P. J. Cushing 2003

6.0 The Enculturation Process of a Local, Moral World

6.1 Introduction

L’Arche has created a local, moral world in its communities[i]; a provocative cultural space for imagining and practicing an enriched way of living with the kind of personal and group differences that are usually devalued in mainstream, Western society. Within this cultural system, L’Arche seeks to expand the scope and principles of caregiving by producing elements of care that are not normally included in a caregiving agency's mandate. In this chapter, I elaborate on several enabling factors that L’Arche has developed in order to achieve those elements or outcomes. I discuss the constructive effect of these factors, but also their unintended and sometimes harmful side-effects.

The L’Arche objectives for creating such a system are described in Chapter 4. Here, based on my analysis of their mission statements, observations and interviews with informants, I identify three important outcomes that must be generated in order for L’Arche communities to reach their goals. These outcomes are: core-member well-being, the creation of mutual relationships across difference, and transformed caregiver subjectivity. These outcomes are intertwined and mutually enabling.

The first outcome is the well-being of the people with intellectual disabilities who come to live in the L’Arche homes and communities. Well-being need not mean that every person in L’Arche is entirely content. Like anyone else, people with intellectual disabilities have ongoing concerns and projects related to their home life, relationships, work and general emotional state that require support and effort. Well-being refers to, but is not limited to, legislated elements of care such as housing and feeding people and providing basic skills training (L’Arche 1993; Rioux 1994). L’Arche aims to create a safe place for people with intellectual disabilities to live and work where they can learn to feel that they are accepted for who they are as whole persons, and with, not “in spite of,” their disabilities. Once they gain a greater degree of confidence and self-acceptance, they are then supported to grow and move outwards into wider social networks in their workplace and in the regular community. Although this goal is fundamental to the mandate and governmental rationale for the existence and funding of L’Arche, I do not evaluate it directly in this thesis[ii].

The second outcome L’Arche requires is healthy mutual relationships across difference. The model of care applied within L’Arche communities involves people sharing home life together and reducing the social distance that has become the norm in caregiver/patient relationships. Since most people with intellectual disabilities in L’Arche and elsewhere will always require some form of paid-care relationships, L’Arche asserts that effort is needed to ensure that they do not experience themselves as dependent, devalued or inferior in these relations. Having mutual relationships requires recognition, especially by the more powerful person (i.e., assistants), that the caring and benefits flow both ways. When assistants acknowledge what they receive, they contribute in a small way to changing the negative conditions under which all people with disabilities live. I illustrate the nature of these mutual relationships in Chapter 7.

The third outcome, transformed caregiver subjectivity, encompasses the professional role of the caregiver, and their sense of self as a person within and outside of the L’Arche homes. Coming to terms with both the community aspects of living and working in L’Arche, and the new experience of being with people with intellectual disabilities can be likened to culture-shock for many new assistants. The stigmas that surround people with intellectual disabilities mean that most adults feel uncomfortable around them (Murphy 1990:86). Being able to be touched by, or learn from them then, does not come naturally for most people[iii]. Assistants need inspiration, role models, and supports to move from a simply compassionate and subjective position to a subjectivity with the emotional, moral, psychological, spiritual and technical skills required to turn the compassion into an active, living practice. An extended period of adjustment and learning or enculturation is thus needed.

Given that the realization of the first two outcomes requires a certain type of participation on behalf of the assistants, the processes involved in their enculturation into L’Arche are extremely important. The subject of this chapter is that enculturation process. I identify and describe two important tactics (spatio-temporal organization and storytelling) and three key strategies (redefining productivity as fecundity, revalorizing difference and providing care for the caregivers) that L’Arche uses to enculturate assistants in their approach to caregiving, and through which assistants negotiate everyday interactions, tasks, and relationships in L’Arche.

6.2 Tactics that support the enculturation strategies

In this section, I examine two tactics—spatio-temporal organization and storytelling—that L’Arche employs to achieve its strategies and goals, including the enculturation of new caregivers. Tactics are “manoeuvres used, or plans followed, to achieve a particular aim or task” (Sinclair 1994:1569). In other words, tactics are not important as ends in themselves, but rather for how they serve other strategic ends, in service of the organizational goals. Tactics are as vital to accomplishing aims as any other part of the plan even though they operate at the micro-level. Though they are not theoretically complex, without them, a plan or goal would remain unfulfilled. The first tactic, spatio-temporal layout, includes how space and time are arranged within the homes and the communities, and how activities and projects are prioritized. By sketching out a typical “day in the life” of assistants, I show how spatio-temporal factors are often intentionally used to influence how experience is constructed for them.

The second tactic used at L’Arche is storytelling. Transforming one’s caregiving and relational experiences into narratives, is a vital didactic mechanism for enculturation into the local moral norms and caregiving approach within L’Arche (Cushing 2002). Although storytelling is a widespread practice at L’Arche, in my observation its power is undervalued and has been given little critical consideration at an organizational level. As such, it is a prospective area for analysis regarding both its challenges and its potential to improve training and L’Arche’s effort to relay its message more broadly.

