SOC 448 HW
arnoldob
Module2-TheDisciplinedBody.pptxSOCIOLOGY OF THE BODY
MODULE 2: THE DISCIPLINED BODY
Last module we learned:
Different philosophical position towards the body and how these positions changed throughout history.
Learn about social changes have causes an increasing interest on the body.
Two main ontological approaches to the body: the foundationalists and the anti-foundationalists.
How our body images and bodily controls are historically contingent.
In this module we will learn:
Historical notions emerging in the 17th century regarding the body as an object and target of power.
How power and authority mold and transform bodies in institutional settings such as armies, hospitals and schools for certain objectives.
How school’s mold student’s bodies, particularly when they are learning how to write.
How we engage in bodily performances when engaging in social interactions with others.
How these performances are separated between front stage and backstage.
How nurses in hospices engage in front stage and backstage performances.
3
Readings
Docile bodies - Michael Foucault
The docile body: Reflecting the school -Zuzana Banovcanoca and Dana Masarykova.
The presentation of self in everyday life -Irving Goffman
Integrating Dark Humor and Compassion -Cindy Cain
Theoretical concepts
Docile Bodies
Discipline- Disciplinary Methods
Micro physics of power
Techniques of the body
Performances
Front
Personal Front
Appearance
Manner
Backstage
Foucault and the body
The first reading for this module is written by the French philosopher Michael Foucault.
As discussed in previous times. Foucault believed that how we thought about the body , how we perceived our body and how we use our bodies is historically contingent.
This means that how we think about the body, how we perceived our bodies and how we use our bodies varies throughout history.
He is also believed that power shaped our bodies.
Let’s go with Foucault to the 17th century.
Docile bodies
The solider in the 17th century had certain characteristics that distinguished them from others.
Soldiers had an erect head, a taut stomach, broad shoulders, long arms, small belly, thick tights, slender legs and dry feet.
The pike was borne with gravity and boldness.
Docile bodies
By the 18th century the soldier was thought as a formless clay.
That is a body that could be shaped and formed to complete certain operations.
This was achieved by correcting their posture and mastering each part of the body through repeating habits.
In this way, the peasant was transformed into a soldier.
Docile bodies
How was the peasant transformed into the soldier?
Again, through various techniques:
Holding their heads high and erect, standing upright without bending the back, sticking out the belly, throwing the back the shoulders.
Soldiers will be taught to never to fix their eyes on the ground, to look straight at those that pass, to remain motionless until order is given without moving the head, the hands or the feet.
Docile bodies
The classical age discovered the body as an object and target of power.
What does this mean?
Philosophers, scientists, technicians and politicians became aware that the body could be manipulated, shaped and trained.
If the body obeys and responds it becomes skillful and increases its forces.
This newly emergent notion on the body could be conceptualized as ‘man as machine.”
Docile bodies
With the notion of “ man-as-machine.” the body is useful and intelligent.
This does not mean that we were thought as “intelligent.”
But rather that through careful analysis the body could be manipulated in order to achieve certain desired operations. The body in this case was thought as a docile body.
Docile body: is a body that may be subjected, used, transformed and improved.
Docile bodies
The 18th century was heavily invested in projects of docility.
However, it was not the first time that the body was being controlled by power, in every society the body had been subject to constrains, prohibitions and obligations.
However, there are several new things in the techniques used in the 18th century.
Let’s revise these new things.
Docile bodies
What was new about these methods of controlling the body?
Control: Controlling the body individually, that is controlling micro-movements, gestures, attitudes and rapidity.
The Object of Control: the efficiency of movements, their internal organizations.
Modality: it implies an uninterrupted, constant coercion and a codification of time space and movement.
Docile bodies
These methods which made possible the meticulous control of operations of the body which assured their constant subjection and which imposed a relation of docility-utility to the body is called disciplines.
Disciplinary methods were already present in monasteries, armies and workshops. However, by the 18th century they became general formulas of domination.
By the 18th centuries disciplinary methods could be found in hospitals, armies and schools.
