Marita Husso

Living on a knife’s edge: Temporal conflicts in welfare service work

This article considers the temporal variations of agency from the point of view of social and health care workers’ experiences and the social structures and practices of the contemporary public service sector. It is based on an interview study of 24 Finnish welfare service workers. The results show that the public service sector increasingly operates according to market principles and an economic-rationalistic framing of time, contrary to the relational understanding of time in care practices. To maintain their sense of self as skilled professionals, workers actively reassess and adjust their identities according to the exigencies of working life, but not without difficulties. The results reflect the intuitive, habitual and innovative nature of temporality in care practices, but also the constraints posed by the economic-rationalistic temporal structures of public service work that produce the experience of working on a knife’s edge. The results suggest that the temporal aspect of professional agency is rather poorly understood in terms of managing and organizing welfare service work. Hence, the article points to the importance of temporality as a viewpoint for studies of agency.

Possibilities for Intervention in Domestic Violence: Frame Analysis of Health Care Professionals’ Attitudes

ABSTRACT. Violence is a serious problem, and social and health care providers are in a key position for implementing successful interventions. This qualitative study of 6 focus groups with professionals (n = 30) examines the health care professionals’ ways of framing a domestic violence intervention. Of special interest here is how professionals see their own roles in the process of recognizing and helping victims of domestic violence. By using Erving Goffmans frame analysis, this study identifies several frames that either: a) emphasize the obstacles to intervention and justify nonintervention, or on the contrary, b) question these obstacles and find justifications for intervention. The possibilities for intervention are further explored by analyzing the ways in which the dynamics between the different frames allow redefinition of domestic violence interventions. Despite the challenges involved in a domestic violence intervention, there seems to be potential for change in personal attitudes and reform of professional practices. The research findings underline the role of social and health care professionals as members of a larger chain of service providers working collaboratively against domestic violence. Implications for practice and directions in policy and future research are suggested.

Feminism, Embodied Experience and Recognition: An Interview with Lois McNay

Lois McNay is Professor of the Theory of Politics at Oxford University, United Kingdom. In addition to many articles and book chapters her work includes Foucault and Feminism: Power, Gender and the Self (1992), Foucault: A Critical Introduction (1994), Gender and Agency: Reconfiguring the Subject in Feminist and Social Theory (2000), and Against Recognition (2007). We met Professor McNay at the conference Power: Forms, Dynamics and Consequences in Tampere, Finland, on September 22–24, 2008. Professor McNay gave her plenary talk by the title ‘‘Feminism and Post-identity Politics: The Problem of Agency’’.