Doing Good: Normativities in the Margins of Welfare

• In Event: Situated Ethics and Normativities in Knowledge Making and Communities of Practice - I

Abstract

The aim of this presentation is to extend the existing knowledge about modes of doing good in professional workers’ home visits, scrutinizing the normativities of doing good (care) at the margins of welfare provision. Drawing on Pols (2003: 320), we define ‘mode of doing good’ as ‘patterns of ideals, procedures, routines and knowledge that is oriented towards a specific form of “good care”’. Care as a mode of ordering include actions, values and knowledge. In other words, care always has a strong normative dimension (Pols 2003: 321).

In order to extend knowledge about modes of doing good care, we have studied the work in two different settings, one mental health care unit doing home visits as part of its’ out-patient work in the context of psychiatric care, and one special-housing unit, doing home visits in the context of the system of homelessness services. We depart from a notion of each home visit as a particular staging and a way of enacting the world, leading us to focus specifically at the norms and values enacted during home visits. Drawing on empirical materials including both actual service interactions and practices taking place during home visits, and interviews as retrospective reflections on service interactions, we ask what is considered as doing good in the margins of welfare? We also ask what problems are attended to, or foregrounded, in home visits.

Authors

• Doris Lydahl, University of Gothenburg

• Cecilia Hansen Löfstrand, University of Gothenburg