Docile bodies
By the 18th century the human body was entering a machinery of power that explores it, breaks it down and rearranges it.
Disciplines produced docile bodies.
Disciplines alienate people from their own bodies.
Again, the invention of the disciplines were at work in secondary educations, primary schools, the hospital and the restructured military organization.
Docile bodies
On almost occasion these disciplinary methods were adopted in response to particular needs, an industrial innovation, a renewed outbreak of certain epidemic diseases or the invention of the rifle.
Think about how the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in disciplinary methods that were imposed in the body to help control the spread of the disease.
What methods do you think would remain after the end of the pandemic?
Docile bodies
Disciplinary methods pay careful and meticulous attention to detail. There are based on close supervision and regulation.
At the same time this meticulous attention to detail and close attention is tight to a greater political or economic objective.
For example, think about the meticulous organization of an assembly line that is tight to the greater objective of industrial production.
The art of distribution
Discipline proceeds from the distribution of individuals in space.
To achieve this, it employs certain techniques. Let’s take a look at what these techniques are.
The art of distribution
Discipline requires enclosure: that is the confinement of people in a specific place that is enclosed. That way it can impose disciplinary monopoly. Think about enclosed: jails, schools, factories, hospitals and army barricades.
Discipline requires partitioning: each individual has its own place and each place its individuals. Think about: setting charts in schools, office cubicles in the office space, your position in an assembly line or your position in an army platoon.
The art of distribution
Particular places were defined to correspond not only to the need to supervise or to break dangerous outbreaks but to create useful space.
In organizing “cells”, “places” and “ranks” the disciplines create complex spaces that are once architectural, functional and hierarchical.
Think again about how the inside of factories are organized or how schools are organized.
In schools you have arranged desks and the teacher desk is on the front, this is for the teacher to control each student individually and students as a whole.
The art of distribution
Disciplinary Spaces are organized in such a way as to guarantee the obedience of individuals but also a better economy of time and gesture.
Disciplinary spaces are mixed spaces because they govern the disposition of buildings, but also ideal, because they are projected over an assessment of hierarchies.
In other words, buildings are constructed with certain hierarchies in mind.
For instance, think about the classroom again. The classroom and its spatial arraignment was built with the hierarchy of student/teacher in mind.
Control of activity
In disciplinary methods there is not only the partitioning and achievement of control through spatial means but also there is the control of activity through time.
There is certain cycles of repetition, disciplinary methods are achieved through a certain rhythm and regulation of activity.
In this way, in disciplinary methods the body is subjected to certain temporal imperatives.
For instance, think again about factories. How is the body controlled through time in an assembly line?
Or another example, think about marching for soldiers, how is marching controlled by time? What is the rhythm solider have to follow?
Control of activity
Disciplinary control does not consist simply in teaching or imposing a series of particular gestures, it imposes the best relation between a gesture and the overall position of the body in order to achieve efficiency and speed.
Again think about an assembly line.
Control of activity
Disciplinary methods also achieved a body-object-articulation.
Body-object-articulation: defines each of the relations that the body. Must have with the object that it manipulates.
That is there is meshing between the body and the object/instrument.
Think about soldiers and rifles, students and pens ( or now computers), factory workers and machinery.
Control of activity
With the body-object-articulation there is an instrumental coding of the body.
Instrumental coding of the body: the breakdown of gestures into two parallel series: that of the parts of the body to be used (right hand, left hand, knew eye, elbow etc) and that of the parts of the object manipulated (barrel, notch hammer, screw, etc.)
This syntax between body and object is called maneuver.
Controls of activity
In sum, the body is required to be dociled in the most detailed way.
Again, these disciplinary methods are directed at individuals but they have in mind the whole group as an organism.
The body and school
Now that we learn what disciplinary methods are and how they shape and control the body, let’s now go to our second reading.
In this second reading we are going to continue to look at the concepts learned in the last readings but in the specific context of the school and hand writing.
Let’s go to school.
Docile body: Reflecting the school
In this paper, the authors focused on the school environment where the body ( the body of the pupil or student) have a unique status—functioning as a symbol from the earlies times to the present day.
