‘Social Skills’: Following a Travelling Concept from American Academic Discourse to Contemporary Danish Welfare Institutions

Prieur, Annick; Jensen, Sune Qvotrup; Laursen, Jannie; Pedersen, Oline

doi:10.1007/s11024-016-9307-8

Cited by 5 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 43 publications

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“…As part of the ESSET project about education in social skills and emotional training in contemporary society (Prieur et al, 2016), a mapping of municipal programmes concerned with citizens’ different forms of social skills was carried out. Thereafter, 25 in-depth interviews were conducted with Danish social workers involved in the assessments of marginalized people or training them in social skills.…”

Section: Methodology and Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

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Lacking social skills: A social investment state’s concern for marginalized citizens’ ways of being

Prieur

Jensen

Nielsen

2019

Critical Social Policy

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The Danish state is preoccupied with its citizens’ social skills, which are seen as important for the nations’ competitiveness. Such skills regard self-presentation, communication, emotional control etc. This article relies primarily on interviews with Danish social workers who are involved either in assessing young marginalized welfare clients’ personal readiness for schooling or employment or in preparing them for this through social skills training. Secondarily, it relies on fieldwork data from young Danes at the margins of the educational system and/or the labour market, who are frequently confronted with a devaluation of their personal ways of being. As personal resources related to ways of being, communicating, handling emotions etc. are ascribed social value, especially at the labour market they may work as a form of capital, while the lack of them may be a source of marginalization. These findings are discussed as signs of more general social normative demands, theoretically grasped in the meeting point of Bourdieu’s understanding of embodied cultural capital, of Skeggs’ analysis of how subjects are attributed value or not, and of Illouz’s investigation of the emotional demands contemporary capitalism puts on employees. Understanding the experiences of those who fail to comply with implicit social requirements for personal resources thus shed light on contemporary requirements regarding how to behave and communicate with other people as well as on the state’s investments in the most personal spheres of its citizens.

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Section: Methodology and Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The term social skills is used both in ordinary language and by the authorities (Prieur et al 2016). This term might appear neutral, uncontroversial and obvious but is packed with classed assumptions and evaluations, thereby conveying a current social normativity (cf.…”

Section: Conclusion and Further Perspectivesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Lacking social skills: A social investment state’s concern for marginalized citizens’ ways of being

Prieur

Jensen

Nielsen

2019

Critical Social Policy

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“…For Illouz (2007), such features relate to the most embodied part of the embodied forms of cultural capital. Prieur et al (2016Prieur et al ( , 2020 hold that emotional competences, like self-control and the ability to put words on emotions, demonstrate a mastery of embodied cultural capital today.…”

Section: Returning To Bourdieu's Three Forms Of Cultural Capitalmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Prieur et al. (2016, 2020) hold that emotional competences, like self‐control and the ability to put words on emotions, demonstrate a mastery of embodied cultural capital today.…”

Section: Theoretical Issuesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Distinctions in the making: A theoretical discussion of youth and cultural capital

Prieur

Savage

Flemmen

2023

British Journal of Sociology

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The aim of this paper is to address the dynamics of contemporary cultural capital by interrogating what counts for young people as valuable cultural resources. Considerable support is given in later scholarship for Bourdieu's model of the social space, as the overall volume of economic and cultural capital combined is regularly found to be the most important axis of opposition, just as in Bourdieu's work Distinction. Yet, while Bourdieu found the second axis to be structured by an opposition between those with cultural rather than economic capital, and vice versa, many later studies instead find oppositions between the young and the old to structure the second axis. Up till now, this finding has not been adequately addressed. In this paper, we hold that considering age-related inequalities offers a powerful way of interpreting recent developments in order to understand the changing stakes of cultural capital, and also their interaction with the intensification of inequalities in economic capital. After a theoretical clarification of the relationship between cultural capital and youth, we will synthesise research on young people and explore the significance of youthful cultural consumption. We will pragmatically focus on the 15-30 years old and put a particular accent on Norwegian studies in our review, as they are the most sophisticated in this genre. Four areas are explored: the restricted role of classical culture; the appeal of popular

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“…However, anger is often associated with violence, labelled uncivil or irrational and regarded with suspicion in the public sphere of Western democracies (Sparks, 2015). Today, programmes for anger management proliferate within a variety of institutional contexts (for example, daycare, schools, prisons, employment services), as anger has become a field of state intervention (Prieur et al, 2016;2020). Norms regarding the articulation of anger are a contemporary subject of controversy where legitimate participation in social life is negotiated with important political implications.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Feeling rules in artificial intelligence: norms for anger management

Monrad

2024

Emotions and Society

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The rapid spread of conversational AI, as well as the potential for personal conversations with chatbots, makes it relevant to examine what norms and values underlie chatbot responses. This article examines the feeling rules for anger implicitly communicated by a recent chatbot (ChatGPT). Querying the chatbot about appropriate and inappropriate anger, the study shows how specific feeling rules are articulated by AI. The chatbot communicates norms of productive, respectful, constructive, controlled and calm expression of anger through talk and, as such, relies on communication as a pervasive cultural repertoire. Based on a rereading of Boltanski and Thévenot’s (2006) economies of worth focusing on feeling rules, it is argued that different moral repertoires have implications for feeling rules. Using this theoretical framework to analyse the responses of the chatbot, it is evident that it primarily relies on both the industrial and the domestic orders of worth to assess anger. The chatbot articulates the problem of anger as unproductiveness and disrespect. The feeling rules implied in the responses of the chatbot reflect a neoliberal conception of self as individually responsible, productive, self-regulating, emotionally competent and able to find solutions. The seemingly neutral advice of the chatbot potentially depoliticises anger, disciplines people to remain productive and respectful and narrows the scope of anger expressions that are deemed acceptable.

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‘Social Skills’: Following a Travelling Concept from American Academic Discourse to Contemporary Danish Welfare Institutions

Cited by 5 publications

References 43 publications

Lacking social skills: A social investment state’s concern for marginalized citizens’ ways of being

Lacking social skills: A social investment state’s concern for marginalized citizens’ ways of being

Distinctions in the making: A theoretical discussion of youth and cultural capital

Feeling rules in artificial intelligence: norms for anger management

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