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Doctor‐patient negotiation of cultural assumptions
Author(s) -
Fisher Sue,
Groce Stephen B.
Publication year - 1985
Publication title -
sociology of health and illness
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.146
H-Index - 97
eISSN - 1467-9566
pISSN - 0141-9889
DOI - 10.1111/1467-9566.ep10832345
Subject(s) - negotiation , reflexivity , apprenticeship , social psychology , set (abstract data type) , psychology , sociology , health care , epistemology , social science , linguistics , political science , law , philosophy , computer science , programming language
This paper simultaneously examines the relationship between norms as features of the social structure and norms as interactional accomplishments. Doctors as cultural members share a set of social facts about women as part of their common stock of knowledge. By posing these facts in a reflexive relationship with the interactional work participants do in specific settings we are able to display how doctors acting as ‘secret apprentices’ ferret cultural assumptions from medical interactions. A detailed comparison of two cases with the same doctor provide the data to examine the ways norms about patients qua women emerged and were negotiated against a background of cultural expectations or assumptions about women. This comparison reveals how divergent assumptions about women emerge, structure the discourse and influence the delivery of health care.