Introduction
The purpose of this paper is to reconsider the ways researchers, professionals, family members, and the older persons involved in this phenomenon construct elder abuse and neglect. It will be argued from a social constructionist perspective that abuse and neglect are products of complex social and psychological practices that reflect broader social arrangements. In other words, social constructionism refers to the emergence of phenomena relative to social contexts (Vygotsky, Reference Vygotsky1978).
The naturalistic paradigm is an important guiding conceptualization in the human service and helping professions as it emphasizes social construction of reality and the need to negotiate and interpret it. Interpretations are multiple and thus one needs to acquire skills and knowledge to formulate and use the ones best suited to his or her needs and rights. This calls for the need to broaden the notion of context to include the client and situation, as well as the institutional setting of practice (Rein and White, Reference Rein and White1981, as cited in Cooper, Reference Cooper2001).
In the remaining of this paper, we will explore the case of the social construction of elder abuse and neglect in order to illustrate the multiple ways in which the phenomena are shaped by social–political and interpersonal factors involved. Our case illustration will include, next to the perspectives of the researchers (authors), perspectives of professional social workers, older persons, and their adult offspring.
Elder abuse has become a well-known phenomenon, which has gained increased visibility due to increase in the aging population and has been recognized as a social problem. Its consequences are associated with distress and mortality in older people and psychological morbidity in caregivers, such as depression, fear, anxiety, submission, anger, irritation, ambivalence, and even suicidal thoughts (Dyer et al., Reference Dyer2006; Cooper et al., Reference Cooper, Selwood and Livingston2008; Fisher et al., Reference Fisher, Zink and Regan2011). Most quantitative studies of elder abuse have focused on the incidence, prevalence, and severity in its various forms, and have examined the characteristics of the abusers and victims, as well as developing profiles of older people at risk for abuse (Pillemer and Finkelhor, Reference Pillemer and Finkelhor1988; Podnieks, Reference Podnieks1992; Kurrle et al., Reference Kurrle, Sadler, Lockwood and Cameron1997; Comijs et al., Reference Comijs, Pot, Smith, Bouter and Jonker1998; Yan and Tang, Reference Yan and Tang2001; O'Keeffe et al., Reference O'Keeffe2007; 2009). The scope of the phenomenon varies both locally and cross-culturally, depending on whether a restrictive or broad definition was used, on instruments used to measure the phenomenon and on means of data collection (Cooper et al., Reference Cooper, Selwood and Livingston2008). An Israeli survey reported higher rates of elder abuse than most Western societies studied (18% abuse and 10% neglect). A comparison of the results of surveys in different parts of the world found similar rates of physical and sexual abuse and of limitations of freedom, ranging between 0.5% and 2.0%. However, financial exploitation is known to vary in different countries and ranges between 1% and 2.5%. In Israel, the rate found was 6.6%. Verbal abuse was the most prevalent form in all countries; the rates of such abuse in Israel are unusually high (14.2%) and similar only to those in Hong Kong (Yan and Tang, Reference Yan and Tang2001; Lowenstein et al., Reference Lowenstein, Eisikovits, Band-Winterstein and Enosh2009).
In-depth studies addressing abusive relationships in old age and using a qualitative methodology focused mainly on long-term parent–child relationships (Pillemer and Finkelhorn, Reference Pillemer and Finkelhor1988; Anetzberger et al., Reference Anetzberger, Korbin and Austin1994; Nahmiash, Reference Nahmiash2002; Band-Winterstein, Reference Band-Winterstein2013) and on lifelong intimate partner violence (Wilson, Reference Wilson2002; Buchbinder and Winterstein, Reference Buchbinder and Winterstein2003, Winterstein and Eisikovits, Reference Winterstein and Eisikovits2005; Zink et al., Reference Zink, Regan, Jacobson and Pabst2003; Montminy, Reference Montminy2005; Zink et al., Reference Zink, Jacobson, Pabst, Regan and Fisher2006; Beaulaurier et al., Reference Beaulaurier, Seff and Newman2010; Band-Winterstein, Reference Band-Winterstein2013). These studies attempted to provide an insider's perspective of the dynamics of relationships between victims and perpetrators, in the context of theoretical conceptualizations such as dependency, social exchange theory, inter-generational transmission, and power and control relations.
