Rasmus Hoffmann Birk

Worth, Wonder and Worry in the Accelerated Academy

This chapter gives no advice or guidance on how to be creative or innovative. Instead, it tells a story about the worries and anxieties one may encounter when conducting research. The chapter tells a story of encountering an absence of wonder and a presence of mundanity, and the worries this induced in its author, an early career researcher. But rather than succumb to individualized explanations, the chapter attempts to situate these feelings within the context of the contemporary accelerated academy. The chapter thus argues that the contemporary academy is structured by modes of worth that privilege demonstrable, economic value and productivity, actively inducing feelings of worry and anxiety.

Infrastructuring the social: Local community work, urban policy and marginalized residential areas in Denmark

This article develops the concept of infrastructuring the social by analyzing the uses of local community work in Danish marginalized residential areas. Infrastructuring the social is a concept to describe how spaces are designated as problematic and marginalized and then remade through the creation and materialization of normative and instrumental relations. The article empirically demonstrates how infrastructuring the social works through enacting relations between residents, local community workers and professionals from municipalities, relations which are used to move people along normative trajectories. These trajectories are meant to transport people out of problematic areas, and into closer contact with “regular society,” such as Danish institutions, education, and the labor market. Infrastructuring the social is thus enacted from the outside in, imbued with the normative imperatives of the welfare state, seeking to rework the agency of residents and improve the marginalized residential area. The concept of infrastructuring the social nuances the trope of the “network” by highlighting the normative imperatives embedded in making relations, and goes beyond frameworks of governmentality by highlighting the practical messiness and on-going work of everyday governance.

Making responsible residents: On ‘responsibilization’ within local community work in marginalized residential areas in Denmark

This article explores how the local community projects in marginalized residential areas in Denmark attempt to make ‘responsible’ residents. It has commonly been argued that contemporary governance is inflected with responsibilization, often understood as the ambition to make citizens self-responsible and independent from the welfare state. However, much less attention has been paid to how such responsibilization is accomplished in practice. The article draws on interviews with local community workers and participant observation in local community projects, to explore the process of ‘responsibilization’ in practice. The article shows how local community workers use narrative accounts to assess residents and their (failed) responsibilities, as well as their own responsibilities towards residents. Building on this, it is shown how attempts to make residents independent from the welfare state become entangled with practices of care, through which local community workers assume responsibilities for residents, rather than making them independent as such. Lastly, the article shows how responsibilization is a fragile process, and how it is entangled with ongoing makings of accounts that demonstrate responsibilities, both for local community workers and residents.

From social to socio-material pathologies: on Latour, subjectivity and materiality

ABSTRACT This article produces an encounter between the concept of ‘social pathology’ and the work of the philosopher Bruno Latour. It offers an introduction to Latour’s style of thought with regard to subjectivity. It argues that subjectivity is not an interiorized property of people, but a processual accomplishment from associating with different actors, which may be human or non-human. Subjectivity, from this point of view, exists in the interstice between affecting the world and being affected. Building on this Latourian perspective, the article goes on to argue that social pathologies should not be seen as a function of ‘society’, but rather as socio-material patterns of activity that spread across different spaces and places. Thus, the article posits that a more apt term for ‘social pathologies’ would be ‘socio-material pathologies’. It finishes by discussing the implications of these perspectives for both critique and methodology in social research.ABSTRACTThis article produces an encounter between the concept of ‘social pathology’ and the work of the philosopher Bruno Latour. It offers an introduction to Latour’s style of thought with regard to subjectivity. It argues that subjectivity is not an interiorized property of people, but a processual accomplishment from associating with different actors, which may be human or non-human. Subjectivity, from this point of view, exists in the interstice between affecting the world and being affected. Building on this Latourian perspective, the article goes on to argue that social pathologies should not be seen as a function of ‘society’, but rather as socio-material patterns of activity that spread across different spaces and places. Thus, the article posits that a more apt term for ‘social pathologies’ would be ‘socio-material pathologies’. It finishes by discussing the implications of these perspectives for both critique and methodology in social research.