6.2.1 Spatio-temporal layout

Shared space and decisions

Cooper (1994:110) has argued that the design of buildings can partially “structure the parameters of people’s daily lives.” There is an ongoing dynamic between built structures, spatial discourses, and people’s experience of them which feeds back into changes in the meaning and uses of built space (Cooper 1994:93, 110). Vanier intuited that the space one inhabits can both reflect beliefs and affect one’s sense of well-being within it. This intuition led him to invite Raphael and Philippe to move from the institution into his home; it is also reflected in his belief that living together, in the same conditions, is necessary for caregivers to develop genuine solidarity and relationships with core members. The moment when Vanier and the men moved in together was “when a meaning was given concrete form in space.” (Cooper 1994:94).

New meanings can be produced in the ongoing dynamic between spatial discourses, built structures, and people’s experience of them (Cooper 1994:93, 110). Sharing living space changed how Vanier perceived the core members, and bore fruit in his evolving notions of mutuality, but has also influenced more recent decisions about spatio-temporal layout in L’Arche. Core members are now asked for greater involvement in planning and decisions, even where that adds substantially to the length and complexity of the process. One Canadian home that needed a new, fully accessible bathroom for people with diverse impairments, held extra meetings involving the core members in discussions and demonstrations (of options) with the architect, plumbers, physiotherapists and technicians. This kind of engagement is progressive (Rodman and Cooper 1989), and is an example of a shift in assistants’ sharing of power by conceiving of the home as a space to be shaped by each person in it.

These same principles continue to be applied today, where assistants live full-time in the homes, at least for the first three years that they are involved with L’Arche, and often for much longer. Assistant and core member rooms alternate throughout the homes and are similar in size, furniture and access to amenities like bathrooms, which are shared. It is difficult to emphasize how significant this single design variable is in realizing the L’Arche ideology and lending a feeling of personal “authenticity”[iv] to the assistants’ project of living and working in a way that “makes a difference.” This is a classic example of how “places [can] produce meaning and that meanings can be grounded in place” (Rodman 1992:643).

Most homes in a L’Arche community are typical of urban or suburban houses. One spatial design principle that developed, once L’Arche was in operation, was that each home should contain an eating area that is large enough for everyone to eat together, and a comfortable, welcoming, common living room area, large enough to hold house members and friends. The belief is that the physical space would facilitate (by virtue of existing) occasions for coming together to share stories about the day and celebrating life’s milestones. This is a spatial design principle that was noted by outsiders as unique and effective when it was introduced (Wolfensberger 1973).

Symbolism in décor and scheduling

There is not enough space here to outline all of the ways in which L’Arche designs their space and time/schedules to reflect their ideology. Instead, I name some salient ones to evoke a sense of how life in L’Arche feels and looks quite different from mainstream group homes and institutions. Candles on the kitchen table and in the common space are often cited as an essential element of a L’Arche home. When I arrived for a visit in Hull, Quebec, I gave them a large, autumn-scented candle, and a long-term assistant at the table smiled and said, “Ah tu comprends déja L’Arche!” In common areas, candles are often simply set on a table, or they are included in a small altar, around which people sometimes gather to share quiet time, stories or prayer after dinner and on special occasions. The candles are incorporated into many rituals and the lighting and snuffing of the candles provides a ritual beginning and end to dinner.

Candles are also utilised in private spaces, reproducing the group emphasis on reflection and ritual. Many assistants and core members have candles and some also have personal prayer spaces in their rooms. When lit, the candles suggest a slowing down, a quieting of the mind, and a turn to reflection on the travails and gifts of the day, however small. In this sense, spatial and temporal principles overlap, as the candles also symbolize a change from the time of day when everyone is involved with their own activities, to a time when they are open to being more connected with the group, be it in sharing food, stories, prayer or laughter.

Temporal principles are perhaps best illustrated by a few aspects of scheduling and time priorities in a typical day for an assistant. Most assistants live in the homes, although across Canada an average of 23% eventually live out, some of whom have spouses and children (Lukeman 2001). The scheduling of a typical day for a live-in house assistant is perhaps the best illustration of how L’Arche ideology is reflected in the temporal principles of L’Arche homes. The assistant typically wakes early in order to get house tasks and routines underway before helping core members to get ready for their days. The assistants in Ontario’s Green House begin with the laundry and then undertake various kitchen-based tasks, such as getting out the breakfast foods, brewing fresh coffee, and packing lunches for core members to take to work. In other homes, such as Unity House in British Columbia, the core members do most of these tasks for themselves and are simply guided by the assistants.

The efforts made to have core members participate in as many of the daily operations of the house as possible, can be used to illustrate how temporal priorities are used to enact the L’Arche ideology in the homes. Although assistants aim to facilitate core members’ inclusion in household chores in order to maximize their sense of independence and control, it often requires more of an assistant’s time and energy to support a core member to do a chore than to do it himself. This is an issue of skills, but also of core members’ desire; over time, many core members seem to have either gotten bored or decided that laundry is not really a meaningful task and would prefer that an assistant does it while they, themselves, do something more interesting.