There is an ongoing polemic among researchers about the definitional issues of abuse and neglect (National Research Council, 2003; Anetzberger, Reference Anetzberger2005; Alon, Reference Alon2006). Recent research in the area of elder abuse and neglect indicates that these two concepts are used more often together than separately. The inconsistencies in usage indicate that the terms are in a constant state of debate.
When reviewing the literature on surveys of elder abuse (Lowenstein et al., Reference Lowenstein, Eisikovits, Band-Winterstein and Enosh2009), we identified that some elements included in the definitions are stressed at the expense of others. For instance, some studies focused on physical violence, verbal abuse, and neglect and others placed abuse and neglect under the same umbrella (e.g. Pillemer and Finkelhor, Reference Pillemer and Finkelhor1988; Podnieks, Reference Podnieks1992; Comijs et al., Reference Comijs, Pot, Smith, Bouter and Jonker1998; Muehlbaur and Crane, Reference Muehlbaur and Crane2006; O'Keeffe et al., Reference O'Keeffe2007; Lowenstein et al., Reference Lowenstein, Eisikovits, Band-Winterstein and Enosh2009). There is a lack of consensus on what to include and exclude in the term abuse, and how to locate neglect in relation to this. One cannot avoid the conclusion that social and cultural factors might play a role in the conceptual construction of abuse and neglect.
There is broad agreement about the need to focus on abuse as commission and neglect as omission. Abuse as commission was operationalized as “hitting, slapping, and burning, restraining and inappropriate use of medication.” Neglect, as an act of omission, was operationalized as “neglect of personal hygiene, malnutrition and dehydration,” (Campbell Reay and Browne, 2001, p. 57).
At times, however, neglect is viewed in a more active light and is related to as commission (e.g. purposeful neglect). An example would be the World Health Organization (WHO) definition: “A single, or repeated act, or lack of appropriate action, occurring within a relationship where there is an expectation of trust which causes harm or distress to an older person.” Moreover, there are those who add to omission and commission intentional and unintentional neglect. More recently, numerous studies lumped abuse and neglect together under the denominator “mistreatment,” which implies both an omission and a commission dimension (e.g. the definition suggested by the National Research Council, 2003; Fulmer et al., Reference Fulmer2005).
Given the above, the social construction of elder abuse merits further exploration. One can also view abuse and neglect as a dramatic realization in which various parties are interested in maneuvering or “managing” impressions and/or expressions of abuse and either question whether what we witness is abuse or affirm that it is (Gergen, Reference Gergen1994). The parties involved define and enforce a reality based on their relative status. With older persons, where the levels of dependence are high, power differentials are indicative as to who has the power to impose or deny a definition of a situation (Goffman, Reference Goffman1961). This selective imposition creates the idiosyncratic script for all persons involved. We can argue that among powerless groups, such as older persons, definitions are imposed on, because some are more dependent than others, based on health status, socio-economic resources, and mental state. Add to this the other protagonists in the drama, such as professionals and family members, who all have their own interests to direct and focus on various domains of the situation.
Cultural factors prevailing in society are also influential. For instance, Israel is known as a familistic society (Cohen, Reference Cohen2003), located between tradition and modernity (Lavee and Katz, Reference Lavee and Katz2003). This in turn affects the nature of intergenerational relationships in the family (Levitzki, Reference Levitzki2009) and the ways in which care of the old person is performed. In societies located between tradition and modernity such as Israel, intergenerational ambivalence can be ascertained between locating the old person at the center of family concern and placing him or her outside the family and expecting the welfare state to care for his or her needs (Haberkern and Szydlik, Reference Haberkern and Szydlik2010). The local and agent of care has an impact on the distribution of responsibility between society, the family, and the individual, and the way elder abuse and neglect is constructed socially and interpersonally.
An additional layer of the construction process is influenced by researchers. They seek to develop specific decoding devices, which lead to explanatory schemas until the explanation “makes sense” and comes to be accepted by most participants (Mishler, Reference Mishler1986). Such sense making is a mutual communication process among the interested parties, who become committed to the explanation in the process once they accept it. The professionals’ expertise is enhanced in the process along with the non-professional's experience of “making sense” of what happens. Along these lines, Bruner (Reference Bruner1990) suggested that these “culturally based interpretive systems” give meaning to certain actions as neglect or abuse. The social interpretation of abuse and neglect revolves around the meanings given to actions rather than around the actions themselves.
