Boundary work: the Mensendieck system and physiotherapy education in Norway

The history of physiotherapy can be seen as a boundary conflict, the profession sought to first establish, then maintain, its distinctive professional identity. Traditional approaches sociology professions support this, seeing professionalization an ongoing process enclosure, encroachment, and conflict. Recent work, however, has emphasized fluidity collaborative nature projects, placed more emphasis on inter-professional negotiations disciplinary coexistence. In this paper, we draw work analyze harmonization independent Mensendieck System medical gymnastics in Norway, emerging state-sponsored system. Our contention is that over course middle decades 20th century, advocates providers orthodox, biomedically informed physiotherapy, came together found way collaboratively shared space without compromising their identities. We argue approach both points ways might revisit traditional conflict-based analyses while also suggesting new imagining how change years come.