| 1. |
- Doganova, Liliana, et al.
(författare)
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Five years! Have we not had enough of valuation studies by now?
- 2018
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Ingår i: Valuation Studies. - 2001-5992. ; 5:2, s. 83-91
-
Tidskriftsartikel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The disparate and heterogeneous body of work that falls under the rubric of “valuation studies” has really taken off in recent years. There are a number of exciting edited volumes and special issues that have been published in the past couple of years (e.g. Berthoin Antal et al. 2015; Cefai et al. 2015; Dussauge et al. 2015; Kornberger et al. 2015). This journal, recently just an idea, is now completing Volume 5 with its tenth issue. Sometimes we hear mumbled irritations about how valuation studies are about everything—and are actually everywhere. “Victory!” we could then answer in triumph, not without noticing how the valuation of valuation studies (and, indeed, of Valuation Studies) goes hand-in-hand with a sense of academic terrain, and the occupation thereof.
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| 2. |
- Doganova, Liliana, et al.
(författare)
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Valuation Studies and the Critique of Valuation
- 2014
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Ingår i: Valuation Studies. - : Linkoping University Electronic Press. - 2001-5992. ; 2:2, s. 87-96
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Tidskriftsartikel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)
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| 3. |
- Grit, Kor, et al.
(författare)
-
Making Markets in Long-Term Care : Or How a Market Can Work by Being Invisible
- 2017
-
Ingår i: Health Care Analysis. - : Springer. - 1065-3058 .- 1573-3394. ; 25:3, s. 242-259
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Many Western countries have introduced market principles in health- care. The newly introduced financial instrument of ‘‘care-intensity packages’’ in the Dutch long-term care sector fit this development since they have some character- istics of a market device. However, policy makers and care providers positioned these instruments as explicitly not belonging to the general trend of marketisation in healthcare. Using a qualitative case study approach, we study the work that the two providers have done to fit these instruments to their organisations and how that enables and legitimatises market development. Both providers have done various types of work that could be classified as market development, including creating accounting systems suitable for markets, redefining public values in the context of markets, and starting commercial initiatives. Paradoxically, denying the existence of markets for long-term care and thus avoiding ideological debates on the marketi- sation of healthcare has made the use of market devices all the more likely. Making the market invisible seems to be an operative element in making the market work. Our findings suggest that Dutch long-term care reform points to the need to study the ‘making’ rather than the ‘liberalising’ of markets and that the study of healthcare markets should not be confined to those practices that explicitly label themselves as such.
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| 4. |
- Harder, Thomas, et al.
(författare)
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Evidence-based decision-making in infectious diseases epidemiology, prevention and control: matching research questions to study designs and quality appraisal tools
- 2014
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Ingår i: BMC Medical Research Methodology. - : BioMed Central. - 1471-2288. ; 14:69
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- BACKGROUND:The Project on a Framework for Rating Evidence in Public Health (PRECEPT) was initiated and is being funded by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) to define a methodology for evaluating and grading evidence and strength of recommendations in the field of public health, with emphasis on infectious disease epidemiology, prevention and control. One of the first steps was to review existing quality appraisal tools (QATs) for individual research studies of various designs relevant to this area, using a question-based approach.METHODS:Through team discussions and expert consultations, we identified 20 relevant types of public health questions, which were grouped into six domains, i.e. characteristics of the pathogen, burden of disease, diagnosis, risk factors, intervention, and implementation of intervention. Previously published systematic reviews were used and supplemented by expert consultation to identify suitable QATs. Finally, a matrix was constructed for matching questions to study designs suitable to address them and respective QATs. Key features of each of the included QATs were then analyzed, in particular in respect to its intended use, types of questions and answers, presence/absence of a quality score, and if a validation was performed.RESULTS:In total we identified 21 QATs and 26 study designs, and matched them. Four QATs were suitable for experimental quantitative study designs, eleven for observational quantitative studies, two for qualitative studies, three for economic studies, one for diagnostic test accuracy studies, and one for animal studies. Included QATs consisted of six to 28 items. Six of the QATs had a summary quality score. Fourteen QATs had undergone at least one validation procedure.CONCLUSIONS:The results of this methodological study can be used as an inventory of potentially relevant questions, appropriate study designs and QATs for researchers and authorities engaged with evidence-based decision-making in infectious disease epidemiology, prevention and control.
