What Is Context? Methodological Reflections on the Relationship Between Context, Actors, and Change

In this chapter, Meier and Dopson discuss the concept of context as it relates to actors and change. Drawing on examples from the Covid-19 pandemic, they illustrate how different approaches to context assign certain phenomena to the foreground and other to the background. Thus, actors continually construct what counts as ‘context’ as they make sense of their experiences and their social worlds. This enacted character of context is relevant as methodological reflection as well as during analysis of empirical phenomena. The authors show how the construction of context becomes an essential part of research into health policy. They end the chapter by discussing methodological issues related to collaborative fieldwork and multi-level phenomena and reflect on implications for healthcare managers and leaders.