Cultures of Consumption within Residential Care Homes: Understanding Elderly Bricoleurs' Cultural Maps of Meaning

Set within the context that the world’s population is ageing at an unprecedented rate, it is argued that care of the elderly, and their everyday lived experiences are poised to become prominent concerns. In the shadow of this, the ageing population poses a myriad of challenges not only for the elderly but also for policy makers who put in place systems for the provision of services within residential care homes. By virtue, given that communities of elderly consumers voices are often muted within many academic analyses of social policy and service provision this study illuminates and distils communities of elderly consumers understandings of residential care homes. Given the absence of suitable literature within the fields of marketing and interpretive consumer research, this study turns to the sociological and anthropological literature of Hall and Jefferson (1976) and Levi-Strauss (1966). In doing so, communities of elderly consumers within residential care homes can be theorised as a cultural community of ‘bricoleurs’ within a ‘cultural map of meaning’. Furthermore, viewed through this lens, such bricoleurs can be seen to understand their meaningful everyday lived experiences within, and through, the use of ‘bricolage’. Emanating from eight existential-phenomenological interviews, a rich picture emerges wherein bricoleurs understandings of residential care homes can be seen to be embedded not only within, but also through, such things as the body, leisure trips, noise disturbances, death, large items of furniture, small hand-sized objects, mobility aids, quality of care and social interaction. Moreover, in the light of the resultant interpretations common themes can be seen to emerge within communities of bricoleurs social and material understandings of residential care homes, namely the notion of cultures of dependency, trauma and comfort. This research contributes to marketing knowledge in that it argues that communities of ‘elderly bricoleurs’ within residential care homes can be seen to be held together by unique understandings of cultures of dependency, trauma and comfort. Furthermore, it is also argued that elderly bricoleurs address themselves to a relatively limited amount of bricolage that enables them to keep alive actual, desired, imagined and fictional community ties. Furthermore, the reality and efficacy of cultural communities of elderly bricoleurs seems to depend on their ability to address ‘whatever is to hand’ (Levi-Strauss, 1966) in order to construct and understand their cultural maps of meaning within residential care homes

Teaching teachers: Building a post-compulsory education training and employment sector through teacher education

This paper captures the experience of implementing an educational reform strategy. The development of Deakin University’s Graduate Diploma of Education (Applied Learning) (GDAL) was understood by its instigators as a platform for reform. The GDAL would respond to the challenge being put before education and training providers in late modern times: to prepare young people to create and engage with a learning society through their capacity for lifelong learning. These teacher education students would, ideally, bring skills and knowledge already gained in a professional career. While they would gain teacher registration they were better conceptualised as professional educators for an emerging post compulsory education, training and employment sector in the Australian state of Victoria: it was expected that graduates would not only teach in schools but would also move readily within the network of learning spaces that young people increasingly experience in their formal education. In the process, they would be a force for change, seeding reform within secondary schools. As a ‘teacher’ these graduates would have the credibility to challenge the entrenched practices of other teachers. It is the story of ‘what happened’ as a consequence of this specific aim that this paper concerns itself with

Personal Life, Pragmatism and Bricolage

Individualisation theory misrepresents and romanticises the nature of agency as a primarily discursive and reflexive process where people freely create their personal lives in an open social world divorced from tradition. But empirically we find that people usually make decisions about their personal lives pragmatically, bounded by circumstances and in connection with other people, not only relationally but also institutionally. This pragmatism is often non-reflexive, habitual and routinised, even unconscious. Agents draw on existing traditions - styles of thinking, sanctioned social relationships, institutions, the presumptions of particular social groups and places, lived law and social norms - to 'patch' or 'piece together' responses to changing situations. Often it is institutions that 'do the thinking'. People try to both conserve social energy and seek social legitimation in this adaption process, a process which can lead to a 're-serving' of tradition even as institutional leakage transfers meanings from past to present, and vice versa. But this process of bricolage will always be socially contested and socially uneven. In this way bricolage describes how people actually link structure and agency through their actions, and can provide a framework for empirical research on doing family.Bricolage, Agency, Individualisation, Families, Pragmatism

What matters to older people with assisted living needs? A phenomenological analysis of the use and non-use of telehealth and telecare