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| 5. |
- Harder, Thomas, et al.
(författare)
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PRECEPT: an evidence assessment framework for infectious disease epidemiology, prevention and control
- 2017
-
Ingår i: Eurosurveillance. - : EUR CENTRE DIS PREVENTION & CONTROL. - 1025-496X .- 1560-7917. ; 22:40
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Decisions in public health should be based on the best available evidence, reviewed and appraised using a rigorous and transparent methodology. The Project on a Framework for Rating Evidence in Public Health (PRECEPT) defined a methodology for evaluating and grading evidence in infectious disease epidemiology, prevention and control that takes different domains and question types into consideration. The methodology rates evidence in four domains: disease burden, risk factors, diagnostics and intervention. The framework guiding it has four steps going from overarching questions to an evidence statement. In step 1, approaches for identifying relevant key areas and developing specific questions to guide systematic evidence searches are described. In step 2, methodological guidance for conducting systematic reviews is provided; 15 study quality appraisal tools are proposed and an algorithm is given for matching a given study design with a tool. In step 3, a standardised evidence-grading scheme using the Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation Working Group (GRADE) methodology is provided, whereby findings are documented in evidence profiles. Step 4 consists of preparing a narrative evidence summary. Users of this framework should be able to evaluate and grade scientific evidence from the four domains in a transparent and reproducible way.
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| 6. |
- Harder, Thomas, et al.
(författare)
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Towards a framework for evaluating and grading evidence in public health
- 2015
-
Ingår i: Health Policy. - : Elsevier. - 0168-8510 .- 1872-6054. ; 119:6, s. 732-736
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The Project on a Framework for Rating Evidence in Public Health (PRECEPT) is an international collaboration of public health institutes and universities which has been funded by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) since 2012. Main objective is to define a framework for evaluating and grading evidence in the field of public health, with particular focus on infectious disease prevention and control. As part of the peer review process, an international expert meeting was held on 13-1 4 June 2013 in Berlin. Participants were members of the PRECEPT team and selected experts from national public health institutes, World Health Organization (WHO), and academic institutions. The aim of the meeting was to discuss the draft framework and its application to two examples from infectious disease prevention and control. This article introduces the draft PRECEPT framework and reports on the meeting, its structure, most relevant discussions and major conclusions.
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| 7. |
- Helgesson, Claes-Fredrik, Professor, 1964-, et al.
(författare)
-
Five years! Have we not had enough of valuation studies by now?
- 2018
-
Ingår i: Valuation Studies. - : Linköping University Electronic Press. - 2001-5992. ; 5:2, s. 83-91
-
Tidskriftsartikel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The disparate and heterogeneous body of work that falls under the rubric of “valuation studies” has really taken off in recent years. There are a number of exciting edited volumes and special issues that have been published in the past couple of years (e.g. Berthoin Antal et al. 2015; Cefai et al. 2015; Dussauge et al. 2015; Kornberger et al. 2015). This journal, recently just an idea, is now completing Volume 5 with its tenth issue. Sometimes we hear mumbled irritations about how valuation studies are about everything—and are actually everywhere. “Victory!” we could then answer in triumph, not without noticing how the valuation of valuation studies (and, indeed, of Valuation Studies) goes hand-in-hand with a sense of academic terrain, and the occupation thereof.
