Jean Spencer

Daily Life and Forms of “Communitas” in a Personal Care Home for Elders

This study examined daily life in a personal care home using anthropological theories of liminality and communitas associated with rites of passage. Purposes of this article are to (1) describe daily life in terms of its setting, activities, and social system (elements of normative communitas) and (2) examine cultural beliefs and values that may foster ideological and existential communitas. Ethnographic methods included participant observations and semistructured interviews. Ongoing data analysis and interpretation were conducted by a five-member research team. Factors that foster social cohesion include a small-scale residential environment, a familiar round of activity routines, a social system with flexible roles of residents and staff, and a culture in which mutual support of persons with varying capabilities is valued. Some of these qualities, for which residents and staff used the metaphors of home and family, might be purposely cultivated in other residential settings for elders.