Intimacy, sexuality, dementia. Strategic affects and appropriation of care work in destabilizing contexts

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Published 14-03-2016
Natacha Borgeaud-Garciandía

Abstract

This article focuses on jobs regarding home care in situations implicating the confrontation of the caregivers to disturbing and potentially destabilizing elements: intimacy, sexuality and dementia in old and very dependent adults. It is based in a qualitative research in sociology in which narrative biographical interviews with caregivers took place. Following the notions of "dirty work", "emotional work" and "defenses", the article analyses how workers protect themselves and redefine their work in terms of the possibility of suffering that carries such a confrontation. This can result still more difficult when the family is reluctant to face the decline of their elderly. In occasions, however, the closeness of the relation and the time shared with the dependant could enable the caregivers to develop a comprehensive care work that can be appreciated and that allow them to qualify their proper care as their own "work" [obra]. As a matter of fact, through their emotional strategies, the caregivers redefine the "dirty work" while they try to keep their very identity of "good caregivers", socially valued.

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Keywords

care work, "dirty work, affects, defenses, acknowledgment, subjectivity

Section
Single Topic Issues