In the Field: A Sociologist's JourneyIn the Field, by Renée C. Fox, is a narrative account of the author’s life as a sociologist. It is not a memoir in the conventional sense; rather, it is an ethnographic autobiography. Drawing on a vast reservoir of notes and documents that chronicle the span of her career, this work also focuses on the places Fox’s field research has carried her. Propelled by a conviction to move beyond the boundaries of herself and of her native land, Fox has done first-hand research in Europe, Central Africa, and China, as well as in the United States. The majority of her research has centered on health, illness, and medicine. Other recurrent themes that pervade her work include training for uncertainty; the allocation of scarce resources; the relationship between self and others; detachment and concern; the particular and the universal; the harm that can result from intended good; and the questions posed by illness and accident, pain and suffering, and death. It is Fox’s commitment as a teacher and mentor of generations of students that lies at the heart of this book. This volume will inspire new generations of social researchers. |
Contents
| 1 | |
| 5 | |
| 15 | |
3 Freshman Year 19441945 at Smith College and the Summer of 1945 | 31 |
4 Polio | 41 |
5 The Year in Whittier | 49 |
6 Return to Smith | 61 |
The Harvard Department of Social Relations | 71 |
18 Professor at the University of Pennsylvania 1969 | 225 |
19 A Sociologist in a Medical School | 237 |
Miss Balkemas Death | 242 |
20 Chairman Renée | 243 |
21 China 1978 | 273 |
Talcott Parsonss Death | 297 |
Tianjin and the Team of Two | 299 |
Reflections of an Observing Participant | 319 |
8 Experiment Perilous | 83 |
9 Columbia Universitys Bureau of Applied Social Research and the Sociology of Medical Education Project | 95 |
10 Teaching at Barnard College | 107 |
A Portal to Belgium | 123 |
Part I | 135 |
Part II | 153 |
Léopoldville Kisantu and Usumbura | 159 |
15 My Years in the Congo | 175 |
16 Deciding to Leave Barnard | 201 |
Photos | 206 |
17 Return to Harvard 19671969 | 207 |
My Parents Deaths | 333 |
A Time of Consummation I Knighthood | 339 |
A Time of Consummation II Leaving the Field of Organ Replacement | 343 |
26 Going Up to and Coming Down from Oxford | 351 |
Medical Humanitarianism and Its Dilemmas | 365 |
28 Retiring | 375 |
29 Willys Last Days | 397 |
30 Becoming Eighty | 409 |
Envoi | 415 |
| 417 | |
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