There has been much debate on ‘culturespeak’ and the politics of culture, but the bureaucratic articulation of specific representations of culture has not received much attention. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, this article presents a double take on bureaucracy. On the one hand, I focus on the outcome of UNESCO’s bureaucracy: UNESCO promotes an all-inclusive culture perspective for ‘We the Peoples of the United Nations’, but there are limits to tolerance in this culture ideology. On the other hand, I focus on the social and pragmatic adaptation to the bureaucratic field and towards UNESCO’s keywords, as they are embedded with institutional authority in everyday practice. In conclusion, I briefly situate UNESCO’s culture ideology in relation to questions of recognition and redistribution.

Empowerment is a keyword in treatment. Users should have the means and possibilities to influence their treatment and become self-managing. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in a Danish methadone treatment project, we find that the practices of users and staff are often not carried out in accordance with governmental intentions. We identify a gap between the official notions of treatment and practices. We analyse the notions and practices of empowerment by applying two analytical perspectives. First, we apply a constructionist perspective in which empowerment is analysed as wanting to set users 'free' but also as ways to govern. We elaborate the analysis by applying a more practiceoriented focus. Drawing on this perspective, we analyse the ways in which staff and users constantly produce, construct and negotiate institutional practices that differ from the governmental intentions for treatment.Empowerment er et nøglebegreb i nutidig behandling. Brugere skal have midler og muligheder for indflydelse på deres behandling, således at de kan blive selvforvaltende. Med udgangspunkt i et etnografisk feltarbejde på et dansk substitutionsbehandlings projekt, analyserer vi hvorledes brugeres og medarbejderes praksis ofte ikke er overensstemmende med statslige politikker på området. Det vil sige, at vi identificerer en diskrepans mellem officielle forestillinger om behandling og praksis. Vi analyserer disse forskellige forestillinger og praksisser ved at applicere to analytiske perspektiver. Først anvender vi et konstruktivistisk perspektiv, hvorigennem empowerment på den ene side analyseres som et forsøg på at ''frisaette'' brugere af velfaerdsstatens institutioner, og på den anden side også kan ses som måder at regere disse borgere på. Dernaest udbygger vi analysen ved at applicere et mere praksisorienteret perspektiv. Ved at inddrage dette perspektiv, analyserer vi de forskellige måder, hvorpå brugere og medarbejdere kontinuerligt producerer, konstruerer og forhandler institutionelle praksisser, der adskiller sig fra politiske intentioner for behandling.

The last 20 years has witnessed a rise in prison-based drug treatment in Nordic countries. This increase has challenged the prominence of the punitive prison, and created changes in the roles of both clients and staff. This article explores the development of two institutional inmate identities: the offender and the client, which have occurred as a consequence of this shift in prison policy. However, in their institutional narratives and daily practice both prison officers and counsellors often fluctuate when addressing inmates as offenders and/or clients. This fluctuation creates a “fuzzy” dynamic. These institutional identities are characterized, on the one hand, by inmates being dealt with by counsellors as ‘real people' and ‘equals’, but simultaneously counsellors are resorting to the control opportunities allowed by the prison authorities such as urine tests and the use of isolation cells. On the other hand, prison officers handle inmates within a disciplinary logic, while concurrently dealing with them as inmates deserving a fair chance – a view resonant with the drug treatment ideology applied in prisons.

No abstract

As in many Western countries, notions of active, free, and self-managing citizens have become key concerns in Danish social policies. This article describes how these key concerns have made their inroads into laws and guidelines for delivery of social welfare services and how these laws and guidelines are intended to be implemented in social work practices. In the first part of the article, we analyze how policies envision drug users as active, free and self-managing citizens. In this view, citizens are assumed to have the desire to become more involved in their treatment and to choose the goals of their own treatment. In the second part, we focus on how this rationale changes under actual conditions of social work practice. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork among social workers and drug users, we show how their daily encounters are not based on the presumption of individual choice. Rather, the life situations and problems of drug users conflict with the predominant idea that drug users are self-managing citizens who should be “empowered.” Instead, we argue that daily treatment encounters are not so much about individual choice and self-management, but rather, about improving the overall situation of drug users.