Liminal Role Research Articles

Between loss and restoration: The role of liminality in advancing theories of grief and bereavement

A recent national survey of bereaved partners found high levels of complicated grief and psychological distress, with evidence that loneliness and isolation may contribute to these outcomes. However, the mechanisms of action for this have not been explored. To advance grief theory this paper reports analysis of the survey free-text data to examine the relationship between social support and emotional responses to bereavement. Individuals bereaved of a civil partner or spouse 6–10 months previously were identified through death registration data. 569/1945 (29 %) completed surveys were received. Of those, 311 participants (55 %) provided responses to two free-text questions which asked about their ‘feelings since the death of their partner or spouse’, and ‘about the support around’ them. Data were analysed using corpus-assisted discourse analysis and the discourse dynamics approach for figurative language. Participants described diverse emotional responses to the bereavement (e.g. sadness, anger, denial, acceptance), and the value of formal and informal bereavement support. Although many of the experiences described are accounted for in existing grief theory, some participants described a liminal experience not recognised within these theories. They felt trapped, unable to engage with loss or restoration, and unable to move forward as their planned future no longer existed. They sought out ‘communitas’ (solidarity in experiences), but often found support from their social networks had diminished. Metaphors were used to describe this liminality, with partner grief expressed as a dark agentic force, a monster, an abyss, and as water. The findings of this study offer original insights into experiences and trajectories of bereavement, and our understandings of prolonged or complicated grief. A novel model ‘Between Loss and Restoration’ is presented to include these experiences. Recognition of the place for liminality within the spectrum of grief experiences could enhance grief literacy and improve formal and informal bereavement support provision.

Humanizing STEM education through student-faculty pedagogical partnerships

STEM culture has consistently been characterized as exclusionary of a diversity of student identities, experiences, and voices. Through such exclusive and inequitable practices, STEM education dehumanizes. A growing body of scholarship documents ways in which student-faculty pedagogical partnership can support the creation of more equitable and inclusive practices. The research question we addressed is: How do faculty and student partners experience, perceive, and act on the potential of student-faculty pedagogical partnership to humanize STEM education? Combining aspects of a scoping review and reflexive thematic analysis, we analyzed 32 publications focused on pedagogical partnership in STEM in the arenas of learning, teaching, and assessment or curriculum design and pedagogic consultancy with student partners in the liminal role of pedagogical co-designer or consultant. Our review, informed by the experiences as well as the perspectives of the student co-authors, revealed five key findings about the aspects of pedagogical partnerships that contribute to humanizing STEM education. First, pedagogical partnerships give faculty access to students’ perspectives and humanity. Second, they support faculty in being, and being perceived as, more fully human. Third, they provide dedicated space and time to develop equitable approaches. Fourth, they support the enactment of equitable teaching. Fifth, they foster a sense of mattering, belonging, and agency in students. Drawing on these findings, we develop four recommendations for those interested in embracing partnership to humanize STEM education. The first is to create roles and support structures for facilitating genuine engagement across positions and perspectives. The second is to position underrepresented student partners to effect a culture shift. The third is to embrace non-STEM student partners’ contributions to humanizing STEM education. The fourth is to recognize this work as ongoing. Together, these findings and recommendations address calls to contribute to renewed and sustained attention to student experiences in relation to instructor values, dispositions, and positionalities. In addition, they reject harmful ideologies and practices that exclude a spectrum of identities, viewpoints, and values. Finally, they contribute to the creation of context-sensitive, inclusive, equitable, and empowering educational experiences for all students.

