The market context: service–consumer

This chapter introduces the market context and examines the recent efforts of integrating norms and values from the market—such as ideals of service, freedom of choice and co-production— into present day welfare work. The chapter begins by introducing the market context and its inherent principles. This is done by drawing especially on the work of Clarke and colleagues on the expert citizen of how the marketisation of public administration lays ground for a number of challenges and dilemmas for both welfare workers (in the roles of service providers) and citizens (in the roles of costumers and consumers). The role of soft power in these idealised service encounters within welfare work is also discussed and the chapter concludes with a discussion on the role and expressions of agency within this marketised context.

Powerful encounters as seen from an interactionist perspective

This chapter present the tradition of symbolic interactionism, that is, the interactionist approach to studying the in-between in human encounters and the study of how interacting individuals interpret the particular situation in which they are part and how this structures their interactions (as put forth by Goffman especially). The chapter furthermore discuss selected empirical studies of the encounter between welfare workers and citizens with particular attention to their respective roles and their relationship with one another. In addition, the chapter emphasises the soft power at play between citizens and welfare workers and exemplify how the structural elements and agency of the two parties frame the encounter. Thus, both welfare workers and citizens co-produce dominant norms in welfare work and this (re)production is an expression of soft power.

Introduction

This introductory chapter presents the aims and focus of this book: to explore current encounters between citizens and welfare staff and to investigate the effects of principles from the bureaucracy, values from the market and norms from the field of psychology on these welfare encounters. Such norms and principles are understood as immensely powerful, as they urge the use of specific resources/capitals, are agenda setting, and may even be attractive for both the welfare professionals and the citizens. The chapter briefly introduces its key theoretical concepts (‘welfare state’, ‘power’, and ‘professions’) before discussing relevant developments in current welfare states such as The Third Way, the move from government to governance, etc. and how these impact the welfare encounter.

The bureaucratic context: administrator–client

This chapter addresses the first of the three contexts (bureaucracy, market and psychology) which the book explores with regards to its influence on present day welfare encounters. The chapter thus presents the bureaucratic contexts and the primary literature hereon; especially centering Weber’s definition of the ideal type bureaucracy as well as the work of Lipsky on street level bureaucratic welfare work. In doing so, the chapter pays particular attention to the discretionary practices of welfare staff in bureaucratic organisations when discussing how values, norm and principles from this context affects the encounter between welfare workers (administrators) and citizens (clients). Lastly the chapter expands upon the discussion on discretionary practices by exploring the role of agency, the concepts of ‘state agents’ and ‘citizen agents’ as well as the notion of welfare staff as holding two bodies.

Soft power and welfare work

This chapter presents key discussion on power and introduces the concept of power used in this book; one that combines Bourdieu’s work on field, capital and doxa with Goffman’s work on strategic interaction in efforts to ensure analyses of welfare encounters which show how the encountering individuals are shaped by the capacities and resources of the field(s) in which they interact as well as how both parties actively manipulate and negotiate these resources. This conceptualisation furthermore draws on the work of Nye on soft power as this concept point to the fact that the type of power at play in welfare encounters is not best described as hard or constraining but rather how particular resources and capitals give some actors the (soft) power to define the interaction.

The power of bureaucracy, market and psychology in citizen–staff encounters

This chapter presents excerpts from two of the author’s previous empirical studies on welfare encounters. The aim of presenting these empirical analyses is to illustrate how to study the power of particular contexts in the welfare encounter. By presenting these two empirical cases, the chapter shows how diagnoses and systems of categorisation reflect a larger environment (a concept by Hall, which here refers to bureaucratic principles, market values, NPM techniques and norms from the field of psychology) and produce particular behavioural expectations of both citizens and welfare workers. The first case shows how doctors (GPs and municipal medical consultants), caseworkers and citizens negotiate the diagnoses of stress and depression, and the second case (greatly inspired by Goffman’s work) shows how norms from the field of psychology and the bureaucracy affect the evaluation of whether or not a citizen is suited for early retirement benefits.

The psychology-inspired context: coach–coachee

This chapter introduces the third context which is key to this book’s analyses of present day welfare encounters, that is, the norms and values from the fields of psychology. This chapter addresses a range of both different and partly overlapping scholarly discussions regarding various ways of identifying the welfare state, such as therapeutic, psychological, maternal or pedagogised alongside discussions of the so-called personalisation and co-production approaches to welfare work. In doing so, the chapter especially draws on the work of Pykett. In emphasising the research on this context, the chapter shows how the roles of welfare workers such as facilitators, coaches and therapists are at play even in welfare areas, which are not traditionally associated with the so-called psy-disciplines (such as psychology, psychiatry, medicine, etc.). The chapter concludes by discussing the agency of welfare workers and citizens and how they each respond to this particular framing of the welfare work.

Professions, de-professionalisation and welfare work

This chapter engages with the primary scholarly work on the concepts of profession, professionals and professionalisation and positions the book within this research as well. The chapter thus presents an overview on the sociology of professions, discusses relevant research related to the concept of professionalism—in which Evetts’ distinction between organisational professionalism (governed by organisational norms) and occupational professionalism (governed by professional norms) is particularly important. Furthermore, the chapter presents the key academic contributions to the sociology of expertise as well as recent discussions of new professionalism, re-professionalisation and de-professionalisation and how these characteristics may be regarded as inextricable consequences of the strong current influence of marketization and managerialism on welfare work.

Conclusion

This chapter presents the primary findings and contributions of the book; finding amongst other things that in efforts to analyse the (new) positioning of citizens and welfare workers it is most fruitful to apply a power perspective that combines 2-D, 3-D and 4-D power approaches. The analyses of the book thus found three levels of power at play in current welfare encounters: at a 2-D level, a bureaucratic context which merits certain rules and procedures; at 3-D level, the interpretive horizon of the social actors who perceive a taken-for-granted reality or natural order of things; and lastly at 4-D level, social subjects whose actions reflect the rules of the bureaucracy as well as the values of the market and norms from the field of psychology. The book furthermore argues, that welfare encounters ought to be viewed as the outcomes of specific dominant ideas about what it takes to be regarded as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ citizens today; that the agency of citizens and welfare workers thus has to do with interconnectedness, interaction and intersubjectivity.