CONCLUSIONES SOBRE EL DIA A DIA DE LAS MUJERES EN PRISIÓN.

such storytelling inherently moves within and between disciplines (Reissman, 1993). Richardson (1991) referred to a discursive move in which no particular discourse in the present may lay claim to an authoritative version of the truth. Mixed methods4 are “[…] a paradigm whose time has come” (Johnson, 2004, p.14). In mixing methods, a researcher encompasses patterns in ways that open up the field of study reducing the possibility for limiting interpretation and discussion. The adoption of a particular

tradition extends to claims for authenticity of that prescription and, in extension, the deprecation of alternative approaches (Atkinson, 1995). This creates an “other” in the field of research paradigms (Denzin, 1994). Given the call for consistency to a worldview, the personal philosophy of the researcher and the paradigm and methods chosen, this present research is based on an inclusive approach to experiences from within and outside of dominating paradigms. These ways of working are valued within narrative therapy and feminist approaches to living and to research.

In adopting an open bricolage, I choose ways and means to explicate my topic. This has prompted me to nest together a set of practices that works through the problems in the field. Surrounded by a plethora of philosophical and paradigmatic positions open for me to take up, I have increasingly moved towards those philosophies and ideas that embrace attachment, subjectivity and critical interrogation of what is most often taken for granted (Lincoln, Pinar & McLaren, 2001). In relation to weight and health, I am particularly drawn to surfacing unspoken or subjugated elements in available discourses. In moving away from ideas of detachment and objectivity, I have worked to deconstruct the hierarchical positioning of the power to speak implied in paradigms of objectivity. I value speaking-out-with and eschew speaking-down-to with all its associated connotations of power-over and expertise-in. I view these as bringing into play the oppositional preference for professional over lay understandings in modern medicine.

Habiti or early predispositions, reinforced by the civilising influences of society (Bourdieu, 1972; Bourdieu, 1980/1995), are the major arbiters of when, if and how we speak. Even while opportunities to speak may be thwarted in medical consultations by the dominance of professional over lay understandings, a relation of power is present in many forms of resistance.5 In the absence of speaking-out, holding fast to old ideas, mulling over ideas, playing with and developing ideas preserve and mature ideas and keep resistant ideas alive. Even taking the opportunity to speak “[…] under one's breath, one negotiates the space between silence and freedom […] to speak and to keep on living” (Pelias, 2004, p.32).

The object under scrutiny exists within a “[…] network or configuration, of objective relations between positions […]” (Bourdieu, 1992, pp.96-97). By attending to this field

5_{I merely note here Bordo’s powerful opposition to the Foucauldian notion of resistance as signifying} the presence of a relation of power. Bordo (1988, p.246) uses media representations to argue that “the rhetoric of resistance has itself been pressed into the service of such normalization.”

it is possible to understand more about the nature of an object, its relational activity, the historicity of its appearance and the means of its maintenance and visibility. The thinkable, internally consistent object reflects of commonsense and discourages heterodoxy, those ideas that do not reflect orthodoxy (Bourdieu, 1988). For instance, in the acceptance that overweight is indisputably unhealthy, a number of other possibilities are not opened for discussion: health is possible, or even preferable to dieting, at any weight; that a thin-at-any-cost understanding of weight affects consultations from ingrown toenails to heart failure; epidemiology is an appropriate resource within the clinic; WLS is the answer to overweight; or, surgeons are appropriately involved in trading health technologies.

The complexity of weight and its resolution is constructed within the mutually dependent activities of media-ted culture, govern-mentality, and health-as-trade. The compulsion of the weight/health message lies in its weaving through the fabric of our lives like dog’s hair through a sofa. Bourdieu (1988) insisted that social scientists should access an intellectual toolkit which included the social history of science exemplified by the French theorists, Foucault, Bachelard and Canguilhem and I have taken such an historical approach to be highly significant in this study. I have looked for creative methods to encompass the fields of consultation in which weight is subject to intervention. In the end I have chosen to notice-but-stray from the arbitrary bounds of medical science, in the interests of producing a more complex story about weight, medicine and WLS consultation. Within a critique of the orthodoxy of weight and health, I suggest that the proliferation of weight technologies gathers momentum when the connections between weight and the cultural context of its occurrence are largely ignored. I have chosen to “[…] live in the middle of things, in the tension of conflict, confusion and possibility […]” (St Pierre, 1997, p.176) without determining acceptable weight for health. After all, it is in the act of abstracting ideal weight by doctors, scientists, insurance and technology companies, and by citizen/patients6 as well, that much of what is termed overweight or obesity has been created as unacceptable. WLS emerges as a legitimised and compelling technical option against the terrifying picture of its culturally produced, risky, and insalubrious alternative, living life as a fat person. 4.3 Introducing the elements of my purposeful bricolage

As author/researcher, my concentration in this thesis focuses on the moral dimensions of responsiveness in professional relationships. While I was, from my thesis beginnings, interested in the play of weight in relationships of consultation, what I did not anticipate was that weight technologies could become, so rapidly, a significant and contestable medical speciality through my years of exploring it. Nor did I grasp initially, the significance nor value the potential to such a project of my personal, academic and professional history as transdisciplinary. In reading Kincheloe (2001, 2002, 2004, 2005), I came to relate to methodology as a bricolage but one that was framed, for me, within narrative therapy foundations.

Through the stories of participants, I have watched these narratives played out in our lived lives. In a series of moves in this and the following chapters, I introduce myself into the text as clarification and evidence of my philosophical positioning.

4.3.1 Introducing the author in the text: An interested objectivity. The