1st Edition

Power and Welfare Understanding Citizens' Encounters with State Welfare

By Nanna Mik-Meyer, Kaspar Villardsen Copyright 2013
176 Pages
by Routledge

174 Pages
by Routledge

176 Pages
by Routledge

In the welfare provision of today, power takes both the shape of juridical sanctions and of attractive offers for self-development. When state institutions punish criminals, remove children at risk, or enforce sanctions upon welfare recipients the question of power is immediately urgent. It is less readily evident that power is at stake when institutions educate, counsel or ‘empower’ citizens.... Read more

1. Introduction  2. Foucault: The Flexible Critique of Welfare  3. Goffman: Interaction and Identity Negotiations  4. Bourdieu: Field, Symbolic Violence and Domination  5. Luhmann: Welfare in Communicative Systems  6. Neo-Institutional Theory: Myths and Legitimacy  7. Risk Theory: Normality, Deviation and Neo-Liberalism  8. Transcending the Approaches

Biography

Nanna Mik-Meyer is Associate Professor in the Department of Organization and the Director of the Center for Health Management at Copenhagen Business School, Denmark.

Kaspar Villadsen is Associate Professor in the Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark.

‘Theory is, or should be, the servant and facilitator of empirical inquiry, which cannot take place without it. In this book, Mik-Meyer and Villadsen offer a sustained and disciplined example of that approach to theory. Power and Welfare is clear and accessible ... and will still be read when many fashionable theory texts have vanished from view.’ – Richard Jenkins, Professor, Department of Sociological Studies, The University of Sheffield, England.

‘This book is not only an examination of highly relevant and applicable theoretical approaches to power and welfare. It also shows the multiple forms and aspects of the play of power in the encounters between the citizen and the professional within the highly ambiguous context of contemporary liberalism. In both these respects, it is a leading example of what is emerging as a distinctive Copenhagen approach to public policy and governance.’ – Mitchell Dean, Professor, University of Newcastle, Australia, and Copenhagen Business School, Denmark.