Paper short abstract:

We explore medical professionalism of general practitioners (GP) from the perspective of their moral experience, also exploring into anthropological professionalism and, in their correspondence, seeking to decolonize our understandings and practices of professionalism. Co-author: Oonagh Corrigan (University of Plymouth)

Paper long abstract:

In this paper, we enquiry on contemporary experiences of medical professionalism in everyday working life of general practitioners (GPs) in the National Health Service, drawing on ethnographic fieldwork with GPs based in Cornwall and Devon/England. We explore medical professionalism from the perspective of their 'moral experience' (Kleinman1999, Kleinman & Benson, 2006) within the 'moral horizon' (Matsuoka, 2007) and the space of manoeuvre of the lived 'moral world' (Hunt & Carnevale, 2011) in which they dwell. The experiential approach of participant observation involved an exploration into the moral experience of anthropological professionalism in carrying out this research, embarking on an anthropological 'practice of correspondence' (Ingold, 2014) of these experiences of professing, shared through the ethnographic encounter. It involved the negotiation around several imageries, among which those split between the religious and the secular, the sacred and the profane, the material and the spiritual. We seek to imagine the possibility of reconciling these dichotomies by attempting to decolonize our understandings and practices of professionalism.