Life History as Text and Context. A Psycho-Societal Approach to Human Service

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Life History as Text and Context. A
Psycho-Societal Approach to Human Service

• Thematic Symposium
• Linda Lundgaard Andersen, lla_at_ruc.dk
• Dept of Educational Research
• Roskilde University
• Esrea, Life History and Biography Network 2006
  Conference
• Volos, March 2006

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Opening statement

• life history as a method starting by defining a
  subject has radical consequences pursue
  excellence
• through the lens of the subject we can follow
  social, cultural, economic, professional
  transformations and changes in human service as
  well as society
• this represents a much needed critical
  counter-knowledge to an individualizing and
  stigmatizing construction of the users and the
  professionals 
• as a counterplay to a dominant paradigme of
  evidensbased practice producing monolitic
  reports based on the average and singularity of
  individuals

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Research background

•  two research programmes at Department of
  Educational Studies, Roskilde University
• the Life History Project
• - a multiannual research programme investigating
  the implications of a life history approach in
  formal and informal education and learning
• Learning and Education in Human Service and
  Health Care
• - investigating the learning processes and work
  life learning in human service and health care
  from the perspectives of professionals and
  recipients

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A case study social workers

• Three social workers in a sickness benefit
  office Karen is 36, social worker in 1997,
  employed for five years. Inger is 58, employed
  for 37 yearsLone is 50, qualified social worker
  978 and employed for two years
• Investigating how the social workers experienced
  their work life and how they evaluated their
  educational background
• They pointed to a demanding schism between their
  great work interest and engagement versus their
  feeling of abandonement due to conflict on
  quality in case work and their professional goals
• (Andersen, 2005).

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Case study the managers

• Interviews with Søren, 54 years, construction
  engineer and human service manager, Erika, 38
  years, social worker and a middle manager
• how did they view the social work organisational
  and professional structure and the importance of
  education
• they pointed to, 1/ that social services
  organisation give opportunities for influence -
  if one can find ways to use it. 2/social work
  today is dominated by control and it is a
  managerial task to establish procedures to ensure
  political and administrative case objectives

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Case study social workers

• The opportunities for influence are many. At
  the same time, the political decisions lead you
  to say no to people, maybe I feel, that this
  sick person (client) should be rehabilitated, but
  I know very well that my manager does not think
  as we do. Thats where youre forced to throw
  your own professio-nalism away. Then I have to
  remind myself, that this is what I am trained for
  that the work I am doing will not necessarily
  harmonise with my my own profes-sionalism. I was
  employed to follow rules.
• (Karen, social worker)
• Thats how it is for me too. We basically dont
  have a jot of influence and is not allowed to act
  professional.
• (Lone, social worker)

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Case study the managers

• We have been reorganising our workplace quite a
  bit. All the time, we have unexpected breakdowns
  and people developing psychological problems
  depression and burnout. This constantly destroys
  the atmosphere and is always there smouldering.
  Of course, it is not just the workplace that is
  responsible. We have not been efficient in
  adapting the work structure so this is not
  amplified. A divorce, for example, can start a
  lot but then work adds to thatand then things
  overflow. There is little one can do then. We
  must be better at structuring work so that staff
  want to do it. They must be involved and have
  much more influence since they have to live with
  the clients and deal with the interaction.
• (Søren, head of office)

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Case study analytic fragments

• social work education leads to a professional
  grounding, expectations of quality, images of
  good case management
• produce an ambivalent tension between the
  professional and individual standpoint and the
  rationales and objectives of management - the
  employee might be caught in conflicting
  pressures
• social work is embedded in organizational,
  political and economic rationales and procedures
  that fall upon the individual social worker to
  exert. Fundamental difficulties in solving
  societal problems appear as individuals life
  historic problems and is being voiced and acted
  out in shape of the individual social workers
  emotional, professional or ethical problems.

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Cases analytic fragments

• the management sees the life history of the
  social workers as a stigmatizing potential
• they are fragile professionals
• workrelated problems as stress and a heavy
  workload,
• not being able to meet the politic decided
  objectives of social work,
• the reluctance to take on the delegated influence
  in case administration
• all these issues are understood as the inadequacy
  of the individual social worker

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Cases analytic fragments

• complex societal and historic problems and the
  limited options to solve these fall heavily on
  the individual social worker in the shape of
  subjectified reactions like ambivalence,
  relinquishment or resignation
• the individual case worker is de-politicised and
  dis-empowered by processes of displacement
  whereby the social workers experience is reduced
  to a privatised conflict.

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Life history as a subjectifying research-method

• qualifies the perspectives of the different
  actors in human service professionals,
  recipients, managers, politicians and how they
  experience and give meaning to their actions and
  experiences
• investigates the constructions of positions and
  possibilities for human service recipients and
  professionals
• provides differentiated understandings of how
  social policy and societal conditions produce
  marginalized human lives from a bottom-up
  perspective

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Life history as a critical hermeneutic theory and
method

• 1. life history as a psycho-societal theory
• human beings live, think and act influenced by
  consciouss as well as unconsciouss processes and
  these are closely formed by and form themselves
  the societal structures and power-relations
• 2. the dialectic of the subject and the societal
  -
• individual action and understanding is
  influenced by a plurality of conditions that are
  interdependent societally formed childhood,
  different forms of consciousness and societal and
  cultural conditions

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• 3. the defended, ambivalent, identifying subject
• in everyday interaction human beings are
  involved in a multitude of conscious and
  unconscious processing on cognitive, emotional
  and bodily matters
• 4. the potentials of a theoretical perspective
• theory should be able to retell and transform
  the empirical object - and its generalised ideas
  of itself, and hereby dissolve the tension
  between reality and the potentials
• (Leithaüser Volmerg, 1976 1998 Adorno, 1972
  )

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Life history as texts in context

• In-deepth hermeneutic is based on text
  interpretations contextualized
• when life history interviews with social worker
  and managers are transformed into text we gain
• an interactively text-production is tranformed
  into the shape of a fixed text that can be
  intepreted
• includes the researchers subjectivity and their
  influence on datagathering, interpretation and
  textproduction
• gives access to a critical inquiry and
  interpretation that can seek validation in
  different settings and ways

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Summing up

• In life history resarch we bring evidens based on
  a scientific and valid ground that advocate the
  subjective and individual perspective
• displaying the complicated interplay between the
  lives of human beings and the societal conditions
• insisting on giving voices to the plurality
  (rather than the monolitic report) as an
  important dimension of the knowledge production