Liminal Role Research Articles

“The world is no longer flat to me”: student perceptions of threshold concepts in world regional geography

Through qualitative analysis of 80 student essays, the author examines geographic concepts students describe as holding traits of threshold concepts. With a group of 11 Honors students, the author employs metacogntion, asking students to analyze their own learning to discover their threshold concepts. Recognizing the role of liminality, this study suggests combining metacognition and geographic concepts to enable students to recognize their preconceptions, build or reconstruct their schemata and transform their understanding of a discipline.

Skin as a Trope of Liminality in Anne Enright's The Gathering

Of the many figurations of liminality and disjunction in Anne Enright’s 2007 novel The Gathering, skin is possibly the most complex trope. As it demarcates and safeguards the protagonist Veronica Hegarty’s elusive sense of self while she traverses a period of mourning, skin recuperates the immediacy of its anatomical function of holding her in, but it also acquires metaphoric value, denoting an inside-outside dialectic that defines both interpersonal relations and psychosocial ontogenesis. Anthropologist Victor Turner’s theorisation of liminality serves to focalise this study of skin as a trope of the permeability of the modern individual to external values, structures and codes and of the prevalence and relevance of ritual in the modern secular society. This essay investigates the constitutive role of ritual and liminality in private experience as thematised through representations of skin, and interrogates the extent to which the individual can insert her private concerns, aspirations and femininity in the communally regulated ritual, and moreover can bring about change in her community.

The inevitability of liminality in organising

We explore the role of liminality, an anthropological and sociological concept, in the context of organisations. We argue that this transition-like condition of being in between is an outcome of organising, which emerges from an ongoing process of structuration. Through the identification of rites and community-like instances in the different processes that compose the act of organising we are able to retrieve what we call liminal elements. We conclude by describing in detail these liminal elements in order to provide a basis for generalisation beyond the examples covered in the paper to include any process that occurs in the context of organisations.

Liminality in Death Care: The Grief-Work of Pastors

Proximity with issues of death and dying is one of the troubling aspects of ministry for many clergy. This article articulates the role of the minister as a liminal figure, a person who serves a ritual function in times of grief and loss, and who enables the creation of meaning in the in-between space between death and life. This liminal role is compared with that of the funeral director, as elaborated by Thomas Lynch in his memoir, The Undertaking. This paper suggests that while the liminal position is a difficult one for the pastor, it also provides some of the deepest satisfactions of ministry.

1147 POSTER The role of transient liminality in expressed expectations for breast care and treatment

This cohort study of postmenopausal women in the United Kingdom aged ≥ 50 years determined the incremental cost of health care and clinical outcomes in the 12 months following incident, selected fractures (non-vertebral non-hip [NVNHF], vertebral [VF] and multiple [MF]). Incremental costs and outcomes of the fracture cohorts were compared with those of cohorts comprised of women without fractures who were individually matched on age and comorbidity. Cohorts were identified from The Health Improvement Network database, a primary health care database, from 2001 to 2005. We estimated 1-year incremental costs (hospitalizations; general practice, accident/emergency, and referral visits; and prescription medications) associated with each fracture type. Descriptive analyses examined occurrence of subsequent fractures and death. No long-term health care costs or outcomes were assessed. Overall, 14,030 women had NVNHF, 1471 had VF, and 193 had MF. The risk of death was greater for women with fractures than for women in the non-fracture cohorts. Mean incremental cost for fractures compared with no fractures was £1152 for VF; £690 for NVNHF, and £2581 for MF. Of the total incremental cost, hospitalizations represented 54%–90% and medications represented 7%–29%. In all fracture cohorts, most of the total annual costs were concentrated in the 6 months after the date of fracture. Fractures among postmenopausal women represent an important burden to the health system due to the increase in health resource utilization and related costs. In this study, hospitalizations were the main driver of the overall incremental cost during the 12 months following the fracture. Mortality in women in the selected fracture cohorts was higher than in women in the non-fracture cohorts.

“Unhomely” Academic Developer Identities: More post‐colonial explorations

Academic developers are very often disciplinary migrants, performing hybrid, liminal roles at the “fault lines” between teachers and learners, between academics and managers, and between teaching and research. As a result, their identities as scholars can be described as “unhomely.” While this in‐between space is uncomfortable and ambiguous, its deconstructive power lends itself to “thinking at or beyond the limit” of current teaching and learning discourses. This article seeks to apply the post‐colonial notion of “unhomeliness” to academic development so that we can more critically understand academic‐developer identities and how the relentless march of performativity impacts on them. The article also explores some deconstructive possibilities inherent in the liminal educational development zone that may bring back the playfulness of exploring transgressive ideas about teaching and learning. Les conseillers pédagogiques sont très souvent des étrangers à la discipline, jouant des rôles hybrides ou à la limite des « lignes de faute » entre les enseignants et les apprenants, entre les universitaires et les gestionnaires, et entre l’enseignement et la recherche. Le résultat est que leurs identités en tant que chercheurs peuvent être décrites comme « non accueillantes ». Tandis que cet espace intermédiaire est inconfortable et ambigu, son pouvoir déconstructif se prête à une pensée « à/au‐delà de la limite » des discours actuels sur l’enseignement et l’apprentissage. Cet article cherche à appliquer la notion postcoloniale du « non accueillant » au développement pédagogique de façon à ce que nous puissions comprendre de manière davantage critique les identités du conseiller pédagogique ainsi que l’impact, sur ceux‐ci, de la marche implacable vers la performativité. Cet article explore aussi les possibilités déconstructives inhérentes à la zone liminale de développement pédagogique, lesquelles sont en mesure de ramener l’espièglerie sous‐jacente à l’exploration d’idées transgressives au sujet de l’enseignement et de l’apprentissage.

