ABSTRACT
Returning to the chronology of events, the chapter takes a micro-historical approach to further explain the discovery of bottom-up community integration in the centre between 1935 and the outbreak of the Second World War, when the Pioneer Health Centre was temporarily shut down due to safety risks. Taking cues from the history of science, this chapter reconstructs in detail how the actual techniques of collecting data evolved in the course of what Pearse and Scott Williamson were increasingly regarding as a social experiment. It also demonstrates how the medical directors and their staff were trying to come to terms with what they perceived as chaos and disorder interfering with their work in the centre during the first months of its existence. The chapter shows that the hands-off-attitude and practices of participant observation for which the centre later became famous in fact evolved out of attempts to make the PHC more attractive to potential members in the neighbourhood and to make it economically viable. Eventually, a new notion of socialized science evolved in the centre. But at the same time, paradoxically, Scott Williamson established a role as its “benevolent dictator”.