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| 8. |
- Johansson Krafve, Linus, 1984-
(författare)
-
Valuation in Welfare Markets : The Rule Books, Whiteboards and Swivel Chairs of Care Choice Reform
- 2015
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis takes an interest in how values attain a specific meaning in market reforms of welfare provision. The study builds on exploring how values are enacted rather than treating them as universal and stable. The aim of the thesis is to contribute conceptually to the understanding of how market-making activities in the welfare state bureaucracy handle the values at play in welfare reform.The empirical case is the governance of a so-called care choice system in a Swedish county council. The methodology for the study is “shadowing” of public officials working to formulate a so-called rulebook for care centres. The analysis describes how these officials handle a variety of values when designing the rulebook. How they choose to organize their work – the methods used to collect data about care centre performance, what governance tools they employ, how they arrange their work roles, and how they construct the rulebook – leads to value shifts and determines the meaning of values in practice.The officials’ work practice is political in the sense that it actively shapes the values enacted in the care choice reform. Therefore, it is of great importance to spur a broader debate about the organization of such governance practices, while there is a need to problematize simplistic images of what market reforms of welfare entails in practice. The thesis proposes that an “ecological” – i.e. a situated, reflexive, and malleable – approach to handling of contending values may contribute to such debates.
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| 9. |
- Lagerlöf, Helena, 1976, et al.
(författare)
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Epistemological deliberation : The challenges of producing evidence-based guidelines on lifestyle habits
- 2021
-
Ingår i: Evidence & Policy: A Journal of Research, Debate and Practice. - 1744-2648 .- 1744-2656. ; 17:4, s. 709-727
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Background: Promotion of healthy behaviour is increasingly highlighted worldwide as a way to improve public health, prevent disease incidence, and decrease long-term costs for healthcare. In Sweden the National Board of Health and Welfare (NBHW) used the well-established format of national guidelines to facilitate a more widespread use of approaches for promotion of healthy lifestyle habits in healthcare. Aims and objectives: The aim of this case study was to explore the tensions between public health knowledge and the tenets of evidence-based medicine (EBM) in the creation of national guidelines on lifestyle habits. Methods: Based on data from interviews with guideline professionals and the collected documents of the national guidelines, we examine how NBHW negotiated the conflicts between public health knowledge and the format of national guidelines. An analytical model based on approaches from the sociology of standardisation is used to explore the ramifications of these negotiations. Findings: In line with findings in the sociology of standardisation, we show how conflicts between public health knowledge and the format of national guidelines result in both having to yield on certain points. This, we claim, results in compromise, but perhaps also compromised notions of validity and causality. Discussion and conclusion: This case offers important learning about the general compatibility of public health and currently dominant methods of EBM. Important crossroads are outlined, concerning how validity and causality are configured in public health guidelines and how these require extensive epistemological deliberation.
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| 10. |
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| 11. |
- Pistone, Isabella, et al.
(författare)
-
Evidence-based practice and management-by-knowledge of disability care : rigid constraint or fluid support?
- 2022
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Ingår i: Evidence & Policy. - : Policy Press. - 1744-2648 .- 1744-2656. ; 18:4, s. 651-669
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Background: Although increasingly accepted in some corners of social work, critics have claimed that evidence-based practice (EBP) methodologies run contrary to local care practices and result in an EBP straitjacket and epistemic injustice. These are serious concerns, especially in relation to already marginalised clients.Aims and objectives: Against the backdrop of criticism against EBP, this study explores the ramifications of the Swedish state-governed knowledge infrastructure, ‘management-by-knowledge’, for social care practices at two care units for persons with intellectual disabilities.Methods: Data generated from ethnographic observations and interviews were analysed by applying a conceptual framework of epistemic injustice; also analysed were national, regional and local knowledge products within management-by-knowledge related to two daily activity (DA) units at a social care provider in Sweden.Findings: In this particular case of disability care, no obvious risks of epistemic injustice were discovered in key knowledge practices of management-by-knowledge. Central methodologies of national agencies did include perspectives from social workers and clients, as did regional infrastructures. Locally, there were structures in place that focused on creating a dynamic interplay between knowledge coming from various forms of evidence, including social workers’ and clients’ own knowledge and experience.Discussion and conclusions: Far from being a straitjacket, in the case studied management-by-knowledge may be understood as offering fluid support. Efforts which aim at improving care for people with disabilities might benefit from organisational support structures that enable dynamic interactions between external knowledge and local practices.Key messagesExamining one case of disability care in Sweden, both social workers’ and clients’ experiences were included in EBP infrastructures.In this study, Swedish EBP infrastructures functioned more like fluid support than a straitjacket.Organisational structures that combine different knowledge sources at service providers can minimise the risk of epistemic injustice within social care.
