This article presents an analysis of boundary work in the context of care for the elderly, where violence appears to be widespread but is still relatively unacknowledged. Talk about aggressive patients was formulated in a particular way among workers in a nursing home. Nursing home staff described how the elderly residents sometimes slapped, pinched, or hit them. Although staff members could describe these acts as intentional, although they could hold patients responsible, and although this violence could end in injuries, demarcations were made such that aggressive acts were constructed as somehow not really “violence.” As “violent” is an inherently exclusionary label, this downplaying can be seen as an effort to avoid pushing persons outside the boundary of normalcy and of continued acceptance. Placing the elderly's violence outside the boundaries of violence means that the elderly remain “care takers,” the staff “caregivers,” and the nursing home a “caring context.”
Social constructionists consider interviews as mutually co-constructing meaning. But what if the interlocutors do not seem to agree on what they construct? What if the interviewee has a particularly strong agenda, far from the intended research topic? Are these 'failed' interviews? We address this issue using a 'deviant' interview in a study of 'being a neighbour'. First, we add to the discussion of interviewees' category representativeness by acknowledging a situation when the interviewee insists on representing a category not intended by the researcher. Second, we address the notion of asymmetries of power, where it is often assumed that the interviewer has the upper hand. Through this case, we argue that the opposite may well be true. Finally, we argue that cases where the interviewee pursues a strong agenda may suggest new research areas. After all, strong efforts of resistance may indicate deeper cultural concerns.
The present article analyses the indistinct boundaries between formal and informal economic exchanges, with a focus on friendship and work relations. To illustrate these intersections, we present a study of Swedish lifestyle entrepreneurs who run small-scale horse-related enterprises. The specific characteristics of this form of business -in which the horse farm owners/operators, customers, employees and voluntary workers share a leisure interest in horses and participate in the everyday work on the farm -provide the foundation for an economic environment where personal favour exchanges and a gift economy are intertwined with a market economy. Drawing on Viviana Zelizer's notion of 'relational work', applied in a context where the gift economy is based on individual leisure interests and leisure-based friendship, the present analysis focuses on how relationships, transactions and forms of repayments are constantly negotiated along a continuum between work-oriented friendship and friendly work relations. The empirical illustrations demonstrate the limitations of the notion of boundary work often employed in studies of relational work -which emphasizes boundary definition. In contrast, it seems that relational work may also involve practices that maintain indistinct boundaries between different types of relationships, thus sustaining tension between a formal and informal economy.
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