Paper short abstract:

This study is a reflexive and self-reflexive exploration of a research conducted on ilness naratives.The main issues considered are the realations between the anthropologist and different actors from the medical field.

Paper long abstract:

My study is a reflexive and self-reflexive exploration of a research conducted on illness narratives (cancer and lupus). Conducted in a contemporary clinical space, my research requires a separate path, the entry on the field being conditioned by intermediate factors, namely getting an approval from the doctors and the heads of the clinic.

In this context, the paper focuses on the early steps of the anthropologist in the ethnographic field, his entry into a special world, that of the contemporary hospital. The main issues here are the power relations implied in the negotiation process involved in obtaining access to fieldwork, and how these power relations are closely related with the space of negotiation. This unique process not only sheds light on anthropologist-physician relationship, but also to the way in which "hard sciences" such as medicine, relate to anthropology.

On the other hand, my study will address the problem of how spatiality itself (that of the clinic), places the anthropologist in a position of symbolicall inferiority. Secondly, the paper discusses how the actual space where the research is conducted influences the results. I will address here the impact that the place where interviews with patients were conducted [(clinical or private space - patients' home)] had on the their discourse on illness experience. On the other hand, I will address how the meeting space has shaped different relationships between researcher and anthropologist, and how it affected the results.