‘Putting on band-aids’: the contradictory roles and ‘small wins’ of tempered campus radicals

Abstract

Nancy Fraser's propositions regarding the nature of ‘boundary’ work carried out by experts within organizations suggests that individuals who work within bureaucratic structures are so constrained by the institutional context that they become detached, depoliticizing arbitrators of politicized claims. The purpose of the research reported in this article is to examine the assertion that workers in boundary roles necessarily engage only in work that depoliticizes the claims of oppositional social groups. By exploring the work of anti-harassment practitioners at Canadian universities, we uncover moments of both constraint and liberation in the practitioners’ work roles. Attending to the complexities of boundary role work illustrates that struggles over the definition of needs and claims made by marginalized social groups are not closed, nor are boundary workers completely co-opted by bureaucratic institutional prerogatives. Although variously constrained, interviews with practitioners reveal that their work can support counter-hegemonic challenges to the status quo.