Showing papers in "Qualitative Sociology in 2006"
TL;DR: In this article, the authors analyze some ethical challenges that confront field researchers working in conflict zones, including self-presentation and mistaken identity, emotional challenges of field work in highly polarized settings, and evolving questions concerning the researcher role and its limitations.
Abstract: Drawing on 26 months of field research in El Salvador during the civil war, I analyze some ethical challenges that confront field researchers working in conflict zones. After briefly summarizing the purpose and general methodology of my research, I discuss in detail the research procedures I followed to implement the “do no harm” ethic of empirical research. I first analyze the particular conditions of the Salvadoran civil war during the period of research. I then discuss the procedures meant to ensure that my interviews with people took place with their fully informed consent—what I understood that to mean and how I implemented it. I then turn to the procedures whereby the anonymity of those interviewed and the confidentiality of the data gathered were ensured to the extent possible. Throughout I discuss particular ethical dilemmas that I confronted, including issues of self-presentation and mistaken identity, the emotional challenges of field work in highly polarized settings (which if not well understood may lead to lapse in judgment), and my evolving questions concerning the researcher role and its limitations. I also discuss the dilemmas that arise in the dissemination of research findings and the repatriation of data.
300 citations
TL;DR: The authors argue for multi-sited fieldwork in countries of migrants' origin and destination and the removal of national blinders so that both domestic and international migrations are brought into the same frame for comparison.
Abstract: Ethnographers' long-standing interest in migration has taken on new significance as researchers grapple with globalization on the ground. Building on the transnationalism literature, I explore how recent appeals to use local archival work and revisits to achieve historical depth can be applied fruitfully to ethnographies of migration. I argue for multi-sited fieldwork in countries of migrants' origin and destination and the removal of national blinders so that both domestic and international migrations are brought into the same frame for comparison. Finally, I amend the extended case method by arguing for the engagement of case studies with theoretical research programs in ways that attend to the representativeness of the case. The utility of these strategies is demonstrated with examples from the migration literature and five years of ethnographic fieldwork among Mexican migrants.
137 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors reflect on some of the debates regarding intimacy and exploitation by examining my experiences of dating, marrying, and eventually divorcing my key informant and trace the way that, despite my attempts to follow the existing ethical guides, I reinforced several larger inequalities in my intimate stance.
Abstract: In response to critiques from feminist, existential, and postmodern qualitative researchers, the idea of maintaining objective and distant relationships with research subjects gave way to the belief that researchers could and, in some cases, should become intimately connected to research participants. These traditions opened the door for contemporary field workers to unapologetically forge close relationships to setting members. Several ethical evaluations have emerged from this intimate literature warning researchers of the harm that can come when we "go to far" in the quest for intimate familiarity. In this paper, I reflect on some of the debates regarding intimacy and exploitation by examining my experiences of dating, marrying, and eventually divorcing my key informant. I trace the way that, despite my attempts to follow the existing ethical guides, I reinforced several larger inequalities in my intimate stance. Using my failure to avoid or mitigate harm, I argue that our discussions of intimate methods and immersion in the field have failed to accurately note how we reinforce or resist structure in our research endeavors. Viewing ourselves as "doing structure" in the field would lead us to stop debating whether intimacy is better than objectivity, celibacy is better than sex, disclosure is better than silence, or conventional behavior is better than deviance in the field. Instead, we should locate how our behaviors, research roles, or discursive choices enact structures and the effect this enactment has on the people who we research.
118 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine the lived experience of motherhood among Cambodian, Lao and Vietnamese immigrant women in Australia and find that women felt a profound change through the process of becoming a mother; they experienced the "transformation of self".
Abstract: In this paper, I examine the lived experience of motherhood among Cambodian, Lao and Vietnamese immigrant women in Australia. The women in this study felt a profound change through the process of becoming a mother; they experience the “transformation of self.” The results reveal several discourses of good motherhood. Becoming a mother was experienced as a moral transformation of self and women were urged to perform their moral career. The representation of mothers as the “keepers of morality” is prominent. Women's moral career is influenced by an ethic of care and responsibility for others, particularly their children. The paradoxical discourse of motherhood is profound in the women's narratives of their lived experiences of motherhood. It is clear that motherhood is not an easy task. When this is combined with difficulties resulting from migration, motherhood becomes double burdens. Lack of sufficient English, financial difficulties and support network in a homeland make the task of good motherhood difficult to achieve. Social and health care services need to take women's experiences into account if sensitive care for immigrant women is to be achieved.
