Paying attention to tension: studying the perspectives of health care workers, sports club volunteers, and people with type 2 diabetes, engaged in public-civil physical activity collaboration

ABSTRACT

Collaborations between public institutions and civil society organisations are popular. One such context for public-civil collaboration is rehabilitation, where health care institutions and sports clubs collaborate in supporting physical activity for people with non-communicable diseases. More specifically, our study involves health care workers, sports club volunteers, and people with Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM), whose perspectives on physical activity might differ. The objective of this article is methodological in the sense that we aim to explore how focusing on moments of tension, arising in interactions between the different people involved, may be useful for researching perspectives on public-civil collaborations. To accomplish this goal, we describe how we conducted fieldwork during collaborative rehabilitation practices and how moments of tension manifested in the fieldnotes. Upon realising the potential significance of such moments, we identified six areas in which tension arose. Two of these areas are then used as examples to show how we moved analytically from the moments of tension identified in the fieldnotes to formulating interest/value statements (IVSs). Subsequently, we describe how these IVSs were utilised in focus group interviews to stimulate conversations by (re)creating tension. Furthermore, leaning on Habermas’ theory of communicative action, we discuss how IVSs based on moments of tension might lead to discussions around not only the views of the other parties in collaborations but also the reasons for those views, and the legitimacy of those reasons.

KEYWORDS:

• Moments of tension
• Habermas
• critical theory
• critical ethnography
• methodology
• physical activity, T2DM

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/2159676X.2023.2296983.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by STENO Diabetes Center Aarhus and the Centre for applied municipal health research – Aalborg [Center for anvendt kommunal sundhedsforskning – Aalborg Kommune].

Notes on contributors

Simon Thomsen

Simon Thomsen graduated with a master’s degree in Sports Science from Aalborg University, Denmark, in 2019. Simon is enrolled as a Ph.D. student in the graduate program Health Care, Health Promotion and Organizations at Aalborg University, working with collaborations between health care institutions and sports clubs regarding the supporting of physical activity for people with Type 2 diabetes. Simon aims to combine theoretical perspectives from Jürgen Habermas with empirical insights into the perspectives of health care workers, sports club volunteers, and people with Type 2 diabetes, gained through fieldwork, in order to critically explore such public-civil collaborations.

Sine Agergaard

Sine Agergaard holds a Ph.D. in ethnography and social anthropology from Aarhus University, Denmark, supplemented with courses on the anthropology of the body from Brunel University. Since 2004, Sine has worked in the field of sports sciences; in 2018, securing a position as professor with specific responsibilities in humanistic and social sports sciences at Aalborg University, where she is now head of the Sports and Social Issues research group. Sine’s research engages critically with policies and programs for the inclusion of underserved groups in sporting communities. Sine is manager of the International Network for Research in Sport and Migration Issues.