Such broad variation indicates that social and personal forces have significant impact on the way elder abuse and neglect are constructed and framed. Definitions often reflect the researchers’ or professionals’ version. However, the phenomenon involves additional actors, each with their own version.
Case illustration
The diverse construction of elder abuse and neglect is illustrated through the following case study of an old woman, her daughter, and the gerontological social worker assigned to the case.
A social construction perspective entails a focus on what is taken for granted in each script and what are the implications of liberating the script from the restraints of tacit knowledge (Polanyi, Reference Polanyi1966). In other words, we must examine what are some of the questions to be asked? How does the meaning-making process take place in terms of biographic work, selective recollection, perception of events through reconstruction in time and place, accounts and justifications provided, negotiation and social positioning? How is power maneuvered in ongoing relationships? What are the implications of power struggles?
Methods
The following findings are based on secondary analysis of data resulting from a national study on elder abuse and neglect conducted between 2006 and 2008 that included two components: one an epidemiological survey and the other a qualitative study aimed at capturing the insiders’ perspectives of the various participants in the construction of the phenomenon: victims, abusers, and practitioners (Eisikovits et al., Reference Eisikovits, Band-Winterstein and Lowenstein2005; Band-Winterstein et al., Reference Band-Winterstein, Eisikovits and Lowenstein2006).
The woman in the following narrative was chosen as a typical complex case that combines between long-life partner violence and abuse and neglect in old age. She is 82 years old, married for 60 years in a partner violent relationship. She has three grown-up children who have families of their own. No impairment was identified and she was known to be independent until recently. Her medical record indicated that she visited the community health agency on regular basis for general follow-up appointments, as expected at her age, and was in good physical health, yet diagnosed as suffering from depression due to living in a conflictual and abusive family relationship. However, after falling and breaking her knee, she was moved to a nursing home by the municipal welfare services.
The old woman's script:
I have been here in the nursing home now for some time. It is not bad, but you know what? If I had parents. . . would I send them to the nursing home? Never. I would carry them on my back, but never send them to a place like this. It's like an orphanage. But I had no choice. I was sent here and couldn't do much to change it. So I am here. Children, you know, these days, they have different ideas. I have this history of things happening to me against my will. When we came here, my parents made me marry this husband of mine. . . I should have said no. But in my generation, we didn't dare oppose our parents. So my life with him was a nightmare. When we were younger, he used to scream at me and beat me. Now he doesn't have the physical energy for that. He just took all the money and gave me money as if I was a child, counted every cent. I would just go spend most of my time on the streets; just not to be with him at home. They thought I was homeless. I was not. It's just that the kind of home I had, you should never know. . . Better not to have one. My daughter has her own open accounts with me. She let him have his way and now, when I needed help, they would not spend a cent. They wanted to get it from the welfare services. I was home after I broke my leg; unable to get up, or to get food for myself. I was dirty and hungry. I am ashamed even to tell you. So what is there to argue about with the nursing home people? At least they wash me. . .and feed me three meals a day. Where were my kids to take me in? Why did they let him do it? They are not bad here, they behave nicely to me. I just wish my daughter would not constantly argue with them when she comes to visit. They take it out on me. I tried telling her that, but she keeps doing it. Sometimes, I think that she should not come here at all, but if I tell her that, she will go away and never come to see me again. So I don't even know. . . should I talk? Should I stay silent? Perhaps it's just time to go. Finish this whole thing. . . I am tired.
The daughter in the following narrative is 52 years old, divorced with an 18-year-old son. She works as a caregiver to older persons.
