Consumption, Psychology and Practice Theories by Tony Wilson

Author:Tony Wilson [Tony Wilson]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2018-08-05T21:00:00+00:00

Introducing Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis in 1996, contributing to the cross-disciplinary 1990‘s (re)development of an applied hermeneutics (Thompson, 1991; Wilson, 1993), Smith wrote on health psychology, developing a research route between the quantitative measuring linking participant attitudes to behaviour (cf. Wilson, 2011) and qualitative analysis of participants constructing social positions in dis-cursive contributions to focus groups and interviews. Instead, the ‘aim of IPA is to explore the participant’s view of the world’, albeit recognising that ‘access is both dependent on, and complicated by, the researcher’s own conceptions’ (1996: 264). Producing interpretations of the participant’s primary sense-making is denoted a ‘double hermeneutic’ (Smith, 2011b: 10).

IPA follows hermeneutics, subscribing to its epistemology where ‘for human affairs, the model of scientific theory, which is adequate to an object, is replaced by that of understanding, seen as a fusion of horizons’ (Taylor, 2002: 136). Understanding is essentially perspectival, explored in the hermeneutics of understanding-in-use we consider by semi-structured interview (Smith, 1995). Translation from participant into researcher language can complicate this double hermeneutic. Yet ‘thinking processes’, anticipatory, accompanying, after practices are recorded (Smith et al., 2002). Care recipients’ ‘meaning-making processes’ are given voice (Gough and Deatrick, 2015: 291). A double hermeneutic can become triple where, for instance, the researcher interviews co-ordinators reflecting on intervention strategies for the disabled, where the latter’s viewpoint is also referenced, as in the case of one university ‘student who had difficulties with, anxiety with presentations, so we had to discuss that and see what the anxieties were’, then seek solutions (Koca-Atabey, 2017: 141).

IPA ‘interprets within the terms of the text which the participant has produced’ (Smith et al., 2009: 37), allowing thereby a ‘restoration of meaning’ (Smith, 2004: 46). From a hermeneutic perspective, a participant’s ‘terms’ can be further analysed within IPA. How do those terms display understanding to be embodied or cast within a wider ‘horizon of understanding’? IPA also ‘allows a hermeneutics of questioning, of critical engagement’ as a researcher ‘may well ask questions and posit readings which the participants would be unlikely, unable or unwilling to see or acknowledge’ (ibid.).

Illustrating ‘IPA in practice’ (1996), Smith considers hospital haemo-dialysis where machines replace the function of damaged kidneys (267–270). A participant reflects on being ‘really fed up with the repetition‘of routine ‘passive’ involvement with the practice. From a hermeneutic stance, one sees in her account of ‘becoming part of this machine’, embodiment and equipment unhappily merge, incorporating a narrative of understanding-in-use. Perception of her desired spatio-temporal distance (not being ‘tethered to one place’) are evoked from an affective horizon of understanding, thereby emplaced: a ‘dialysing at home would be—I’m still being myself. I’ve still got my identity but I’m just giving myself some treatment’, actively engaging equipment. ‘(It’s) under my control and I use it’. Less ‘alien’ equipment understanding-in-use would emerge (Yardley, 2002: 19). The bodily ‘battle for agency’ is evoked further in poetry discussed by Spiers and Smith (2012: 122). Embodiment can be challenged by equipping as where a patient comments on the large size of an HIV tablet: ‘you feel it on your chest and it is like you’re going to throw up’ (in Spiers et al.

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