As a result, many of the household chores are sites of ongoing negotiation of rights and responsibilities between core members and assistants. There are at least four intersecting and conflicting interests at play here: the organizational goal of supporting people with intellectual disabilities to grow in skills and minimize dependence on others; the well-being of the people with intellectual disabilities, which includes where possible their desires (e.g., not to do chores); the assistants’ well-being, including the chance to do more than housework (e.g., to support others to learn the skills, have time to plan outings, etc.); and the reality that negotiations and supportive training are necessarily bounded by the limited time and number of assistants available to undertake these tasks.

In my observation, such complex situations were always resolved through some micro-negotiation of the particular priorities at hand between the assistant and core member, and often consultation with other assistants as well. For example, in my house, watering the plants was Donna’s (a core member) responsibility and she liked it. It took her a long time and she needed an assistant to be with her. When we had enough assistants in the home for other vital tasks like making dinner, we would support Donna through this chore. If we did not have the time or people to support her in a way that did not rush her and make her agitated, then one of us would water the plants. An assistant must constantly make micro-decisions like this. They must develop a facility to quickly weigh the competing claims of multiple ideals within the parameters of ethical practice and resource realities. The second tactic, storytelling, helps assistants learn to navigate this moral domain (see section 6.2.2).

Dynamics of personal hygiene routines

Waking people and providing help with personal hygiene routines and dressing are other key aspects of life in a L’Arche home. A few core members need only minimal help with this. Many need to be supported through the whole process in the morning and again at night. Routines are often occasions where the organization’s values are reflected in temporal structures. In formal training and, ideally, in the role models provided by long-term assistants in the home, the message is that routines are not merely a task. Rather, routines are an opportunity for a profoundly respectful human interaction with the person who is being cared for, and a time for assistants to recognize how difficult it must be for core members to experience such vulnerability in the bath every day, with different caregivers over time.

The assistants are encouraged not to rush people through their routines like an assembly line, but rather to try to be sensitive to how the core member is feeling and to make it as comfortable for them as possible. If the core member’s ride to work is waiting or some other issue emerges, expediency will prevail. In my observations, however, the idea of routines as requiring and deserving extra time, is commonly respected. Indeed in interviews and informal conversations with assistants, particular stories about this are frequent, as I illustrate in the next section on storytelling.

The intimacy of routines, again, tends to create many delicate situations and conflicts between the parties involved. For example, for those core members who are not “morning people,” their desire to stay in bed is often a source of stormy confrontations with assistants who are responsible for supporting them to make it to the bus and to work on time. In so doing, the assistants help the core members learn to balance their responsibilities and their desires. Once again, I observed many multi-factored scenarios that required that the assistant and core member negotiate the terms and parameters of acceptable choices.

Sometimes the daily squabbles and mini-power struggles are not connected to health issues or more significant concerns. In these cases, assistants support each other by sharing tactics that help make the process less quarrelsome. For example, Henry likes to curse at the assistant who is with him, as he sometimes feels that it is the assistant’s fault that he must get up. To diffuse the tension, prevent the escalation of the behaviour, and to give Henry, who has a good sense of humour, something else to focus on, the assistants and Henry now commonly accentuate the humour in the predictability and frequency of the scenario. For example, if Henry calls the male assistant a name, he might joke that Henry was being too easy on him; “Is that the best that you can come up with this morning? Boy! Guess you did not sleep too well!”

In cases where this reluctance or refusal is out of the ordinary for a core member, the behaviour is taken more seriously as it might signal that something else is possibly bothering the person, such as a health or emotional issue. Such unexpected behaviours are especially helpful in flagging concerns for people who do not use words to express themselves. One such refusal led the team to realize that a man had a toothache that he could not articulate, and another revealed a core member’s distress over the departure of an assistant that she had liked. Taking the time to be attentive to someone in routines is thus also a practical way to help identify and resolve issues that a person is facing[v].

Meetings and decision processes

Among home team members, informal discussions about the meaning of events that are points of conflict within a home are on-going . These issues also become an important focus of the weekly team meeting. Although in relational matters and recreational time there is an attempt to minimize the staff-client distinction, there are also set times when the assistants in the home come together to plan a weekly schedule and discuss any issues salient to people’s well-being. L’Arche meetings usually reflect and reproduce aspects of the community philosophy. In this way, participation in the meetings functions secondarily as a means of socialization for new assistants. There are three main emphases of home meetings: establishing the status of, and contributing factors for, core members’ well-being; attending to the well-being of individual assistants; and organizing administrative responsibilities.

The meetings always begin with prayer. This often, though not always, includes a time for individual petitions and a short silent time for reflection. Long-term assistants explain that these rituals serve many functions. They quiet people’s minds, bring their thoughts fully into the space and purpose(s) of the meeting, and they re-establish a front-of-mind awareness, among those present, of the broader framework of faith and social justice in which their labour operates and derives significance. For many assistants, prayer also calls on the power and presence of the spirit to be there to guide the discussion. This ritual is usually followed by a “group check-in.” Assistants may speak of personal, familial or professional topics. They can choose to mention something that is going well, or something challenging or sad that is weighing on them. The aim of sharing is to provide people a chance to be heard and to help the team be aware of each other’s state of mind so that they can support them or give them space, as needed. Making time for these practices contributes to caregivers’ well-being.

