Paul Atkinson

The electric guitar is an exceptional object. Its sound is heard every day by hundreds of millions of people. Yet this beloved instrument started as an experimental project, hand-built by lone inventors and warily regarded by audience and players alike. Amplified traces the history of the design and development of the electric guitar as it became a mass-produced object made, sold and played all over the world. Paul Atkinson shows how, over the years, amateur makers, part-time tinkerers, musicians, enthusiasts, designers and corporations have developed its design, its looks and its sound. Featuring new interviews with players and makers, and many illustrations sure to inspire ‘guitar envy’, this book shows how the electric guitar went from an instrument to an icon.

It may seem as if the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (NICE) has always been part of the UK’s health and social care landscape. But this fascinating book charts the evolution of NICE from its origins 25 years ago, as well as how this development illustrates many of the key themes effecting health care today. In a period of rapid medical and technological advance, NICE has been both a gatekeeper to ensure that health care resources are spent where they are needed most, and a promoter of patient access to the best new technologies. Through a detailed history, the authors show how NICE’s remit grew from health care to public health to social care, advancing the use of evidence-based policy making and health economics as it did so. Playing a key role in ethical debates which often made the news, NICE also re-aligned the relationship between patients, politicians and the pharmaceutical industry. Written by two of the leading scholars in the field, this fascinating history also situates NICE in an international context, where it is often seen as a model to follow. It will be key reading for students and researchers in the fields of health and social care and health policy, as well as professionals and interested general readers. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC BY-NC-ND)] 4.0 license.

It may seem as if the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (NICE) has always been part of the UK’s health and social care landscape. But this fascinating book charts the evolution of NICE from its origins 25 years ago, as well as how this development illustrates many of the key themes effecting health care today.In a period of rapid medical and technological advance, NICE has been both a gatekeeper to ensure that health care resources are spent where they are needed most, and a promoter of patient access to the best new technologies. Through a detailed history, the authors show how NICE’s remit grew from health care to public health to social care, advancing the use of evidence-based policy making and health economics as it did so. Playing a key role in ethical debates which often made the news, NICE also re-aligned the relationship between patients, politicians and the pharmaceutical industry.Written by two of the leading scholars in the field, this fascinating history also situates NICE in an international context, where it is often seen as a model to follow. It will be key reading for students and researchers in the fields of health and social care and health policy, as well as professionals and interested general readers.The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC BY-NC-ND)] 4.0 license.

In Ethnographic Explorations: Surrender and Resistance, Whitaker and Atkinson, two experienced ethnographers, explore the complexities of fieldwork, analysis and writing from new perspectives. It takes the opportunity to reflect on Ethnography not just as a methodological perspective, but at a fundamental level.In general terms, Ethnography is seen not just in terms of a set of data-collection methods, but as a more profoundly transformational perspective. The book explores a series of tensions and differences in the conceptualisation and conduct of ethnography, among them: Surrender and Catch; Strangeness and Familiarity; Intimacy and Distance; amd Romanticism and Modernism. It emphasises disruptions and interruptions rather than an idealised model of smoothly untroubled research. The book covers a variety of theoretical and methodological perspectives, illustrated with research in many social settings.The book is intended for researchers at postgraduate and postdoctoral levels and at experienced researchers who want to read a different, sometimes challenging, take on ethnographic research and its outcomes.

In Ethnographic Explorations: Surrender and Resistance, Whitaker and Atkinson, two experienced ethnographers, explore the complexities of fieldwork, analysis and writing from new perspectives. It takes the opportunity to reflect on Ethnography not just as a methodological perspective, but at a fundamental level.In general terms, Ethnography is seen not just in terms of a set of data-collection methods, but as a more profoundly transformational perspective. The book explores a series of tensions and differences in the conceptualisation and conduct of ethnography, among them: Surrender and Catch; Strangeness and Familiarity; Intimacy and Distance; amd Romanticism and Modernism. It emphasises disruptions and interruptions rather than an idealised model of smoothly untroubled research. The book covers a variety of theoretical and methodological perspectives, illustrated with research in many social settings.The book is intended for researchers at postgraduate and postdoctoral levels and at experienced researchers who want to read a different, sometimes challenging, take on ethnographic research and its outcomes.

This final book in Paul Atkinson’s celebrated quartet on ethnographic research investigates material culture and its relationship to sensory ethnography. Building on the author’s recent fieldwork, the book showcases how materials, techniques, tools and perspectives combine with the five senses to inform ethnographic methods. Filled with images and hands-on examples of encounters with crafts and craft workers, the book takes you on a sensory journey through glassblowing, woodworking, silversmithing, photography, life drawing, and perfume blending. These fieldwork snapshots provide insight into the ethnography of knowledge, skill, and craft. Helping to inform more reflective fieldwork, this book explores how analytical perspective varies based on the researcher and their physical environment. If you are looking to hone or expand your ethnographic practice, Paul shows you the exciting possibilities and implications of applying ethnographic methods to new contexts and media.

