‘This is your home now!’: Conceptualizing location and dislocation in a dementia unit

In this chapter, I discuss ethnographic work in a residential unit for Alzheimer’s patients located in the southeastern part of the United States. The borders of home and work in this nursing home are analyzed in order to unpack meanings of ‘home’ for residents. Postmodern discussions of location and dislocation for contemporary identities have relevance for an analysis of this setting. The concepts of non-place (non-lieu) from the work of Marc Augé and of location (lieu) from the work of Pierre Bourdieu are employed in the analysis. In this unit, well-to-do white residents are cared for by working-class black women. Intersections of race and class, as well as gender and age, form an important context for social relationships within this space. The case of one resident who daily asked for her car so that she could go home is used to illustrate the social and spatial arrangements in this setting and the ‘location’ of both patients and staff.