Det magtfulde møde mellem system og klient
 (The powerful encounter between system and client)

The powerful encounter between system and client edited by Margaretha Järvinen, Jørgen Elm Larsen & Nils Mortensen was published in September 2002.

Aarhus University Press
200 pages
DKK 198.00
To order, contact a bookshop or www.unipress.dk or + 45 89 42 53 70

Analyses of power often focus on power and influence in the political system. This book analyzes power in the actual encounter between administrative systems and individual citizens. It presents a series of analyses of power in the encounter between different staff groups and their clients in municipal social services departments and institutions.

A key theme in the analyses is the many different forms of power that extend beyond the exercise of authority and the powers granted to the social services staff in the legislation. In many concrete encounters between system and client, decisions and treatment are characterized by forms of disciplining that are based on moral assessment, notions of “the norm” and artificial classifications that have very little to do with the clients’ personal problems. It is also characteristic that staff groups often fail to acknowledge that they are agents of power. The examples in the book stem from visitation interviews, activation projects, family treatment institutions, child placement cases, and day centers for highly marginalized groups.

 

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