The school as an institution uses disciplinary methods, norms, regulations and rituals which can be seen in the bodies of school children.
This is evident in hand-writing.
When writing in the school environment the student’s body adopts a particular position.
Docile body: Reflecting the school
The classroom also has specific spatial specification which constrain the student’s body, enabling effective control not only of the body but also of the mind.
This approaches are based on body discipline which in the school environment is constrained and created spatially (again think: seating arraignments, rows and columns) and also temporally ( there is a daily breakdown of activities).
The body has always been controlled in educational settings, however the specificity of the controls has changed, let’s take a look at these changes.
Historical exploration of corporeality in the school environment
In Sparta education was associated with physical specialization as preparation for battle and wars.
While in Athens, education focused on the balance between body and soul.
In the middle ages spiritual goals disappeared and education concentrated in creating knights.
In the middle ages there was also the Christian emphases on humility and obedience. To achieve this schools practices corporal punishment.
Historical exploration of corporeality in the school environment
In the renaissance the concern for the unity of body and soul was restored. there was also the aesthetisaction of the body. For instance, how people adorned their bodies for ball room dances in the royal courts.
In school, corporal punishment began to be discouraged and the disciplinary techniques used in school were modified.
Overtime the dualism of soul and body were also rejected in favor for a concern for the unity between body and cognition.
Historical exploration of corporeality in the school environment
This examples of how the body is treated differently is an illustration on how the body is historically contingent.
The author reminds us that each culture deals with the human body in a certain way ( such as, hygiene, habits ways of walking etc,) each culture treats the body in a particular way, adapts it, disciplines it and gives it a particular role.
Marcel Mauss a famous sociologist understands techniques of the body the ways in which from society to society people know how to use their body.
Historical exploration of corporeality in the school environment
The body is therefore cultural, the body reflects the ways in which it is treated, and the traditions and the various techniques for using the body.
The body is human’s most natural and that tool is culturally encoded.
The bodies of students and teachers are therefore a cultural reflection of the school individuals.
Let’s take a look on today’s school culture and how it shapes the body.
The role of the body in education today
The body is currently gaining importance in institutional learning and communication.
There is an emphasis on how the cognitive domain interacts with the body.
In teaching, a student’s body seems to be constantly guided and corrected, subjected to investigation and observation.
Since there is an emphasis on the body and cognition. Today, we are looking at how to integrate both.
There is a dominant school of thought that states that student’s acquire more knowledge if the body is also involved.
The role of the body in education today
The culture of education is reflected on the techniques of the body.
For instance, hand rising is one phenomenon in which adopting this gesture allow the student to take the identity of a student.
Over time, students learn through their bodies that by rising their hands they can gain attention that would otherwise not be directed at them.
In the next section the authors focus specifically on how the body is disciplined through learning how to write.
Foucault's docile bodies
Schools and education underwent various transformations in history which also resulted in changes in disciplinary techniques.
We are no longer talking about physical discipline as corporal punishment.
Today the use of corporal punishment evokes feelings of guilt and a loss of self control.
Foucault's docile bodies
Today all pupils are placed in a particular class where they have their established place and role to be performed at a certain time.
The organization of bodies in educational space results in a general organization of teaching and learning which is free from disruptive elements to a a great extent.
Controlling students is much easier for the teacher since all students have their own place and because the ways that bodies are organized in the classroom.
Now lets look at a specific body technique that is thought in school: writing.
Writing as school discipline
We write throughout our schooling without being aware that is a physical discipline or a body technique this is because it becomes a habit over time.
Initially, however learning to write is a physical drill that involves the body in method.
As the philosopher Merleau Ponty states: we aquire our experiences of the world through our bodies.
In this case, the pen function as an extension of the student’s body helping him gain experience of the world—through writing.
Writing as school discipline
Children have to learn how to hold the pen properly.
The first time they hold a pen in their hand it does not form part of their body so it is important form them to develop the habit.
