensory knowledge in nurses’ continuous, embodied and intersubjective interaction with individual patients and a specific patient group. Secondly, it illustrates how the embodied knowledge of individual nurses is transformed through acts of translation as knowledge is shared, and hence moves in interaction. Thus, nursing knowledge emerges as a third space in the nurses’ interpretative and creative effort to fill the gap between knowledge as embodied and inscribed and the languages and lifeworlds of patients, practitioners and managers. Finally, it displays how nurses’ professional knowledge is produced and reproduced through temporal structuring of caring practices in clinical work, potentially emphasising particular modes of accomplishing care and forms of knowing at the expense of others. In sum, the thesis thus sheds light on how nurses’ heterogeneous body of theoretical knowledge and practical skills is put to use and made useful in a particular organisational context. In this way, the study identifies topics for reflection by clinical practitioners, managers and policy-makers in the field of knowledge management in contemporary healthcare contexts and other professional settings. Beyond providing an in-depth ethnography on aspects of clinical work and knowledge that are little studied in the existing nursing literature and often rendered invisible in a modern hospital context, the thesis contributes to the literature on professions more generally. It does so by demonstrating how acts of diagnosis and treatment are accomplished in the continuous mobilisation and synthesis of theoretical and practical forms of knowledge through inference as an embodied, interactional and situated achievement. The thesis thereby nuances a notion on professional knowledge as a given, illuminating its potential heterogeneous nature, the complex ways in which various forms of knowledge are connected in the solving of particular tasks, and how it circulates and evolves in enactments at the workplace. Overall, the thesis demonstrates the fruitfulness of broadening out theoretical and methodological approaches to the understanding of professional knowledge in future research. It is to be hoped that the thesis can inspire further exploration and new revelations of the knowing body and the body of knowledge in professional practice
The knowing body and a body of knowledge: an ethnographic study of professional knowledge in use in clinical nursing
Get PDFThis thesis is an ethnographic study of nursing knowledge from the perspective of its use, exploring how professional knowledge evolves in work by taking clinical cancer nursing as its case. Cancer nursing requires a complex interplay between biomedical, clinical and patient knowledge in caring for patients’ acute and prolonged physical and mental problems. It thus provides a case that reveals the heterogeneous body of theoretical knowledge and complex practical skills that comprise clinical nursing. The nature and status of these different forms of knowledge and their usefulness for clinical practice in modern healthcare contexts have been discussed in great detail in the nursing literature, more recently related to questions of academisation and evidence-based practice. These discussions reflect the essential role ascribed to knowledge in defining and exploring what professions are, and what they do, in the sociology of professions and the literature on expertise. Despite this interest in understanding what knowledge is, and what role different forms of knowledge play in professional practice, few studies have aimed to envision and explore how different types of knowledge and modes of knowing are interconnected in professional decision-making at a micro-level, and how knowledge thus develops through use. These questions are explored in this thesis by analysing data from five months of fieldwork followed by formal interviews with registered nurses in a cancer ward in a Norwegian hospital. Observations revealed how nurses’ professional knowledge and clinical expertise emerged in clinical decision-making through practices of sensing, sharing and caring, as they aimed to evaluate, define and meet cancer patients’ overall care needs. These practices were further explored and analysed by combining perspectives from the sociology of professions and knowledge in policy with sociological and anthropological notions on embodiment, translation and temporality. On this basis the thesis addresses the question of how knowledge is acquired, shared and structured in nurses’ clinical practice and how it is moulded in its circulation through enactments in an organisational context. Based on the three empirical articles, the thesis demonstrates, firstly, how nursing knowledge develops through the building of sensory knowledge in nurses’ continuous, embodied and intersubjective interaction with individual patients and a specific patient group. Secondly, it illustrates how the embodied knowledge of individual nurses is transformed through acts of translation as knowledge is shared, and hence moves in interaction. Thus, nursing knowledge emerges as a third space in the nurses’ interpretative and creative effort to fill the gap between knowledge as embodied and inscribed and the languages and lifeworlds of patients, practitioners and managers. Finally, it displays how nurses’ professional knowledge is produced and reproduced through temporal structuring of caring practices in clinical work, potentially