Liminal Role Research Articles

Transformative travel experiences and gender: a double duoethnography approach

ABSTRACTIn the realm of transformative tourism research and tourism studies on gender, transformation is considered part of the emancipating and empowering process that women mostly experience through travel. Yet, little is known about the same process from a male or comparative perspective. This paper contributes toward addressing this research gap, adopting a double duoethnography approach aimed at analysing young male and female experiences of transformation through tourism. Through a photo elicitation technique, data was collected from two researchers’ personal experiences with transformative tourism, then analysed for gender-based similarities and differences. Overall, findings suggest that both young female and male tourism experiences of transformation are characterised by becoming mentally stronger and more confident, as well as increasing acceptance of unexpected negative events and challenges arising during the trip. The critical role of liminality is also common for women and men in exploring their identities during tourism experiences. The female process of transformation is marked by bodily feelings and self-consciousness, while the male experience is characterised by flow, adaptation, a sense of community with other travellers. Recommendations for marketers and operators are made to enhance the transformative tourism experience for both women and men.

The masking and making of fieldworkers and data in postcolonial Global Health research contexts

ABSTRACTThis paper centres on the roles and contributions of fieldworkers-local data-collectors in Global Health research in postcolonial contexts. It is informed by two separate ethnographies, conducted in two different East African biomedical research institutions. It discusses how common characterisations of fieldworkers as ‘low-skilled’ and ‘local’ make them attractive to research institutions in two important ways – as community-embedded data-collectors thus facilitating community participation and as being unlikely to fabricate data because they lack the skills to avoid detection. This paper questions these assumptions. It draws on Daston’s idea of the ‘scientific persona’ and Fanon’s concepts of mask-making to explore how fieldworkers construct identities and data within their liminal roles. Fieldworkers create particular pseudo-personae or masks for getting and staying employed. They dumb-down CVs and emphasise their similarities with community members in ways which are partially ‘real’ but also ‘fake’. These constructed identities provide fieldworkers with a persona that allows them to fabricate or modify data without raising suspicions. They frequently engage in practices known as ‘genuine fake’ data fabrication which is data perceived as factually correct and verifiable yet methodologically incorrect, hence it is real and fake in varying degrees. We understand the ‘pseudo’ as the blurry space between real and fake where fieldworkers construct their identities and data. Given the seemingly laudable aims of Global Health, we argue that fieldworkers’ masking and making up data signal the need for greater attention by those designing its research, to better understand and address why and how these practices unfold.

Constructing an entrepreneurial life: liminality and emotional reflexivity in identity work

ABSTRACT This paper examines the identity work of a budding entrepreneur through a longitudinal case study based on his ongoing personal reflections as he tries to construct an entrepreneurial life. In particular, we investigate the role of emotional reflexivity and liminality, concepts that give us analytical purchase in exploring the complex dynamics of this identity work. The liminal condition of multiple identity positions enables our informant to experiment with and integrate several parallel identity narratives as he tries on socio-political constructions of ‘the entrepreneur’ for size; and it is the permanence of the liminal condition that makes emotional reflexivity necessary so he can handle the constant lack he experiences. The contribution of our work lies in exploring how the operation of the discourse of enterprise never closes on the centre of subjectivity that is imputed in that discourse, and how our subject, through emotional reflexivity, deals with this fundamental lack.