It has to lead to embodied writing that is a combination of corporal elements ( correct sitting position, correct position of hand, proper pen grip) and writing itself, a physical act through we express our feelings and knowledge.
Writing as school discipline
The pen as object must become a subject and must be integrated with a pupil’s body.
Remember the body-object-articulation discussed by Foucault.
Here we see a correlation of body and gesture.
Writing produces a docile body which is governed and controlled through a series of defined movements associated with a particular body gesture.
Discipling the body is the basis for writing correctly, correcting movements and the body and correctly handing the pen.
Writing as school discipline
It is only when the body is constrained and docile that is said to be performing correctly.
In any classroom, we can hear the teacher warn students: Back straights, heads, up, I can see you slouching you won’t be able to write neatly!
However, writing is not only a disciplined body activity it is also an embodied activity. What do we mean by this?
We mean that perception, thinking, paying attention and memory all overlap with the physical side when the child is writing.
Conclusion
School is where individuals are shaped using a variety of powers and methods.
Although all school- children are individuals, they are part of the image the school institution seeks to create.
Being a student means not only having to acquire particular kinds of knowledge and skills, but also having to acquire the image of the student.
When writing, the position of the body and the correlation between hand, body and space create the docile body.
Social interactions and the body
Now that we looked at how the body is transformed by power and authority, particularly in the army, school, and hospital, what about other social settings?
How do we present our body when we are in the presence of others? How do we shape our body in social interactions?
To answer this question let’s go to our next reading by Goffman.
The presentation of self in everyday life
Goffman begins by saying that whenever we are in the presence of others, we commonly seek to acquire information about those who we are engaging with.
We immediately want to know about their general socio-economic status, their conception of self, their competence, their trustworthiness, etc.
Information about others help us define a situation, enabling us to know in advance what to expect from others, and what others expect from ourselves.
The presentation of self in everyday life
To gain (quick) information about others in social encounters, we either rely on stereotypes or in past experiences that tell us that individuals of a particular kind are to be found on a given social setting.
However, we also rely in the immediate bodily expressions of others to infer about their characteristics.
In other words, we rely on their performances.
Performances
Performances refer to the bodily expressions that we engage in to communicate to others something about our identities or character in the moment of social encounters.
We put on performances for the benefit of other people.
Sometimes we are consciously aware of our performances.
For example, a server is aware that he is putting a performance for consumers in order to receive good tips.
Performances
Other times we are not as aware of our performances.
For example, when we are hanging out with our friends.
However, according to Goffman we are always performing, regardless of if we are aware of it or not.
Performances
Goffman places performances in a continuum. At one extreme is when we totally internalize our performances and believe is authentic behavior, and at the other extreme is when we are totally cynical about our performances.
Also, within the same encounter there can be a cycle of disbelief to belief or from belief to disbelief.
Front
We have been using the term performance to refer to all the bodily activity that an individual engages in in a particular period marked by his presence begore a particular set of observers.
The front is the part of individual’s performance which regularly functions in a general and fixed fashion to define the situation for those who observe the performance.
Front is the expressive equipment of a standard kind intentionally or unwittingly employed by the individual during his performance.
Front
There are several parts to fronts.
First, there is the setting, the setting involves furniture, décor, physical lay out and other background items which supply the scenery.
For instance, for a server, his performance takes part in a restaurant, the restaurant is part of the front of his performance as a server.
Can you think of other fronts and settings? How are they associated with specific performances?
Front
If we take the term setting to refer to the scenic parts of expressive equipment, personal front refers to other items of expressive equipment that we most intimately associated with the performer herself, and that follow the performer wherever she goes.
As part of our personal front we may include: insignia of office or rank, clothing, gender, racial characteristics, size and looks, posture, speech, patterns and bodily gestures.
Some of these items of the personal front are relatively fixed (for instance, race) however others like bodily gestures, we can modify during a performance from one moment to the next.
Front
It is useful to divide the stimuli which makes up personal front into two categories according to the information that they convey. We have:
Appearance: refers to the stimuli which function to tell us about the performer’s social status. These stimuli also tell us of the individual’s temporary ritual state, that is, whether he is engaging in a formal activity, work or informal recreation.
