Blurring Boundaries
Structural Constraints, Space, Tools, and Agency in an Operating Theater
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 5338050 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Josiane Carine Tantchou (0000-0002-5997-0154, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Paris, France, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2014 |
| Volume | 39 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 336-373 |
| Publication date | 2014-05-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Science Technology & Human Values (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0162-2439 • E-ISSN: 1552-8251 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/0162243913506617 |
| OpenAlex | W2128798119 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
| References cited | 36 |
This study looks at the interactions between health workers, physical space, surgical tools, and the "patient-body" in an operating theater. My aim is to explore the approaches of Katz, Rawlings, and Collins and to show that when rituals, restrictive entrance procedures, and clothing requirements are not in place, when rules are not observed for reasons that this article addresses, the boundary between the operating theater and its surroundings blurs. It becomes a trivialized space. Data were collected in the regional hospital of one major town of the Extrême Nord of Cameroon. I describe a context of crisis and a lack of equipment and personnel that narrow the boundaries of the operating room (the limits of which are supposed to be kept sterile and isolated) but do not erase them. Restrictive entrance procedures, clothing requirements, rituals, and rules that are supposed to separate the operating theater from its surroundings, as Katz has shown, are not observed. Instead, the theater is connected to its surroundings through an "intriguing combination of practices" consistent with the analyses of Rawling and Collins. Thus, the operating theater is not a closed and limited area inside the hospital that can be completely isolated from its surroundings. There is continuity between the interior and the exterior
Aesthetics · Archaeology · Art · Clothing · Operating theater · Operations management · Political science · Sociology · Computer Science · Engineering · Historical Psychiatry and Medical Practices · History · Law · Mathematics · Psychology
Science in action
Etat et corruption en Afrique
Medicine, Rationality and Experience
Pain as Human Experience
La "distance au rôle" en salle d'opération
Social constraints to TB/HIV healthcare
Poor Working Conditions, HIV/Aids and Burnout
On control, certitude, and the ?paranoia? of surgeons
Regions, Networks and Fluids
Heterogeneity and Coordination of Blood Pressure in Neurosurgery
The Manufacture of Bodies in Surgery
Dissecting Surgery
Causes of worker burnout
Risk society
Cameroun
Décentralisation du système de santé publique et ressources humaines au Cameroun
The Architecture of the Hospital
Drilling Surgeons
Poverty and violence, frustration and inventiveness
Safe asleep? Human-machine relations in medical practice
Space, sterility and surgery
Producing effective knowledge agents in a pluralistic environment
Informal economic activities of public health workers in Uganda
Des femmes dans un métier d'hommes
Quelques touches hospitalières
Ritual in the Operating Room
The Body Multiple
Space, Time and Culture among the Iraqw of Tanzania
Dismembering the Image of God
Space, Time, and Culture among the Iraqw of Tanzania
Medical Anthropology at the Intersections
Coming clean
| Unique citing works | 4 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,5 |
| Citation span | 2018 - 2025 (8) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 4 |