title: [Ethnographical situations at the hospital. "She is coming to see if we have a bone in the nose.."].
abstract: The first tool of the anthropologist is himself/herself. As for "his/her" field it is constructed by the interrelations which are formed from the beginning of the survey and throughout this one between the researcher and the community of which he/she tries to get the explicit and implicit functionings. Beyond the common opposition between subjectivity and objectivity, between empathy and distance, or even between sensitive disorder and classificatory logic, the watchful use of floating attention and fortune founds the rigour of the approach. This way the method is not to have any, at least at first sight. This is what the article tries to show by its very construction. To mirror someone is never insignificant because of the tensions and conflicts which haunt every human group. It is particularly true when it is about fields as tormented as violent, such as certain hospital departments where the ethnologist, in position of listening in places where precisely this one lacks, has to deal with the complaints and crossed sufferings of the nursing staff and the patients.
authors.affiliation: CNRS, Paris.
authors.forename: Marie-Christine
authors.initials: MC
authors.lastname: Pouchelle
mesh_terms: D000884:Anthropology, Cultural / Q000458:organization & administration*; D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel / Q000208:ethnology*; D001294:Attitude to Health / Q000208:ethnology*; D006801:Humans; D007297:Inpatients / Q000523:psychology*; D015404:Nursing Methodology Research; D009873:Operating Rooms / Q000458:organization & administration*; D010297:Paris; D012107:Research Design; D012108:Research Personnel / Q000523:psychology*; D035844:Researcher-Subject Relations / Q000523:psychology; D012942:Social Sciences; D012962:Sociology, Medical