The bulk of meeting time is spent discussing the well-being of core members including their medical health, efficacy of medications, psychological and emotional health, sociability and opportunities for physical fitness. These categories are often significantly overlapped and each person tries to share information and interpretations to help create a holistic picture of the person’s overall well-being. Core members are not treated as a group. Rather, they are discussed as individuals with highly particular ways of being in the world, desires and responses to particular triggers. For example, if a team plans a birthday party with guests for one core member who loves to socialize, they might need to also ensure extra support for another core member for whom a party will be anxiety-provoking.

The rest of the meeting is taken up with scheduling the presence and activities of people in the house to ensure that enough assistants are around to take care of basic responsibilities throughout the week and month. This process is fluid: efforts are made to accommodate the varying needs of everyone in the house, although compromises are often needed. They attempt to make the daily routine similar to those in a regular home. An assistant’s scheduled day away can change in response to either a house need or the assistant’s own desire. This flexibility reflects their philosophical emphasis on minimizing the institutional rigidity of the milieu.

Issues of sustained liminality

The space-time structure of L’Arche communities bears some parallels to the liminal phase of the rites of passage model. In this model, there are three stages through which initiates proceed: entry (symbolic and spatial separation from regular life), liminality (period of learning and growth), and exit (re-integration) (Gennep 1960; Turner 1964). Although this model is generally not appropriate for understanding experiences of people in complex, modern societies (Cushing 1999), it can be used to understand two aspects of L’Arche communities. First, while L’Arche ultimately does not intend to be a “time out of time” or temporary space, assistants do frequently speak about their entry into L’Arche in terms of a separation from the “real world.” Second, the L’Arche moral sub-culture regulates and rewards behaviour in different ways than mainstream society, and in this way can be likened to the liminal phase of the rites of passage model. The potential for change inscribed in the L’Arche philosophy generates a sense of urgency, energy and vitality, similar to the liminal phase, that inspires people to take chances and experiment in ways they would not normally feel open to (Turner 1986). This is part of what makes it such a growthful time and place for many people.

There are at least two unintentional and negative outcomes for assistants that arise as a result of the liminal quality of life in a L’Arche home. These are burnout and feelings of separation from society. The first problem arises because there is no real temporal limit to the liminal phase of life in L'Arche, other than leaving permanently. Whereas traditional rites of passage last for a very short period—generally a week—all assistants at L’Arche stay for much longer than a week, many are not sure how long they will stay, and some stay longer than five years. Therefore, they spend extended periods of time in an environment that is partially structured to reproduce the restless, dynamic energy of a liminal period. Yet, it is nearly impossible for one to sustain that kind of energy over an extended period. This problem is complicated by the fact that assistants are called to balance the drive for change with a grounded sense of a safe home. This balancing act is difficult in an environment where there are always people in need. Consequently, many assistants who stay a year or more experience some degree of burnout, emotional exhaustion and feelings of inadequacy. Finding a better balance involves identifying one’s limits, learning ways of disengaging from the liminal space for periods of time to recuperate, and reflecting on when and how to engage again.

The second disadvantage of the felt liminality of the communities is that it encourages a continued separation of its members from the rest of the society. This unintended outcome reduces L’Arche’s ability to make their message relevant to a broader audience, as I outlined in Chapter 1. Rachel, a well-regarded assistant of two years agrees, saying:

Yes, I agree that the separation is a problem. I love L’Arche and I love the people in my house, but the longer that I live here the less connected I feel to the rest of the world. That was not what I envisioned when I came here, but it gets so busy that it is hard to make time for external connections—personal or professional.

The result is that assistants do accomplish a degree of growth, as any initiate should, but then they are not provided any clear exit or reintegration rituals that would specify a time to settle, take stock and integrate the growth into daily routine. Exit and reintegration rituals could also foster dialogue with other professional disability or caregiver associations to give assistants opportunities both to share the knowledge and experiences they have gained at L’Arche, and to learn of further challenges and opportunities in the field. This, in turn, might decrease their sense of separation or stagnation, and would likely return vital energy and new ideas to their L’Arche communities as well.

6.2.2 Narrative: informal storytelling

Following Wikan (1995:263), I define narratives as “stories or talk that have intention, characters, and plight.” This definition aptly describes the stories that are commonly shared among L’Arche assistants. In fact, informal storytelling among L’Arche assistants is so common that most assistants seem to find it natural and enjoyable, but unremarkable. In this section, I examine the forms that stories take in L’Arche and the contexts in which they are told in order to highlight the role of stories in the production and reproduction of knowledge and cultural norms (i.e., enculturation). I argue that informal, everyday narratives constitute productive activity insofar as they endorse or undermine particular social realities and structures of L’Arche ideology (see also Kingfisher 1996). Ethnographic stories are used to illustrate the common uses and intended aims of these stories, and to demonstrate the effectiveness of narrative as a didactic tool. I also discuss how the prevalence of informal narratives in L’Arche can have unintended and sometimes detrimental side-effects for the assistants, their relationships and, indirectly, the quality of care for the core members.

