ABSTRACT
To the outsider, the ‘caring’ world may have appeared one of pink overalls,
cleanliness, jangling keys, ‘come along Annie’, wheelchairs, walks around the
grounds, trolleys, laundry, the ubiquitous institutional smell, dozing residents
in television lounges. This was the re-presented, more acceptable face of the
occupation, which in effect in terms of contemporary cultural constructs, was
a ‘heavy’, ‘dirty’ job, steeped in taboo subject matter, such as the body, age,
‘shit shovelling’ and death. These social responsibilities were transported
from the wider society to a sub-society, staffed largely by women. Within this
sub-society, a partial and truncated version of ‘caring’ was enacted, involving
constant tension between caring for and processing people.
