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Abstract
ABSTRACTCommunity health workers (CHWs) occupy a liminal position in two senses: they are situated between the communities they come from and serve, and the health and social service professionals with whom they connect patients; and also between two forms of knowledge. In interacting with health and social service institutions, they draw on the 'technical knowledge' that dominates these settings. However, they must also draw on 'communicative knowledge', which is the situated and embodied knowledge needed to gain the trust of their community peers and to carry their voice, but which is often relegated to a secondary position. In this US-based study, we analyze interviews with CHWs, their supervisors, and advocates of their work, to better understand how CHWs mobilize discursive resources to combine these two forms of knowledge and, in doing so, constitute their liminal position as an essential asset. Our findings support valuing CHWs' incorporation within healthcare teams, so that health and social service professionals can directly interact with CHWs' situated and embodied knowledge of patients.

New mobile information and communication technologies are of special interest to researchers seeking to understand the problematic of boundaries between work and personal-life. This study examines how workers used and interpreted the personal digital assistant (PDA) as a boundary management resource. Using a protocol that combined structured, closed-ended questions with open-ended questions, 42 users were interviewed. The data were analyzed to examine individuals' practices in using this technology, the interpretive resources they drew upon, and the ways in which the spirit of the device's design intersected with their practices and interpretations. Results suggest that the spirit of the device is control, and that users interpreted their technological practices as expressions of personal agency, using the PDA to control the work—life boundary through both integration and segmentation of work and personal-life.