Seminar Series on the History and Sociology of Welfare Work

Seminar Series headed by The Research Priority Area The History and Sociology of Welfare Work, Section of Educational Research, Department of Media, Cognition & Communication, University of Copenhagen

Ever since “the crisis of the welfare state” was voiced in the 1970s, liberalism has been strengthened and formed anew with a more positive attitude towards the state. Thus, ‘neoliberalism’ gained momentum. This seminar series considers what neoliberalism is and how it has influenced the practice and operation of welfare work and the way welfare work is related to issues of social solidarity and social inequality. The seminar series invites and brings together scholars from different areas of study in order to illuminate these issues most carefully.

The welfare professions are central in the operationalization of social security in the welfare state. Moreover, they also play a vital role in the state’s general economic approach, which combines economic strategies of growth, market logics, and state planning and regulation. Fundamentally, a welfare state works by intervening in society, actively trying to prevent or address social problems through social education, thus promoting health and functional social relations. In this perspective welfare work aims at making and remaking practical and sensible individuals, whom the state can expect uses the knowledge provided by the welfare professionals. Thus welfare states urge their citizens to plan and conduct their own welfare according to the collective norms expressed by welfare professional practices and institutions. In other words, the social rights of the welfare state bring about symbolic boundaries delimiting appropriate behaviour and conduct, and the professions in a sense serve as gatekeepers and defenders of normality. The question is how the gatekeeping is carried out, what it entails and what its significance is in terms of social solidarity and inequality.

The seminar series stresses that the mechanisms and processes of the professions are energised through professional agents’ actions and viewpoints, and the seminar series intend to unpack the specific symbolic dimensions of welfare work, presenting and discussing the different professional repertoires which are used and circulate, thus adding dynamism to the study of welfare work under neoliberalism.

The seminar series is conducted in either Danish or English and the seminars begin during the autumn of 2014 and will be announced continually.