The prevalence of storytelling among L’Arche assistants probably originated from listening to Jean Vanier, who is an eminently gifted storyteller. His convention of formal storytelling at retreats has become a common element in most L’Arche community gatherings, training sessions, spiritual retreats and some meetings. In this section, however, the focus is on informal narratives that are shared frequently in the homes and in daily interactions. While this practice goes on among all members of their communities, including core members, I focus on the workings of this process primarily in assistant-to-assistant interactions. I think it is important to identify the vital teaching role that assistant-to-assistant stories are playing because the tendency in L’Arche has been to underplay that role in favour of highlighting the teaching role of core members[vi]. While the core members’ role is vital, I try to show here that other techniques are at work in helping an assistant become open, and able to learn from core members.

For context, I note that narratives are not commonplace in the landscape of busy mainstream healthcare systems, where the lack of resources and taboos on intimacy with patients often result in a substantial loss of engagement. One striking example of this comes from research showing that a majority of American state hospital nurses in the study could not recall any particular stories about particular patients in the preceding month (Benner 1994:58). Other research suggests that when specific stories are told, they are often about incidents or non-compliance with section rules. Thus, stories often function solely to justify further constraints or, indirectly, the lack of attention given or rehabilitation achieved (Rhodes 1991; Young 1993; Chambliss 1996).

The lack of shared stories about clients with intellectual disabilities can be particularly problematic. Typically these people are under long-term care, many are non-verbal, and the agencies that care for people with disabilities generally have high staff-turnover rates. The result is that there are large gaps in individualized understandings of how to give the best possible care, as much that is learned about an individual client is never written down. Preferences that are discovered by one staff person over the course of a year, such as where someone likes to go for a walk, who she enjoys spending time with, or what kind of juice she likes with her medications, are often lost when that staff member leaves the agency. Informal storytelling has become a key tactic through which L’Arche works towards holding and passing on a person’s history.

Narrative theory, intended aims and roles of stories

Before I discuss the functions and genres of informal narratives among assistants at L’Arche, it is necessary to outline the theoretical strands that informed my analysis of these narratives. I am interested in how the narratives provide a window into the ongoing dynamic between the ideology of L’Arche and the agency of its assistants. The ideology of L’Arche functions like that of other institutions, which, to paraphrase Young is to “convince people to do what they would not otherwise do; subvert and devalue rival perspectives; [and] serve important interests by changing or overwhelming resistances” (Young 1993:116)[vii]. Narratives are clearly sites of reproduction of the L’Arche ideology, but they are also rich sites of creativity that assistants use, intentionally and otherwise, to adapt and personalize the ideology. Assistants also use stories to achieve other self-interested and community-building goals. The assistants’ informal narratives convey information—often positive—about themselves, which speaks to both their wholeness as actors with multiple projects, and their agency or capacity to enact those projects[viii]. Their agency is not limited to self-interest. Stories that assistants share about experiences and relationships also create a sense of commonality, continuity and connection with other assistants, and within the community as a whole, and mutual support.

This is not the place to do a comprehensive analysis of the construction of these stories, but I outline some common norms. As Bruner explains, the Russian formalists identify three aspects of all stories: the theme (mythic plight, moral leitmotif), discourse (plot; variation on the theme), and genre (language, position) (1986:17-18). The five most common themes of informal L’Arche stories overlap and support each other. These are: commonality and difference; the relations between the strong and the weak; personal responsibility for unjust power imbalances; the power of spiritual faith; and the importance of the little things.

The discourse or common plot lines are more numerous, but usually focus on the inversion of expected roles for people with intellectual disabilities. Typical of any good story, “to be worth telling, a narrative must run counter to expectancy” (Bruner 1996:139; Bruner 1986:19). The most common stories revolve around what an assistant learned from a core member, often through the course of a difficult experience. Such a story inverts the social assumptions that i)caregivers teach the clients and ii)difficulties are always bad. For example, one talkative young seminarian often tells people the story about spending one practicum week in a L’Arche home where none of the core members used words to express themselves. The twist in his story is that at first he thought that this would be a painfully uninteresting experience for him given his love of conversation, until someone helped him to see the opportunity to enjoy the gifts of quiet time implicit in the core members’ silence. Other peoples’ stories that I share in this thesis, reveal instances when the core member has been the wise sage or exhibited extraordinary humour, good sense or absolute cunning.

