PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore the formation and composition of “regions” as places of care, both empirically and conceptually.Design/methodology/approachThis paper draws on action-oriented research involving experiments aimed at designing, implementing and evaluating promising solutions to the entwined problems of a burgeoning elderly population and an increasing shortage of medical staff. It draws on ethnographic research conducted in 14 administrative areas in the Netherlands, a total of 273 in-depth interviews and over 1,000 h of observations.FindingsThis research challenges the understanding of a healthcare region as a clearly bounded topological area. It shows that organizations and professionals collaborate in a variety of different networks, some conterminous with the administrative region established by policymakers and others not. These networks are by nature unstable and dynamic. Attempts to form new regional collaborations with neighbouring organizations are complicated by existing healthcare governance and accountability structures that position organizations as competitors.Practical implicationsPolicymakers should take the pre-established partnerships of healthcare organizations into account before delineating the area in which regionalization is meant to take place. A better alignment of governance and accountability structures is also needed for regionalization to occur in healthcare.Originality/valueThis paper combines insights from valuation studies with sociogeographical literature and provides a framework for understanding the assembling and disassembling of “regions”.

The word Casanova is often treated as a synonym for womaniser, variously interpreted in a positive or negative light depending upon the audience. The Seduction Community (SC) largely comprises young heterosexual men who follow and adapt the teachings of commercial pick-up artists, typically in an effort to embody the Casanova-myth. This paper reports and analyses findings from a qualitative study of the SC. Drawing from life history interviews ( n =29) and understandings generated during fieldwork in California in 2009 and 2013, the paper explores the meanings of the Casanova-myth qua urban legend. As explained in studies that view modern society as a ‘folk community’, urban legends help mediate anxieties following the Great Transformation in American community life. However, this paper contends that such legends may also produce the same gender anxieties they aim to ameliorate. Lascivious myth-making, which finds clear expression within the rationalised SC, constitutes a double-edged sword under conditions of rapid social change comprising confluent intimacies and the potential marketisation of everything.

Task reallocation is increasingly foregrounded as a promising solution for capacity problems. Numerous studies show, however, that task reallocation between medical professionals is a highly contested issue and difficult to institutionalise. Conflicts are omnipresent and often arise from ‘intraprofessional competition’: Zero‐sum games between professionals from different disciplinary backgrounds where one party’s gains require another party’s losses. In this article, we build on calls to enrich the sociology of professions with new concepts and theories. We analyse a case of task reallocation between medical professionals in a nursing home using concepts from empirical ethics and valuation studies. We argue that modes of good care offer a valuable framework for analysing the reorganisation of professional work because they provide an empirically grounded and fine‐grained conceptual toolkit for understanding the dynamics among professionals and between professionals and managers. Enactment of different modes of good care inspires innovation in service provision but at the same time creates new tensions between those involved. We show how, in times of scarcity, a dynamic emerges between professionals attempting to stave off and reallocate work, thereby restricting their professional domains.

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De groeiende ouderenpopulatie met een steeds complexer wordende zorgvraag (een combinatie van zowel somatische als psychogeriatrische aandoeningen) en het toenemend tekort aan arbeidskrachten maken verregaande beleidsveranderingen noodzakelijk om de ouderenzorg toekomstbestendig te maken (WRR, 2021). Zorginstellingen, en vooral verpleeghuizen, ervaren steeds meer moeilijkheden om hun personeelsbestand op peil te houden (SER, 2021). Dit werd tijdens de coronapandemie pijnlijk zichtbaar toen zorginstellingen met kunst-en vliegwerk de basale zorg probeerden te blijven verlenen en telefonisten en verpleeghuisdirecteuren aan het bed stonden. Maar het arbeidsmarktprobleem is al langer voelbaar, vooral in niet-stedelijke gebieden buiten de Randstad. Voormalig minister van Volksgezondheid, Welzijn en Sport (VWS), Hugo de Jonge, wees vóór de pandemie al op de onhoudbaarheid van het huidige systeem. In een interview stelde hij dat 'het geloof in de markt als probleemoplosser op de terugtocht is' (Van der Aa & Kok, 2019). De marktdynamiek in het zorgdomein zou tot versnippering en ongewenste verspilling leiden, bijvoorbeeld in de wijkverpleging. In plaats van een veelvoud aan zorgaanbieders in de wijk zag De Jonge meer heil in een overzichtelijk aanbod om afstemming tussen zorgverleners in de wijk te stimuleren, met name tussen de wijkverpleegkundige en de huisarts. Hetgeen met de overheveling naar gemeenten, en de bijbehorende aanbestedingen, grotendeels verloren is gegaan.'De regio' wordt veelvuldig genoemd als centraal en 'nieuw' sturings-en ordeningsprincipe om capaciteitsproblemen in de ouderenzorg tegen te gaan (Schuurmans, Wallenburg & Bal, 2019). Regionalisering lijkt ogenschijnlijk tegenstrijdig binnen het huidige zorgstelsel van gereguleerde marktwerking (Helderman e.a., 2005), en wordt bovendien gestapeld bovenop al bestaande sturingsarrangementen zoals professionele autonomie en eerdere de-en recentralisatieprocessen (Van de Bovenkamp, Stoopendaal & Bal, 2016). Hoewel regionalisering wordt gezien als oplossingsrichting voor de complexe problemen in de ouderenzorg, ontbreekt het momenteel aan kritische analyses van de regionale uitdagingen voor betrokken