Tales of an Immersed Researcher: Dealing with an Intimate Experience of Practice, New Perspectives on the Politics of Regulatory Change and Communication

Abstract

Both Governmentality and accounts of collaborative ethnographic study are well served by the academic literature. However, this discussion focuses upon discourses that circulate around the debate of meat hygiene practice and how it mediates through implementing organizational and regulatory change. This study subtly illuminates the differing expectations and gaze of the researcher and sponsor relationship. It sketches the degrees of control for both, as each search for insights into existing practice, exposing challenging attitudes and communicating the need for change within a watchful public realm. Finally, it also traces how the research objectives evolved from challenges to organizational change to notions of 'Communities of Practice' (Lave and Wenger, 1991).