110 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examined the impact of law enforcement strategies in New York City on the life and work of women working in the indoor sex trade and found that women begin to conceive of sex work as a profession and a career, rather than just a short-term means of employment.
Abstract: In the mid-1990s, changes to law enforcement strategies in New York City pushed many women working in the sex trade off of the streets and into the indoors. Increasing numbers of women began advertising sexual services in bars, over the Internet, and in print media, and conducting their work in their homes, hotels, and brothels. This study uses in-depth interviews and participant observation to examine the impact of this change on the life and work of women working in New York’s indoor sex trade. A critical finding is that as women move their work indoors, they begin to conceive of sex work as a profession and a career, rather than just a short-term means of employment. This “professional and careerist orientation” may have significant implications for the length of women’s tenure in sex work and ultimately, for their ability to exit the trade completely.
84 citations
62 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine the ways that endemic drug trafficking has affected local level politics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and show that the persistence of drug trafficking in the city has led to the emergence of a two-tiered clientelist system.
Abstract: This article examines the ways that endemic drug trafficking has affected local level politics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Drawing on ethnographic analysis of political exchanges in the 1998 national elections in three favelas (shantytowns), I argue that drug trafficking has changed the practice of clientelism. Evidence and analysis in this paper will show that the persistence of drug trafficking in the city has led to the emergence of a two-tiered clientelist system in which politicians make exchanges with traffickers who then, in turn, provide some benefits to favela residents in return for their votes. This results in an arrangement that provides votes to politicians and limited assistance to the poor but does little to build the legitimacy of the political system.
51 citations
TL;DR: Ashforth as discussed by the authors used a total of about three years' residence during the 1990s in Soweto (South West Township), an Apartheid-built black suburb of Johannesburg, plus subsequent visits to his adopted family and friends there.
Abstract: Adam Ashforth has written one of the recent political ethnographies I most admire. His Witchcraft, Violence, and Democracy in South Africa draws on a total of about 3 years’ residence during the 1990s in Soweto (South West Township), an Apartheid-built black suburb of Johannesburg, plus subsequent visits to his adopted family and friends there. Earlier, Ashforth wrote an impressive historical analysis of the process by which Apartheid took shape (Ashforth 1990). But preparation for his book on witchcraft, violence, and democracy plunged him shoulder-deep into ethnography. Through first-hand observation, personal intervention, and incessant interrogation of his acquaintances, Ashforth built up a powerful picture of coping, strife, and hope amid vicious violence. Ashforth’s ethnographic involvement forced him to abandon many a preconceived category and explanation of struggle during and after Apartheid. Ashforth’s ethnography yielded remarkable, even disturbing, results. His analysis persuades me, at least, of two surprising conclusions I long resisted when hearing them from Adam: first, that no one can make sense of local South African politics without understanding the enormous part played by fears about, accusations of, and reactions to witchcraft in Soweto’s (and, by extension, South Africa’s) everyday politics; second, that no one can hope to deal with South Africa’s devastating AIDS epidemic or build local-level democracy without confronting witchcraft directly. Many a political ethnographer will resonate to Ashforth’s reflection: Fortunately, from my first day in Soweto I was blessed with remarkable friends who guided me through the pleasures and perils of life in the township. They steered me toward what little understanding of their world I can now claim, though they do not always agree with the way I have come to understand this place. I have read widely in the years since I began getting to know Soweto, but the essence of whatever I know about this place I have learned through my friends: how I know it is by being there as a friend. This is both the strength and the weakness of what follows. For what I came to understand – dimly, slowly, over many years of fumbling in the dark – is that their world is my world, and mine theirs, and yet we also live in worlds apart (Ashforth 2005, pp. x–xi). In order to do his ethnography, Ashforth had to become at least moderately competent in Zulu, Sotho, Xhosa, and the special brands of English Sowetans speak. It helped that he learned to play the violin Zulu style with other musicians in local drinking places, and that he was ready to defend his adopted brothers and sisters from
51 citations
TL;DR: The authors examines how place affects framing processes inside a movement and counterprotester responses with an ethnography of anti-Iraq War protests in Fayetteville, North Carolina, and shows how place attracts the attention of movement leaders, creates opportunities for local community members to assert their interests, suppresses some frames within the movement, and encourages opponents to co-opt the meaning of place for their own ends.