The adult daughter's script:
This woman (my mother) passed away as a pure spirit; she never gossiped, never complained. But other than that, nothing was good at home. I tried to think about good things, but could not remember. There was nothing. . . Towards the end, she asked me: “Do you love me?” I said, “sure” and felt pain in my heart. Sometimes, it seems to me that she died of sorrow. A week before she died, they (my family) accused me of being unable to care for her. Does this mean “I neglected her,” as they said? No. I was the only one who came and checked on her, tried to listen to her and always tried to find practical solutions to her problems and also, as always, tried to bridge between her and my father. But as always, they kill the messenger. Mother was independent and was roaming the streets. . . not to be home with my father, since he was constantly screaming and swearing, and humiliating her. Then, one day, she fell and developed this inflammation in her knee. She went to see the doctor who referred her to a specialist but I was busy and couldn't take her. In addition, my father was against her taking any kind of medicine or spending resources for getting a second opinion. Her situation deteriorated and from her leg, it moved to deep depression. One day, my brothers came to visit and found her lying in feces, with blue marks on her face and father was yelling at her. The refrigerator was empty. There was no supervision, no caregiver. No one from the welfare came to investigate, and I called the welfare services and then she was taken to the nursing home; then, after three days there, she fell and dislocated her shoulder. Surgery and more surgery; I argued with the nurses; I asked the social worker to get her out of there; her situation deteriorated. I have constant thoughts coming back to me from childhood and so as not to think and suffer, I take Vaben. When she died, I burst out crying, looked at her and said: “What an innocent face”. . .Towards the end, I went to the hospital every day. I was at the point at which I was asking God to let her rest. You should have seen how she suffered. . . I would criticize the staff; you would never know how they treated her and how they related to her. All this running around, the tension, her dying, exhausted me. I cannot blame the welfare people, but they were not on the alert when they should have been.
The social worker in the following narrative is a senior professional with 28 years of experience working in the welfare agency with multi-problem families for 15 years and in the last 7 years as an expert social worker with the older population in the unit for prevention of elder abuse and neglect.
The social worker's script:
We have known this family for a long time, since I used to work as a generic social worker, before I went into gerontology. The children were removed from the home due to parental child neglect. They were always known as a “multi-problem” family, including incidents of domestic violence. After the children became adults, the social services were not in contact with the family on a regular basis. Recently, after many years, the daughter reported serious problems with her parents, which she was unable to handle alone. Several home visits indicated some hygiene problems and some interpersonal conflict between the parents, but nothing severe enough to warrant drastic intervention. . . Just normal cases. . . from my home visits and from her medical record I was under the impression that old woman was mobile, able to get around, and cognitively intact; then, recently, she was injured as a result of an accident and her functioning ability became more limited. As a result, the National Insurance Institute considered giving her permanent home care. However, the husband refused to let anyone in the home including any health care professionals. Given this situation, along with the previously known family history and her present emotional instability as a result of her helplessness, called for out of home placement, even against her will. The daughter cooperated with the idea of placing her in a nursing home, but never stopped complaining as to the quality of care, as if she had taken such good care of her. After all, the mother had become a major burden on this daughter, and the other siblings did nothing to help. As such none of the children were officially appointed as caregivers. The daughter had constant fights with the staff there and the mother appeared torn between the warring parties. In addition, her husband refused to pay any part of her medical care or participate in at least part of her nursing home expenses, claiming that as long as she was home, he would use his resources to care for her; once she was outside the home against his will, then the welfare authorities were responsible for her care. As he was always in control of the family finances, he felt this to be his exclusive prerogative. The daughter had no financial or emotional means to contribute to the mother's care. The family withdrew any responsibility over her. At the same time, they increasingly blamed the “system” for neglecting her. Increased conflict and aggression was directed toward me. I understand this, as the husband needed a substitute for his life-long victim, and the daughter needed a target at which to release her guilt feelings. The daughter was always ambivalent; she wanted to help her mother, but never really forgave her for “stealing her childhood,” as she put it.
Analysis and discussion
A social construction-oriented analysis of these scripts allows us as researchers to rediscover and question the taken-for-granted nature of abuse and neglect. The historical context of this family's interaction with the welfare services calls for change due to old age. It calls for switching from viewing them as a multi-problem family living in intimate partner violence (IPV) to identifying them as living with elder abuse and neglect. However, neglect remained in the background, as an integral part of the family history (children's removal from home), according to the social worker's narrative. Such change entailed a whole new set of problems. The woman's incapacitation due to the fall acerbated the neglect to a point at which it could no longer be taken for granted and, as such, moved to the foreground of her existential experience. She was now unable to take care of herself. As this was a family of lonely individuals, with all the members fending for themselves, the situation exposed the neglect.
Similar to her mother, the daughter viewed her father's abuse toward her mother as a life-long ingredient of her everyday experience, and therefore also took it for granted. When she identified omission of care as a result of the mother's injury, the daughter's interpretation of the everyday experience changed. Due to her brothers, who felt the situation was untenable, a change of action on her side was called for. Her perception of the family reality and the different family roles within it also changed. The father's dominant role continued as long as the daughter perceived the levels of risk to be acceptable. However, this changed when the neglect became visible to other family members, which led to the involvement of the welfare services.