Embarking on a ‘(birth)rite of passage’: exploring the role of liminality and youth transitions in diaspora tourism motivation

ABSTRACT Motivations to participate in diaspora tourism ‘birthright’ programs have widely encompassed themes of heritage exploration, including a desire to develop personalised attachments to people, places, and memories connected to ancestral heritage or a ‘homeland’. Despite the popularity of such programs among young members from the diaspora, the additional role that life course positioning plays in structuring motivation is less understood. In this paper, I analyse the motivations shared through semi-structured interviews with a group of young Hungarian-Australians who attended a 10-month ‘birthright’ diaspora program in Hungary. By applying a rite of passage lens to their stories, I highlight that uncertainties about the future, escaping the mundanity of everyday life, and the burden of impending adult responsibilities, were strong factors shaping their gap year motivations and overall view of the program. The paper thus encourages a more nuanced interpretation of diaspora tourism motivation through a liminal and youth transition context. It also prompts further thinking toward the role and representation of such programs as alternate rite of passage events, representing a critical point of transition between life stage endings and beginnings.

American Public School Librarianship: A History

American Public School Librarianship: A History

Paul Hirst as a liminal figure and modernizing moralist

Abstract Four years prior to the publication of Moral Education in A Secular Society, Hirst presaged his commitment to education as a moral enterprise in The Logic of Education, co-authored with R. S. Peters. A cursory glance at the index will confirm his (their) preoccupation with morality as a, and probably the, key condition of all education. Morality appears some 43 times in the index, considerably more than any other item, including the curriculum and knowledge. Add the many further references to moral education, moral judgement and sundry substantive moral conceits show that his concern with morality is indisputable. In an educational landscape preoccupied with the admittedly somewhat asinine contest between personal actualisation and performativity, perhaps Hirst's explicit preoccupation with education as a moral endeavour may appear rather anachronistic. Yet, at the time, this concern was central to the conversation as to educational purpose and practice and Hirst was the liminal figure in British education standing at the threshold between a post-War educational identity centred on religion, sacrifice and a social contract, on the one hand, and a new, more individualized, self-expressive culture, on the other. Arguably Hirst's most important contribution in this was to act as a midwife to a new way of thinking about morality and education. In this article I will suggest that Hirst's enduring importance to British education was in his liminal role as a moralist trying to wean the educational establishment off an increasingly unsustainable attachment to Christian piety as the motive force underpinning educational provision while simultaneously attempting to hold on to the virtues that had secured much social progress in the War period. In 1970, the same year as he published The Logic of Education, the precursor to the British Journal of Religious Education, Learning for Life published a series of discussions on ethics and education, repeatedly asking the question: ‘Can ethics survive without religion?'. Through the lens of 21st century post-structralism, this can appear very odd but in 1970 it was commonplace in schools, universities, and indeed further education to explicitly see religion as the shape and energy of education. Hirst enters these controversies as an educational moralist intent on re-positioning moral education away from its status as a practical appendage to Christianity and as an integral activity of education, itself considered as a moral good. Moreover, I will suggest that Hirst’s account of moral education cannot be understood apart from his consideration of the general aims of education and that his voice has retained its echo long past his citation scores!

More Human Than Human: The Exile in Blade Runner

More Human Than Human: The Exile in <i>Blade Runner</i>

Staff experiences of using non‐violent resistance in a residential care home for young people with high‐risk behaviours

AbstractNon‐violent resistance (NVR) is a systemic approach to working with young people presenting with aggression and other harmful behaviours. The work draws on the use of personal presence in resistance movements of the twentieth century, focusing on the role of the caregiver to increase their presence through acts of resistance and care. This paper investigates the experiences of professionals using NVR in one UK residential care home. Eight participants took part in semi‐structured interviews, which were analysed thematically. Analysis identified four overarching themes: NVR is both a set of processes and a way of being, NVR and transformation, NVR and the personal–professional divide and NVR and organisational support. The findings suggest that NVR offers an effective and acceptable alternative to behavioural approaches. Further research is required to investigate the liminal role of the professional/parent and the challenge of managing reluctance both within and around the organisation.