Abstract: Social movement leaders regularly invoke geographic places—such as cities, parks, and monuments—as symbols in strategic efforts to frame social movement activity. This article examines how place affects framing processes inside a movement and counterprotester responses with an ethnography of anti-Iraq War protests in Fayetteville, North Carolina. We show how place attracts the attention of movement leaders, creates opportunities for local community members to assert their interests, suppresses some frames within the movement, and encourages opponents to co-opt the meaning of place for their own ends. The multiple meanings of place can broaden the scope of conflict and reduce a movement leader’s ability unilaterally to define a movement’s agenda and public image.
45 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors analyze the spatial politics of street market vendors in Santiago, Chile, drawing upon Lefebvre's concepts of perceived, conceived, and lived space as well as ideas drawn from research on space and protest.
Abstract: Recent discussions of contentious politics have focused on struggles in and over space and place. This article builds upon these concerns by using ethnographic, interview, and documentary data to analyze the spatial politics of street market vendors in Santiago, Chile. Drawing upon Lefebvre’s concepts of perceived, conceived, and lived space as well as ideas drawn from research on space and protest, I show how street market vendors build upon spatial routines, a sense of place, political alliances, and scale jumping in their self-defense strategies at the local, national, and international scales. The findings illustrate Lefebvre’s argument that the advance of abstract space (constructed by dominant economic and political elites) provokes resistance by groups who defend and seek to reconstruct lived space.
44 citations
TL;DR: The authors analyzed two interviews with a former plantation worker named Cicero who considered himself a member of the MST in 1999 but "didn't even know what to say about the movement" three years later.
Abstract: Ethnographic research is invaluable for social movement research. Ethnographies of everyday participation in mobilization help to counter the popular image of social movements as coherent, well-bounded entities consisting of individuals committed to the goals of the collective. In this study of the Movimento Sem Terra (the Landless Movement, or the MST) in northeastern Brazil, I establish a more complete continuum of movement membership by analyzing two interviews (one conducted in 1999, the other in 2003) with a former plantation worker named Cicero who considered himself a member of the MST in 1999 but “didn't even know what to say about the movement” three years later. Cicero's interviews are noteworthy because he is not the sort of person typically featured in studies of social mobilization: he did not join the MST because of a passionate commitment (more because the movement showed up and he couldn't see a reason not to), and he was never convinced of the MST's primary ideals or methods. Cicero's interviews provide what Lila Abu-Lughod calls a “counter-discourse,” in which people make decisions that are contradictory, and incomplete, often made without explicit articulation or even understanding. Ultimately, I argue that incorporating this broader continuum will help us better explain movement personalities and trajectories.
TL;DR: The authors used interpretive theory to explain how two formerly abused Christian wives exposed a more contextual and liberatory interpretation of gender, power, and conduct within the Christian marriage, and illustrated how meanings from the Bible and alternate ideological contexts helped them revise and subvert once oppressive hierarchal teachings on conduct and authority within marital submission.
Abstract: In this manuscript, I use interpretive theory to explain how two formerly abused Christian wives exposed a more contextual and liberatory interpretation of gender, power, and conduct within the Christian marriage. Through narrative, I illustrate how meanings from the Bible and alternate ideological contexts helped them revise and subvert once oppressive hierarchal teachings on conduct and authority within marital submission. I also explore their discursive cultures and convictions to examine how text and interpretation hindered initial trajectories toward removing victimization. Future research on domestic violence and women should consider the religious contours of the experience and the processes that facilitate their meaning making. Qualitative inquiry can help expose the messages and strategies that compose abused religious women's oppression and agency.
TL;DR: This article examined how members think about elections and whether and how groups decide to respond to national electoral campaigns and found that SMGs vary considerably in the strategies of action or inaction they adopt, depending on their changing sense of whether the election poses an opportunity or a threat to the group.