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| 12. |
- Pistone, Isabella, 1987, et al.
(författare)
-
Evidence-based practice and management-by-knowledge of disability care: rigid constraint or fluid support?
- 2022
-
Ingår i: Evidence & Policy: A Journal of Research, Debate and Practice. - 1744-2648 .- 1744-2656. ; 18:4, s. 651-669
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Background: Although increasingly accepted in some corners of social work, critics have claimed that evidence-based practice (EBP) methodologies run contrary to local care practices and result in an EBP straitjacket and epistemic injustice. These are serious concerns, especially in relation to already marginalised clients. Aims and objectives: Against the backdrop of criticism against EBP, this study explores the ramifications of the Swedish state-governed knowledge infrastructure, ‘management-by-knowledge’, for social care practices at two care units for persons with intellectual disabilities. Methods: Data generated from ethnographic observations and interviews were analysed by applying a conceptual framework of epistemic injustice; also analysed were national, regional and local knowledge products within management-by-knowledge related to two daily activity (DA) units at a social care provider in Sweden. Findings: In this particular case of disability care, no obvious risks of epistemic injustice were discovered in key knowledge practices of management-by-knowledge. Central methodologies of national agencies did include perspectives from social workers and clients, as did regional infrastructures. Locally, there were structures in place that focused on creating a dynamic interplay between knowledge coming from various forms of evidence, including social workers’ and clients’ own knowledge and experience. Discussion and conclusions: Far from being a straitjacket, in the case studied management-by-knowledge may be understood as offering fluid support. Efforts which aim at improving care for people with disabilities might benefit from organisational support structures that enable dynamic interactions between external knowledge and local practices.
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| 13. |
- Postma, Jeroen, et al.
(författare)
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Beyond Volume Indicators and Centralization: Toward a Broad Perspective on Policy for Improving Quality of Emergency Care
- 2017
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Ingår i: Annals of Emergency Medicine. - : MOSBY-ELSEVIER. - 0196-0644 .- 1097-6760. ; 69:6, s. 689-697
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Study objective: Policymakers increasingly regard centralization of emergency care as a useful measure to improve quality. However, the clinical studies that are used to justify centralization, arguing that volume indicators are a good proxy for quality of care (practice makes perfect), have significant shortcomings. In light of the introduction of a new centralization policy in the Netherlands, we show that the use of volume indicators in emergency care is problematic and does not do justice to the daily care provided in emergency departments (EDs). Methods: We conducted an ethnographic study in 3 EDs, a primary care facility, and an ambulance call center in the Netherlands, including 109 hours of observation, more than 30 ethnographic interviews with professionals and managers, and 5 semistructured follow-up interviews. Results: We argue that emergency care is a complex, multilayered practice and distinguish 4 different repertoires: acute and complex care, uncertain diagnostics, basic care, and physical, social, and mental care. A repertoire entails a definition of what good care is, what professional skills are needed, and how emergency care should be organized. Conclusion: The first repertoire of acute and complex care might benefit from centralization. The other 3 repertoires, however, equally deserve attention but are made invisible in policies that focus on the first repertoire and extrapolate the idea of centralization to emergency care as a whole. Emergency care research and policies should take all repertoires into account and pay more attention to alternative measures and indicators beyond volume, eg, patient satisfaction, professional expertise, and collaboration between EDs and other facilities.
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| 14. |
- Sager, Morten, 1972, et al.
(författare)
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Materialities of Post-Evidence-Based Practice
- 2020
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Ingår i: Conference Program 4S/EASST Prague, August, 18-21, 2020, online.