Functions of informal narratives

Informal stories shared in L’Arche have four primary roles or functions that relate to sociability, problem-solving, identity and their utility as a didactic tool[ix]. The roles overlap in significant ways. They are primarily analytical constructs that I’ve developed, not everyday discursive categories of assistants (although a few assistants use them). Narratives can play overt or covert roles, or both. The covert roles are not always intentional. Rather, they can emerge as a culturally normative practice that is sometimes reproduced with little thought. The first two roles are somewhat self-explanatory, and do not directly contribute to the chapter’s aim of elaborating on the reproduction of the L’Arche ideology and the process of enculturation of assistants. The discussion below, therefore, focuses on the roles of narrative in a) teaching and b) identity production.

a) The use of narratives as a didactic mechanism

In this section, I demonstrate how storytelling is effectively used at L’Arche to reproduce knowledge of the agency’s ideology of caregiving. I also point out ways in which narratives sometimes fail to produce desired effects and can result in problematic side-effects. New assistants are subjectively reconstituted as they listen to, and learn to tell stories in a particular manner. Participating in exchanging stories also changes their relation to the core members, who are the objects of narrative knowledge—usually a positive shift. This teaches them to be the particular kind of caregivers and people that L’Arche needs.

Bruner argues that in narratives, action is always portrayed as happening for a reason (1996:136). He observes that what “people do in narratives is never by chance, nor is it strictly determined by cause and effect” (Bruner 1996:136). People tell stories when the protagonist, (who is also often the teller), could have made other choices, but did not, and he wants the listener to know that. Conveying what he did not do, (for example, taking the easy way out), can be as important to the purpose, force and meaning of the story as what he did do. Narratives are thus intended to tell the listener something about the teller, the actors and the culture, as well as the event or explicit object of the story. Narratives contain information about what constitutes unacceptable or acceptable behaviours or actions in a particular scenario. Many stories are formed around an instance where the assistant telling the story made a poor choice, and the core member plays the role of demonstrating or teaching them why this was unhelpful or inappropriate.

Narratives can teach moral lessons. While spirituality is fundamental to the origins of L’Arche, and many assistants experience spiritual growth and conversion (Hyrniuk 2001), the subjective transition of assistants is also significantly a moral shift, made possible by providing them with an alternative moral framework. I argue here that the most significant role of storytelling in L’Arche is that stories fire the moral imagination of the caregivers. Stories always hold in tension the details of a particular event and the often moral, universal themes within which the stories make sense, and to which they speak. The particulars of an event help stories to resonate with caregivers’ everyday experience and make the ideology liveable for them. Details also humanize and individualize people with intellectual disabilities in a way that formal ideology and training never could because they are inherently generic. Stories allow the few L’Arche principles to be continually re-told, re-lived and re-produced without seeming “tired” because they are freshened with new characters and particulars[x]. As Charles Taylor has noted, it is in the particulars that genuine compassion is forged (Taylor 1994).

The following story exemplifies how the narrative is used to teach lessons and morals in L’Arche homes. Jacob has lived in his L’Arche community in Ontario for over twenty-five years. When he first came, the community had farmland and he loved to work with the animals. He still works at another farm nearby on some days, while on other days he does various jobs around his L’Arche community such as delivering the mail from the office to the houses. When Jacob arrives in a home, he calls out for an assistant to come and read out the names on each piece of mail. Assistants usually enjoy this ritual for a few weeks, but then most seem to grow tired of it and try to avoid going through it. What often turns their behaviour back around is a simple story that has been told innumerable times. If experienced assistants are around, they will often tell their version of the “why it is important to read the mail with Jacob” story to the new person[xi]. The premise of the story is that, unlike some people with intellectual disabilities, Jacob is very aware that he is different from the assistants, and he is conscious of the imbalance between them. This consciousness pushes him to be very independent. For example, he rejects assistance with his daily hygiene routines. He also often does nice things for other people, and assistants who have known him a long time think that this is partly his way of restoring some of the balance to his relationships. Doing the mail together is another way to acknowledge the productive role he plays and therefore to restore some balance.

An assistant who hears these stories about Jacob, with their embedded moral lessons, now has an alternative interpretive framework for understanding Jacob’s actions and his motives. Ideally, she uses that framework to inform her own (now) moral decision about how to respond to Jacob’s mail visits more empathetically. Joanne, a former assistant, told me that she still thinks about Jacob yelling “Mail!” and how it always reminded her of how important it is to acknowledge what other people mean to her, and to spend time with them when she can, rather than rushing around. The assistant also learns more general lessons from this story about the L’Arche approach to caregiving, including how to talk about experience and how to interact with core members.

Neil is a former L’Arche director. He often tells new assistants a story about a significant conversation he had years ago with his friend, Frank, who is a core member. The context for the story is that high staff-turnover rates cause constant disruption in routines and relationships for people with disabilities (Braddock and Mitchell 1992). Many assistants leave at the end of the summer to go to school. One year, Frank was finding this exodus particularly hard. Frank is thoughtful and very expressive, and he and Neil had a good conversation about how they both found this situation sad. Neil relates how he wanted to encourage Frank to see what had been accomplished, not just the loss, in saying:

You know there is also the good side. You really changed those assistants’ lives by welcoming them to share your home. Many assistants have told me how much they learned from your example, and who you are as a person. Frank paused to think about that for awhile. Then he looked up and said, “If that’s true, Neil, then how come no one has ever thanked me?

