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This paper aims to show how collective embodiment with physical objects (i.e. props) support young children’s learning through the construction of liminal blends that merge physical, virtual and conceptual resources in a mixed-reality (MR) environment..

Building on Science through Technology Enhanced Play (STEP), we apply the Learning in Embodied Activity Framework to further explore how liminal blends can help us understand learning within MR environments. Twenty-two students from a mixed first- and second-grade classroom participated in a seven-part activity sequence in the STEP environment. The authors applied interaction analysis to analyze how student’s actions performed with the physical objects helped them to construct liminal blends that allowed key concepts to be made visible and shared for collective sensemaking.

The authors found that conceptually productive liminal blends occurred when students constructed connections between the resources in the MR environment and coordinated their embodiment with props to represent new understandings.

This study concludes with the implications for how the design of MR environment and teachers’ facilitation in MR environment supports students in constructing liminal blends and their understanding of complex science phenomena.

This paper investigates how a new entrepreneurial identity forms in conjunction with prior work-related identities during sponsored self-employment after an emotional job loss.

The authors empirically examine why some dismissed employees failed and others succeeded in transitioning from a wage-earner career via corporate sponsorship to a career as an entrepreneur, investigating how those employees meaningfully constructed (or did not) an entrepreneurial identity.

The authors' findings show that the simultaneous preservation of central attributes of prior work-related identities and the engenderment of new entrepreneurial attributes support the formation of an entrepreneurial identity and that a liminal state, in which people practice entrepreneurship at work, may facilitate identity transition.

This paper demonstrates that the initial entrepreneurial endeavor is based on prior work-related identity and identity congruence between prior work-related identities and a projected entrepreneurial identity is of great importance for the identity transition. However, the authors also show that incongruence may in some cases turn into congruence if entrepreneurs are given the opportunity to experiment with provisional entrepreneurial selves in a risk-free environment (so-called liminal states).

This paper aims to investigate how consumption linked with life transitions can differ in its potential to bring about ongoing liminality. By examining how consumers can draw on overlapping systems of resources, different ways in which consumers negotiate ongoing liminality following the transition to motherhood are identified.

The authors conducted an interpretive, exploratory study using in-depth phenomenological interviews with 23 South Asian mothers living in the UK. The sample consisted of mothers at different stages of motherhood.

Following life transitions, consumers may encounter liminal hotspots at the intersection of overlapping systems of resources. The findings examine two liminal hotspots with differing potential to produce ongoing liminality. The study shows how consumers navigate these liminal hotspots in different ways, by accepting, rejecting and amalgamating the resources at hand.

The research sample could have been more diverse; future research could examine liminal hotspots relating to different minority groups and life transitions.

Marketers need to examine the different ways in which consumers draw on different systems of resources following life transitions. The paper includes implications for how marketers segment, target and market to ethnic minority consumers.

Due to increasingly fluid social conditions, there are likely to be growing numbers of consumers who experience ongoing liminality following life transitions. A preliminary framework is presented outlining different ways that consumers negotiate ongoing liminality by drawing on overlapping systems of resources, broadening the understanding of the role that marketplace resources play beyond life transitions.

Sex tourism is well documented in the literature, but what about porn tourism? Whether it is a Ping Pong show in Phuket or the Banana show in Amsterdam, porn and tourism have an encounter and gaze no different from the Mona Lisa in the Louvre or magnificent views of New Zealand’s Southern Alps. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This paper explores the intersections of tourism, porn and the future as a conceptual framework.

Four intersections are derived from the conceptual framework. Intersection 1, the Future of Tourism, portrays the evolution of tourism and explores its technological future. Interaction 2, Porn in Tourism, distinguishes between soft- and hard-core porn tourism. Intersection 3, Portraying Porn as a Future Dimension, delves into futurism, science fiction and fantasy. The fourth intersection, the Future Gaze, conveys the thrust of the paper by exploring how technological advancement blends with authenticity and reality. Thus the porn tourist seeks both the visual and the visceral pleasures of desire. The paper concludes with four future gazes of porn tourism, The Allure of Porn, The Porn Bubble, Porn as Liminal Experience and Hardcore.

The originality of this paper is that this is the first paper to systematically examine porn tourism beyond sex tourism overlaying with a futures dimension. Porn tourists actively seek to experience both visual and visceral pleasures. Tourism and pornography both begin with the gaze. The gaze is an integral component of futures thinking. Technology is changing us, making us smarter, driving our thirst for liminal experiences. Like the transition from silent movies to talking pictures the porn tourism experience of the future is likely to involve more of the bodily senses.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the experiences of donors to a UK-based contemporary music organisation fundraising scheme through the theoretical lens of liminality.

In-depth interviews with 16 members of the Sound Investment scheme investigated the motivations and experiences of individual donors to the commissioning of new music. Thematic analysis suggested parallels with the framework of “liminality,” which shed new light on the ways in which membership changed donors' relationships with the organisation and audience.

Motivations for supporting contemporary music commissioning included personal interest, cultural responsibility and alignment to the values of the organisation. Tangible benefits, particularly access to rehearsals, brought donors into closer connection with the creative and managerial working of the organisation.

