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Also, I have tried to marry the form of this thesis with its content, so that
the re-presentation here could be criticised for being a repetitive text.
However, this is what life, action research and stories are like: partial,
recycled, repetitive and emerging. Some may find the language colloquial
and poking fun at the research process by regarding it as a story of
experience; just an illusion of a systematic and rigorous process that edits
out serendipity, formal and informal ideas arrived at in relation with others
in conversation, observation or through written texts. I found this was the
reality of the research process; some of it is intuitive or creative whether
we acknowledge it or not. I am not saying I have not been rigorous in my
methods, I am suggesting as Bourdieu argued that: ―In contrast to the
search for literary quality, the pursuit of rigour always leads one to sacrifice
a neat formula‖ (1993b p21).
A good story is driven by characters that connect the reader irrespective of
whether he/she is liked. My central theoretical character has been
Bourdieu whose wisdom I have used alongside my important pragmatic
and situated characters: the co-inquirers. All of these characters have
developed my understanding of embodying reflexivity. Bourdieu‘s
concepts have not yet widely penetrated the nursing research or
philosophy debates. Nevertheless, I have used them as the backbone of
this thesis alongside feminist ideals and a systemic inquiry perspective.
Bourdieu was resistant to his work being labelled preferring to regard it as
a science of human practice (Wacquant 2006). Nevertheless, his concepts
have been criticised by some feminist authors 61 who suggest he was
contradictory about gender; paying less attention to the generative aspects
of the habitus (i.e. the person‘s sense of agency). They accuse him of
seeing the habitus in a determinist way so that the embodied dispositions
tend not to focus on the potential for social change, thereby reducing the
sense of hope and agency 62 . I have not interpreted his work in this way as
61 See for example Adkins 2004, Witz 2004, Lovell 2000, Butler 1999,
62 See his notions of symbolic violence
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