Gitte Sommer Harrits

Prevention at the Front Line: How home nurses, pedagogues, and teachers transform public worry into decisions on special efforts

Abstract Within recent years, Denmark has implemented a number of preventive policies based on the line of reasoning that it is better to prevent than to solve problems. Preventive policies express political intentions aimed at solving core welfare state problems, but policy goals are ambiguous and vague, and policy tools are often poorly specified. Thus, front-line workers (FLWs) are pinpointed as key persons to implement these policies, because they hold a ‘specific knowledge’ about and ‘close acquaintance’ with citizens. In the article, we explore different types of front-line work, implementing preventive policies, and identifying children in need of a special effort.

Class, Culture and Politics: On the Relevance of a Bourdieusian Concept of Class in Political Sociology

Even though contemporary discussions of class have moved forward towards recognizing a multidimensional concept of class, empirical analyses tend to focus on cultural practices in a rather narrow sense, that is, as practices of cultural consumption or practices of education. As a result, discussions within political sociology have not yet utilized the merits of a multidimensional conception of class. In light of this, the article suggests a comprehensive Bourdieusian framework for class analysis, integrating culture as both a structural phenomenon co-constitutive of class and as symbolic practice. Further, the article explores this theoretical framework in a multiple correspondence analysis of a Danish survey, demonstrating how class and political practices are indeed homologous. However, the analysis also points at several elements of field autonomy, and the concluding discussion therefore suggests the need for further studies.

Constructing at-risk target groups

This article explores the political legitimatization of intervention toward at-risk target groups in Danish preventive policy. Here, the overall intention is to detect social problems before they occur. Part of these preventive policies is the emergence of at-risk target groups identified as potential deviants among ‘the normal population’ of children, families and youth. We explore policy documents and find relations between political categories, social categories, perceptions of normality and risk, policy legitimization and policy tools, which we argue constitute the discursive setting for why, how and who should be objects of preventive intervention. Through a comparative analysis of preventive policy in health care, daycare and primary education, we conclude that social labeling and common sense categories play an important role in the construction of at-risk target groups. These categories function as the designators of at-risk target groups as deterministic interpretations of risk factors. We discuss why we think this might lead to unintended stereotyping and even discrimination of what was recently not part of the states worrisome gaze.This article explores the political legitimatization of intervention toward at-risk target groups in Danish preventive policy. Here, the overall intention is to detect social problems before they occur. Part of these preventive policies is the emergence of at-risk target groups identified as potential deviants among ‘the normal population’ of children, families and youth. We explore policy documents and find relations between political categories, social categories, perceptions of normality and risk, policy legitimization and policy tools, which we argue constitute the discursive setting for why, how and who should be objects of preventive intervention. Through a comparative analysis of preventive policy in health care, daycare and primary education, we conclude that social labeling and common sense categories play an important role in the construction of at-risk target groups. These categories function as the designators of at-risk target groups as deterministic interpretations of risk factors. We discus...

Political power as symbolic capital and symbolic violence

This article discusses the possibility of the simultaneous existence of inclusion/empowerment and exclusion/dominance within the practices of everyday political participation. Taking a point of departure in the Bourdieusian approach to practice and symbolic power, the article first constructs a theoretical framework for studying political practices and power as both symbolic capital and symbolic violence. Secondly, results from a qualitative research project are presented, making it possible to trace and follow the logics of political habitus and the symbolic classifications of democratic practices, and explore how mechanisms of symbolic boundaries and misrecognition work to produce both elements of inclusion and exclusion.

Categories and categorization: towards a comprehensive sociological framework

This article presents a comprehensive framework for the study of categories and categorization. Sociological studies of the classic theme ‘categorization’ seem to have faded in favor of psychological research and – most recently – policy studies, and we argue that present theories lack an adequate conception of the distinction between political and social categories as well as an adequate conceptualization of the different social contexts for categorization. Concerning the first point, we suggest separating an understanding of the political as legitimate use of state power and performative and dislocative practices, corresponding to a conception of the social as that which is beyond political institutions and that which is sedimented and stable. Drawing mainly on French epistemology, the article further discusses three important contexts for social (i.e. beyond political institutions) categories and categorization, namely systems of exchange, symbolic lifestyles and bodily schemes, and moral boundaries and perceptions of normality. These contexts are complementary and each presents an autonomous arena for processes of categorization and construction of social categories. In conclusion, we suggest that much can be gained from addressing political categories in the sociological study of categorization.

In the eye of the beholder: What determines how people sort others into social classes?

Contrary to much conventional wisdom, this article shows that class is still used by people to sort others into groups, that this sorting is largely on the basis of income and occupation and that it occurs in conditions of both high and low income inequality. Uniquely, we use both open-ended survey questions and a factorial survey experiment to show that people from high (Britain) and low (Denmark) inequality countries are willing to define classes and they do so mainly in terms of job and income. Even though people in the two countries classify others using somewhat different class labels - with working class labels being used more frequently in Britain than in Denmark - we find a common underlying pattern to the classification. This indicates that class categorization takes place according to a strong underlying mental schema.