Manner: refers to stimuli which functions to warn us of the interaction role of the performer and warns us about what to expect to play in on-coming situation.
For example: An aggressive manner may give the impression that the performer expects to be the one who will initiate verbal interaction and direct its course.
Front
We often expect a consistency between appearance and manner.
However, appearance and manner may contradict each other.
For example, when a performer who appears to be of a “high status” acts in a manner that is apologetic or shy.
Can you think of other examples were appearance and manner may contradict each other?
Front
In addition to the expected consistency between appearance and manner we also expect some coherence among setting, appearance and manner.
Some settings are institutionalized and thus, we expect some consistent appearance/manner to take place in those settings.
For example, we expect more or less the same appearance and manner from servers in for instance, fast food restaurants.
Dramatic realization
While in the presence of others, individuals typically portray their activity with signs that dramatically highlight and portray facts of themselves that otherwise would remain unapparent or obscure.
For the individual’s activity to become significant to others, he must mobilize his activities so that they will express during interaction what he wishes to convey.
Individuals often find themselves in the dilemma of expression versus action?
What does this mean?
Dramatic realization
Those who have the time and talent to perform a task well may not because of this, have time or talent to make it apparent that they are performing well.
Or vice-versa,
Individuals who are make it in apparent that they are performing a task well but who are not actually performing the task well.
For example, people who take gym selfies but who in reality may not be performing well at the gym.
Think about how social media has sharpen the dilemma of expression versus action.
Performances at the hospice
Now that we learn some basics understanding of performances, let’s go to our next reading.
In this study conducted by Cindy Cain (former U of A grad student) we will look at how nurses and social workers engage in performances with patients and fellow workers in the setting of a hospice.
Integrating dark Humor and compassion
Workers across various occupations and organizations are expected to manage public perceptions of their companies, professions, and work-related selves.
In doing so, they engage in array of impression management strategies including displaying appropriate emotions for the setting, learning and disseminating organizational meanings.
Care workers feel especially pressured to use these strategies because, if they fail to convince others that they are warm as well as competence, they face the prospect of losing their jobs.
Integrating dark humor and compassion
In this article, the author focus on how hospice workers partition time and space as a strategy for managing perceptions of hospice workers as compassionate caring professionals.
The author draws on Goffman’s concept of front and back regions of social life.
We know what the front is but what is the back?
Integrating dark humor and compassion
The front refers to any time or location in which workers exhibit the official meaning of the setting, conforming to the expectations of their identity in the setting.
The back refers to any time and location in which we are not dramaturgically “on” and therefore may express unofficial or even counter-official selves or interpretations.
Think for instance of being a server at a restaurant. The front is when you interact with customers, while the back is in the kitchen where you are interacting with your co-workers.
Think about other fronts and their respective backstahge
Integrating dark humor and compassion
The two regions have a symbiotic relationship in that activities in the backstage allow workers to maintain appropriate behaviors during the front stage, while front stage activities provide fodder for discussions and activities in the back region.
To investigate the front and backstage regions of a hospice, the author conducted participant observation—meaning that she spent a significant amount of time being at a hospice and interacting with nurses, staff and patients.
Let’s see what she found out, but first, let’s look at the work and identities of care workers.
The work of care workers
In workplaces, the front highly scripted and often does not allow participants to express their personal throughs, feelings, or desires.
In the workplace, front regions hold the official interpretations of the job at hand, the requirements for completing the job, and ideas about the worth of the job and other participants.
To keep the interaction on track, performance at workplaces include staged behaviors for both staff members and consumers of that service.
In addition, workers perform emotional labor and sometimes even exaggerate emotions for the audience in efforts to evoke a particular feeling in others.
The work of care workers
Workplaces also typically have backstage regions that are out of view of the publics they serve.
In these backstage regions, workers can express beliefs that are not permitted in the front stage, openly denigrate members or groups they do not like, laugh at customers or the work situation, learn about and practice their response to stigma related work.
