The trouble with queer fashion: Ambivalence, visibility, and the meanings of ‘queer’ among London-based LGBTIQ creatives

Recent research suggests that the notion of boundary work can improve our understanding of interprofessional tension and collaboration in health care, yet hospital social workers (HSWs) have not received sufficient attention in this area. Using boundary work as a theoretical framework, this article investigates HSWs’ boundary work in interactions with other health care professionals in paediatric acute wards. The data were based on in-depth interviews with nineteen HSWs at hospitals in Norway about their experiences with interprofessional collaboration. Based on their situated narratives, abductive analysis was performed, using the conceptually distinct but inter-related forms of competitive and collaborative boundary work that are grounded in Abbott’s framework of jurisdiction. The findings demonstrate how HSWs construct, defend and extend boundaries to create distinctions between themselves and others, and how they sometimes adapt and downplay boundaries in order to achieve common goals and perform their work. As a facilitator of this process, the HSW might be viewed as a boundary subject. This, in turn, can result in optional and intentional ways for HSWs to carry out boundary work. There is reason to believe that, the less specific educational requirements and role guidelines, the more important these mechanisms become.

‘Nanotechnology’ is often touted as a significant emerging technological field. However, determining what nanotechnology means, whose research counts as nanotechnology, and who gets to speak on behalf of nanotechnology is a highly political process involving constant negotiation with significant implications for funding, legislation, and citizen support. In this paper, we deconstruct a high-profile moment of controversy about nanotechnology’s possibilities: a debate between K. Eric Drexler and Richard Smalley published as a ‘point—counterpoint’ feature in 2003 in Chemical & Engineering News. Rather than treat the debate as a stand-alone episode of scientific controversy, we seek to understand the forces that enabled it to be seen as such an episode. We introduce the term ‘para-scientific’ media to make explicit how certain forms of publication intervene in the dissemination of technical knowledge as it travels beyond its supposed site of production. The existence of para-scientific media is predicated on intimate association with formalized channels of scientific publication, but they also seek to engage other cultures of expertise. Through this lens, we show that Drexler and Smalley were not only independent entrepreneurs enrolling Chemical & Engineering News as a site of boundary work; members of the para-scientific media actively enrolled Drexler and Smalley as part of a broader effort to simplify a complex set of uncertainties about nanotechnology’s potential into two polarized views. In this case study, we examine received accounts of the debate, describe the boundary work undertaken by Drexler and Smalley to shape the path of nanotechnology’s emergence, and unpack the boundary work of the para-scientific media to create polarizing controversy that attracted audiences and influenced policy and scientific research agendas. Members of the para-scientific media have been influential in bounding nanotechnology as a field-in-tension by structuring irreconcilable dichotomies out of an ambiguous set of uncertainties. We conclude with thoughts about the implications of this case study for studies of science communication, institutional entrepreneurship and the ethics of emerging technologies.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to add a little piece to the research on boundary work and inter-occupational cooperation by addressing two questions: how do actors perform boundary work in an inter-occupational cooperation project that seeks to improve the personnel health work in a hospital setting? What impact does the boundary work have on such cooperation in the personnel health project?Design/methodology/approachThe study is based on individual, in-depth interviews and participative observations of focus group discussions conducted at a regional municipal organization in Sweden. Respondents are hospital line managers, experts and strategists in the HR departments, and experts from the internal occupational health service.FindingsThe concepts on boundary work, which include closing/opening boundary strategies, provide the framework for the empirical illustrations. The cooperation runs smoothly in the rehabilitation work because of an agreed upon process in which the professionals’ jurisdictions are preserved through closing strategies. Illness prevention and health promotion are not areas of inter-occupational cooperation because the stronger actors use closing strategies. While the weaker actors, who try to cooperate, use opening boundary strategies in these areas, they are excluded or marginalized.Research limitations/implicationsThe empirical investigation concerns one cooperation project and was completed at one data collection point.Originality/valueNo similar study of boundary work and inter-occupational cooperation in a hospital setting is available despite the frequency of this professional group configuration in practice. A more inclusive concept of professionalism may facilitate the study of boundary work and inter-occupational cooperation among actors with different professional authority.

