Cover not available
Part of
Studies of Discourse and Governmentality: New perspectives and methods
Edited by Paul McIlvenny, Julia Zhukova Klausen and Laura Bang Lindegaard
[Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture 66] 2016
► pp. 119–148

The art of not governing too much in vocational rehabilitation encounters

This chapter uses ethnomethodological conversation analysis (CA) to investigate the empirical manifestations of governmentality in vocational rehabilitation encounters in the Norwegian Labour and Welfare Administration. How can the counsellors’ actions be understood as conducting the conduct of clients in the setting of vocational rehabilitation? How do the counsellors’ practices, especially their ways of dealing with client resistance, relate to the core idea of governmentality as governing, not at the cost of, but through the freedom of individuals? The chapter analyses the dialogue techniques in six instances in which the client uses silence and minimal response tokens to resist the counsellor’s actions. Earlier CA research has suggested counsellors have a rather unilateral orientation to client resistance. However, this analysis reveals a more responsive orientation, since it demonstrates how counsellors choose inviting, non-intrusive action designs in the first place, as well as make adjustments to the cued client resistance. These practices may be understood as evidencing a technology of sensibility, co-constituting the client’s agency in situ.
Published online: 29 June 2016
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/dapsac.66.04sol
References (45)
References
Bilmes, Jack. 1994. “Constituting Silence: Life in the World of Total Meaning.” Semiotica 98: 73-87. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Carstens, Annette. 2002. “‘Motivation’ i visitationssamtaler på aktiveringsområdet.” In Det magtfulde møde mellem system og klient, ed. by Margaretha Järvinen, Jørgen Elm Larsen, and Nils Mortensen, 28-60. Århus: Aarhus Universitetsforlag.Google Scholar
Chrulew, Matthew. 2014. “Pastoral Counter-Conducts: Religious Resistance in Foucault's Genealogy of Christianity.” Critical Research on Religion 2: 55-65. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dean, Mitchell. 1995. “Governing the Unemployed Self in an Active Society.” Economy and Society 24: 559-83. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2010. Governmentality: Power and Rule in Modern Society. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Duell, Nicola, Shruti Singh, and Peter Tergeist. 2009. Activation Policies in Norway. OECD Social, Employment and Migration Working Papers No. 78. Paris: OECD Publishing. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 1983. “The Subject and Power.” In Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, ed. by Hubert Dreyfus, and Paul Rabinow, 208-226. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
. 2007. Security, Territory, Population (Lectures at the Collège De France 1977-1978), ed. by Michel Senellart. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Frøyland, Kjetil. 2006. Supported Employment or Segregated Rehabilitation? Oslo: Work Research Institute.Google Scholar
Grøgaard, Jens B. 1998. Ordinær skolegang for yrkeshemmede: Effektevaluering basert på sammenligning med hospiteringstiltaket, vol. 255. Oslo: Fafo.Google Scholar
Heritage, John. 1984. Garfinkel and Ethnomethodology. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Heritage, John, and Steven Clayman. 2010. Talk in Action : Interactions, Identities, and Institutions. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Heritage, John, and Sue Sefi. 1992. “Dilemmas on Advice: Aspects of the Delivery and Reception of Advice in Interactions between Health Visitors and First-Time Mothers.” In Talk at Work, ed. by Paul Drew, and John Heritage, 359-419. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hernes, Thorgeir, Ingar Heum, Paal Haavorsen, and Tor Saglie. 2010. Arbeidsinkludering: Om det nye politikk- og praksisfeltet i velferds-Norge. Oslo: Gyldendal Akademisk.Google Scholar
Holmes, Jain. 2007. Vocational Rehabilitation. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Johnsson, Håkan, and Bjørn Hvinden. 2005. “Welfare Governance and the Remaking of Citizenship.” In Remaking Governance: Peoples, Politics and the Public Sphere, ed. by Janet Newman, 101-118. Bristol: Policy Press.Google Scholar
Lilja, Mona, and Stellan Vinthagen. 2014. “Sovereign Power, Disciplinary Power and Biopower: Resisting What Power with What Resistance?” Journal of Political Power 7: 107-126. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lindström, Anna. 1999. Language as Social Action: Grammar, Prosody, and Interaction in Swedish Conversation . Unpublished doctoral dissertation. Uppsala: Department of Scandinavian Languages, Uppsala University.
Maynard, Douglas W. 1992. “On Clinicians Co-implicating Recipients' Perspective in the Delivery of Diagnostic News.” In Talk at Work: Interaction in Institutional Settings, ed. by Paul Drew, and John Heritage, 331-358. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
McDonald, Catherine, and Greg Marston. 2005. “Workfare as Welfare: Governing Unemployment in the Advanced Liberal State.” Critical Social Policy 25: 374-401. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