Similar to the daughter and mother, the social worker accepted and normalized the family practices and norms, and took action only when she identified the new situation of neglect due to the deterioration in her physical status.
It is important to note that the social and historical context of meaning making is also reconstructed differentially throughout the various participants’ narratives (Gergen, Reference Gergen2001). The old woman has a life-course context of being a victim of IPV throughout her adulthood. As such, she experienced several kinds of abuse. However, old age and the physical limitations that came about brought her to a twilight zone, as abuse became mixed with severe neglect. In her meaning making, abuse was taken for granted and the degrees of tolerance for it were, accordingly, stretched beyond the boundaries of her everyday reality. This enabled deterioration of the neglect without any intervention.
Within the same historical context, the daughter constructed a different meaning arising from the various roles she played over time in the drama: she was a child victim, who lost her childhood due to ongoing violence between her parents; she grew up distancing herself from the family to survive, while taking the blame for neglecting her parents; following her mother's deterioration in old age, she carried the burden of her care along with the anger she felt toward her parents. Moreover, she saw herself as a victim of the family, by being the only one among the siblings to fulfill adult–child obligations. Her construction was based on two contradictory forces in modern society (Hareven, Reference Hareven1986). On the one hand, she was socialized to her family norms of “everyone for him/herself,” and, on the other hand, to the social normative expectation of caring for aged parents.
The social worker had a long-term history with the family, which went back a generation. Her experience led to the belief that problems between the spouses were insoluble within the family and that there was a need to open its boundaries to outside intervention. This was achieved in the previous generation by removing the children from the home, based on the recognition that the family could not deal with their upbringing. The pattern was repeated in the present generation by removing the older mother from the home, based on the assumption that her adult children were unable to care for her. Such action indicated that the decision-making power was once again in the hands of the social services. The historical context enabled the definition of the entire family by the social services as cross-generationally “at risk,” which led to the “carte blanche” usage of drastic intervention as in the remote past. As a result of such meaning making, the more severely a problem is defined, the more the social workers tend to move from social intervention to social control.
The social negotiation of meaning is constructed through power (Harre, Reference Harre1979), both on the family and the professional level. The more severe the problem becomes, the more the power shifts from the family to the system. This is demonstrated from the mother's narrative describing her removal from her home against her will. The daughter's narrative illustrated how in spite of her efforts to care for her mother and to partner with social services, she loses control along the way following her mother's placement outside the home. From the social worker's script, we understand that she takes over by placing the mother in a nursing home because of the family's history and the daughter's alleged incompetence. Once the power shifts from the family to the social worker who is part of the formal system, the definition of the problem is also at the discretion of the same system rather than of the family. This enables the formal systems to control the definition of what abuse and neglect is and how it should be handled.
The struggle for power is influenced by the way people “make sense” of their abuse and neglect experiences, rather than by what constitutes the abuse and neglect (Fiske, Reference Fiske1990, p. 115). The way the older woman makes sense of her neglect is through a mixture of being cared for outside the home and being placed in a nursing home against her will. She experiences the placement as being thrown away and abandoned. Thus, her experiential location is one of being in an orphanage and thus of being an orphan. The experience of abandonment is cross-generational, as it is reported by both the mother and the adult daughter. Suffering throughout life, experiencing abandonment and exhaustion, and forgiving it all fuse in the construct of being a martyr. The successful management of this construct is reiterated by the daughter's initial description of her mother as a pure spirit, just, and righteous.
The daughter presents a narrative in which she faces an inevitable course of events related to her mother, which she attempts to resist. Her overall means of making sense of the situation is through molding her self-image into a fighter against all odds, against forces larger than herself and attempting to minimize damage, resist evil while sacrificing herself in the process. Her interactions at the nursing home are a dramatic expression of this. By so doing, she balances her mother's weakness as martyrdom. It seems as if part of this presentation of self is related to the understanding that the more she presents her mother as a martyr (saint), the more her sacrifice becomes appreciated. Perhaps such sense making and impression management enable her to cleanse herself of guilt and shame.
