Dementia is an illness that creates instability for both the person living with dementia (PwD) and the caregiver. For the PwD, they are worried about how others will treat them because of their dementia diagnosis. For the caregiver, they are worried about how the PwD may interact with others due to behavioral changes – in other words, social interaction becomes tinged with unpredictability. One way to help these parties live with dementia is through memory cafes which are organization-like entities that host dementia-inclusive programming. While these cafes are effective at helping to improve the lives of those affected by dementia, these cafes are often decentralized and constituted differently with aims that vary and are often contradictory. Given the contradictory nature of memory cafes this dissertation is guided by the overarching research question: How are memory cafes communicatively constituted such that they have the power to potentially reconstitute ideas about dementia? To do so, I employed the Four Flows approach in order to conduct three qualitative studies. Specifically, I sought to explore how different triggers that set off the order-disorder process – boundary work, struggle, and negotiation of meaning – shape memory cafes. My findings suggest that these triggers prompt memory cafe organizers to construct these organization-like entities in a manner that emphasizes the confluence of activity coordination and self-structuring to account for the potential effects of dementia on communication behaviors. Dementia itself is reflected in the organization, but the way in which it is reflected depends on how dementia is emphasized. In effect, organizers are able to craft these entities in a manner that helps their attendees work through how they come to understand the meaning of dementia by tailoring the memory cafe to the needs of their attendees. Ultimately, understanding organization-like entities such as memory cafes through a communicative perspective is essential to theorizing alternative ways to communicate and organize health-related social phenomenon like illness construction and care responses.
Sabrina Singh (Thu,) studied this question.