This final book in Paul Atkinson’s celebrated quartet on ethnographic research investigates material culture and its relationship to sensory ethnography. Building on the author’s recent fieldwork, the book showcases how materials, techniques, tools and perspectives combine with the five senses to inform ethnographic methods. Filled with images and hands-on examples of encounters with crafts and craft workers, the book takes you on a sensory journey through glassblowing, woodworking, silversmithing, photography, life drawing, and perfume blending. These fieldwork snapshots provide insight into the ethnography of knowledge, skill, and craft. Helping to inform more reflective fieldwork, this book explores how analytical perspective varies based on the researcher and their physical environment. If you are looking to hone or expand your ethnographic practice, Paul shows you the exciting possibilities and implications of applying ethnographic methods to new contexts and media.

This book provides students and researchers with clear guidance through this tricky, but fundamental aspect of qualitative, ethnographic research. The chapters provide a concise overview that clarifies, illustrates and develops a highly popular methodological principle. To some extent, the book is critical of some contemporary approaches, particularly those that portray reflexivity as an optional, virtuous extra. Drawing on a broad range of anthropological, sociological and other sources, it illuminates through example as well as by precept.

In Ethnographic Engagements: Encounters with the Familiar and the Strange Delamont and Atkinson, each with over 40 years of experience as ethnographers, present strategies for designing, conducting and publishing research that contributes original insights.Ethnography is a core qualitative research method, widely used across the social sciences. However, producing good, interesting and thought-provoking ethnography is never easy. This book provides effective research strategies for combatting familiarity in the context of empirical fieldwork. The authors rehearse ways that challenge the ethnographer to avoid taken-for-granted ideas, and to make the familiar strange. The book covers the cycle of research from research questions to publication and leaving the field and brings together the central themes of their life’s work in one clearly written volume.This book is aimed at researchers at postgraduate level and beyond, their supervisors and principal investigators, and at experienced investigators who want to improve their thinking. Any ethnographer will find ideas and proposals to help them reflect self-critically and creatively about their research practice.

In Ethnographic Engagements: Encounters with the Familiar and the Strange Delamont and Atkinson, each with over 40 years of experience as ethnographers, present strategies for designing, conducting and publishing research that contributes original insights.Ethnography is a core qualitative research method, widely used across the social sciences. However, producing good, interesting and thought-provoking ethnography is never easy. This book provides effective research strategies for combatting familiarity in the context of empirical fieldwork. The authors rehearse ways that challenge the ethnographer to avoid taken-for-granted ideas, and to make the familiar strange. The book covers the cycle of research from research questions to publication and leaving the field and brings together the central themes of their life’s work in one clearly written volume.This book is aimed at researchers at postgraduate level and beyond, their supervisors and principal investigators, and at experienced investigators who want to improve their thinking. Any ethnographer will find ideas and proposals to help them reflect self-critically and creatively about their research practice.

Published in 1994, this book gathers together a series of original studies on occupational socialization and the everyday realities of work. It includes detailed, empirically based accounts of a variety of occupational settings. Included are: social workers; trainee midwives; prison officers; accountants; teachers; psychiatrists; postgraduate research students. They all reflect the tradition of qualitative research that has been developed at Cardiff.This book was originally published as part of the Cardiff Papers in Qualitative Research series edited by Paul Atkinson, Sara Delamont and Amanda Coffey. The series publishes original sociological research that reflects the tradition of qualitative and ethnographic inquiry developed at Cardiff. The series includes monographs reporting on empirical research, edited collections focussing on particular themes, and texts discussing methodological developments and issues.

Published in 1996, this book comprises a number of essays by Paul Atkinson in which he reflects on processes of reading and writing in the social sciences. Topics covered include: ethnographers’ ‘confessions’, an analysis of the style of Erving Goffman, a reflection of his own experiences of re-reading work, and a discussion of the challenges of reading an alien discipline.This book was originally published as part of the Cardiff Papers in Qualitative Research series edited by Paul Atkinson, Sara Delamont and Amanda Coffey. The series publishes original sociological research that reflects the tradition of qualitative and ethnographic inquiry developed at Cardiff. The series includes monographs reporting on empirical research, edited collections focussing on particular themes, and texts discussing methodological developments and issues.

This second edition, published in 1997 follows the original edition from 1981 which was the only published ethnography of medical education in the UK. The theoretical, methodological and substantive issues continue to be of importance to the sociology and anthropology of medicine and medical knowledge. Indeed, critiques of contemporary ‘biomedicine’ and the growing interest in the sociology of the body have made its central concerns of even greater significance than when the first edition was published.Covering topics including the clinical tradition, the social distribution of bedside knowledge, reproducing disease, and the clinical setting, this expanded edition builds on the success of the first and will interest researchers and clinicians in the fields of sociology, anthropology and medicine.This book was originally published as part of the Cardiff Papers in Qualitative Research series edited by Paul Atkinson, Sara Delamont and Amanda Coffey. The series publishes original sociological research that reflects the tradition of qualitative and ethnographic inquiry developed at Cardiff. The series includes monographs reporting on empirical research, edited collections focussing on particular themes, and texts discussing methodological developments and issues.

