Social Policy and Self-Help in Denmark—A Foucauldian Perspective

Bringing the client back in: A comparison between political rationality and the experiences of the unemployed

“…Methodologically, the article demonstrates how longitudinal qualitative accounts of the experiences of welfare claimants can be used for a critical investigation of the gap between political perceptions and the perceptions of those directly affected by prevailing political rationality. Needless to say, qualitative accounts of lived experiences of the unemployed can be brought into the analysis for numerous reasons, such as to study the different forms of agency exercised by people in poverty (Hoggett, ; Lister, ; Müller, Hussain, Larsen, Hansen, Hansen, & Ejrnæs, ), to shed light on practices of street‐level bureaucracy and the logics of interaction between the system and the client (Olesen & Eskelinen, ), to study how welfare clients reflect and act upon specific reforms or discourses (Dencker‐Larsen & Lundberg, ; Nielsen, ), and to study how governmental technologies and discourses practically reshape the welfare subject (Høgsbro, ; Stenson, ). What we have sought to demonstrate here is a comparative research design that enables us to do something else, namely to view political rationality in the light of the lived experiences of those it affects (Patrick, ; Wright, ).…”

Self-help and self-help groups for people with long-lasting health problems or mental health difficulties in a Nordic context: A review

“…This is because the studies focus on the tangible outcomes of self-help such as symptom relief, wellbeing, quality of life, etc. As such, they do not oppose healthcare and treatment systems [12,20,108,109]. Few publications provide knowledge about what self-help means outside a professional treatment context, and when they do, experience-based knowledge of sickness or disability and peer support as important components of health-promotion strategies are emphasised in addition to the experience of recovery through methods derived from alternative medicine [15,42,43,90].…”

“…Studies focusing on the outcome of self-help do sometimes discuss self-help in the framework of a voluntary, non-clinical, setting [12,14,15,19, 42,43,56,59,90]. Self-help is then described as a way to cope with life in a positive way.…”

“…Self-help is viewed by some researchers as an alternative strategy for marginalised groups to gain a voice in the public arena [12,13] and by others as a support system to complement public healthcare measures, through mutual support, sharing experiences and information, or social contact in a group setting [13⊟18]. In this sense, self-help can be seen as representing an experience-based perspective on health problems, as it is based on mutual experiences.…”

Self-Help Groups

“…Attention is also given to ways in which professionals and SHGs groups can find ways of working together without damaging the fundamental mutual aid ethos (Wilson 1995;Munn-Giddings et al 2017). The latter emphasis is perhaps reflective of the stronger welfare state systems in many of these countries, particularly in the Nordic countries (e.g., Lundström and Wijkström 1997;Høgsbro 2012).…”