“A barbaric, elemental force”: The Liminal Role of the Eastern European Modern Girl in Western Culture

The Modern Girl was a feminine archetype that emerged in the early 1900s, challenging traditional gender roles and redefining racial boundaries. Particularly revealing of these dynamics is the case of the Eastern European Modern Girl, a figure who was characterized by her barbaric, primitive origins and ‘off-White’ racial status. This article seeks to investigate the construction of femininity and Whiteness in the interwar era through a comparative discourse analysis of two quintessential Modern Girls: Hollywood stars Pola Negri and Gilda Gray. It examines the ways in which each starlet’s ethnicity has been used to situate her as an exotic, racial Other. However, while Eastern European women were often exoticized and Othered, they could also be ideologically ‘Whitened’ through juxtaposition with members of more visibly racialized groups. This paper examines the ways in which Eastern European Modern Girls negotiated this unique position within the boundaries of femininity and, in doing so, argues that the social construction of Whiteness is fundamentally a relational process.

Negotiating a New RoleIidentity: The Experiences of First Batches of Female Military Officers

How do individuals create and negotiate a professional identity in a newly created liminal role? We explore this question by drawing upon a qualitative study based on fifty-one interviews with India’s first batches of female military officers. These officers joined the military on an experimental basis with time-limited contracts, and their participation was restricted to certain duties. Despite the highly regimented setting of the military, in which identity custodians hold significant power, we find that these new role occupants actively negotiated, shaped, and ultimately aligned this liminal role with how they saw themselves in it (i.e., their role identity). Our key contributions include: (1) elaborating theory on experiences of individuals in liminal roles within organizational boundaries; (2) highlighting the dynamics of role-identity negotiation in an atypical setting; and (3) explaining, counterintuitively, how liminal role identity can be valued and endure post role departure.

Problematising engagement with technologies in transitions of young people identified as ‘Not in Education, Employment or Training’ (NEET) in Scotland

ABSTRACT Dominant debates and digital upskilling strategies in Scotland have been long underpinned by the notion that engagement with technologies can transform young people’s lives. This paper offers a critique of such dominant understandings and contributes to the scarce research on the impact of technologies on disadvantaged young people’s life chances. It reports on qualitative fieldwork exploring everyday lives, transitions and technology use amongst 22 NEET-identified Scottish young people aged 16–24, drawing on thinking tools from Bourdieu. Findings show that participants followed ‘accelerated’ transitions towards vocational pathways, whilst technologies played a liminal role in making occupational choices. Furthermore, processes underpinning the post-16 transitions policy field were found to strongly shape the young people’s trajectories, directing them towards the least valuable options in terms of work and training. Concurrently, uncertainties about how to navigate the realm of work and perform the self in relation to the labour force constituted a common feature of participants labouring subjectivities and these were reflected in the ways they used technologies while looking for opportunities. However, even when the young people acquired digital employability skills, these had little impact on their transitions as the old social divisions were a much stronger influence.

Knowledgeable but not specialist: Virtual School Heads’ experiences of supporting autistic children in care

ABSTRACT Autistic children comprise a large group of young people who are looked-after by their local authority and for whom educational outcomes are amongst the poorest of all children in care. Virtual School Heads (VSHs) in England have a statutory responsibility to improve the educational outcomes of children in care following the implementation of the Children and Families Act 2014. However, very little is known about the experiences of VSHs in supporting autistic children in care, including whether and how knowledge about autism diagnosis is shared within interprofessional teams. This qualitative study reports the findings from nine semi-structured interviews with eight VSHs and one occupational therapist from eight local authorities in England. VSHs worked within multiple and diverse teams locally and nationally to co-ordinate and manage effective provision but reported that knowledge about autism was often uncertain and conflated with attachment difficulties. They could not state with confidence that individuals around the child were sufficiently enabled to provide appropriate support and educational provision. The VSH, and the children they support, occupy liminal roles which create challenges for effective communication and support. Crucially, young people’s views need to be authentically gathered and holistically understood to inform and improve provision.