(Literary) Capital of the Russian Arctic: Murmansk in Russian Literature

In this article, I examine depictions of the city of Murmansk in Soviet and contemporary Russian literature: how different works describe Murmansk’s liminal location and role as a frontier city in the Russian Arctic. I approach this question by analyzing three themes central in the texts about Murmansk: 1) future visions of the city, 2) the role of the sea/ocean and the port in the city life, and 3) depictions of the geographical location and natural surroundings of the city. I ask how the image of the city may have changed during the last century and how different actors and places in the city space influence the urban experiences of the protagonists. The Arctic became “a key component of the modern mythology” in the Soviet Union in the 1930s (McCannon 1998: 81). This “Arctic myth”, examined extensively by John McCannon (1998, 2003), is an important context for my study. I am interested in the role of urbanization, focusing on the city of Murmansk, in the Arctic myth and in conquering the North in the 1930s. I also cover questions about the relationship between gender and urban space in this Arctic city text.My theoretical frameworks come from literary urban studies, geocriticism, ecocriticism and semiotics. I analyze Soviet texts in parallel with the contemporary material. The geocritic Bertrand Westphal proposes the geocentered approach to texts: “the geocritical study of literature is not organized around texts or authors but around geographic sites” (Prieto 2011: 20, italics mine). According to Westphal, analyzing a single text or a single author makes the study of a place lopsided, and geocritical study should emphasize the space more than an observer (Westphal 2011: 126, 131, italics mine). Applying Westphal’s geocentered approach to texts, I analyze depictions of Murmansk in multiple texts from different authors and decades. I prefer this kind of approach because exploring different eras’ texts about Murmansk, I want to give a comparative perspective to the history of Murmansk as a literary city.

Climbing invisible walls: The construction of career (im)mobility in liminal professional roles

Drawing on 67 interviews with paraprofessionals and professionals in four leading law firms, we examine the construction of career immobility in liminal roles. Specifically, we analyze how individu...

Liminal roles in construction project practice: exploring change through the roles of partnering manager, building logistic specialist and BIM coordinator

Industries have to adapt to changes in external environment. This adaption includes the development of new professional roles that challenge established structures, roles and communities of practice. In order to better understand the unfolding of construction project practice in an increasingly changeful world new professional roles are explored as liminal roles. The studied professional roles are partnering manager, building logistic specialist and BIM coordinator. Liminality is used as framework to understand descriptions of liminal experiences when negotiating boundary interfaces in construction project practice. Findings are both theoretical and practical and suggest that new professional roles practice multi-liminal work and acknowledge tensions that pose challenges for liminal roles to act as change agents.

Liminal practice and reflection in professional education: police education and medical education

ABSTRACTThis paper reports on a study of how liminality relates to the facilitation of reflective practice in professional education. Liminality refers to sites and positions that exhibit 'in-betweenness', or bordering positions, that might draw together different institutional conditions. The present project aims to examine the role of liminality in professional educational practice with a specific focus upon how liminality may support student reflection. Using a qualitative and comparative research approach, we analysed interview and observational data from police education and a medical programme. Observations and interviews explore practices of collective interactional (and hence observable) reflection at sites that are characterised by ‘betweenness’ of work and education. Findings indicate that situations that afford reflection are characterised by a sense of undeterminedness in terms of either the subject, space or activity. Thus, we conclude that there is some evidence that liminality affords reflection, but also that liminality and underminedness are fragile states that are not easily organised in a professional education curriculum.

Disturbing Hospitality with The Young Family

Taking Patricia Piccinini’s 2002 artwork, The Young Family, this article looks to interrogate how the liminal role of the mother within the sculpture can aid in a re-articulation of hospitality as offered to non-human life forms. The artwork depicts a strange creature, part human part pig, surrounded by her children. With her face like a dog, lying on her side with her primate hands and surprisingly human flank, she is rendered in silicon, fibre-glass and human hair, but what is not clear is that The Young Family have been ‘bred’ for the specific purpose of organ donation. Through this work Piccinini asks for the human animal to take up an orientation of care towards these creatures. Following the failures of the ‘father’s of science’ this attitude would be rendered in the name of the mother. I read the role of the mother in this artwork through the lens of hospitality. Rather than being an individuated pregnant body, the mother in The Young Family acts as a metaphor for a care-focused, community-building ethic grounded in the maternal. This shifts the maternal away from pregnancy and birth and towards concepts of renewal, restoration and growth – linking the maternal with environmental and ecological concerns. In representing multiple generations this artwork calls for responsibility to be reconsidered outside of teleological progress. This piece presents a continuum – rather than portraying a singular triumph of the laboratory we are shown a complicated family where responsibility is enduring. In so doing Piccinini’s artwork can offer a new perspective into how we, the human-animal, offer hospitality to the living products of technoscience and beyond. I argue this alter-hospitality, in the mode of mutual thriving, co-evolution and flourishing, could be brought to bear on the collapse of any notion of a sustainable global ecology.

