Listening to the Welfare State

This anthology explores the welfare systems of Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. The aim of its 14 contributors is to examine how these systems operate at street-level: that is, at those sites where professional helpers encounter persons seeking help, financial assistance and other welfare servic [...]
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This anthology explores the welfare systems of Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. The aim of its 14 contributors is to examine how these systems operate at street-level: that is, at those sites where professional helpers encounter persons seeking help, financial assistance and other welfare services. The researchers presenting in the book approach talk-in-interaction and related social behaviour at the core of these meetings from three closely-related though different perspectives. Their academic training represents a variety of disciplines ranging from social psychology, linguistics, sociology, social work and cultural anthropology. The text is divided into four parts. Prior to Part One, there is a synopsis of the contributions comprising the book's main body. This is followed by a discussion of traditional welfare state research and its limitations as well as a summary of the three interrelated methods of ethnographic description, conversation and discourse analyses serving as the shared source for data upon which this book is based.Part One takes up issues involved with the study of authentic conversations in research on the welfare state as well as the ways in which meaning may be constructed in talk between professionals and clients. Part Two shifts focus to examine how talk-in-interaction takes place at points where the well-being of children becomes the concern of welfare state professionals. Part Three explores the roles of the Danish and Finnish welfare systems in counselling the unemployed and others participating in different programmes linking them to the labour markets. In the book's final part, contributors from Finland and Sweden examine the role of talk-in-interaction in institutional contexts.