Boundary work refers to the strategic actions and practices through which individuals and groups construct, maintain, and legitimize categorical distinctions. Drawing on in-depth interviews with male line managers in Indian microfinance institutions (MFIs), this study critically examines how boundary work is enacted to marginalize women field officers. We foreground the agential role of line managers in actively (re)producing, normalizing, and defending exclusionary boundaries, thereby reinforcing gender inequalities. Crucially, we find that the passivity of senior management is interpreted by line managers as tacit approval, enabling the reinforcement of boundary work that limits boundary permeability (i.e., crossability). We contribute to boundary work literature by centering its discursive nature, illuminating how paternalistic narratives of care and safety are used to legitimize exclusion under the guise of concern. We highlight its gendered enactment as a micro-political process through which male managers align workplace practices with dominant socio-cultural norms to sustain gender hierarchies. Finally, we show how managerial agency interacts with structural inaction, with line managers interpreting senior leaders’ passivity as tacit approval, transforming it into a resource for reinforcing exclusion. Together, these insights offer a more relational and processual view of boundary work, revealing how power is enacted, legitimized, and concealed through everyday managerial practice.

Drawing on social resource theory, we investigated the evaluation of distributive justice principles in relation to material benefits (monetary rewards in working life) and symbolic benefits (praise at university) in a cross-cultural study. We predicted that the equity principle would be perceived as more just for distributing culturally valued resources, whereas the equality principle would be perceived as more just for resources that are less valued within culture. Moreover, applying uncertainty management theory, we predicted that cross-cultural fairness evaluations would be more pronounced for individuals with higher (vs. lower) uncertainty avoidance or lower (vs. higher) uncertainty tolerance. Data of 608 Canadian and German students were collected in a two-wave survey. As expected, when allocating material benefits Canadians found the equity principle to be more just than did Germans, whereas Germans perceived the equality principle as more just than did Canadians. When allocating symbolic benefits, by contrast, Canadians perceived equality as more just than did Germans, though unexpectedly culture did not influence evaluations of the equity principle. Finally, consistent with uncertainty management theory, some of the cultural differences in the evaluation of distributive principles were more pronounced among people with higher uncertainty avoidance and lower uncertainty tolerance. Implications for cross-cultural research on distributive justice are discussed.

While borders are on the rise in both political practice and academic research, more mundane practices of boundary work continue to make, remake and unmake transnational knowledges, spaces and identities. In this special section, we argue that global politics unfolds through boundary work, an understudied but highly effective set of ordering practices that shape the conditions for and dynamics of global (non-)cooperation. We leverage recent innovations in the study of boundary work in other fields to transcend the conventional portrayal of boundaries as instruments of exclusion and competition. Instead, we equally attend to their potential to facilitate inclusion and cooperation between otherwise differently positioned actors. Building on this conceptual foundation, the contributions to this collection offer novel, empirically grounded insights into diverse types of boundary work (competitive, collaborative and configurational) across several important transnational domains and institutional sites. These insights will be of particular relevance to practitioners of global politics, who regularly confront boundaries. Overall, we encourage scholars of International Relations to pay more attention to the constitutive effects and dynamics of boundary work in global politics.

ABSTRACTUsing two conceptual frameworks—boundary work and field theory—I examined how academic scientists’ strategies for demarcating science from the market have implications for professional socialization. I focused on how field theory’s emphasis on group differentiation, power, and rules within fields can inform analysis of boundary work. The study was organized around two questions: How do academic scientists demarcate the fields of science and the market? What role do noncommerical scientists, graduate students, and postdoctoral scientists play in commercially oriented scientists’ boundary work? Drawing from in-depth interviews with 61 commercialist and traditionalist scientists at commercially intensive research universities, I identified three “rules” that operate as boundaries between science and the market. Commercialist adherence to these rules translated into a particular practice of third party impression management in which commercialists used postdoctoral scientists to segment science from the market. The liminality of postdoctoral scientists, which originates in their status as trainees between formal education and permanent positions, doubled as commercialist advisors situated them in the space between the fields of science and the market. The findings suggest that contemporary ways of protecting the integrity of the professoriate may operate at the expense of the long-term health of the profession by undermining professional socialization.