From the Editor

From the Editor

Experimenting With the Occult: The Role of Liminality in Slumber Party Rituals

ABSTRACT While the slumber party itself is a significant preadolescent ritual, this article examines, in particular, how the import of belief is heightened by conditions of liminality during three specific slumber party rituals that involve the occult: “Cat Scratch,” “Concentrate,” and “Sandman.” After contextualizing the study within children's folklore and examinations of ritual and belief specifically, the author discusses how the slumber party space, as a liminal environment, is conducive to these belief-oriented rituals. The latter portion of the article analyzes interview material, collected by the author, in light of specific contextual information—such as the informants' religious, educational, and political backgrounds. Ultimately, the author concludes that within these three rituals that involve the occult (and thus a whole host of beliefs), the liminal environment allows participants, who might in other circumstances feel less permitted to engage in these activities, to experience a measure of freedom.

Urban cemetery animals: an exploration of animals’ place in the human cemetery

This paper investigates the place of animals in the contemporary Swedish human cemetery. It does this by looking at how animals are admitted to cemeteries – alive and dead, above and below ground, physically as well as symbolically. The aim is to shed light on the various ways that animals are experienced and treated in the cemetery, and to explore how this both reflects our changing attitudes to animals and our changing attitudes to death. The paper draws on the findings from a qualitative interview study carried out at the Eastern Cemetery in Malmö, Sweden, and a follow-up study of a turtle pond, in Malmö-Limhamn Cemetery. Two different perspectives relating to animals in the cemetery were common to these studies: (1) the liminal role of the companion animal; and (2) aesthetics and care in relation to wild and domesticated animals. The two perspectives, considered as findings in their own right, are used in this paper as a foundation for discussing questions relating to how urban cemetery animals can enrich the cemetery environment and increase the importance of urban cemeteries today and in the future.

Caves, Liminality, and the Sun in the Inca World

Caves were liminal features of the Inca sacred landscape, connecting this world with the underworld. They were places for making contact with ancestors and the powers of creation. In this paper we examine caves in southeastern Peru for solar orientations and cosmological context, with recourse to the concept of liminality that appears central to cave use. The cave within Kenko Grande has ceremonial steps adjacent to an altar upon which sunlight climbs at midday in June. A rear entrance and altar are illuminated at the time of the solar equinox sunrises. Lacco has three caves which have one solsticial orientation and two light-tubes. A primary opening in the cave at Lanlakuyok faces sunrise at the time of the equinoxes. Tambomachay contains a major fountain and a cave with a platform oriented to December solstice sunrise. Rumiwasi Bajo contains a number of niches and a nine-meter-long passageway oriented close to the June solstice sunset, while the other door opens to December solstice sunrise. Choquequilla is a complex cave opening to December solstice sunrise. The Royal Mausoleum is one of the major shrines of Machu Picchu and opens to June solstice sunrise. Intimachay is a cave with a constructed opening for the December solstice sunrise. The Temple of the Condor contains a cave approximately open to the anti-zenith sunrise. The Gran Caverna includes both an upper and a lower cave oriented for June solstice sunset. There are two caves at the River Intihuatana that, while part of an astronomically oriented complex, don’t have solstitial nor equinoctial orientations, nor do they have interior carvings. We end the paper by considering the role of caves and liminality in Inca cosmology.