The social worker defines the situation through a narrative of choosing between the lesser of two evils. She saves the woman from continuous neglect and abuse by removing her from her residence and placing her in an environment that she had no choice but to accept. The social worker's narrative simultaneously withdraws responsibility of the family to care for their mother based on past experience along with the present situation, thus placing her in a nursing home. However, when the daughter complains that the treatment is inadequate due to her mother falling and breaking her shoulder, the social worker holds the daughter responsible because she could not care for her mother at home which caused neglect. Her ideology of “best available option,” along with the way she manages the situation, compromises and passes responsibility back to the family to enable a professional competence-ridden image. Her specific role definition and the limitations on the extent and depth of responsibility are all directed toward reinforcing her professional role. The decoding of the case by using terminology and images of the multi-problem family has connotations of difficult work with little chance of success. Therefore, not succeeding which is expressed by the mother's death is more “understandable.”
Finally, researchers’ recent definitions use “trusting relationships” as a recurring context in which neglect and abuse take place (Fulmer et al., Reference Fulmer2005). However, trust in interpersonal relationships cannot be taken for granted. Families and relationships have histories and memories heavily loaded with both positive and negative content, the members are involved in endless accounting procedures and role reversal frequently occurs in old age. At any point in the family history, the “trusting relationship” is constructed and reconstructed and cannot be taken for granted. At times, especially within lifelong violent family relationships, the relationship is based on terror (Johnson, Reference Johnson1995).
Throughout this process, the formal definitions of the terms of abuse and neglect are used as “baseline.” These definitions are delineated and initially proposed by researchers and other officials who are outsiders to the phenomenon, but hold positions of influence. Such processes leave little space for the lay definitions and usually distance themselves from attempts to include folk knowledge in framing them. This often creates inconsistencies between the definitions used by the target populations (folk knowledge; Bruner, Reference Bruner1990), given the gaps between how the phenomenon looks from the inside (emic definitions) and from the outside (etic definitions; Pike, Reference Pike1954).
One can view abuse and neglect as dramatic realization, in which various parties have an interest in maneuvering or “managing” impressions and/or expressions of abuse and either question whether what we witness is abuse or affirm that it is or is not. In this dramatic reality, the actors, or at least some of them, are not of our choice, but are rather imposed on us. They define and enforce a reality based on their relative power and interest. With older persons, when the levels of dependence are high, such power differentials are reasonably indicative as to who has the power to impose or deny a definition of a situation. This selective imposition creates the idiosyncratic script for all persons involved. We can say that among powerless groups such as older persons, definitions are imposed in a non-homogeneous manner, as some are more dependent than others, based on health status, socio-economic resources, and mental state.
Practical implications
Healthcare professionals and social workers should take into account the context of each one of the players in the field along with being reflective concerning their complex role within dealing with elder abuse and neglect. This includes being aware of their own attitudes toward old age and abuse, personal experiences, background, and interactions within their families, which could influence their intervention strategies toward older persons and their family members. The social workers’ attitudes and emotions need “bracketing” in order for them to be reflective and to be able to relate simultaneously to multiple points of view which can be controversial. The social worker who comes with a given stock of knowledge, both theoretical and practical, should not take for granted any one perspective but rather consider to be attentive to the voices of all protagonists involved (Cooper, Reference Cooper2001). In the case presented in this paper, the social worker by being reflective (D'Cruz et al., Reference D'Cruz, Gillnham and Melendez2007) to her own attitudes toward this family's strengths, a different intervention program might have emerged. This could perhaps be an in-depth consideration of the mother's wishes based on her worldview of how she wants to be taken care of in her situation. In addition, we could take into consideration that the daughter is a caregiver of older people for a living and she showed willingness to do so for her mother as well. This could enable the option to provide the daughter with information and resources to manage her mother's home care.
The constructionist perspective helps avoiding the possible role engulfment (Goffman, Reference Goffman1963) of the professionals involved, and thus will ensure openness to multiple perspectives related to the situations as described above. It will further enhance awareness of the social workers to their power position granted to them by their authority to intervene.
The construction of intervention is related to what and how professionals perceive elder abuse and neglect. If they are intimidated by it, feel helpless, frustrated and anxious, and have paternalistic attitudes toward older persons, they will probably not have much faith in the families’ ability to change. Understanding the multiple constructions of the events enables the understanding of power distribution (Harre, Reference Harre1979) and creation of alternative solutions (Kelly, Reference Kelly1991).
Conflict of interest
None.
Description of authors’ roles
The authors have equally contributed to all parts of the paper during all stages of the research and writing.