emphasising particular modes of accomplishing care and forms of knowing at the expense of others. In sum, the thesis thus sheds light on how nurses’ heterogeneous body of theoretical knowledge and practical skills is put to use and made useful in a particular organisational context. In this way, the study identifies topics for reflection by clinical practitioners, managers and policy-makers in the field of knowledge management in contemporary healthcare contexts and other professional settings. Beyond providing an in-depth ethnography on aspects of clinical work and knowledge that are little studied in the existing nursing literature and often rendered invisible in a modern hospital context, the thesis contributes to the literature on professions more generally. It does so by demonstrating how acts of diagnosis and treatment are accomplished in the continuous mobilisation and synthesis of theoretical and practical forms of knowledge through inference as an embodied, interactional and situated achievement. The thesis thereby nuances a notion on professional knowledge as a given, illuminating its potential heterogeneous nature, the complex ways in which various forms of knowledge are connected in the solving of particular tasks, and how it circulates and evolves in enactments at the workplace. Overall, the thesis demonstrates the fruitfulness of broadening out theoretical and methodological approaches to the understanding of professional knowledge in future research. It is to be hoped that the thesis can inspire further exploration and new revelations of the knowing body and the body of knowledge in professional practice.Denne avhandlingen er en etnografisk studie av sykepleieres kunnskap basert på feltarbeid ved en kreftavdeling. Studien utforsker hvordan sykepleiekunnskap utøves og utformes i arbeidet med kreftpasienter som har akutte og langvarige fysiske og psykiske komplikasjoner. Dette arbeidet fordrer et komplekst samspill mellom biomedisinsk kunnskap, kliniske ferdigheter og pasientinnsikt. Utøvelse av sykepleie på en kreftavdeling er dermed en klinisk kontekst der sykepleiens heterogene kunnskapsgrunnlag kommer til syne. Spørsmål om hva som kjennetegner teoretiske og praktiske former for kunnskap, hvilken status de har og bør ha, og vektleggingen av ulike akademiske tradisjoner har vært gjenstand for debatt i sykepleiefaget, i senere tid særlig knyttet opp mot spørsmål om akademisering og kunnskapsbasert praksis. Diskusjonene reflekterer den sentrale rollen kunnskap har i forståelsen av profesjoner som en spesifikk type yrkesgruppe i profesjonssosiologien og i studier av ekspertise. På tross av denne interessen for hva kunnskap er og hvordan ulike former for kunnskap tas i bruk i profesjonell praksis er det få studier som har undersøkt hvordan ulike kunnskapsformer kobles sammen i profesjonelle beslutningsprosesser på et mikronivå, og hvordan profesjonell kunnskap fremkommer og utvikles i utøvelsen av profesjonelt arbeid. Avhandlingen utforsker disse spørsmålene basert på data fra et fem måneder langt feltarbeid etterfulgt av formelle intervjuer med sykepleiere på en kreftavdeling ved et sykehus i Norge. Gjennom deltagende observasjon kom det fram at sykepleieres profesjonelle kunnskap og kliniske ekspertise utformes i kliniske beslutningsprosesser gjennom tilegnelse av sansekunnskap om pasientenes tilstand, deling av kunnskap om pasienter med andre og gjennom ulike former for omsorgsutøvelse. Disse praksisene ble videre utforsket og analysert ved å kombinere perspektiver på kunnskap fra profesjonssosiologien og politisk sosiologi, med antropologiske og sosiologiske perspektiver på kroppsliggjort kunnskap, oversettelse og temporalitet. På dette grunnlaget utforsker denne avhandlingen hvordan kunnskap tilegnes, deles og struktureres i sykepleiernes kliniske praksis, og hvordan den dermed formes gjennom utøvelse i en organisatorisk kontekst. Som presentert i avhandlingens tre artikler viser studien først hvordan sykepleiekunnskap fremkommer gjennom tilegnelse av sansekunnskap i sykepleiernes kontinuerlige kroppslige og intersubjektive samhandling med individuelle pasienter og en spesifikk pasientgruppe. Deretter illustrerer den hvordan den kroppsliggjorte kunnskapen transformeres i oversettelsen som skjer når kunnskap deles og dermed forflytter seg i interaksjon med andre. Med dette belyser studien hvordan kunnskap vokser fram i sykepleiernes kreative fortolkningsarbeid som bidrar til å skape sammenheng mellom kroppsliggjort og formalisert kunnskap, og mellom den virkelighetsforståelsen som pasienter, profesjonsutøvere og ledere besitter. Til slutt viser studien hvordan sykepleieres profesjonelle kunnskap produseres og reproduseres gjennom strukturering av praksiser i tid, og hvordan dette kan medføre en vektlegging av visse omsorgsoppgaver, forstått som typer av kunnskapsarbeid, på bekostning av andre. Samlet belyser dermed avhandlingen hvordan sykepleiernes heterogene teoretiske og praktiske kunnskapsfelt tas i bruk og nyttiggjøres i en spesifikk organisatorisk kontekst. Med dette har studien reist problemstillinger som forhåpentligvis kan bidra til refleksjon og diskusjon blant profesjonsutøvere, ledere og politiske beslutningstagere i helsesektoren så vel som i andre sektorer. I tillegg til å gi et dyptgående etnografisk innblikk i aspekter ved utøvelse av sykepleie som ikke så ofte har blitt gjort til gjenstand for empirisk forskning, og som står i fare for å bli usynlig i en moderne