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Together with changes in governance related to New Public Management, evidence-based practice (EBP) has amounted to a paradigm shift in the Swedish welfare sector and elsewhere concerning the management, monitoring and measurements of operations in health care, education and social care. Critics have pointed to the de-contextualized character of aggregated knowledge of randomized controlled trials and systematic reviews and subsequent guidelines and indicators that fail to acknowledge complex localities and the temporal unfolding of practices. While it is tempting to align with such concerns, we experiment with developing a “post-EBP approach” through a quality improvement program within a large social care and welfare organization to create a different infrastructure for evidence-basing that enacts a dynamic, non-linear evidence-practice-entwinement. This infrastructure consists of harvesting quality improvement knowledge and turning it into a situated evidence base. It also consists of aiming to revise procurement processes in which municipalities require care organizations to prove that their work is ‘evidence based’, without having the faintest idea what that might entail in practice, nor how that helps enact good social care and welfare. By working creatively with graphic illustrations in close relation with practitioners in a social care setting for mentally disabled we are investigating ethnographically how improvement work is affected by the materials used to train and maintain competences of improvement coaches. Among the most important illustrations are the evidence hierarchy often depicted in the form of a pyramid, venn diagrams of various spheres of knowledge and participants, and also images of a knowledge pipeline from top to bottom. These pictures harness and reproduce particular disembodied forms of agency, as it were, outside time and place. By developing a quality improvement program that considers evidence and practice as entwined, we aim to put bodies, time and place back into knowledge governance. We are harvesting practice-derived improvement knowledge and create and experiment with new illustrations for the training, maintaining and use of competences in improvement work. Important points for tracing the consequences are the material and mental effects made available through observations, interviews and quantitative indicators. The care of mentally disabled in the operations studied here, is led by and pursued mostly by staff without academic training. But, they are both using and producing knowledge with considerable consequences for a vulnerable group in society. By the disembodied nature of present EBP infrastructures both practitioners and clients are systematically disenfranchised. Studies, reviews and guidelines do not take their bodies, time and space into account. This project attempts to change the epistemic conditions by investigating how local complexities and temporal unfolding of local improvement work can be embodied in the materialities of post-EBP.
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| 15. |
- van de Bovenkamp, Hester, et al.
(författare)
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An empirical study of patient participation in guideline development : exploring the potential for articulating patient knowledge in evidence-based epistemic settings
- 2015
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Ingår i: Health Expectations. - : John Wiley & Sons. - 1369-6513 .- 1369-7625. ; 18:5, s. 942-955
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Background Patient participation on both the individual and the collective level attracts broad attention from policy makers and researchers. Participation is expected to make decision making more democratic and increase the quality of decisions, but empirical evidence for this remains wanting.Objective To study why problems arise in participation practice and to think critically about the consequence for future participation practices. We contribute to this discussion by looking at patient participation in guideline development.Methods Dutch guidelines (n = 62) were analysed extended version of the AGREE instrument. In addition, semi-structured interviews were conducted with actors involved in guideline development (n = 25).Results The guidelines analysed generally scored low on the item of patient participation. The interviews provided us with important information on why this is the case. Although some respondents point out the added value of participation, many report on difficulties in the participation practice. Patient experiences sit uncomfortably with the EBM structure of guideline development. Moreover, patients who develop epistemic credibility needed to participate in evidence-based guideline development lose credibility as representatives for ‘true’ patients.Discussion and conclusions We conclude that other options may increase the quality of care for patients by paying attention to their (individual) experiences. It will mean that patients are not present at every decision-making table in health care, which may produce a more elegant version of democratic patienthood; a version that neither produces tokenistic practices of direct participation nor that denies patients the chance to contribute to matters where this may be truly meaningful.
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| 16. |
- van Loon, Esther, et al.
(författare)
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Diagnostic Work through Evidence-Based Guidelines : Avoiding Gaps Between Development and Implementation of a Guideline for Problem Behaviour in Elderly Care
- 2014
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Ingår i: Science as Culture. - : Routledge. - 0950-5431 .- 1470-1189. ; 23:2, s. 153-176
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Diagnostic work is the reflexive work of figuring out what issues are at stake and determining the scope for action. This work is not generally accommodated by evidence-based guidelines, which generally promote a uniform, predefined approach to solving healthcare problems that risk narrowing the opportunities for diagnostic work in healthcare practice. Consequently, guidelines are often criticised as too general to solve situated, individual healthcare problems and gaps between guidelines and their implementation are often reported. The Netherlands has developed a guideline for problem behaviour in elderly care, explicitly designed for diagnostic work, thus stimulating a situated approach. Relational problem behaviour is highly embedded in its context. The guideline stimulates diagnostic work, which helps to unravel problem behaviour and is opening alternatives in elderly care. Diagnostic work does not transfer guideline development problems to healthcare practice, but simply structures the decision-making process without giving a predefined answer. Diagnostic work is thus important to consider in order to avoid a gap between guideline development and implementation.