The sample did not include any lapsed donors, or people who had chosen not to participate. Future research could test the liminal framework in different artforms and through different tangible benefits.

Understanding donors as liminals could help arts organisations to develop membership schemes that more effectively sustain individual giving. Key elements of involvement and access are identified that could engage audiences more widely.

This case study foregrounds lived experience of arts donors where previous literature has primarily focussed on motivations for donating. It highlights the liminal elements of becoming an individual donor, namely, the integration and socialisation processes, the space-and time-bound interactions with the organisation and the alignment of values with the organisation. This framework offers a new way for arts organisations to understand and enhance individual giving in a time of austerity.

Parents’ collective involvement in their children’s education takes the form of holding leadership positions in schools. Employing the concept of liminality, which is used in anthropological and sociological approaches, the purpose of this paper is to explore the features of parent leadership in schools (PLS).

Interviews were conducted with 18 individuals: 11 chairpersons and 7 members of the parent leadership of 11 primary schools in Israel attended by students of high socioeconomic backgrounds.

Data analyses disclose PLS as a liminal framework, which constitutes both formal and informal dimensions, whether these be its in-school limited activities or out-of-school actions in introducing change and supporting the institutions. PLS’s functions are restricted by school principals, but simultaneously enhance school principals’ position.

The study’s findings carry implications for school collaboration with external entities. School principals need to support PLS and keep encouraging entrepreneurship, creativity and innovation. There is a need for acknowledging the value of PLS’s contributions whereas policy makers must provide more guidelines and support to parent leaders.

The study focuses on exploring the position of collective parental involvement in schools. This issue is of significance in a time where parents gain more responsibility over their children’s education and schools support more collaborative relationships with external agencies. The study highlights the benefits of parents in leadership positions for school benefits and for school principals’ legitimacy, from the approach of liminality.

Bosnia-Herzegovina has recovered slowly from the war of 1992–1995 partly due to the fact that the Dayton Accord that ended the war created a consociational state segmented by the three majority ethnic and religious groups, the Bosniaks, the Serbs, and the Croats. These “constituent peoples” live in divided spaces, rule the country separately, and have not yet reconciled their differences, impeding the creation of national identity. Women’s nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and women peacemakers are working toward reconciliation and peace through the construction of an alternative narrative to that of the government’s and creating an increasingly influential civil society. These NGOs, comprised of women “victims” who became “empowered leaders,” are fostering reconciliation and peace through the promotion of the human rights of five groups: (1) deceased victims of the war; (2) surviving victims of the war; (3) minority groups; (4) marginalized groups; and (5) women. By the construction of liminal space through civic art, psychosocial healing, and political action, these groups are creating a new future and building the momentum to push the country forward to a reintegrated society. Leadership of the groups is dispersed throughout the country and comprised of many ethnic groups who collaborate to meet the needs and demands of their followers, who, in effect, have created the leaders and lead inclusively with them. The chapter provides an interesting study of the power of women, who turned victimhood into social action, to build a grassroots civil society that is fostering reconciliation and peace.

This chapter explores the symbolic connections between coming of age liminality and identity-oriented consumption practices in postmodern American culture, specifically among adolescent girls.

Forty-two female participants (ages 20–23) participants were asked to answer the general question of “Who am I?” through creating identity collages and writing accompanying narrative summaries for each of three discrete life stages: early adolescence (past-self), late adolescence (present-self), and adulthood (future-self). Data were analyzed using a hermeneutical approach.

Coming of age in postmodern American consumer culture involves negotiating paradoxical identity tensions through consumption-oriented benchmarks, termed “market-mediated milestones.” Market-mediated milestones represent achievable criteria by which adolescents solidify their uncertain liminal self-concepts.

In contrast to the traditional Van Gennepian conceptualization of rites of passage, market-mediated milestones do not necessarily mark a major transition from one social status to another, nor do they follow clearly defined stages. Market-mediated milestones help adolescents navigate liminality through an organic, nonlinear, and incremental coming of age process.

Rather than traditional cultural institutions (e.g., church, family), the marketplace is becoming the central cultural institution around which adolescent coming of age identity is constructed. As such, organizations have the power to create market-mediated milestones for young people. In doing so, organizations should be mindful of adolescent well-being.

This research marks a turning point in understanding traditional rites of passage in light of postmodern degradation of cultural institutions. The institutions upon which traditional rites of passage are based have changed; therefore, our conceptions of what rites of passage are today should change as well.

Much scholarly examination of BDSM and kink attempts to make meaningful various specific practices as cultural “texts,” and analyzes them for what they might signify within a particular culture or subculture. This approach has often focused on interpreting specific acts in relation to human sexuality or psychology – specifically deviance – or on critiquing them from a feminist perspective. I propose to approach an examination of (a particular) BDSM (event) itself as (a) performance, and I argue that it is not only performance but that it is performative, creating a liminal space within the already liminal space of the fetish club in which it occurs. This “kink-space” then becomes the place within which the embodiment, and the dissolution, of binaries occurs, creating possibilities for the audience and upending the structures upon which identity is based. Ultimately, BDSM as performance is an avenue for the understanding of the concepts of liminality and power and how they function to create and contain selves.