Paper short abstract:

The paper explores the network of relations connected to the glass barrier that divides the waiting room from the Triage area of the E.R. Patients, providers and "the Glass", these are the protagonists of the grassroots reshaping of the most important resource of the Emergency Room: The Time.

Paper long abstract:

The daily clash between patients and providers sees at its center the Glass barrier between them. Both these "space based" identities exploit the material features of this "container" through strategic and tactical behaviors. The glass became the battleground where the two groups are projecting expectations into an endless informal negotiation for attentions and cares. Here begins a broader re-appropriation of the central hospital structure by the local identities, which are unhinging the standardized organization of time to build a space for their social needs. The glass embodies the spoliation of the personal history imposed from a top-down perspective by the central structure. However, this panoptic device is also capable to offer tactical possibilities exploited by the patients through a grassroots mobilization. The paper sustains the blind ambivalence of the barrier as both the exemplification of the central authority's power and as the main instrument of marginal power practices. The glass became the key to conquer the only resource that matters inside the E.R.: "the control upon our time". However, the dialogue between the central authority and its margins is not that easy. As a provider said: "The glass is the only thing that saves us, we can ignore people and not going crazy, someone said that we need to remove it because it is too much impersonal. I said to him that all the nurses would be on strike until the glass could stay. I would personally enchain myself to the front door before letting this happen!"