sykehuskontekst, bidrar avhandlingen også til den mer generelle profesjonsforskningen. Den gjør det ved å belyse hvordan diagnostisering og behandling av komplekse problemer skjer gjennom profesjonsutøveres kontinuerlige mobilisering og syntetisering av teoretiske og praktiske kunnskapsformer. Videre viser avhandlingen hvordan dette finner sted gjennom kroppsliggjorte og situerte slutningsprosesser i interaksjon med andre. Studien nyanserer dermed forståelsen av profesjonskunnskap som en gitt teoretisk base eller et sett med praktiske ferdigheter ved å belyse hvordan ulike heterogene kunnskapsformer integreres i håndteringen av konkrete problemer, og hvordan kunnskap sirkulerer og endres når den utøves i en gitt organisatorisk kontekst. Overordnet demonstrerer studien verdien av å utvide det teoretiske rammeverket og den metodiske tilnærmingen i studier av profesjonell kunnskap. Forhåpentligvis kan avhandlingen dermed inspirere til videre forskning og nye innsikter om kroppen som base og om kunnskapsbasen i profesjonell praksis.publishedVersio
Embodied performance of operational work in a highsecurity prison
Get PDFThis dissertation explores how frontline workers maintain safety and security in organisations, based on an ethnography of work in a Norwegian high-security prison. The primary focus is on how prison officers and operational senior officers carries out operational work, which in prisons involve safety and security related tasks. Operational work is characterized by a continuous navigation of uncertainty, predominantly influenced by social determinants, where prison officers operate in close physical proximity to people associated with risk. Making sense of what and who represents risk, and how danger will (possibly) materialize, is often a complex task. The fluctuating nature of operational work introduces potential tensions to rationalised logics of work, embedded in high-security prisons as bureaucracies concerned with control and regulation of frontline work. Recognizing the disparities between implicit assumptions of work inherent in formal structures and the actual execution of situated work has prompted a call for a greater emphasis on observations and descriptions of work practices in safety research. To move beyond formal depictions of work and explore practices as they unfold in real time, participant observation over time proves to be a valuable method. During five months of fieldwork in a Norwegian high-security prison, I participated in prison and senior officers’ daily work, where both observations and field conversations were crucial to understanding how the work was performed. The overall research question in this dissertation is how operational work is carried out in a high-security prison, and based on observations of prison officers’ work, this general question is addressed with the following questions: How do prison officers accomplish operational work as an embodied competency? And, in what ways do formal representations of work appear incompatible with the accomplishment of operational work? The three articles and the introduction illustrate how prison officers accomplished operational work as an embodied competency in engagement with the prison environment, provided with a certain orientation towards risk and danger. The articles detail how prison officers made sense of weak signals by sensing that ‘something is wrong’, how they relied on their embodied judgment of safety and danger to take precautions in the social prison environment, and how senior officers created capacity by skilful adjustments in the face of disruptions. Additionally, the articles demonstrate how representations of work, including safety rules, staffing plans and building design in some ways appeared incompatible with how work was actually carried out, or at least with how the officers wanted to carry it out, thus seeming insufficient to prison officers’ ability to be aware of and solve safety-related problems. The dissertation contributes to prison research concerned with safety and security by providing descriptions of everyday work, complementing retrospective studies of full-blown prison riots seeking causal explanation. Moreover, it makes three main contributions to safety research. First, the dissertation theorises how operational work is accomplished as an embodied competency and how this contributes to keeping people safe through specialised knowing developed through experience. This challenges ‘thin’ rationalised understandings of work in both research and policy and complements a common focus on how people think to solve safety related problems. Second, the dissertation offers empirical insights from ethnographic fieldwork data in a highsecurity prison context, a novel setting in safety research, where safety and security are coupled. Consequently, the scope of risks broadens from previously studied technology and natural forces to encompass people, where work is carried out in close physical proximity to those associated with risk. Third, the bottom-up and in-depth empirical descriptions of work involved in the daily maintenance of safety and security are important in a field of research where abstract theoretical concepts and normative, rationalistic research tended to dominate. It highlights how deficient assumptions about operational work, built into organisational and material structures, can shape situated practices in ways that unintentionally work against objectives of safety and security.