This conversation happened years ago. L’Arche is much more conscious now of cultivating a spirit of gratitude among assistants. Still, the story contains lessons that might never grow old. Neil claims this story as a turning point in his understanding of how to be a better L’Arche assistant. He also uses the story as a didactic tool to convey those embedded lessons to new assistants. The story conveys particular details about Frank and his response to staff turnover that would be important for people who live with him to be aware of. It also evokes a way of perceiving a person with intellectual disabilities that is not obvious to new assistants. For example, the story indicates the depth and complexity of Frank’s emotions, and his awareness and potential vulnerability in relationships. It also reveals that Frank’s feelings about at least some of his caregivers have grown to surpass employee status. This all highlights the unavoidably moral nature of engaging fully in dependency relations (Kittay 1999).

i) How narratives teach

This story also reveals something about how narratives can teach. Bruner argues convincingly that narratives are rarely innocent or “unsponsored”(1996:136-8). To grasp what he means, we must first consider how we learn to think about and interpret experience, and how we learn to evaluate experience in moral terms. Neither one is natural or obvious. Reiff (1966:261) suggests that what “is moral is not ‘self-evident’… [but] becomes and remains self-evident only within a powerful and compelling system of culture.”[xii] L’Arche is clearly a cultural system, in that it prescribes moral norms, but a cultural system’s effects go even further. It also provides the categories of thought that construct how we experience life, and how we make sense of it. This in turn influences what parts of the flow of our lives we come to consider narrative-worthy, meaningful experiences. “What counts as experience is neither straightforward nor self-evident” (my emphasis) (Scott 1992b) (see also Turner 1986:35). So experience itself is always already an interpretation, and that interpretation has been partially shaped by listening to more experienced people’s narratives, which indirectly teach the listener what is significant.

Narratives thus teach through indicating, and thereby reproducing, the norms and parameters of a particular cultural system. Narrators choose to include certain experiences or events and not others in stories, which tacitly teach new caregivers what counts as experience or moral behaviour and what does not count (in this particular moral world). It is as important to attend to what themes are not included in stories. As Wikan argues, what is not said can be as telling about cultural values as what is said (1995:266). For example, in L’Arche, it is rare to hear conversations about a core member’s etiology, medical or psychiatric diagnosis or private history outside of team meetings dedicated to this purpose; this is considered disrespectful. This reinforces L’Arche’s desire to help others see them as individuals, not as their disability, and to mitigate against the tendency for people to see them as chronically sick or abnormal.

However, this unofficial narrative regime also has its shortcomings. Along with the sincere attempt to heighten assistants’ awareness of the gifts and lessons of core members by encouraging stories about them, a corollary tendency has developed whereby assistants seldom speak about their gifts or contribution to the home and the people they care for. Assistants’ gifts are discussed in annual reviews, or if the assistant is going through a hard time, but they are only a minimally sanctioned topic of everyday, informal stories. Some assistants found this lack of acknowledgment hard over time, and some felt it usurped their ability to feel good about their work and presence in the home. As one former assistant explains:

I guess the thing I found hardest was that there was little care or attention paid to the assistants, who were mostly these young, idealistic, searching people who were sacrificing a lot of themselves… [but] life mainly revolved around the people with disabilities … and not the needs of the assistants.

Long-term assistants counter that they are aware of this concern but that a concentrated effort is required to enculturate new people into an appreciation of core members’ gifts. Moreover, they point to the fact that L’Arche is not intended to be a therapeutic community for assistants. I cannot resolve this issue here, but it is important to recognize both the constructive and limiting dimensions of the subtlety of a narrative regime.

ii) Unpredictable effects of narrative

Assistants can have very different experiences in L’Arche in spite of the common culture. In this section, I discuss two caregivers whose time in L'Arche shared many common elements, and yet their responses to the environment were quite divergent. I argue that the enculturation of these two caregivers, or lack thereof, was in part the result of the strengths and limitations of applying narrative practices in everyday care. The first person is considered a L’Arche success story, while the second person’s situation is not thought to have been fecund for him or those around him.

Raoul was 19 years old when he came to L’Arche after a year of university followed by a year working at small jobs. He became an assistant in Blue House, a home with a full complement of experienced assistants, in a community that was not facing any major issues at the time. Raoul thus received solid modelling by experienced assistants through stories, observations, retreats and formal training. By all accounts, his time as an assistant was fruitful for both himself and those he lived with and cared for. We had a casual discussion when he had been there for about a year. He talked about hearing a story, told by the pastor, Joe, that contained lessons similar to the story of Frank and Neil. I asked him whether that story affected how he interacted in the home with Jeremy. Jeremy is in his mid-thirties and loves country music, dancing with a partner who wheels him about, and being with friends. He uses a wheelchair as his body is significantly underdeveloped and his muscles very tense. He does not use words to communicate although he often vocalizes . The following passage is Raoul’s response to my question:[xiii]

Joe’s story was pretty moving because he also talked to us about what we could do differently after that. But since being here, I’ve heard lots of stories from different assistants about core members. For sure looking back, all of it made me realise that Jeremy is a lot more than just someone that can’t eat by himself and yells a lot. You don’t think about that at first because you are just a bit overwhelmed by him. He’s so different from anyone I’ve ever hung out with obviously. So it was hard to know how to relate to him. Like at first in the bath, I just sort of did the bare minimum of what needed to be done, because it felt odd to be in there with him naked – I didn’t know what to do.