The work of care workers
Back region behaviors must exist in order to make the front stage behaviors possible.
They allow workers time and space to prepare for their roles, practice appropriate ways of being, blow of steam, and take a break from emotionally burdensome roles.
Workers frequently become skilled at hiding back region activities, the line between front and back regions is not always clear.
For instance, in the case of hospice nurses they have to quickly change from backstage to frontstage if a patient is passing by.
Similarly, think of a server who is smoking a cigarette in front of restaurant and has to turn it off if he sees a customer passing by.
The work of care workers
There is a conception that the backstage is more “authentic” than the front stage.
However, as the author will show us, hospice workers see both front stage and backstage behaviors as important part of their professional identities.
Identities of care workers
Our conceptions of self-emerge through our interaction with others.
We form ideas about ourselves based on our interpretations of how others appraise us.
However, given a particular view of ourselves, we must also constantly monitor and maintain a preferred identity.
Identities shape social action in the workplace by providing a “definition of the situation” and offering potential lines of action.
Identities tie workers to organizations. For instance, to have the identity of a teacher ties you to the school as an organization.
Similarly, the nurse identity ties nurses to hospitals or hospices
In this article, the author examines how workers negotiate identities and how they use those identities to account for discrepancies in behavior.
Methods and settings
The author engaged in I engaged in participant observation, informal interviews, and semi structured interviews to gather data about the identities and interactions of hospice workers.
These methods are especially attuned to the processes by which behaviors and identities are constructures, they are ideal for assessing Goffman’s writing on the interaction order.
Methods and settings
Hospice serves as an ideal venue for examine worker’s presentations of self.
Hospice organizations are shaped by the hospice philosophy which seeks to provide a “good death” to patients.
The nature of hospice work makes it especially important that hospice workers carefully manage impressions of self.
Methods and settings
Observations of staff-patient interactions took place primarily in the inpatient unit, but also included visits to patient’s homes and adult care facilities.
Observations the impatient unit included attending meetings in the conference room, visiting patients with nurses, visiting family members with social workers, counselors and chaplains; and spending time in the nurse’s station.
For her study, the author spent slightly more than two years making visits to the main office, IDG meetings, to the impatient unit and to the homes of patients.
To gain access to these settings the author subscribed herself as a volunteer.
Frontstage of hospice
Front stage behaviors performed by hospice workers often occurred during interactions with patients and family members.
During these interactions workers typically projected absolute professionalism, expertise, and caring.
Workers brought about difficult topics, family members and patients responded emotionally, and then the hospice worker assessed the needs of family members and offered support.
Throughout the entire process, the staff member remained calm and compassionate.
Frontstage of hospice
Workers typically took the time to say nothing, hold hands, and reassure patients who were not responsive.
The philosophy of hospice—to provide comfort, not a cure—was espoused and embodied in the front stage behaviors of staff at all levels.
These front stage presentations of self were consistent with the worker’s commitment to the hospice philosophy.
Although workers admitted that they sometimes had to project feelings they did not have in these encounters, they also emphasized that their caring self-presentations felt real.
Frontstage of hospice
To keep up this level of care and perform required forms of emotional labor, they needed to engage in backstage activities with their coworkers
Backstage of hospice
The backstage presentation of self of hospice workers differed markedly from the front stage.
While workers consistently viewed and presented themselves as caring, compassionate, and professional, they often deemphasized those characteristics when they were in a group of other hospice professionals, especially when interacting in IDG meetings.
Dark humor and morbid conversations
Proximity to death broke down social norms about the inappropriateness of these kinds of conversations, permitting workers to have morbid conversations.
Workers negotiated spaces to be front stage and backstage throughout their workdays.
Laughing was almost universally seen as an inappropriate to front stage behavior within the inpatient unit.
As Goffman highlighted, managing these moments represents an attempt to keep what is “given off” in interactions consistent with intentional presentation of self.
Strategizing to change behavior
During IDG meetings workers also had frequent conversations about how to “educate” family members who were resistant to common hospice practices.