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| 17. |
- van Loon, Esther
(författare)
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Reflexive Standardization and Standardized Reflexivity : Development and use of innovations in healthcare practices
- 2015
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Healthcare is inevitably confronted by many kinds of variation. For example, patients have multiple conditions and wish specific treatment, influencing their care trajectory as this results in different options for treatment or diagnosis (Eddy, 1984). Or different cultural backgrounds between the elderly admitted to nursing homes and their care givers result in communication differences (The, 2008). Or ranking hospitals to gain insight into the best shows substantial variation, depend-ing on who decides the order, the ranking criteria and the publisher, such as the Dutch opinion weekly Elsevier and the newspaper AD (Bal, 2014; Dijkstra & Harverkamp, 2012). Variation is found on all levels of healthcare and, as with the graffiti ex-ample, not all of it is either good or bad. Two dominant developments in healthcare, aimed at improving quality, seem on first sight to ‘stand for’ either good or unwanted variation. The first, the standardization movement seems mainly aimed at reducing unwanted variation, while the second, patient-centred care seeks to allow more individualized care and is likely to be associated with endorsing good variation. As I intend to show in this thesis, labelling variation as good or unwanted depends upon who perceives it in a particular context. The two developments of standardization and patient-centred care do not a priori resemble either ‘unwanted’ or ‘good’ variation. In the rest of this section I will explain this proposition.
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| 18. |
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| 19. |
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| 20. |
- Zuiderent-Jerak, Teun
(författare)
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If Intervention Is Method, What Are We Learning? : A Commentary on Brian Martin’s “STS and Researcher Intervention Strategies”
- 2016
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Ingår i: Engaging Science, Technology, and Society. - : Society for Social Studies of Science (4S). - 2413-8053. ; 1:2, s. 73-82
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Forskningsöversikt (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In STS and Researcher Intervention Strategies, Brian Martin expresses his concern about the lack of strategic guidance STS offers for intervening in controversies in which actors are being marginalized. This is an interesting contrast with some classic critiques of Actor-Network Theory. Leigh Star famously argued that the over-emphasis of ANT on strategic action made it particularly poorly equipped to study heterogeneity––an analytical and political problem at once. I argue that guidance on intervention as research method should actively resist the urge to make intervention “strategic.” Considering intervention as a scholarly method for producing novel insights about our topics is diametrically opposed to considering intervention strategically , that is, as means to achieving predefined scholarly or normative goals. Drawing on previous, recent, and ongoing work on intervention as an equally non-strategic and nondetached method for developing new knowledge and new normativities, I explore how such work would speak to Martin’s challenge of intervening in controversies and what could be some interesting lessons such an experiment might spark. A strategic take on intervention is important for Martin because it challenges a linear model of STS knowledge production: scholars prioritizing the development of greater understanding of phenomena, hoping that such knowledge can then be beneficial for society later on. Approaching intervention as method, however, challenges problematic linear models of STS knowledge, not by inverting the linearity (from areas of social importance to knowledge production), but by extending non-linear scholarship to our own and others’ normativities. This allows STS scholars to take their concerns about the practices they are involved in seriously without violating their equal attachment to reflexivity, unpredictability, and situatedness. Such a prospect may help STS scholars to explore what it means to live the multiple membership of societally and academically concerned communities, which is what considering intervention strategically would make us lose.
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| 21. |
- Zuiderent-Jerak, Teun, et al.
