Skip to main content
Log in

Calendars and keys: The classification of “home” and “work”

Sociological Forum

Abstract

This article presents a discussion of the relationship between classification systems and individuals' everyday activities. The concept of “boundary work” is defined as the practices that concretize and give meaning to mental frameworks by placing, maintaining, and challenging cultural categories. “Home” and “work” provide a case study for examining boundary work across a range of realm relationships, from those that are highly “integrating” to those that are highly “segmenting.” Boundary practices involving calendars and keys, clothes and appearances, eating and drinking, money, people and their representations (like photographs and gifts), talk styles and conversations, reading materials and habits, and work breaks (including lunches and vacations) are discussed. Mary Douglas's work on categorical purity helps illustrate the relationship between cognitive order and visible behavior seen in the boundary work of home and work.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

References

  • Douglas, Mary 1975 Implicit Meanings: Essays in Anthropology. London: Routledge and Paul.

    Google Scholar 

  • 1985 Purity and Danger, ARK ed. (1966) London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

    Google Scholar 

  • Durkheim, Emile 1965 The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. (1912) New York: Free Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Durkheim, Emile and Marcel Mauss 1963 Primitive Classification. (1903) Translated and edited by Rodney Needham. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Foucault, Michel 1973 The Order of Things. (1966) New York: Vintage Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Freud, Sigmund 1966 Psychopathology of Everyday Life. (1917) New York: Norton.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mannheim, Karl 1985 Ideology and Utopia. (1936) San Diego, CA: Harvest/HBL.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nippert-Eng, Christena 1996 Home and Work: Negotiating Boundaries Through Everyday Life. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schwartz, Barry 1981 Vertical Classification. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Simmel, Georg 1955 The web of group-affiliations. In R. Bendix (ed. and trans.), Conflict and the Web of Group-Affiliations. New York: Free Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Williams, Raymond 1985 Keywords (1976). New York: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zerubavel, Eviatar 1985 Hidden Rhythms. (1981) Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • 1991 The Fine Line. New York: Free Press. forthcoming Social Mindscapes: An Invitation to Cognitive Sociology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Nippert-Eng, C. Calendars and keys: The classification of “home” and “work”. Sociol Forum 11, 563–582 (1996). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02408393

Download citation

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02408393

Key words

Navigation