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My purpose in this thesis is to give an ethnographic account of how both I and those I encounter in the field of nursing construct boundaries around experiences of self, work and knowledge.

Accounts of both ethnographic and nursing practices often tend to put forward one perspective or another in presenting a particular line of argument. My account departs from this approach insofar as I try to show how practices in both domains can be more fully understood from a variety of overlapping perspectives. The boundaries I elucidate do not rigidly delineate "the ethnographer" and "the nurse", rather I try to demonstrate that there is a situational logic to how boundaries are drawn around experiences of self, work and knowledge by both myself and those I encounter in the field. That is to say, I explore how boundaries are continuously shifting, drawn and redrawn, interpreted and re-interpreted depending on a number of contextual features. (Abstract shortened by UMI.).