But later Chris told me a story about a time when he noticed how incredibly relaxed Jeremy’s muscles and body got when he stayed in the bath longer, and how happy he seemed because the water eventually relieved the constant pressure on his joints. Still, he can’t be in there alone—someone has to stay with him so he doesn’t go under. Since he told me that, I’ve tried to stay in longer with him, and do different things to make it fun like playing guitar or reading, or even prayer. We both like music, and we’ve found one song to play that he really seems to like a lot! Anyway, I would definitely say that I am more in tune with him now—I can pick up on when he’s feeling anxious or uncomfortable, like if some guest to the house is staring at him … and I can respond to him better, I think. The same goes for other people in the house now—I am more creative now about trying to get inside their head to figure out what they’d like.

Raoul’s case is a classic example of enculturation through storytelling, but it also illustrates two other points. First, as I noted with Frank’s story, narratives teach particular details about caring for and relating to a certain individual well, but there is also enough interpretive latitude for the lessons embedded in them to be adapted to other situations. Second, it demonstrates how teaching through stories can give caregivers a sense that they are an important element in the caregiving mix, and not just doing physical labour. The latitude in stories helps caregivers to feel that their choices, interpretations and creative initiative will actually make a difference to the person’s well-being[xiv]. This is so because, as I wrote earlier, narratives imply that things could have been otherwise without the (moral) agency of the protagonist. Narrative provides the assistant with the space to decide how to apply the lessons in particular situations that are often morally ambiguous. As Raoul talks, he recalls negotiating and testing the moral terms of what is “due” Jeremy beyond basic physical care.

Liam was 18 years old and just out of high school when he came to the same community and house one year before Raoul arrived. In spite of living under similar conditions in the home and hearing roughly the same stories from the same people, Liam never seemed to grasp the ideas that were being conveyed to him in narratives. At L’Arche, there is a cultural reticence to give people direct orders on how to be or behave[xv], which seems to be a by-product of their commitment to diversity. With Liam, the issue was not that he did not perform his role well, but that he did so without actually believing in the value (for others or his own growth) of being that way. My aim is not to determine why that was so for Liam, rather it is to discuss how Liam and Raoul illustrate two important limits of narratives as enculturation mechanisms.

First, although narratives are often credited with conveying moral lessons (Narayan 1989), in many situations informal, everyday narratives are morally ambiguous. They gesture at a definition of appropriate behaviour but they do not provide rigid guidelines or prescriptions. In this case, for example, although a certain level of physical care and respect is required at L’Arche, the narrative form of teaching gave Liam and Raoul a degree of autonomy to decide what they felt was “morally sufficient” care for Jeremy. Thus, even when used as a didactic tool, narratives are generally used by narrators to hint at, rather than specify, the behaviour or belief they hope to evoke in their listeners.

Occasionally, the ambiguity of narratives plays a role in unfortunate scenarios with assistants. I interviewed a handful of people[xvi] who had tried to confront their respective communities about how they were being treated personally, or regarding concerns about how the lived reality in their homes did not match the official rhetoric. All of them, however, found it hard to argue their case about unmet expectations because the expectations laid down in the narratives are ambiguous to begin with. Assistants talk about how leadership uses that grey area or ambiguity to deflect criticism and avoid responding to it with clear answers (see also Johnston 1987:7). This issue deserves more attention than I give it here, but it seems to point to the need for a mechanism for processing anonymous feedback that would pose less risk to the assistant. For instance, keeping some kind of professional person who is associated with the community on a retainer fee to be available to listen to, and report back on sensitive issues and feedback. The person must be familiar with but external to L’Arche, (e.g. nurse, conflict management consultant, human resources consultant, therapist) and be broadly perceived as politically neutral and thus able to both hold the source of the feedback in confidence, and report back honestly and constructively on this issues. They should report to a committee of people from varying levels of experience in the community, including core members, in order to ensure openness and follow-up, or corrective, action.

To return to the two young men, the fact that Liam (intentionally or not) did not undergo or undertake the subjective transformation that most assistants do, suggests that narratives are not binding. Their efficacy is often based on the assumption that the listener is ready, or is willing, to accept the particular moral system that supports that reality. As has been explained in relation to the limits of the human rights model—you cannot legislate someone to care (Ignatieff 1984; Ignatieff 2000).

b) Identity production

L’Arche assistants also use stories to construct their own identities or sense of self, within L’Arche. This function of the narrative is covert, as it is a sub-text of the stories, which conveys information about the teller. People craft themselves and hope to influence others’ perceptions of them through the role that they, themselves, play in the stories they tell (Kondo 1990; Wikan1992:464; Fulford 1999:14). This tool is particularly potent and popular in L’Arche, partly because it is an environment in which many traditional tools and measures for crafting one’s identity, status and achievements have been stripped away or are not culturally legitimate in this sub-culture that advocates anti-materialist, anti-competitive and anti-individualist values.

Whether intentiona