McHoul, Alec, and Wendy Grace. 1997. A Foucault Primer: Discourse, Power and the Subject. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
NAV. 2006. Directive on Vocational Rehabilitation. Oslo.Google Scholar
Nealon, Jeffrey T. 2008. Foucault beyond Foucault: Power and Its Intensifications since 1984: Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Newman, Janet. 2005. Remaking Governance: Peoples, Politics and the Public Sphere. Bristol: Policy Press.Google Scholar
Nygård, Roald. 1993. Aktør eller brikke? – om menneskers selvforståelse. Oslo: Ad Notam Gyldendal.Google Scholar
Patton, Paul. 2013. "From Resistance to Government: Foucault's Lectures 1976-1979." In A Companion to Foucault, ed. by Christopher Falzon, Timothy O'Leary, and Jana Sawicki, 172-188. Oxford: WileyBlackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rogers, Carl. 1951. Client-centered Therapy: Its Current Practice, Implications and Theory. London: Constable.Google Scholar
Rose, Nikolas. 1999. Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rose, Nikolas, and Peter Miller. 2010. “Political Power beyond the State: Problematics of Government.” The British Journal of Sociology 61: 271–303. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sacks, Harvey, Emmanuel A. Schegloff, and Gail Jefferson. 1974. “A Simplest Systematics for the Organization of Turn-taking for Conversation.” Language 50: 696-735. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schafft, Angelika. 2008. Psykiske lidelser og arbeidsintegrering i Skandinavia: En kunnskapsstatus. Oslo: Arbeidsforskningsinstituttet. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schegloff, Emanuel A. 1996. “Turn Organization: One Intersection of Grammar and Interaction”. In Interaction and Grammar, ed. by Elinor Ochs, Emanuel A. Schegloff, and Sandra A. Thompson, 52-133. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Silverman, David. 1997. Discourses of Counselling: HIV Counselling as Social Interaction. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Simons, Jon. 2013. “Power, Resistance and Freedom.” In A Companion to Foucault, ed. by Christopher Falzon, Timothy O'Leary, and Jana Sawicki, 301-319. Oxford: WileyBlackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sokhi-Bulley, Bal. 2013. “Counter-conduct or Resistance? The Disciplining of Dissident in the Riot City of London.” In Counter-Conduct in Global Politics Workshop. University of Sussex, Brighton.Google Scholar
Solberg, Janne. 2011a. “Accepted and Resisted: The Client's Responsibility for Making Proposals in Activation Encounters.” Text & Talk - An Interdisciplinary Journal of Language, Discourse & Communication Studies 31: 733-752. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2011b. “Activation Encounters: Dilemmas of Accountability in Constructing Clients as ‘Knowledgeable’.” Qualitative Social Work 10: 381-398. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. In press. “Argument in Professional-Client Encounters: Building Cases through Second-hand Assessments.” Pragmatics and Society.
Stivers, Tanya, and Federico Rossano. 2010. “Mobilizing Response.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 43: 3-56. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Thompson, Sandra A., Cecilia E. Ford, and Barbara A. Fox. 2002. “Constituency and the Grammar of Turn Increments”. In The Language of Turn and Sequence, ed. by Sandra A. Thompson, Cecilia E. Ford, and Barbara A. Fox, 15-37. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Tøssebro, Aage Støren. 1999. Vocational Rehabilitation - An Integrated Part of Labour Market Policy: Towards Professional Expertise in the Work for Vocational Rehabilitation [translated from Norwegian]. Oslo: Directorate of Labour.Google Scholar
Vehviläinen, Sanna. 1999. Structures of Counselling Interaction: A Conversation Analytic Study of Counselling Encounters in Career Guidance Training. Helsinki: University of Helsinki.Google Scholar
. 2003. “Avoiding Providing Solutions: Orienting to the Ideal of Students' Self-directedness in Counselling Interaction.” Discourse Studies 5: 389-414. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Villadsen, Kaspar. 2010. “Governmentality.” In Key Concepts in Critical Management Studies, ed. by Mark Tadajewski, Pauline Maclaran, Elizabeth Parsons, and Martin Parker, 87-95. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Walters, William. 2012. Governmentality: Critical Encounters. Abingdon: Routledge.Google Scholar
Cited by (3)

Cited by three other publications

Winther, Bjarke Zinck & Laura Bang Lindegaard
2021. In the name of democracy: UNSC reform at the intersection of discourse and governmentality. Discourse & Society 32:2 ► pp. 231 ff. DOI logo
Riis-Johansen, Marit Olave, Kristin Halvorsen, Ellen Andenæs & Gøril Thomassen Hammerstad
2018. Interaksjon med brukere i Nav:. Tidsskrift for velferdsforskning 21:3 ► pp. 227 ff. DOI logo
Winkler, Jan
2017. Freunde führen einander – Der kommunalpolitische Dialog mit dem „Islam“ im Modus einer Gouvernementalität der Freundschaft. Geographica Helvetica 72:3 ► pp. 303 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 25 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.