Magnus Ring

The implementation of elder-care in France and Sweden: a macro and micro perspective

ABSTRACT This paper presents results from a comparative project on the implementation of elder-care in France and Sweden. The transition to requiring care is understood as a process, and elder-care is seen as a part of a more general organisation of social care that reflects different welfare traditions. An overview of elder-care on the institutional level in the two countries is supplemented by case studies from the perspective of older people which identify ways of co-operation between actors, such as public eldercare providers, family members and help provided by profit and non-profit organisations. The interviews include approximately 20 older persons in each country as well as a small number of administrators and adult children. The study sheds light on how policies are implemented on the local level and puts the focus on who actually does what and when for older persons with care needs. The different roles played by the state, the family, the market and civil society are examined. Family members in France take on a more active role both as co-ordinators of care and as actual caregivers. The study shows that gender and social class remain associated with caring but that such differences are much larger in France than in Sweden.

Review Essay : Towards a New Sociology of Art Worlds: Bringing Meaning Back In

tion. Combined with a feminist appropriation of Foucault, which reads artifacts through discourses of power and domination, these sociological approaches to art have spread into art history and other disciplines traditionally grounded in humanism. Here, areas of study such as art history, which once sought to uncover the universalistic values which defmed great works of art, are now engaged in disclosing how such value gets assigned to cultural artifacts a notion now expanded to include film, video and television as the outcome of interactions on discursive fields constituted through power. While both the art worlds of the sociologist and the new art history have in common the contextualization of artifacts, there are significant differences. The prime focus of art historical analysis remains the content of an artwork and the meaning it may convey to viewers, be they local and contemporary or distanced by time and space. The sociology of art worlds, on the other hand, brackets out meaning to focus on the context of production. Any resulting ’meaning’ is taken as an epiphenomenal outcome of the process of production itself, not something internal to an artwork or to any communication between the work and its audience. Thus, while art history can be said to have experienced a sociological turn, incorporating the sociology of art worlds into its analysis of the content and meaning of artworks, sociology has not reciprocated. The art worlds approach has, until very recently, left such analysis of the art object aside. There are