ABSTRACT

In the Field, by Renee C. Fox, is a narrative account of the author's life as a sociologist. It is not a memoir in the conventional sense; rather, it is an ethnographic autobiography. Drawing on a vast reservoir of notes and documents that chronicle the span of her career, this work also focuses on the places Fox's field research has carried her.Propelled by a conviction to move beyond the boundaries of herself and of her native land, Fox has done first-hand research in Europe, Central Africa, and China, as well as in the United States. The majority of her research has centered on health, illness, and medicine. Other recurrent themes that pervade her work include training for uncertainty; the allocation of scarce resources; the relationship between self and others; detachment and concern; the particular and the universal; the harm that can result from intended good; and the questions posed by illness and accident, pain and suffering, and death.It is Fox's commitment as a teacher and mentor of generations of students that lies at the heart of this book. This volume will inspire new generations of social researchers.

chapter 1|10 pages

Origins and Beginnings

chapter 2|16 pages

Growing up on West End Avenue

chapter 4|8 pages

Polio

chapter 5|12 pages

The Year in Whittier

chapter 6|10 pages

Return to Smith

chapter 8|12 pages

Experiment Perilous

chapter 10|16 pages

Teaching at Barnard College

chapter 11|12 pages

The Summer of 1959: A Portal to Belgium

chapter 14|16 pages

Africa: Léopoldville, Kisantu, and Usumbura

chapter 15|26 pages

My Years in the Congo

chapter 16|6 pages

Deciding to Leave Barnard

chapter 17|18 pages

Return to Harvard (1967-1969)

chapter 19|5 pages

A Sociologist in a Medical School

chapter |1 pages

Miss Balkema’s Death

chapter 20|30 pages

1 Chairman Renée 2

chapter 21|24 pages

China, 1978

chapter |2 pages

Talcott Parsons’s Death

chapter |6 pages

My Parents’ Deaths

chapter 25|8 pages

The 1990s: A Time of Consummation (II)

chapter 26|14 pages

Going Up to, and Coming Down from, Oxford

chapter 28|22 pages

Retiring

chapter 29|12 pages

Willy’s Last Days

chapter 30|6 pages

Becoming Eighty

chapter |2 pages

Envoi