This article examines the boundary work undertaken by Filipino transnational workers in globalizing Indian cities. While the ‘practice turn’ in boundary studies has shed light on boundary work's mundane and performative dimensions, the role of emotions in performing such work needs to be ascertained. To account for both the performative and emotional dimensions of boundary work, I present an ethnographic study on Filipino professionals in India that engages Hochschild's concept of emotional labour. Since the mid-2000s, local and multinational companies have hired Filipino professionals to set up businesses and manage operations. I examined their practices of boundary work through in-depth interviews and participant observation at work and in everyday life. Given the dynamics of seniority, unequal gender relations and ethnic othering in the workplace, Filipino professionals are required to demonstrate their authority and expertise. To succeed in establishing their professional or managerial roles, they perform emotional labour as they construct, maintain and reconfigure professional boundaries. I argue that the performance of boundary work requires emotional labour. In the case of Filipino transnationals in India, emotions in boundary work facilitate cooperation through their communicative and transformative functions. The present study adds to our understanding of how emotions work in the context of international migration.

In this chapter I examine what happens at the boundaries between intersecting practices where the resources from different practices are brought together to expand interpretations of multifaceted tasks. I develop the idea of common knowledge as a pre-requisite for mediating collaboration across the boundaries of specialist practices. I argue that common knowledge involves gaining sufficient insight into purposes and practices of others to enable specialists to bring their expert knowledge together in activities. I show that common knowledge is built in conversations at the boundaries between practices. Topics covered in the chapter include boundaries and boundary work, alternative envisioning at the boundaries, constructing sites for boundary work and knowledge talk at the boundaries.

This article presents data from a study of Black men and masculinities at a predominantly White university. I argue that the campus racial climate on predominantly White universities are important sites of boundary work where fear and sexualization of Black masculinities are normalized in ways that shape Black men’s social relations on college campuses. In doing so, I will share narrative data of how Black male college students perceive the campus racial climate, with a focus on how they are feared and sexualized in predominantly White spaces. I also analyze the ways in which they managed race, gender, and sexuality within school spaces, and situate their gendered performances within the context of the boundary work of the university. Attention will be given to their agency in how they respond to White fears and sexualization of Black men.

This essay is focused on the analysis of several success stories of state-directed developmental projects and programmes in Russia, which are designed and implemented amid conditions of bad governance. I argue that these success stories do not serve as exceptions to the general rules of bad governance but rather confirm its overall tendencies. The prioritisation of state support for successful projects and programmes is related to conspicuous consumption of material and symbolic benefits by the political leadership against the background of mediocre policy outcomes beyond the ‘pockets of efficiency’ intentionally designed by authorities. The analysis of several success stories related to technological development and the advancement of higher education addresses the questions of why they were short-lived and resulted in diminished returns and/or weak multiplicative effects. Thus, success stories become the other side of the coin for bad governance: these achievements are intertwined with the general trends of governing the state.

This chapter discusses the court system. When an enormous or arbitrary power establishes itself in a country, the court system is created. A court exists when a person, by virtue of his enormous power, constantly occupies a more elevated and central position in relation to a relatively large number of individuals who depend on him in order to gain, keep, and increase their wealth, status, and chance of appearing and being seen and admired. This system depends on the effective power of the signore to distribute to the courtiers material and symbolic benefits and to threaten them, equally effectively, with the loss of those goods. In the court system, the prince too depends to a certain degree on the courtiers and all those whom he can benefit or threaten. However, the superior power of the signore and his central position are not in question. Ultimately, the most important reason for a court's existence is the practice of servitude.

The article is about the national issue in Kenya. It is noted that the socio-economic and political situation in Kenya is largely determined by such a factor as tribalism. The author examines the national issue and tribalism in connection with the development of Kenyan statehood, problems of internal politics and stability, party life, security problems in the country and the region, the federal experience of the country at the dawn of independence and since the 2010s. The “majimbo” (regionalism, federalism), devolution (transfer of powers from the upper level of government to the lower, to the county level) system adopted in Kenya defines the country’s role in the regional East African federal process. Kenya is called the “big brother”, the “big man” of East Africa. It is the most economically developed country in the region. Kenya’s political weight is determined by its special allied relations with the United States and Great Britain, and leadership in the East African Community. It is planned to create a political federation based on EAC, preceded by the creation of a confederation. The country’s system of “majimbo”, devolution provide grounds for currently considering Kenya a “regional, semi-federal” state. The administrative and territorial structure, the borders of the regions correlate with the national/tribal composition of the country. Also since independence, the origin of a leader from a certain tribe has determined the phenomenon of “ethnic eating”, the system of distribution of material and symbolic benefits in the state among representatives of different nationalities, and there are at least 40 of them in Kenya. The origins of this phenomenon date back to the colonial period, when the British administration established “ethnic boundaries”, divided and ruled Kenyans, clashing the economic and political interests of tribal groups that differ in language, culture.