The liminal role of the screenplay: Pre-production, the screen idea and the visual concept

The screen idea is a scholarly term used to describe the collective idea for a narrative screen project that exists in the minds of the collaborators as their concept for the work is evolving. The term has mostly been related to the script development phase of a project to elucidate the liminal form and function of the screenplay during that period. The screen idea can also be related to subsequent phases of conventional commercial screen production, such as the intensive planning period known as pre-production. One of the central activities during pre-production is the process undertaken by key heads of department – director, production designer and director of photography (DOP) – in conceiving a visual style with which to tell the story. This group is sometimes referred to as the visual triumvirate. The visual concept developed by the triumvirate sets out a plan for how the formal qualities of the work, such as colour, contrast, camera movement and lens choice, will be used to drive and enhance the expression of the narrative. During this phase, the imagery inferred through the words of the script begins to find tangible form, thereby contributing to the evolution of the screen idea as it progresses beyond the script development phase. Through examples taken from creative practice in recent Australian film and television, alongside the author’s own industry experience, this article examines factors influencing the process of negotiation between the triumvirate as they develop a visual style for their screen projects.

Negotiating liminal roles: Analysing the interstructural positionality of management interns

Through our narratological approach driven by grounded research, we present a theory of interstructural positionality. In this paper, we explore how management interns experience positional shifts, and in so doing, negotiate the role dynamics of working in a transitory space. Our study contributes to literature on education-to-work transitions by exploring changes in subjective positioning of undergraduate business students during an interstructural journey across domains, i.e. internships, which we consider as a liminal period for students-as-interns that disrupts established patterns of identity and internship work. An inductive analysis of 154 students’ year-long reflective diaries, as part of a work placement programme at a UK business school, shows three interstructural positions as a coping mechanism: confused outsiders, regulated adapters and recognized insiders in responding to internship work. Findings also contribute to scholarship on management learning and education by illustrating how business school students learn from liminal role experiences and resolve identity misalignment arising as a result of a break in self-conceptions and internship ideals.

The Liminal and the Surreal: The Space of Limbo and Dreams in Luis Bunuel’s The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie

This study explores the role of liminality and Surrealism in Luis Bunuel’s The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie. By taking into consideration the relationship between Surrealism, Marxism and Freud, this paper identifies the role of the liminal and Bunuel’s treatment of these topics. The purpose of this study is to examine the use of liminal space and Surrealism to identify the role of the bourgeois and their fears through the lens of Bunuel.

'Becoming' and 'Belonging': The Ambivalent Space of Hybrid Identity in Qurratulain Hyder's River of Fire

This research paper explores the role of ambivalent space of hybrid identity and the 'longing' and 'belonging' in the lives of major characters of River of Fire by Qurratulain Hyder to attain a positive vision towards life. In addition, the research tends to perceive the ways by which major characters in the different eras get insight to bridge the 'longing' and 'belonging' by standing in a liminal place.Thus, the study explores the role of subjective liminality in a person's life that induces a new perceptive socio cultural vision in the lives of Hyder's characters. This research uses postcolonial theory as a lens to examine the circumstances that compel the characters towards slip page without regarding their social status and hierarchy. Furthermore, according to Homi k. Bhabha, the term ‘belonging’ represents the cultural history of a nation that always remains in flux because of the ‘longing’ or desires of its individuals of sharing their objectives with other nations in new places to make harmony with new people and circumstances. River of Fire tends to combine a syn chronic and diachronic approach to show that cultural hybridity always orientates the social, economic, and cultural tenets of the characters idiosyncratic ambivalence

Keeping the Lights on and the Wolves Outside: College Student Media Advisers in Communities of Practice

This research advances communities of practice (CoPs) theory by documenting a role distinct to CoPs within student newsrooms. Using a survey ( N = 127) of college student media advisers, the data support a liminal role in which advisers are simultaneously inside and outside the CoP. This study also develops and verifies scales for each of the four pillars of a CoP in student newsrooms, that is, practice, community, identity, and meaning. Furthermore, these findings explore the impact of newsroom structure on the formation of CoPs and the differences among advisers regarding time spent in mentorship and assessment.

