The Training Setting as a Social and Liminal Space for Professional Hybridization

This article addresses the liminality concept as a way to explore a particular group context, relating to a training setting intended as a liminal space, and to highlight its potential to trigger evolutionary personal and organizational identity trajectories. Dealing with a contemporary uncertain, volatile, and ambiguous organizational scenario, people are asked for consistent and quick professional hybridization processes. This article refers to a case study related to an action research process aimed at a cultural transformation and nurturing organizational learning inside an extra-hospital Rehabilitation Center, challenged by a strong organizational reconfiguration and the creation of new functions and roles, among which the one coordinator, responsible for the operational activity to be managed within the units of the organizational context. This article also highlights both the main features that characterize a training setting as a liminal space and identifies the possible plots of professional hybridization paths that a training group as a liminal space can trigger and develop.

Exploring the Book of Fortresses

Duarte de Armas’ Livro das fortalezas or Book of Fortresses illustrates 55 border fortresses in over 180 meticulous measured and annotated renderings. The book is even more impressive given that de Armas completed his on-site survey in a single year (1509) and finished annotating the book the following year. The book’s drawings, alluring in their combination of finite time and enormous space, are difficult to link together at an intra-site or inter-site scale. Consequently, while mapping the 55 border fortresses in the book provides a greater apprehension of a historical, liminal space, this alone does not solve the greater problem of reconstructing de Armas’ methods for rendering place on the Portuguese-Castilian border, nor does it acknowledge the historical moment in which it was produced. This article reconstructs the world of the Book of Fortresses through a novel, digital approach that acknowledges Duarte de Armas’ malleable sense of space rather than ‘rectifying’ his work to match modern geography.

Re-Membering and Naturing my Life and Work in a Fifth Province

This paper will outline my own systemic journey of engagements and movements in and away from a more natured inclusion in my life and work. Looking back, I can see that from childhood my life was filled with sustainability practices in that I had parents who planted much of our food and never threw away anything that might be useful in the future. In my team, the Fifth Province Associates, one was a farmer’s daughter and grew up with a deep knowledge of our countryside and the other was an ecological and climate activist. How had I managed not to put all this together into a more coherent systemic roadmap before now? I thank Roger Duncan (2018) and many of my colleagues here in this issue for re-minding me of what I already knew and experienced, and how it could be recycled as it were for a possible more useful future (Simon & Salter, 2020; Palmer, 2014; Santin, 2020; Triantafillou et al., 2016; Edwards, 2020). They have facilitated me to re-member experiences around nature practices, the possibilities for love and colonisation in our practices, the co-creation of an indigenous Irish therapy practice and my experiences of a deep spiritual practice which I have seen over and over again to foster resilience and equanimity1 not only in my own life but also in the lives of clients and those in our Sangha. In the Irish language, the word for resilience, athléimneacht is interesting. Athléimneacht directly translated means jumping (across/in) a ford, an open space or a hollow between two objects. I resonate with this translation as it points to a liminal space so important in Celtic consciousness and of course a fifth province space. Maybe resilience or athléimneacht has been called forth as a need in all of us by the sudden advent, fear and stress of a world in panmorphic crisis (Simon, 2021).

Inhabiting the threshold: the Women's Gallery as liminal space in New Zealand's feminist art history

<p>In the four years between January 1980 and January 1984, a gallery was run in Wellington by a collective of women to display the work of female artists only. This feminist space sought to provide an educational, supportive and inclusive environment, free from the obstacles which were perceived to prohibit women from displaying their work in mainstream art spaces. This thesis tackles the history of this gallery’s reception and seeks to address its absence in the writing of New Zealand’s art history. In reassessing its history, I assert the Women’s Gallery deserves a place within critical accounts of art in New Zealand. Chapter one locates the Women’s Gallery within the cultural and political context of New Zealand society by tracing the development of the women’s art movement, and feminism as a grassroots political movement. An examination of the gallery’s Opening Show serves as an example of the way in which the ideology of the Women’s Gallery shaped its organisational structure. Chapter two pinpoints the time of the gallery’s existence at a point of transformation within feminist thinking. This chapter problematises the evolution of feminist thought from ‘essentialism’ to a critique informed by poststructuralist strategies. A close analysis of artworks demonstrates that the Women’s Gallery was simultaneously occupied by artists who exhibited both tendencies. By proposing Victor Turner’s model of liminality as a framework upon which to base a discussion of the Women’s Gallery, chapter three reframes the gallery as a liminal space. I argue the temporary existence of the gallery allowed women a space – removed from patriarchal power structures – in which to experiment both politically and creatively.</p>

Paris: A Poem by Hope Mirrlees: The liminal world of Paris in 1919

Paris: A Poem by Hope Mirrlees is a modernist ‘curiosity’ which remained largely unknown due to the peculiar conditions of its original publication. In recent years, however, it has regained its place within the field of modernist studies due to the efforts of Julia Briggs and Sandeep Parmar. Instead of approaching the poem through established categories of urban representation, such as flânerie, urban phantasmagoria or the urban palimpsest, this article focuses on Paris, then in the midst of the 1919 Peace Conference, as a liminal space and site of Bakhtinian carnival. This framework advances an understanding of the poem as a complete and complex work of art. The article argues that the peculiar structure and formal organization of the poem, and its relation to the reality of Paris in 1919 and beyond, turns the poem into a liminal space of its own, thus doubling the city it speaks of.

Liminal Space of First-Episode Psychosis: Health Management and Its Effect on Social Participation

Importance: Managing health requires extensive time and effort, especially in the early stages of a new illness. Although important, health management occupations contribute to treatment burden, disrupt engagement in other occupations, and galvanize the incorporation of the illness into identity. This is especially true for young adults after first-episode psychosis (FEP). Objective: To explore the impact of health management occupations on the social participation of young adults after FEP. Design: Qualitative study. Setting: Community with participants from primarily urban environments. Participants: Five adults between 18 and 30 yr old who experienced FEP within the previous 5 yr. Data collection occurred through semistructured interviews, participant observations, and discourse elicitation. Outcomes and Measures: Two participant observations per month for 6 mo with 4 study participants; six observations total for a 5th participant. Results: Health management dominated participants’ occupations immediately after FEP and hindered their social participation as they experienced a liminal space (i.e., transition space) in their life trajectory. Some participants were “stuck” in this space and deferred life goals to focus on illness management, whereas others used the liminal space as a space for growth and transformation. Conclusions and Relevance: Health management occupations are essential; however, overemphasizing health management can hinder social participation and quality of life. Occupational therapy practitioners can assist clients with moving through liminal spaces after diagnosis by supporting participation beyond mental health treatment environments, helping clients to imagine alternative life trajectories, and finding strategies to reduce overall treatment burden. What This Article Adds: The concept of liminality holds promise for understanding and supporting health management and social participation after FEP.