Total Institutions

2018 ◽  
pp. 668-688
Author(s):  
Jay Mechling
Keyword(s):  
Nursing Homes ◽  
American Culture ◽  
Social Needs ◽  
Summer Camps ◽  
Total Institution ◽  
Religious Institutions ◽  
Basic Training ◽  
Folk Traditions ◽  
Total Institutions ◽  
Military Basic Training

In his 1961 book, Asylums, Goffman introduces the concept of the “total institution,” a formal institution in which the staff has near-total control of the lives of the “inmates,” including where and when they sleep, eat, and socialize. Typical total institutions in American culture include hospitals (mental and otherwise), prisons, military basic training camps, other isolated military settings (e.g., onboard ships), boarding schools, summer camps, nursing homes, and cloistered religious institutions. The fact that the control is “near-total” rather than total opens the possibility that the “inmates” or “residents” will create their own folk traditions, including oral, material, and customary folklore. The folk cultures of residents serve their psychological and social needs, and the folklore often centers on resistance against the regime of control and surveillance by the staff.

scholarly journals ‘We have become prisoners of our own age’: from a continuing care retirement community to a total institution in the midst of the COVID-19 outbreak

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Liat Ayalon ◽  
Sharon Avidor
Keyword(s):  
Emotional Responses ◽  
Retirement Community ◽  
Retirement Communities ◽  
Continuing Care ◽  
Total Institution ◽  
Continuing Care Retirement Communities ◽  
Personal Experiences ◽  
Total Institutions ◽  
Design And Methods ◽  
Depth Interviews

Abstract Background and objectives during the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic in Israel, people residing in continuing care retirement communities (CCRC) found themselves under strict instructions to self-isolate, imposed by the CCRC managements before, during and after the nationwide lockdown. The present study explored the personal experiences of CCRC residents during the lockdown. Research design and methods in-depth interviews were conducted with 24 CCRC residents from 13 different CCRCs. Authors performed a thematic analysis of interview transcripts, using constant comparisons and contrasts. Results three major themes were identified: (i) ‘Us vs. them: Others are worse off’. Older residents engaged in constant attempts to compare their situation to that of others. The overall message behind these downward comparisons was that the situation is not so bad, as others are in a worse predicament; (ii) ‘Us vs. them: Power imbalance’. This comparison emphasised the unbalanced power-relations between older adults and the staff and management in the setting and (iii) ‘We have become prisoners of our own age’. Interviewees described strong emotions of despair, depression and anger, which were intensified when the rest of society returned back to a new routine, whilst they were still under lockdown. Discussion and implications the measures imposed on residents by managements of CCRCs during the lockdown, and the emotional responses of distress among some of the residents, revealed that CCRCs have components of total institutions, not normally evident. This underscores the hidden emotional costs of the lockdown among those whose autonomy was compromised.

Boundaries in the Making: Transformations in Erving Goffman’s Total Institution through the Case of a Female Benedictine Monastery

Sociology ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 003803852110115
Author(s):  
Anna Clot-Garrell
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Research ◽  
Total Institution ◽  
Erving Goffman ◽  
Seminal Work ◽  
Total Institutions ◽  
Late Modern

Total institutions have undergone profound changes since Erving Goffman published his seminal work Asylums in 1961. This article explores the persistence and transformation of total institutions under late-modern conditions. Based upon empirical research conducted in a female Benedictine monastery, I analyse changes in the physically bounded structure of a total institution. Specifically, I address the trend towards greater permeability and flexibility of enclosed total spaces. Inspired by Georg Simmel’s spatial insights, I examine how boundaries are historically reshaped through changing relations of distance and proximity to wider society, and how these shifts alter the material expression and configuration of power that originally characterised the monastery’s totality. This article claims the ongoing relevance of Goffman’s conceptualisation to accommodate such modifications and illustrates how, in certain cases, adaptations of total institutions to contemporary conditions can be understood as involving the reconfiguration, rather than the dismantling, of totality.

scholarly journals The politics of monastic life: opportunities for exit and voice in a voluntary total institution

2020 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-127
Author(s):  
Mikaela Sundberg
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Total Institution ◽  
Monastic Life ◽  
Cistercian Order ◽  
Total Institutions ◽  
Monastic Communities ◽  
Exit Option ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Initial Entry