The electric guitar is an exceptional object. Its sound is heard every day by hundreds of millions of people. Yet this beloved instrument started as an experimental project, hand-built by lone inventors and warily regarded by audience and players alike. Amplified traces the history of the design and development of the electric guitar as it became a mass-produced object made, sold and played all over the world. Paul Atkinson shows how, over the years, amateur makers, part-time tinkerers, musicians, enthusiasts, designers and corporations have developed its design, its looks and its sound.Featuring new interviews with players and makers, and many illustrations sure to inspire ‘guitar envy’, this book shows how the electric guitar went from an instrument to an icon.

What does it mean to see time in the visual arts and how does art reveal the nature of time? Paul Atkinson investigates these questions through the work of the French philosopher Henri Bergson, whose theory of time as duration made him one of the most prominent thinkers of the fin de siècle. Although Bergson never enunciated an aesthetic theory and did not explicitly write on the visual arts, his philosophy gestures towards a play of sensual differences that is central to aesthetics. This book rethinks Bergson’s philosophy in terms of aesthetics and provides a fascinating and original account of how Bergsonian ideas aid in understanding time and dynamism in the visual arts. From an examination of Bergson’s influence on the visual arts to a reconsideration of the relationship between aesthetics and metaphysics, Henri Bergson and Visual Culture explores what it means to reconceptualise the visual arts in terms of duration. Atkinson revisits four key themes in Bergson’s work – duration; time and the continuous gesture; the ramification of life and durational difference – and reveals Bergsonian aesthetics of duration through the application of these themes to a number of 19th and 20th-century artworks. This book introduces readers and art lovers to the work of Bergson and contributes to Bergsonian scholarship, as well as presenting a new of understanding the relationship between art and time.

What does it mean to see time in the visual arts and how does art reveal the nature of time? Paul Atkinson investigates these questions through the work of the French philosopher Henri Bergson, whose theory of time as duration made him one of the most prominent thinkers of the fin de siècle. Although Bergson never enunciated an aesthetic theory and did not explicitly write on the visual arts, his philosophy gestures towards a play of sensual differences that is central to aesthetics. This book rethinks Bergson’s philosophy in terms of aesthetics and provides a fascinating and original account of how Bergsonian ideas aid in understanding time and dynamism in the visual arts. From an examination of Bergson’s influence on the visual arts to a reconsideration of the relationship between aesthetics and metaphysics, Henri Bergson and Visual Culture explores what it means to reconceptualise the visual arts in terms of duration. Atkinson revisits four key themes in Bergson’s work – duration; time and the continuous gesture; the ramification of life and durational difference – and reveals Bergsonian aesthetics of duration through the application of these themes to a number of 19th and 20th-century artworks. This book introduces readers and art lovers to the work of Bergson and contributes to Bergsonian scholarship, as well as presenting a new of understanding the relationship between art and time.

This original and authoritative exploration of ethnographic writing comes from one of the world's leading academics in the field, Paul Atkinson. The third book in his seminal quartet on ethnographic research, it provides thoughtful, reflective guidance on a crucial skill that is often difficult to master. Informed throughout by extracts from Paul’s own writing, this book explores and examines a broad range of types and genres of ethnographic writing, from fieldnotes and ‘confessions’, to conventional ‘realist’ writing and more. Whilst highlighting the possibilities and implications of ethnographic text, this valuable resource will help those conducting ethnographic research select and adopt the most appropriate approach for their study.

This original and authoritative exploration of ethnographic writing comes from one of the world's leading academics in the field, Paul Atkinson. The third book in his seminal quartet on ethnographic research, it provides thoughtful, reflective guidance on a crucial skill that is often difficult to master. Informed throughout by extracts from Paul’s own writing, this book explores and examines a broad range of types and genres of ethnographic writing, from fieldnotes and ‘confessions’, to conventional ‘realist’ writing and more. Whilst highlighting the possibilities and implications of ethnographic text, this valuable resource will help those conducting ethnographic research select and adopt the most appropriate approach for their study.

Now in its fourth edition, this leading introduction to ethnography has been thoroughly updated and substantially rewritten. The volume offers a systematic introduction to ethnographic principles and practice, and includes a new chapter on ‘Ethnography in the digital world’.The authors argue that ethnography is best understood as a reflexive process. This requires recognition that social research is part of the world that it studies, and demands that researchers reflect on how they shape both data and analysis. Starting in Chapter 1 with an outline of the principle of reflexivity, against the background of competing research philosophies, the authors go on to discuss the main features of ethnographic work, including:the selection and sampling of casesthe problem of accessfield relations and observationinterviewingthe use of documentsrecording and organizing data the process of data analysis and writing research reports. There is also consideration of the ethical issues involved in ethnographic research. Throughout, the discussion draws on a wide range of illustrative material from classic and more recent studies, within a global context. The new edition of this popular textbook will be an indispensable resource for undergraduate and postgraduate students, and for all researchers using ethnographic methods in the social sciences and the humanities.