Creative Teamwork: Developing Rapid, Site-Switching Ethnography

Creative Team Work describes a new way of doing rapid ethnography to capture the rich complexity and contradictions of social relations. It is about the imagination, stimulation, and reflection that can come with international, interdisciplinary teams sharing the development, application, analysis, and dissemination of research. Although the book is based on a large, seven-year project studying care homes to search for promising practices and is guided by feminist political economy, the lessons we have learned are relevant for everyone undertaking empirical investigation. All research needs to consider theory -- the organization of information, ethics, and dissemination, for example. The specific techniques and approaches the authors discuss can be applied to a wide range of qualitative methods and are not exclusive to this kind of ethnography. By dissecting experiences and uniting chapters through the theme of creative, reflexive team work, the book considers issues and methods of interest to all those struggling through the research process, with or without team support.

Table of Contents:
Introduction Pat Armstrong Chapter 1: Theory Matters Pat Armstrong and Hugh Armstrong Chapter 2: Administrative Matters Pat Armstrong and Wendy Winters Chapter 3: Ethics as Teamwork Susan Braedley Chapter 4: Organizing Site Visits: Methodological Considerations Martha MacDonald Chapter 5: Feminist Political Economy and Flexible Team Interviewing Tamara Daly and Ruth Lowndes Chapter 6: Fieldnotes: Individual Versus Team-Based Rapid Ethnography Ruth Lowndes, Palle Storm, and Marta Szebehely Chapter 7: Different Eyes: An RN/Sociologist and an Historian Invite You on a Tour of Our Fieldnotes Jacqueline Choiniere and James Struthers Chapter 8: New to Long-Term Residential Care: Using Reflexivity to Navigate Research Tensions as Student Novice Ethnographers Krystal Kehoe MacLeod, Suzanne Day, and Sandra Smele Chapter 9: Snap-Happy? The Promise and Problems of Photovoice Ruth Lowndes and Susan Braedley Chapter 10: Telling Stories: Literary Perspectives on Interdisciplinary Team Research Sally Chivers and Derek Newman-Stille Chapter 11: Rapid Ethnography and a Knowledge Translation Project: Benefits from Bookettes Donna Baines and Rachel Gnanayutham Chapter 12: Threading the Strands: Tensions and Possibilities of Team-Based Rapid Ethnography Pat Armstrong

About the Author :
Pat Armstrong, PhD, MA, is Professor of Sociology and of Women's Studies at York University, Toronto. She held a Canada Health Services Research Foundation/Canadian Institute of Health Research Chair in Health Services, is a Distinguished Research Professor in Sociology and Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. Focusing on the fields of social policy, of women, work, feminist theory and the health and social services, she has published widely, co-authoring more than a dozen books and co-editing another dozen. For over a decade, she was Chair of Women and Health Care Reform, a group funded by Health Canada, Her current research is focused on reimagining long-term residential care, a Major Collaborative Research Project funded by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Ruth Lowndes, DPhil, MN, is currently engaged full time in the "Re-magining Long-term Residential Care: An International Study of Promising Practices" MCRI. Ruth's doctoral ethnographical study used observation and interviewing, methods which extend into this current project. She is also registered with the College of Nurses of Ontario and is a Certified Diabetes Educator.

Review :
"[The book] contains promising elements of practice often neglected by traditional quantitative research. This spurs us toward higher valuing of qualitative study and rethinking the need for balance in quantitative assessment and service quality." -- Zhong Xin, Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare "In Creative Teamwork, a group of researchers tell a fascinating story about developing a new approach to ethnographic research. The authors explore how they wrestled with reflexivity, engagement, analysis, writing, and other theoretical and methodological issues over the course of creating and doing what they call 'rapid, site-switching, team-based ethnography.' The result is an important and engaging narrative about the possibilities of ethnographic research that is genuinely collaborative, interdisciplinary, and international." - Eric Mykhalovskiy, PhD, Professor, Department of Sociology, York University "One of the greatest strengths of Creative Teamwork is that it explores and elaborates on the processes, ethical dilemmas, and behind-the-scenes decision-making of conducting interdisciplinary team research and shows how it is played out in actual case examples. The volume also puts emphasis on knowledge sharing and informed interventions-topics that have become increasingly important when seeking research funding and applying research results to larger contexts. I believe this book goes a long way in addressing these emerging needs." - Amy Zaharlick, PhD, Emeritus Associate Professor, Ohio State University