AbstractTotal institutions are by definition totalitarian, but not necessarily authoritarian. Voluntary total institutions consist of members who have chosen to enter, but what opportunities do they have to leave? This article addresses opportunities for exit and voice in Catholic monasteries within the Cistercian Order of Strict Observance. Monasteries have institutionalized important democratic processes regarding membership and leadership. Members are involved in decision-making through community bodies and discussions, but in many practical concerns, superiors may wrest control by neglecting to ask the community for alternative opinions. The superior’s decision-making style therefore crucially affects the range of democratic decision-making in individual monastic communities. Complete exits are common during the initial entry process. The cost of leaving is higher for full members, and the internal exit option to other monastic communities in the Order is therefore of great importance. It means that monastic communities cease to operate as monopolies.

scholarly journals A fun, active and sociable life on display – nursing home presentations on Instagram

2018 ◽  
Vol 39 (9) ◽  
pp. 2109-2132 ◽  
Author(s):  
ELISABETH CARLSTEDT
Keyword(s):  
Nursing Home ◽  
Nursing Homes ◽  
The Public ◽  
Home Life ◽  
The Past ◽  
Total Institutions

ABSTRACTSwedish nursing homes’ use of Instagram has increased vastly in the past few years. Instagram is understood as a means to manage the image they wish to mediate to the public. This article examines what is displayed in the nursing homes’ Instagram accounts, and what kind of reality is thereby constructed. The data consist of 338 Instagram images from four nursing homes’ Instagram accounts. It is found that nursing home life is primarily depicted on Instagram as active, sociable and fun, with informal, friendly relations between staff and residents, and residents able to continue to live as before, if not better, and to interact with surrounding society. Frailty, boredom, loneliness and death were absent from the data, as were mundane care activities. The article concludes that the presentations in the Instagram accounts challenge the traditional idea of nursing homes as total institutions, and the decline and loss associated with living in such institutions; however, there is a risk that these idyllic presentations conceal the inherent problems of nursing home life.

scholarly journals Prioritizing interventions for preventing COVID-19 outbreaks in military basic training

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guido Felipe Camargo Espana ◽  
Alex Perkins ◽  
Simon Pollett ◽  
Morgan Smith ◽  
Sean M Moore ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Test Results ◽  
Basic Training ◽  
High Coverage ◽  
Agent Based ◽  
False Positive Test ◽  
Community Exposure ◽  
Training Need ◽  
Effective Transmission ◽  
Transmission Blocking Vaccine ◽  
Military Basic Training

Like other congregate living settings, military basic training has been subject to outbreaks of COVID-19. We sought to identify improved strategies for preventing outbreaks in this setting using an agent-based model of a hypothetical cohort of trainees on a U.S. Army post. Our analysis revealed unique aspects of basic training that require customized approaches to outbreak prevention, which draws attention to the possibility that customized approaches may be necessary in other settings, too. In particular, we showed that introductions by trainers and support staff may be a major vulnerability, given that those individuals remain at risk of community exposure throughout the training period. We also found that increased testing of trainees upon arrival could actually increase the risk of outbreaks, given the potential for false-positive test results to lead to susceptible individuals becoming infected in group isolation and seeding outbreaks in training units upon release. Until an effective transmission-blocking vaccine is adopted at high coverage by individuals involved with basic training, need will persist for non-pharmaceutical interventions to prevent outbreaks in military basic training. Ongoing uncertainties about virus variants and breakthrough infections necessitate continued vigilance in this setting, even as vaccination coverage increases.

scholarly journals Institutional Work in Total Institutions and the Perspective of the Persons that Have Lived in Residential Treatment Institutions

2015 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 38 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mitja Krajnčan ◽  
Boštjan Bajželj
Keyword(s):  
Residential Treatment ◽  
Goal Orientation ◽  
Post Treatment ◽  
Total Institution ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Institutional Work ◽  
Total Institutions ◽  
Living Environments ◽  
The Many ◽  
Specific Learning

Institutional work includes all kinds of psychosocial assistance that offers, to people that need them, living environments and immediate environments adapted to their age, problems, disorders, and state. The diversity and dilemmas of institutional work represent the central theoretical discourse that the authors are researching in the explanations of the total institution, the exact answers regarding the help the youth that involuntarily find themselves in such institutions receive. The continued development of the discourse logically proceeds into deinstitutionalisation. Semi-structured interviews of adults that have spent their youth in such institutions represent the empirical part of the research. Extreme psychosocial pressures make the youth deviate away from goal orientation and the purpose of the institutions’ operations. So, additionally, the authors have gathered a collection of good and bad experiences to bring attention to the many imperfections that should not be self-evident. The key problems that people that have stayed in such institutions a decade ago would like to give light to are the non-existence of logic and specific learning and practical competences that would benefit them in the life outside of the institution. They also stressed the lack of using the quality relations that had been established in the institution as support in post-treatment.

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