Sanktionerat motstånd : Brukarinflytande som fenomen och praktik
Sanctioned resistance : Service user involvement as phenomenon and practice
Author
Summary, in English
The aim of the thesis is to investigate how service user involvement is constructed within contemporary human service organisations, and how the construction is affected by, as well as affects, the prevailing power structures characterizing the relationship between service users and welfare workers (see Hasenfeld 2010). The study has an ethnographic and constructionist base. During three years I conducted fieldwork in two welfare organisations – a county based psychiatric hospital and a municipal social service administration – following such activities that the organisations defined as working with “service user involvement”.
The concept of co-optation (Selznick 1949) is used to analyse how power structures and institutional logic within the welfare organisations are maintained as well as questioned through the everyday interactions taking place when service user involvement is carried out. At the same time as the institutionalized service user involvement control and constrain the way service user representatives act and pursue their goals, it gives them a possibility to challenge the welfare organisations from within. Hence, service user involvement can be understood as a “sanctioned resistance”. The study suggests that no radical change in power positions is achieved through the service user involvement. The influence that users have can commonly be understood as adjustments within a prevailing institutional logic, rather than changes that transform the organisations in a more profound way. Moreover, the surrounding socio-political context plays a vital role in determining what service user involvement becomes. What employees can do when it comes to meeting service users’ demands is conditioned by the overarching welfare politics and resource allocation.
Department/s
Publishing year
2015
Language
Swedish
Publication/Series
Lund Dissertations in Social Work
Volume
47
Full text
Document type
Dissertation
Publisher
Lunds universitet, Socialhögskolan
Topic
- Social Work
Keywords
- consensus
- resistance
- control
- institutional theory
- co-optation
- power
- psychiatry
- social services
- human service organisations
- welfare organisations
- user involvement
- service user involvement
- konsensus
- motstånd
- kontroll
- institutionell teori
- kooptering
- makt
- new public management
- psykiatri
- socialtjänst
- människobehandlande organisationer
- välfärdsorganisationer
- brukarperspektiv
- Brukarinflytande
Status
Published
Supervisor
ISBN/ISSN/Other
- ISSN: 1650-3872
- ISBN: 978-91-89604-54-4
Defence date
13 November 2015
Defence time
10:15
Defence place
Palaestra övre, Paradisgatan 4, Lund
Opponent
- Alain Topor (Docent)