Abstract: How do local social movement groups respond to national electoral politics? Previous studies, often based on aggregated data on public protests, focus on the effects of elections on established social movement organizations (SMOs). Some find that SMOs flourish during election years, taking advantage of the political opportunities that elections pose. Others conclude that elections hurt SMOs, siphoning members and resources. Using ethnographic, in-depth interview, and document data on new and emerging social movement groups (SMGs) in Pittsburgh for 20 months before and after the 2004 U.S. presidential election, we examine how members think about elections and whether and how groups decide to respond to national electoral campaigns. We find that SMGs vary considerably in the strategies of action or inaction they adopt, depending on their changing sense of whether the election poses an opportunity or a threat to the group and that these strategies of action are patterned in path-dependent sequences. We conclude with a discussion of the possibilities for integrating concepts of path-dependency and timing into social movement research.
TL;DR: The authors explored the variations of the maker-tool-material relation in glassblowing, informed by Bourdieu's logic of practice as well as phenomenological considerations of the body's dispositions towards and interactions with the material world.
Abstract: Understanding tools in the development of practical knowledge and in the formation of social worlds is critical for the sociology of culture insofar as they reveal how matter, or material, informs practice and discourse. This article is an ethnographic exploration of the variations of the maker-tool-material relation in glassblowing, informed by Bourdieu's logic of practice as well as phenomenological considerations of the body's dispositions towards and interactions with the material world. These relations form the backbone of the glassblowing studio, and more importantly provide the subject matter of ‘tool talk,’ studio talk about tools, which forges feelings of empathy and consequently contributes to the formation of the glassblowing social world. Through this exploration, we come to understand how material, the subject of much studio discourse, is a structuring force of a lifeworld, the glassblowing studio.
TL;DR: In this paper, Weber's seminal essay "politics as a vocation" is used to construct an ideal type of political passion with which to highlight the inherent shortcomings of traditional explanations of political action.
Abstract: Drawing data from works of political non-fiction that help to reveal the moral and sensual underpinnings of political practice, this paper seeks to adumbrate a sensualist understanding of political engagement. After beginning with a brief discussion of Weber’s seminal essay “Politics as a Vocation,” I then construct an ideal type of political passion with which to highlight the inherent shortcomings that plague traditional explanations of political action. My argument is that these approaches are all vitiated by their reliance on Chinese-box epistemology. I go on to suggest that in order to obtain a genuinely sociological account of political engagement, one must develop methods that are true to the experiential specifics of politics while recognizing the conditions that shape the possibility of those very experiences.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examine four social movement organizations operating in separate movement contexts with different outcomes: contested gay politics in Cincinnati, Ohio and grassroots feminism in Cleveland, Ohio, and New York City, New York.
Abstract: Focusing on the interactional dynamics of movements, we find that two constructs, voice and agency are critical to the development of a sense of “groupness” and can aid social movement actors in accomplishing desired goals. Voice and agency are accomplished when movement actors engage in various processes such as planning and strategizing, completion of goal-oriented tasks and other unifying activities. We examine four social movement organizations operating in separate movement contexts with different outcomes: contested gay politics in Cincinnati, Ohio and grassroots feminism in Cleveland, Ohio and New York City, New York. We find that groups will have a better chance at achieving their goals if members are able to create a unified voice, and if leaders include and draw from the strengths of those they recruit, thus allowing a sense of agency.
TL;DR: The authors consider how a researcher's construal of a communicative event as either an ethnographic or survey interview shapes the production of information and find that dialogicality and interaction are essential to understand the construality of communicative events.
Abstract: When a researcher enters an interview, she has already construed it as being a standard type of communicative event. This article considers how a researcher's construal of a communicative event as either an ethnographic or survey interview shapes the production of information. Interview standards entail epistemological assumptions that directly inform the type of information sought and produced. I consider this process through a comparison of the elicitation techniques I employed in survey and ethnographic interviews conducted during research in Mexico. I draw on theory in linguistic anthropology on the nature of meaning in language, examining how dialogicality and interaction are essential to understanding the construal of communicative events.
TL;DR: The authors explored political meanings in the context of recent economic and political changes in a village in south India and found that deserving honor and respect has become less a statement about political superiority and domination and more about individual moral qualities.