MAKING SENSE OF TOM: SEEING THE REPARATIVE IN RESTORATIVE JUSTICE

This paper considers the contribution of a creative writing project to restorative youth justice though a case study in which a young offender is filmed working on a one‐to‐one basis with a poet over a number of weeks. The restitutive and reparative dimensions of restorative justice are identified and the article shows reparative processes at work through transcribed extracts of video data. The analysis is informed by a psycho‐societal perspective which attends to the dialogue around social roles and identities and the intersubjective process of the sessions. It considers the liminal role of the poet in relation to the youth justice system and the moral community which surrounds the young man in question. Conclusions from short‐term case‐based studies are necessarily tentative and must await larger longitudinal studies. However, the material presented here shows how in using the position of the artist to good effect, the poet succeeds in helping the young offender find a language in which he begins to develop self‐reflective capacity, moral responsibility and hopes for a better future.

Was Dust Their Food and Clay Their Bread? Grave Goods, the Mesopotamian Afterlife, and the Liminal Role of Inana/Ishtar

AbstractMany literary texts portray the Mesopotamian netherworld as unrelievedly bleak, yet the archaeological evidence of grave goods suggests that there may also have existed an alternative way of thinking about the afterlife. An analysis of the types of objects found in burials indicates that many people may have anticipated a less harsh form of existence after death. Furthermore, iconographic allusions to the goddess Inana/Ishtar in certain burials raise the possibility that this deity may have been associated with the descent of human dead to the netherworld. The occasional presence of her image and iconography in funerary contexts does not necessarily imply a belief that Inana/Ishtar would personally grant the deceased a happy afterlife, but it may provide an allusion to her own escape from the undesirable netherworld of literary narrative. Inana/Ishtar's status as a liminal figure and breaker of boundaries also may have encouraged Mesopotamians to associate her with the transition between life and death.

The Red Hat Society®: Exploring the Role of Play, Liminality, and Communitas in Older Women's Lives

ABSTRACT There is an extensive literature on play. Yet, the role of play in older adults' lives has received limited attention. Strikingly absent is research on play and older women. Missing from the literature is how older women use play as a liminal context for social interaction and communitas. This is odd because by 2030 one in four American women will be over the age of sixty-five. The primary purpose of this study is to explore the roles of play, liminality, and communitas in older women's lives. The focus is the Red Hat Society®, a social group for women over age 50 that fosters play and fun. Using qualitative interviews with focus groups and participant observation of a regional Red Hat Society® event, the study highlights some of the strengths and weaknesses of current conceptualizations of play, liminality, and communitas.

Role‐Playing and Playing Roles: The Person, Player, and Persona in Fantasy Role‐Playing

In fantasy role‐playing games, participants collectively create and play fantasy personas in an imaginary universe by using a vast system of rules that function as guidelines for make‐believe action and interaction. Consequently, role‐playing games obligate participants to occupy a liminal role located in the boundaries of persona, player, and person. This study, based on approximately ninety hours of participant observation and forty interviews with thirty role‐players, explores how role‐players actively negotiate these symbolic boundaries: how role‐players carve out distinct spheres of meaning between themselves, their fantasy personas, and status as players of these games. It also illustrates how these distinctions fail. Boundaries erupt and role‐players prove unable to compartmentalize themselves so discretely. Through the lens of these games, we can examine simplified and exaggerated dynamics and entertain the possibility that we are all players located at the liminal margins between the people we believe ourselves to be and the personas we perform in situated social encounters.

Counselling goes to church: Aspects of the ‘pastoral’ in John McLeod's narrative constructionist counselling and psychotherapy

AbstractA discussion is offered of the recent work of John McLeod, which explores the notion of therapy as a social process. Points of similarity between McLeod's approach and notions of pastoral care are noted, such as an awareness of the relational nature of human well-being, the significance of narrative in therapeutic practice and the liminal role of carers within institutions. Points of difference are also noted, and critical questions are raised concerning McLeod's understanding of how human communities can be nurtured and the possibility of McLeod's model unintentionally becoming another form of therapeutic expertise. A case is made for the practical value of an on-going dialogue between McLeod and those with an interest in pastoral care.

The world(s) of the cross

To fully understand the meaning of early medieval crosses, like the one at Bradbourne (Derbyshire), we have to appreciate their liturgical, apotropaic and liminal roles. With the Reformation, changes in attitudes to the power of images resulted in the destruction of such ‘monuments of superstition’. The fragments of the Bradbourne cross were ‘rediscovered’ in the late eighteenth century and, through the eyes of the antiquarian Hayman Rooke, metaphorically converted into a Roman altar. The cross‐shaft was re‐erected in the late nineteenth century, and was used by Bishop Browne as a ‘text’ to perpetuate a ‘Reformationist’ view of English history in which Roman Catholicism played no part. Bishop Browne, Hayman Rooke, the iconoclasts and the medieval parishioners of Bradbourne contextually constructed their own monument.

Social Dramas and Stories about Them

Analyse de la structure sociale des Ndembu du nord-ouest de la Zambie et de la facon dont cette structure abstraite determine le type de relations concretes que nouent les individus et les conflits qui les opposent. La structure sociale Ndembu se caracterise par une opposition constante entre ligne paternelle et ligne maternelle, une residence virilocale inversee par les divorces frequents qui ramenent chez leurs peres les epouses et leurs enfants.