Telehealth and telecare research has been dominated by efficacy trials. The field lacks a sophisticated theorisation of [a] what matters to older people with assisted living needs; [b] how illness affects people's capacity to use technologies; and [c] the materiality of assistive technologies. We sought to develop a phenomenologically and socio-materially informed theoretical model of assistive technology use. Forty people aged 60–98 (recruited via NHS, social care and third sector) were visited at home several times in 2011–13. Using ethnographic methods, we built a detailed picture of participants' lives, illness experiences and use (or non-use) of technologies. Data were analysed phenomenologically, drawing on the work of Heidegger, and contextualised using a structuration approach with reference to Bourdieu's notions of habitus and field. We found that participants' needs were diverse and unique. Each had multiple, mutually reinforcing impairments (e.g. tremor and visual loss and stiff hands) that were steadily worsening, culturally framed and bound up with the prospect of decline and death. They managed these conditions subjectively and experientially, appropriating or adapting technologies so as to enhance their capacity to sense and act on their world. Installed assistive technologies met few participants' needs; some devices had been abandoned and a few deliberately disabled. Successful technology arrangements were often characterised by ‘bricolage’ (pragmatic customisation, combining new with legacy devices) by the participant or someone who knew and cared about them. With few exceptions, the current generation of so-called ‘assisted living technologies’ does not assist people to live with illness. To overcome this irony, technology providers need to move beyond the goal of representing technology users informationally (e.g. as biometric data) to providing flexible components from which individuals and their carers can ‘think with things’ to improve the situated, lived experience of multi-morbidity. A radical revision of assistive technology design policy may be needed

Contextualizing Theories and Practices of Bricolage Research

Within the last decade, bricolage, as an approach to qualitative inquiry, has gained popularity in academic circles. However, while conceptual and concrete precedents exist, the approach has remained relatively misunderstood, and unpopular, in broader research communities. This may be because the complexity of the approach has stymied widespread discussions and commentary. This article means to address this concern by providing a thick, yet accessible, introduction to bricolage as an approach to qualitative inquiry. While researchers and scholars have conceptualized bricolage, few have attempted to provide an overview of how the concept emerged in relation to qualitative research. Further, while the literature on bricolage offers invaluable conceptual insights, lacking is a survey that provides clear examples of how bricolage has been implemented in research contexts. Therefore, while greatest attention in this article is devoted to contextualizing bricolage and introducing influential theorists, it also provides key examples of research that adopts the bricolage approach. In drawing on a plurality of sources, the article provides a thick discussion of the complex bricolage project; one that can be beneficial to both novice and seasoned researchers who pursue alternative methodological approaches

The dynamics of managerial ideology: analyzing the cuban case

After the collapse of state socialism in Eastern Europe, management researchers devoted considerable energy to investigate ways to smooth transition to market economies. But one country of the former Soviet bloc, Cuba resisted transition and reaffirmed loyalty to communism. Little is known about management in Cuba on the managerial impacts of the combination of two major environmental forces: the American embargo and the Soviet Union collapse, both of which have challenged the sustainability of the communist regime. This study intends to approach one particular aspect of management in Cuba: the relationship between national ideology and management practice. To analyze these topics, direct qualitative data from focus groups with Cuban managers and management professors was obtained and complemented with documentary analysis. Results suggest that the dynamics of managerial ideology can be understood as the interplay of several processes operating at distinct levels: institutional, professional, organizational and individual. The study provides a nested, multi-level understanding of management and organization as parts of a wider institutional context, which is both a source of constraint and a non-tangible resource to be used by ideological bricoleurs. The interplay between the acceptance of ideology and its use as a practical resource is a potential source of change. As such, the same professional class (managers) may be both a source of continuity and a trigger of change - a finding that is line with institutional theorys claim that it is necessary to understand both institutionalization and de-institutionalization for understanding organizational change and continuity.Cuba, managerial ideology, institutional change, ideological bricolage

Relationships between community ventures and community resource holders: a joint dependency approach

Guided by the joint dependency approach this study analyzes how emerging community ventures engage into mutually dependent relationships with community resource holders in the community to be able to mobilize the community into collective action. I conducted qualitative, longitudinal case studies of three music festivals in rural communities in Norway. By investigating the early stages of the venture formation process, I observed how different types of entrepreneurs impacted on the relationships between the community venture and community resource holders and how these relationships changed over time. High joint dependence relationships were characterized of high level of trust and goal congruence as well as few conflicts. Initially, bricoleurs, who built the venture upon existing resources and knowledge in the community, could transform their individual joint dependence relationships in the community to the venture. The constructionists aimed to introduce new activities and resources and could not build upon existing relationships in the community. Their venture struggled with mistrust and conflicts making it difficult to mobilize the community into collective action. Over time, however, the relationships between the community venture and community resource holders became more based upon joint dependence. By adapting a joint dependency as well as longitudinally approach, this study offers new insights about how the concepts of bricoleurs and constructionists may not be static but rather change over time