Abstract: The article explores political meanings in the context of recent economic and political changes in a village in south India. Cultural constructions of political relations emerged in conversations between the author and village informants in Andhra Pradesh. Informants perceived decline in the power and authority of former village lords and talked about the establishment of authority in the new setting. In processes of democratization which had taken place, showing and receiving honor and respect continued as political and social preoccupations. However, deserving honor and respect has become less a statement about political superiority and domination and more about individual moral qualities.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine interactions between citizens and representatives of municipal governments on newly established local planning committees to demonstrate that an individual's confidence in an institution and his/her trust in a social intimate who works in that institution are sociologically different phenomena with correspondingly different outcomes for institution building.
Abstract: This article considers the problem of fostering confidence in institutions in a post-war context. Situated in post-war Bosnia, this article examines interactions between citizens and representatives of municipal governments on newly established local planning committees to demonstrate that an individual's confidence in an institution and his/her trust in a social intimate who works in that institution are sociologically different phenomena with correspondingly different outcomes for institution building. Contrary to the assumption that increased social capital and interpersonal trust positively affect democratic institutions, this article shows that interpersonal trust may actually undermine the development of institutional confidence.
TL;DR: In this article, field observation of anti-emperor protests in Japan reveals two key processes through which the interaction of police and demonstrators gradually narrows the limits of permitted dissent through soft repression.
Abstract: Field observation of anti-emperor protests in Japan reveals two key processes through which the interaction of police and demonstrators gradually narrows the limits of permitted dissent through soft repression. The first process stigmatizes demonstration participants and sharply separates them from the mainstream of Japanese public life, discouraging public attention to or participation in their causes. The second process divides protest movements internally, decreasing support for groups that operate at the prevailing limit of tolerated dissent, and gradually constricting the limit itself. Great variability in police-demonstrator interactions within demonstrations suggests the limitations of newspaper content analysis methods for such research.
TL;DR: The article de Donald Roy, ecrit en 1952 and non publie avant 2006, souleve la question du developpement des outils conceptuels pour la recherche sur les relations intergroupe dans le contexte social d'une institution industrielle moderne as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: L'article de Donald Roy, ecrit en 1952 et non publie avant 2006, souleve la question du developpement des outils conceptuels pour la recherche sur les relations intergroupe dans le contexte social d'une institution industrielle moderne. Dans ce but, les resultats empiriques d'un observateur de l'experience dans l'usine sont donnes comme base des discussions
TL;DR: This paper explored the advocacy work of a publicly funded, professionalized, institutionalized, and publicly-funded service provider organization in Philadelphia, and found that the organization's institutionalization and ties to the public sector have allowed staff to develop resources and skills for being both contentious claim-makers and influential actors in the institutional political arena.
Abstract: Through a case study of a leading service provider organization in Philadelphia, this paper explores the advocacy work of a publicly funded, professionalized, institutionalized nonprofit organization. In this article I relate how in the spring of 2002, staff at the organization responded to a recurring political issue: local business groups were again calling for official action against “aggressive panhandlers” in the downtown district. I use ethnographic and historical data to show that the organization’s institutionalization and ties to the public sector have allowed staff to develop resources and skills for being both contentious claim-makers and influential actors in the institutional political arena.
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TL;DR: Tilly as discussed by the authors argues that stories are part of a dialogue, an essential part of social interaction, whose participants might be individuals of equal or different social statuses (or possessing different kinds of knowledge about the storyline).
Abstract: Tilly begins and ends his book, Why, by reviewing the gripping accounts of ordinary people and experts as they tried to make sense of the events of September 11, 2001. Differences in explanations for the same event make it possible to explore how people sort out cause and effect. No one would disagree with Tilly’s observation that stories are important for human interaction or that they are a social invention sculpted after the fact. Seventy years ago, Paul Lazarfeld alerted us that, “Asking for reasons and giving answers are common place habits of everyday life.”1 Stories are part of a dialogue, an essential part of social interaction, whose participants might be individuals of equal or different social statuses (or possessing different kinds of knowledge about the storyline). Tilly redefines that assertion by claiming that stories share three main characteristics: (1) storytellers rework their stories to make their social processes more available to their audience. (2) stories include strong insinuation of responsibility (e.g., a moral evaluation); (3) and different people (even with equal social status) who experience a story bring a different viewpoint to the telling. But most important, stories, Tilly argues, truncate cause-effect connections. Causes and effects, according to Tilly, are joined in complicated ways (p. 65). When asked for a reason as to why something happened, people give or receive four types of accounts: conventions, stories, codes and technical accounts. Each type differs in its emphasis. For instance, technical accounts have a more complex cause-effect model than conventions (or logics of appropriateness) and codes are interpreted through available formulas (which include limited cause-effect reasoning). Yet, as much as Tilly acknowledges that these reasons are not mutually exclusive stories are critical to each type—whether they are gathered to reform or translate codes or used by experts to explain to ordinary people the epistemology of their expertise. In fairness Tilly does not claim to have discovered the use of stories in everyday life or in professional arenas: still, Why captured my interest because it made me think hard about
TL;DR: The authors discusses the role of shame, as an emotion and a behavioral disposition, in face-to-face confrontations between workers and employers, embedded in an authority structure marked by patron-clientage and personal dependency.
