Violence in a Caring Society – Boundary-Making Practices of Violence in Institutional Elder Care from a Transdisciplinary Perspective

Violence in institutional elder care is still under-researched (Görgen, 2010; Gröning & Yardley, 2020). This is partly because violence is a taboo topic, and partly because there is no shared understanding of what constitutes violence in institutional eldercare. Different disciplines, practice fields and people affected share differing views about what violence “is”, use differing explanations of the emergence of and solutions to minimize violence, and perform different boundaries between protection and endangering. Consequently, violence becomes harder to detect, voice, and sanction. Drawing on agential realism (Barad, 2003), the contributions asks which boundaries are drawn between caring practices that are defined as violent and not violent - and by whom - and which explanations are used for the emergence of violence and solutions to minimize violence in different fields. Data from focus group discussions with professionals of different disciplinary backgrounds as well as with older adults are analysed to identify collective orientation frameworks on violence that are expressed in the form of a conjunctive knowledge during the group discussions (documentary method: Bohnsack, 2003). Findings show which boundaries are drawn between caring and violent treatment in LTC settings, and highlight the age-specificity of such boundary-making practices. From a Linkign-Ages perspective, we finally discuss how understands of violence differ across the life course, and how barriers to implementing effective protection measures in LTC settings could be resolved.