Between Home and Work: Commuting as an Opportunity for Role Transitions

Across the globe, every workday people commute an average of 38 minutes each way, yet surprisingly little research has examined the implications of this daily routine for work-related outcomes. Integrating theories of boundary work, self-control, and work-family conflict, we propose that the commute to work serves as a liminal role transition between home and work roles, prompting employees to engage in boundary management strategies. Across three field studies (n = 1,736), including a four-week-long intervention study, we find that lengthy morning commutes are more aversive for employees with lower trait self-control and greater work-family conflict, leading to decreased job satisfaction and increased turnover. In addition, we find that employees who engage in a specific boundary management strategy we term role-clarifying prospection (i.e., thinking about the upcoming work role) are less likely to be negatively affected by lengthy commutes to work. Results further show that employees with higher levels of trait self-control are more likely to engage in role-clarifying prospection, and employees who experience higher levels of work-family conflict are more likely to benefit from role-clarifying prospection. Although the commute to work is typically seen as an undesirable part of the workday, our theory and results point to the benefits of using it as an opportunity to transition into one’s work role.

Food Networks As Urban Commons: Case Study of a Portuguese “Prosumers” Group

In many parts of the world, people are coming together to experiment with ways to collectively take care of their livelihoods and create practical solutions to their needs. Guided by principles of solidarity, these grassroots initiatives represent rich contexts for research on the urban commons: what qualifies them as commons, and how do they emerge, develop, sustain and dissolve – or transform over time? This research dissects the commons character of a food network which emerged from Porto's solidarity economy movement in a post-crisis context. Following an action-research approach and methodological triangulation, we develop a qualitative analysis of a “prosumers” group, where both production and distribution were performed weekly by consumers themselves. We first analyze how the initiative emerged and then look at how its principles and democratic qualities relate to commons theories and frameworks. We then delve into the main dilemmas of its commoning practices and reflect about its transformative character and liminal role as a temporary urban commons. Despite ceasing its activities, there was a lived-experience and a knowledge commons which allowed it to be appropriated in new terms, and thus food networks as urban commons persist.

Liminality and festivals—Insights from the East

This research extends our knowledge of liminality through investigating how the liminal experiences of festival-goers are constructed in a Chinese music festival context. The research employs a multi-site data collection approach undertaking field observations and 68 in-depth semi-structured interviews at seven music festivals across three years. The study contributes to the theoretical development of a liminality framework by providing empirical evidence of the nature of liminality. It extends our understanding of event tourist experiences by highlighting the development and role of three types of communitas and identifying six stages within a rite of passage. The resulting multifaceted coexistence of liminal behaviours and identity with everyday routine life provides a new approach to the critical understanding of the role of liminality.

The Domestic Veil: The Net Curtain in the Uncanny Home

In this practice-based research the net curtain embodies Freud’s uncanny as the point of slippage between the homely and the unhomely. In this liminal role the net curtain is used to reconsider women’s equivocal experience of home as sanctuary and prison, based on tropes from Victorian gothic novels, but with contemporary parallels. Considered as a domestic veil the net curtain is a metonym for the trapped heroine in those nineteenth-century, gothic novels that critique the notion of separate spheres and the conflation of women with their homes and domesticity. This study builds on research into the uncanny, the gothic and the domestic and the discourse of Mary Douglas and Julia Kristeva on the instability of margins, to reveal the dysfunction that results from breaching domestic boundaries. The net curtain gradually reveals the secrets of the uncanny home. Pins and needles pierce the curtain to mark the passing of time, referencing a cell-bound prisoner. Dust, memories and conversations are trapped within its sieve-like net. Experiences of claustrophobia, confinement and coercion are made manifest through the domestic veil of the net curtain.