Abstract
Personal experience from my ethnographic fieldwork in an oncological ward in Denmark is the starting point for this article. This experience is used to describe the research methods of anthropology, which means fieldwork with participant-observation and ethnographic interviews. Just as the word participant-observation includes two parts, the method also includes two distinct processes of recognition. Through participation, the researcher familiarizes herself with the daily life of the explored, she becomes a part of her own data-collection material, and she becomes her own informant. Through observation, the researcher distances herself from what she sees and hears in the investigation field. The researcher always stands between her data and its interpretation, which means that the investigation field is always very loosely defined and selfdefining. This article shows that the characteristics of anthropology: a holistic perspective on the single cultural phenomenon and a transcultural perspective are not only reserved to studies of people from foreign cultures. They are also very useful in research projects about the nature of nursing.
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