the bigger picture

At somewhat late in the stage of my prospectus I had to make a big structural change. I had to abandon one of the central concepts in my dissertation (Bourdieu's notion of illusio) for what had initially been a peripheral idea that I had dropped (nomos). It just made better sense this way. When talking about the organization of perception, illusio is a trait of the habitus and nomos is an extension of the field. Since I'm not interviewing doctors but looking at a semi-official document (The Medical Post), which is an expression of how doctors present themselves to one another as a collective, it makes more sense to examine the structural organization of perception rather than the range of dispositions in individual doctors. It's a tough decision, though, because it means discarding a lot of what I've painstakingly written and rewritten and starting afresh. I can't simply replace one with the other, either. Nomos must be stitched into the discussion and this will probably mean that I have to alter the structure of what I've written already. 

Editing lesson #2: For the sake of the bigger picture, I must break apart, discard and rebuild the different components of my argument... so I don't get too attached to any idea! I never know if or when I'll have to abandon it.