TripleED has the pleasure of welcoming assistant professor Derin Kent (Warwick University) and lecturer Gloria Kutscher (Southampton University) to Umeå. On Friday in SAM.A.333 at 13-14, they will give a talk on “Extreme contexts as places for working and living: How seafarers manage the boundary of personal and professional life” (see abstract below).

WHAT: presentation by Derin Kent and Gloria Kutscher (bios below)
WHERE: SAM.A.333
WHEN: This Friday (23rd) at 13-14

Abstract:

In everyday life, people engage in boundary management to demarcate work, family, and other life domains. In doing so, they bring order to the conflicting expectations and affordances each of these domains offer. Yet, not all life circumstances let individuals easily maintain the boundaries between work and nonwork. Individuals in settings ranging from cargo shipping to offshore oilrigs to logging camps conduct all aspects of their life confined to the workplace, surrounded 24/7 by colleagues. In this study we explore how members’ orientations to ICE – isolated, confined, and extreme – settings as places to both work and live shape their everyday experience of isolation and confinement. Drawing on fieldwork and interviews with seafaring crews on transatlantic cargo ships we identify four styles of place orientation and their associated boundary work strategies. Two styles were productive, wherein members found meaning in pursuing professional or personal roles in the ICE context. The other two styles were ambivalent, reflecting tensions in balancing work and personal life. Our findings contribute to understanding how individuals actively shape their personal lives in extreme work environments, offering insights into diverse orientations that range from upholding professionalism to seeking intimacy with colleagues.