A Rapid Team Ethnography on Vaccine Hesitancy in a Multi-Lingual and Multi-Country Contexts
A Rapid Team Ethnography on Vaccine Hesitancy in a Multi-Lingual and Multi-Country Contexts
Monday, 7 July 2025: 09:45
Location: ASJE028 (Annex of the Faculty of Legal, Economic, and Social Sciences)
Oral Presentation
The presentation focuses on the methodological conundrum of doing quick team ethnography in complex teams in a clinical setting studying childhood vaccine
hesitancy. The study involved seven European countries: Italy, Belgium, Czech Republic, Finland, Portugal, Poland, and the United Kindom. The paper describes how and to what extent a particular «thought style» (in Ludwik Fleck’s meaning) has developed through decisions, negotiations and disputes, producing a dialogical «local truth». It also shows how ethnographers can adapt their practice, considering day-to-day endogenous changes in fieldwork and public debate as well as exogenous ones, such as pandemics and wars. Following a compact exploration of a few sensitising concepts, referring in particular to Ludwik Fleck, Knorr-Cetina and Clifford Geertz, it explores how the complex team had worked in practice effectively while unpacking vaccine hesitancy. The paper describes three fundamental steps of this group endeavour: i) the genealogy of the birth of the team and the subsequent team-building process; ii) the illustration of how the group’s «thought collective» and interactions have produced in practice a «local truth»; iii) a reflexive stance on this particular empirical case of «method in process». The presentation concludes with some general methodological remarks.
hesitancy. The study involved seven European countries: Italy, Belgium, Czech Republic, Finland, Portugal, Poland, and the United Kindom. The paper describes how and to what extent a particular «thought style» (in Ludwik Fleck’s meaning) has developed through decisions, negotiations and disputes, producing a dialogical «local truth». It also shows how ethnographers can adapt their practice, considering day-to-day endogenous changes in fieldwork and public debate as well as exogenous ones, such as pandemics and wars. Following a compact exploration of a few sensitising concepts, referring in particular to Ludwik Fleck, Knorr-Cetina and Clifford Geertz, it explores how the complex team had worked in practice effectively while unpacking vaccine hesitancy. The paper describes three fundamental steps of this group endeavour: i) the genealogy of the birth of the team and the subsequent team-building process; ii) the illustration of how the group’s «thought collective» and interactions have produced in practice a «local truth»; iii) a reflexive stance on this particular empirical case of «method in process». The presentation concludes with some general methodological remarks.