(författare)
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Ineffable Cultures or Material Devices : What Valuation Studies can Learn from the Disappearance of Ensured Solidarity in a Health Care Market
- 2015
-
Ingår i: Valuation Studies. - 2001-5992. ; 3:1, s. 45-73
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Valuation studies addresses how values are made in valuation practices. A next —or rather previous—question becomes: what then makes valuation practices? Two oppositional replies are starting to dominate how that question can be answered: a more materially oriented focus on devices of valuation and a more sociologically inclined focus on ineffable valuation cultures. The debate between proponents of both approaches may easily turn into the kind of leapfrog debates that have dominated many previous discussions on whether culture or materiality would play a decisive role in driving history. This paper explores a less repetitive reply. It does so by analyzing the puzzling case of the demise of solidarity as a core value within the recent Dutch health care system of regulated competition. While “solidarity among the insured” was both a strong cultural value within the Dutch welfare-based health system, and a value that was built into market devices by health economists, within a fairly short time “fairness” became of lesser importance than “competition”. This makes us call for a more historical, relational, and dynamic understanding of the role of economists, market devices, and of culture in valuation studies.
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| 22. |
- Zuiderent-Jerak, Teun
(författare)
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Situated Intervention : sociological experiments in health care
- 2015
-
Bok (refereegranskat)abstract
- In this book, Teun Zuiderent-Jerak considers how the direct involvement of social scientists in the practices they study can lead to the production of sociological knowledge. Neither “detached” sociological scholarship nor “engaged” social science, this new approach to sociological research brings together two activities often viewed as belonging to different realms: intervening in practices and furthering scholarly understanding of them. Just as the natural sciences benefited from broadening their scholarship from theorizing to experiment, so too could the social sciences. Additionally, Zuiderent-Jerak points out, rather than proceeding from a pre-set normative agenda, scholarly intervention allows for the experimental production of normativity. Scholars are far from detached, but still may be surprised by the normative outcomes of the interactions within the experiment.Zuiderent-Jerak illustrates situated intervention research with a series of examples drawn from health care. Among the topics addressed are patient compliance in hemophilia home care, the organization of oncology care and the value of situated standardization, the relationship between standardization and patient centeredness, the development of patient-centered pathways, value-driven and savings-driven approaches to the construction of health care markets, and multiple ontologies of safety in care for older adults. Finally, returning to the question of normativity in sociological research, Zuiderent-Jerak proposes an ethics of specificity according to which research adapts its sociological responses to the practices studied. Sociology not only has more to offer to the practices it studies; it also has more to learn from them.
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| 23. |
- Zuiderent-Jerak, Teun
(författare)
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Situated Intervention: Response to Comments
- 2016
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Ingår i: Science & Technology Studies. - 2243-4690. ; 2:1, s. 70-73
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Recension (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In STS and Researcher Intervention Strategies, Brian Martin expresses his concern about the lack of strategic guidance STS offers for intervening in controversies in which actors are being marginalized. This is an interesting contrast with some classic critiques of Actor-Network Theory. Leigh Star famously argued that the over-emphasis of ANT on strategic action made it particularly poorly equipped to study heterogeneity––an analytical and political problem at once. I argue that guidance on intervention as research method should actively resist the urge to make intervention “strategic.” Considering intervention as a scholarly method for producing novel insights about our topics is diametrically opposed to considering intervention strategically, that is, as means to achieving predefined scholarly or normative goals. Drawing on previous, recent, and ongoing work on intervention as an equally non-strategic and nondetached method for developing new knowledge and new normativities, I explore how such work would speak to Martin’s challenge of intervening in controversies and what could be some interesting lessons such an experiment might spark. A strategic take on intervention is important for Martin because it challenges a linear model of STS knowledge production: scholars prioritizing the development of greater understanding of phenomena, hoping that such knowledge can then be beneficial for society later on. Approaching intervention as method, however, challenges problematic linear models of STS knowledge, not by inverting the linearity (from areas of social importance to knowledge production), but by extending non-linear scholarship to our own and others’ normativities. This allows STS scholars to take their concerns about the practices they are involved in seriously without violating their equal attachment to reflexivity, unpredictability, and situatedness. Such a prospect may help STS scholars to explore what it means to live the multiple membership of societally and academically concerned communities, which is what considering intervention strategically would make us lose.
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