In this case the workers brought back region behaviors into a front region interaction in an attempt to persuade others.
The team discussion of this strategy allowed the front stage encounters to go smoothly, even as workers tried to change the behaviors of caregivers.
These educational efforts frequently did not succeeded, prompting staff to have regular backstage conversations about how to get through to family members who thought they were doing more harm by withholding food and water.
Detachment towards death
Even during backstage activities, hospice workers found it important to maintain professional, and often unemotional, presentations of self.
Unless a particular staff member had grown very close to this patient, they rarely spent more than a few moments discussing him or her.
During interviews, several staff said that outsiders often do not understand hospice nurses not being sad because they come accustomed to death and accept it as inevitable.
In the front regions, the workers emphasized their caring self, even crying about loos if it felt appropriate, but during backstage activities they often kept their sadness quiet.
Detachment towards death
These findings contradict the assumption that backstage behaviors are a more authentic expression of self than behaviors in the front region.
Both sets of behaviors include elements that workers describe as genuine to their sense of self, and both sets also include behaviors that are intentionally staged.
Workers used their hospice identities to account for their divergent behavior to one another and outsiders.
Worker’s identity
During interviews, most hospice workers described their job with hospice as very different from any other type of work they have done.
Some described it as “finding your place” “fitting in with family” or “feeling at home.”
They came to see themselves not as nurses or social workers or chaplains but as hospice nurses, hospice social workers and workers, and hospice chaplains.
This strong dedication to hospice was integrated into a hospice identity that included authentic emotional experiences and enlightenment about death.
Authentic emotional experiences
Worker’s main explanation for feeling such affinity for hospice was the ability to feel authentic emotions while going about their work.
Several staff members told the author that they liked hospice because the hospice philosophy encourages them to make real connections with their parents and their family members.
However, like abortion clinic workers, hospice workers do not form emotionally intensive relationships with all patients.
In fact, they find ways to balance the needs of the job and their own self-care needs by making connections with some patients and situations, while detaching from others.
Authentic emotional experiences
Even within close relationships with patients, however, staff members were careful to distinguish between their own emotional states and those of their patients.
The ability to feel authentic emotions but do not detract from the pain of the families is an important component of worker’s identities.
Being able to feel emotions while also keeping them within “appropriate limits” was an important element of being a hospice worker.
Enlightenment about death
Hospice workers described their backstage humor as “understanding that death is inevitable” and sometimes even funny.
Having a sense of humor in such situations enabled workers to deal with emotionally difficult times and uncooperative others while also allowing them to demonstrate their acceptance of death.
Hospice workers saw themselves as more enlightened about the inability of death than the average person.
They emphasized the need to celebrate the ending of life in similar ways to the beginning of life.
Enlightenment about death
Hospice workers formed an identity around being enlightened about death and privileging real emotional encounters over superficial forms of medical care that focus too much on the body and not enough on the person.
This identity allowed them to reconcile their front stage commitment to care and compassion with their backstage expressions of morbid humor, strategizing to change other’s behaviors as just “part of hospice.”
Conclusion
Although hospice workers sometimes convey callousness in their backstage comments about death and dying, they pride themselves in offering the highest level of care and compassion to their patients and patient family members.
Workers mitigated negative consequences of emotional labor through their interaction with one another in back regions.
Backstage activities enable them to sustain their front stage performances.
Conclusion
Hospice workers use coping techniques that allow them to continue meeting the demands of care work in front regions.
Workers used scenarios and stories from their front stage interactions to share poignant, humorous or disturbing experiences with one another while they were backstage.
When workers conceal their backstage joking and strategizing, they are not hiding their “true” selves. Instead, they are subordinating one part of their hospice identity in order to maintain the caring and compassionate part.
Conclusion
All social interactions, including front and stage regions are characterized by performances.
While workers regard these backstage behaviors as key components of their hospice identities, it is important to recognize that their backstage presentations of self were just as performative as their front stage presentations.
Hospice workers viewed both types of conduct as authentic expressions for their professional identity and their ability to handle death.