This article aims to describe corruption in contexts of low statehood from a sociological approach. Corruption is understood as a social and relational phenomenon that permeates public institutions, transgresses the legal framework and alters their formal procedures. A qualitative methodology with a descriptive approach was used, and 32 interviews were conducted with relevant actors from the municipal (authorities and officials) and local (stakeholders) in 13 municipalities with low state presence in the Araucanía region in Chile. The results show the importance of personal networks and ties in the way corruption functions in local contexts. In addition, it shows how, in the absence of the State in those communes, corruption operates through informal practices, such as the exchange of favors and the use of networks to obtain particular and contextual material and symbolic benefits.

This article explores how marriage patterns and practices changed over the course of 60 years in Willow Pond Village (a pseudonym), a rice-farming community on the Yangzi Delta, 50 km west of Shanghai. Data gathered during eight months of fieldwork in 1990 reveal the intimate relationship between marriage and changes in the local political climate and illustrate the ways in which marriage reflects and reproduces the local social hierarchy. (Marriage, family, kinship, social stratification, China) ********** By late imperial times, China's highly elaborate system of stratification had developed an extraordinary degree of social mobility (Ho 1962; Fei and Chang 1945; Yang 1945; Hsu 1948), owing in part to the virtual absence of legal restrictions on intermarriage or movement between strata. Ironically, the permeability of the strata may have allowed the system of stratification to persist. As long as upward mobility remained a possibility, albeit requiring several generations, and as long as a few families served as examples of mobility, non-elite strata were likely to accept the legitimacy of their positions. The social order itself was a process of anfractuous reconstruction whose shape is described by the calculus of families striving for material and symbolic benefit. And in no domain of rural Chinese social life is this calculus more apparent and more determinative of the social order than in the decisions surrounding marriage. These decisions, as Bourdieu (1977:70) points out, belong to the system of reproduction strategies.... [E]very marriage tends to reproduce the conditions which have made it possible. PREREVOLUTIONARY WILLOW POND On the eve of the Communist victory in 1949, what is now the administrative village of Willow Pond was the site of two villages with a combined population of roughly 245. On small plots of generally fertile land, some 60 households cultivated a main crop of summer paddy rice and some winter wheat or barley. Although all families worked in the fields, marked social differences are evident in older informants' descriptions of village life during the 1930s and 1940s. About 60 percent of families lived at the margins of subsistence, with half their crop extracted as rent by absentee landlords. Most owned no draft animals or only a share in one, and either rented the pumps of wealthier neighbors or paid for itinerant pump-boat operators to irrigate their fields. They frequently hired out themselves or their older children as laborers to others. Another 20 per cent of village families fared little better. They were driven less frequently to sell their labor to others, but they controlled no surplus land, and could not afford the tools and means to maximize yields. The top strata of village society, perhaps 20 per cent, had landholdings that exceeded their own subsistence needs, derived a significant portion of their income by renting this surplus to others, but worked in the fields themselves, also employing one or more long-term laborers. The very wealthiest families derived most income from renting land, and owned one or more oxen and perhaps a windmill for irrigation; although their primary business was agriculture, some of their children were involved in nonfarm pursuits, like extended education or apprenticeship to a skilled craftsman. One family briefly owned a rice mill until it was lost to fire in 1946. Wealthier families were far more likely than others to have reserves of capital that allowed them to buy land, goods, and services when the prices were at their lowest, and to acquire some of the trappings of the elite lifestyle they tried to emulate. Thus, land, labor, capital, and access to irrigation, tools, and agricultural inputs--the means of production--were one dimension along which village families were stratified. The social relations of production comprised another dimension and included the division of labor within the production unit (the family), the network of alliances a family could depend on for support, and its accumulated symbolic capital (Bourdieu 1977). …