Abstract: Shame – a feeling of social inadequacy and (the anticipation of) public humiliation – may inhibit worker activism. This article discusses the role of shame, as an emotion and a behavioral disposition, in face-to-face confrontations between workers and employers, embedded in an authority structure marked by patron-clientage and personal dependency. It explores how shame may function as an obstacle to face-to-face confrontations and claim-making, and how workers and leftwing activists try to overcome this hurdle.
TL;DR: Tilly's Why? as mentioned in this paper surveys how and why people offer explanations, excuses, justifications, and accounts and makes a compelling case for reason giving as a way of creating, maintaining, transforming, or terminating interpersonal relations.
Abstract: Charles Tilly has surprised us again. It was enough of a surprise when the veteran analyst of political conflict and change published a major book on inequality (Durable Inequality, 1998) and then started writing about identities (Stories, Identities, and Political Change, 2002). But now he has entirely shifted the scale and style of his analysis. Although an experienced Tilly reader will not be surprised to find engaging vignettes and vivid comparisons, even I did not expect him to present such a remarkable tour of small-scale social processes in a conversational mode. Who would have expected to find so many of the topics made famous by Erving Goffman, Kenneth Burke, and Jerome Bruner in a Tilly book? Why? uses a simple scheme to survey how and why people offer explanations, excuses, justifications, and accounts. It makes a compelling case for reason giving as a way of creating, maintaining, transforming, or terminating interpersonal relations. It lays out its arguments cheerfully, clearly, and without fanfare, illustrating from an extraordinary range of material including stories from Tilly’s own life. The brief account of his re-reading Anatole Broyard’s Intoxicated by My Illness while he (Tilly) was undergoing chemotherapy for cancer, for example, comes first as a shock and then as an illumination. Perhaps we should have seen it coming. Over the last ten years or so, Tilly has talked repeatedly about “tunneling under the post-modern challenge.” By that he means a twostep process. First, we must recognize that a great deal of social construction goes into the formation of entities—groups, institutions, markets, selves—that most people take for granted as real. But then, he insists, instead of stopping there social scientists must go on to explain how that construction actually works and produces its effects. Elsewhere he has written about this problem extensively in terms of epistemology, ontology, and social scientific method. Except for some intriguing discussions of Aristotle on poetics and rhetoric, however, Tilly almost entirely avoids formal encounters with theory and method in Why?. He makes his arguments lightly, illustrates them brightly, then moves on to the next point. Since I learned English as a third language, I am probably more sensitive than most native English speakers to the way people write English prose. American academics often dismay
TL;DR: In the early 1970s, graduate students like me who were interested in qualitative methods might choose to specialize in medical sociology because of the tradition established by the works of Renee Fox, Erving Goffman, Everett Hughes, and Anselm Strauss, and perpetuated in that decade by Elliot Freidson and Howard Waitzkin this paper.
Abstract: In the early 1970s, graduate students like me who were interested in qualitative methods might choose to specialize in medical sociology because of the tradition established by the works of Renee Fox, Erving Goffman, Everett Hughes, and Anselm Strauss, and perpetuated in that decade by Elliot Freidson and Howard Waitzkin. Half a century after the classics, the books selected for review show both methodological consolidation and innovation, especially in how their substantive interests take the sociology of health and illness outside the clinical settings of the classics. If one common theme unifies the substantive studies under