Denne avhandlingen utforsker hvordan arbeidere i førstelinja ivaretar sikkerheten i organisasjoner, basert på en etnografisk studie av arbeid i et norsk høysikkerhetsfengsel. Fokus er rettet mot hvordan fengselsbetjenter og vaktledere utøver operativt arbeid, som i fengsler innebærer et formelt ansvar for ivaretakelsen av sikkerheten til samfunnet, innsatte og ansatte. Operativt arbeid kjennetegnes av å kontinuerlig navigere usikkerhet på grunn av såkalt situasjonsvariabilitet, som fordi fengselsbetjenter arbeider fysisk nært innsatte, i stor grad avhenger av sosiale faktorer. Å forstå hva og hvem som kan representere en risiko, og hvordan farer (eventuelt) vil materialiseres, er en kompleks oppgave. Variasjonen i operativt arbeid utgjør potensielle spenninger til rasjonalistiske tilnærminger til arbeid innebygget i høysikkerhetsfengsler som byråkratiske organisasjoner opptatt av kontroll og regulering av arbeid. For å vite mer om avstanden mellom implisitte antagelser om arbeid inkorporert i formelle strukturer, og hvordan situert arbeid faktisk utøves, har det blitt etterlyst et større fokus på beskrivelser av faktiske arbeidspraksiser innen sikkerhetsforskning. Deltagende observasjon er en nyttig metode for å gå utover formelle beskrivelser av arbeid med sikkerhet, og for å beskrive arbeid som det utøves i virkelige situasjoner. Gjennom fem måneders feltarbeid i et norsk høysikkerhetsfengsel deltok jeg i fengselsbetjenters og vaktlederes daglige arbeid, hvor både observasjoner og feltsamtaler var sentrale for å forstå utøvelsen av arbeidet. Det overordnede forskningsspørsmålet i avhandlingen er hvordan operativt arbeid utøves i et høysikkerhetsfengsel, og basert på observasjoner av arbeidet i fengselet ble det overordnede spørsmålet adressert gjennom følgende spørsmål: Hvordan utfører fengselsbetjenter operativt arbeid som en kroppsliggjort1 kompetanse? Og, på hvilke måter fremstår formelle representasjoner av arbeid som lite egnet for utførelsen av operativt arbeid? De tre artiklene og kappen viser hvordan fengselsbetjentene utførte operativt arbeid som en kroppsliggjort kompetanse gjennom aktiv tilstedeværelse i fengselsmiljøet ut ifra en bestemt orientering mot risiko og fare. Artiklene viser hvordan fengselsbetjenter ga mening til svake signaler via sansene som bidro til at de merket at «noe er galt», hvordan de stolte på sine egne kroppslige bedømmelser om sikkerhet og fare for å ta forholdsregler i et sosialt og skiftende fengselsmiljø, og hvordan vaktledere ‘skapte’ kapasitet i møte med ulike forstyrrelser gjennom tilpasninger av ressurser basert på lang fengselserfaring. Videre viser artiklene hvordan representasjoner av arbeid, inkludert sikkerhetsregler, bemanningsplaner og bygningsutforming på noen måter fremstod som lite passende for hvordan det operative arbeidet faktisk ble utført, eller i noen tilfeller for hvordan mange betjenter ønsket å utføre det, og slik reduserte betjentenes evne til å løse sikkerhetsproblemer. Avhandlingen bidrar til fengselsforskning ved å gi beskrivelser av sikkerhetsrelatert arbeid slik det utøves i vanlig drift, noe som gir et viktig supplement til overvekten av studier som søker årsaksforklaringer i etterkant av fengselsopprør. Videre gir avhandlingen tre hovedbidrag til sikkerhetsforskningen. Først, avhandlingen teoretiserer hvordan operativt arbeid utføres som en kroppsliggjort kompetanse og hvordan dette bidrar til folks sikkerhet gjennom spesialisert kunnskap2 utviklet gjennom erfaring. Gjennom dette kompletteres 'tynne’ rasjonaliserte forståelser av arbeid i både forskning, politikk og praksis, og bidrar til å komplettere et vanlig fokus på hvordan folk tenker for å løse sikkerhetsproblemer. Dernest gir avhandlingen empiriske beskrivelser fra etnografisk feltarbeid i en høysikkerhetskontekst, som er en ny setting innen sikkerhetsforskning hvor såkalt ‘safety’ og ‘security’ er koblet sammen. Slik utvides typen risikokilder fra teknologi og naturkrefter som tidligere har blitt studert, til å inkludere mennesker i en setting hvor arbeid utøves i nær kontakt med menneskene som assosieres med risiko. Til slutt, empiriske dybdebeskrivelser av arbeid involvert i den daglige ivaretakelsen av sikkerhet ‘på gulvet’ er viktig i et forskningsfelt hvor abstrakte teoretiske begreper og normativ, rasjonalistisk forskning har dominert. Disse beskrivelsene retter oppmerksomheten mot hvordan mangelfulle antagelser om operativt arbeid kan være innebygget i organisatoriske og materielle strukturer, og som utilsiktet kan forme situert praksis.publishedVersio
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