The Impossibility of Conservatism? Insights from Russian History

Sometimes [...] revolution is necessary in order achieve piecemeal change. Equally, project can utopian its advocates believe it can achieved incrementally. Debates about gradual improvement or total transformation are just distraction. The question is whether the goals of the project are possible at all [...].-Gray (2011)Just imagine British Labour Party supporter and Party supporter met each other by chance in weird, wild country like Russia. What would they do? They'd go the pub or for cup of tea together.-Solidarity movement activist cited in White (2013)In his essay On Being Conservative (1956), philosopher Michael Oakeshott describes conservative disposition, as centered on a propensity use and enjoy what is available and to delight in what is present rather than what was or what may be (407-408). The present, as Oakeshott portrays it, is esteemed on account of its familiarity, its here-and-now quality, and its ability provide sufficient (rather than superabundant or blissful) conditions for life. Yet Oakeshott acknowledges the value of the present-and, ultimately, of conservatism itself-depends on the concrete, historical circumstances in which any political actor finds himself or herself.1 He goes on add the conservative approach politics characteristically asserts itself when there is much enjoyed, and it will strongest this is combined with evident risk of loss (408). And he observes if the present is arid, offering little or nothing used or enjoyed, then [the conservative] inclination will weak or absent (408).These remarks, by one of conservatism's best-known thinkers, point an important aspect of conservative theory, namely both the normative worth and practicality of conservative outlook depend on how much there is enjoy and value in actual historical circumstances. If they live in times of great hardship, or under arbitrary political rule, political actors and thinkers with conservative sympathies (such as respect for tradition, and predilection for slow, gradual improvements) will face painful moral dilemmas, and perhaps even justified in renouncing conservative behaviors altogether. Such thinkers have been called conservatives or, sometimes, conservatives because of their recourse radical means defend values such as stability, tradition, and authority (see for example, Dahl 1999; Muller 1987). Oakeshott himself intimates that, in historically turbulent times, the task of conservatively-inclined thinkers is no longer delighting in the present, but actively participating in the establishment of better future. And he concludes, rather enigmatically, that it is not at all inconsistent conservative in respect of government and radical in respect of almost every other activity (1956, 435).This paper explores some of the issues thinkers temperamentally disposed conservatism face they live in time and place in which laws and constitutions are dispensed with, and there is little of value conserve. It proceeds by discussing, first, the necessary preconditions for recognizably conservative approach change, before going on explore what might happen if those preconditions do not exist. While the conservative mistrust of revolution and preference for piecemeal approaches is well-known, less attention has been paid the plight of (potentially) revolutionary conservatives, who are convinced such approaches are of little or no use in their current circumstances. Part two of this essay, therefore, uses empirical examples illustrate how practice complicates some of the theoretical propositions discussed in part one. While Edmund Burke's (1729-1797) reactions the French Revolution have played liminal role in developing conservative political philosophy, other parts of history where conservatism's problems have emerged and have recognizable connection with the situation today remain of great interest. …

Liminal roles as a source of creative agency in management: The case of knowledge-sharing communities

Studies suggest that the experience of liminality – of being in an ambiguous, ‘betwixt and between’ position – has creative potential for organizations. We contribute to theory on the link between liminality and creative agency through a study of the coordinators of ‘knowledge-sharing communities’; one of the latest examples of a ‘neo-bureaucratic’ practice that seeks to elicit innovative responses from employees while intensifying control by the organization. Through a role-centred perspective, our study found that both the structural and interpretive aspects of coordinators’ role enactments promoted a degree of creative agency. ‘Front-stage’ and ‘back-stage’ activities were developed to meet the divergent expectations posed by senior management and community members, and the ambiguity of their roles prompted an array of different role interpretations. Our findings contribute to theory by showing how the link between liminality and creative agency is not confined to roles and spaces (consultancy work, professional expertise) that are positioned across organizational boundaries, or free from norms and expectations, but may also apply to roles that are ambiguously situated within organizational contexts and that are subject to divergent expectations. This shows how neo-bureaucratic forms may be both reproduced and renewed through the creative responses of individual managers.

