Where the Hens Come to Roost: How the Functionality of a Staff Room is Subverted by Teachers to a Space of Conviviality
(2012) Ethnographic Encounters — Vol. 1, n° 1, p. 71-83 (2012)
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- Authors
Van de Ven, Annelies 
- Abstract
- In our present modern society, the socio-economic system is often characterised as being geared toward maximum profit. Its success is dependent on the ability of specialized institutions to maximize efficiency and innovation. Many anthropological studies have been focussed on these modern work spaces and new managerial techniques within big business environments. However, one field where there has been relatively little study when it comes to these issues is the establishment of schools as such institutions. Teachers nowadays must absorb the corporate ideals of flexibility and self-management within the workspace and at home in order to keep up with the ever-changing needs of a society in flux. These changes not only affect the behaviour of teachers within their educating role in the classroom but also more generally their role as social actors, interacting with one another within the working environment. This ethnography focusses on how these circumstances are dealt with in the space of the teacher’s lounge, which by definition is a casual space within the working environment. My analysis of the data I collected during my fieldwork will assimilate Anthropological theories regarding construction of space, liminality and exchange including some comparisons with the dynamics of the porters’ lounge or ‘buckie’ described in Nigel Rapport’s account of the Constance Hospital (2009). Through this ethnography I hope to show the ingenuity with which the faculty of the elementary school ‘de Klimop’ was able to creatively adapt to the new situation in which they must work.
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Citations
Van de Ven, A. (2012). Where the Hens Come to Roost: How the Functionality of a Staff Room is Subverted by Teachers to a Space of Conviviality. Ethnographic Encounters, 1(1), 71-83. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/213692 (Original work published 2012)