Liturgy as Becoming: Appreciating the Crucial Role of Liminality in Liturgical Engagement

Liturgy as Becoming: Appreciating the Crucial Role of Liminality in Liturgical Engagement

Change Agents and the Enactment Of Liminal Roles: The Case Of Knowledge-sharing Communities

Recent studies have suggested that the experience of liminality – of being in a ‘betwixt and between’ state – has implications for change agents within organizations. In this paper, we explore thes...

Thomas Dekker, Rock Star: “Golden Slumbers,” the Beatles, and the Wages of Authorship

The lyric poem known as “Golden Slumbers,” from Dekker, Chettle and Haughton’s 1603 play Patient Grissil , has been repeatedly appropriated over the past four hundred years, becoming at various points an “anonymous, traditional” folk song, a Beatles hit, a nursery rhyme, a minor Elizabethan anthology piece attributed to an established author, and a piece of gnomic folk wisdom. All of these identities continue to coexist today. The poem flourishes in a network of viral transmission, confounding conventional theories of literary canonization. The history of the poem’s transmission reveals Thomas Dekker’s peculiarly liminal role in the English canon and casts a startling light on how discourses of authorship and literary value function. The assignment of an author tends to stabilize the text itself, but also paradoxically strips away artistic complexity and obscures clear authorial intentions. Indeed, the poem does not function as a “work” at all. The various iterations of the text do not direct their audiences toward other uses of that text, or toward any sense of a stable, coherent literary object.

The role of liminality in residential activity camps

Residential activity camps have been widely studied for their positive outcomes providing a broad multi-disciplinary analysis of the effects of camps in a range of contexts. However, there has been limited exploration of these camp experiences from the perspective of tourism studies. This article addresses this omission by exploring the potential offered by the concept of ‘liminality’ to explain the ways in which camps produce positive experiences for participants. This article discusses the idea of the camp environment as a liminal zone relating touristic aspects of the experience (such as being away from the familiar and placed into contact situations with a new social group) to the achievement of successful outcomes. The context for the investigation was residential camps organised by the Youth Hostel Association (England and Wales) and funded by a UK government pilot programme, which aimed to overcome issues of community cohesion within urban neighbourhoods in England, thus a form of ‘social tourism’. This article contributes to the understanding of the role played by novel environments in creating a context for liminal tourist experiences and outcomes for positive social interventions.

Imaginary animals: the monstrous, the wondrous and the human

Medieval authors placed fantastic creatures in the borders of manuscripts, since they mark the boundaries of our understanding. Tales throughout the world generally place fabulous beasts in marginal locations - deserts, deep woods, remote islands, glaciers, ocean depths, mountain peaks, caves, swamps, heavenly bodies and alternate universes. According to apocalyptic visions of the Bible, they will also proliferate as we approach the end of time. Because they challenge our conceptual powers, fantastic creatures also seem to exist at the limits of language. Legends tell us that imaginary animals belong to a primordial time, before we had encompassed the world in names, categories and elaborate conceptual frameworks. This richly illustrated book shows how, despite their liminal role, griffins, dog-men, mermaids, dragons, unicorns, yetis and many other imaginary creatures are socially constructed through the same complex play of sensuality and imagination as 'real' ones. It traces the history of imaginary animals from Palaeolithic art to the Harry Potter stories and robotic pets. These figures help us psychologically by giving form to our amorphous fears as 'monsters', as well as embodying our hopes as 'wonders'. Nevertheless, their greatest service may be to continually challenge our imaginations, directing us beyond the limitations of our conventional beliefs and expectations.

Denying an Ideal: Maidservants in the Works of Sacher-Masoch and Freud

This article explores late nineteenth-century texts by Sacher-Masoch and Freud to demonstrate that the liminal role the maidservant played within the family made her the ideal sexual object. Simultaneously she must be contained, because she has the ability to destroy the familial institution by displacing the mother. Both authors attempt to carve out a space in order to preserve the mother, but this does not reflect common social practices, including their own childhood experiences.