Shadow categorizations
Children with `special needs´ and the ethical work of parenting: minding the gap!
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7146/qs.v8i2.140962Keywords:
Parenting children with special needs, Early Childhood Education and Care, ECEC, shadow categorization, everyday life perspective, anthropology of diagnoses, ideals and realitiesAbstract
Drawing on analyses of how, during the 20th century, explicit processes of social distinction morphed into languages of niceness and, further, into various categories of pathology (Löfgren, 1991; Conrad, 2007; Horwitz, 2002; Brinkmann, 2014), I explore some of the contemporary consequences of this transformation in a Danish context. Focusing on everyday experiences of parents of children with so-called special needs, I highlight their concerns and hopes, analysing what happens when they encounter those who work in welfare state institutions. Inspired by anthropology of policy (Wright, 2017), I view these parents’ actions, efforts, and negotiations as a form of micro-policymaking, with an analytical emphasis on what Mattingly (2013) describes as everyday ethical work. Interactions with welfare state professionals such as early childhood educators and schoolteachers are part and parcel of parenting, especially in a Nordic context. In this ethical work, the parents face different gaps they need to handle.
References
Frederiksberg: Frydenlund Academic.
Becker, H. S. (1963). Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance. The Free Press, Simon & Schuster.
Brinkmann, S. (2014). Languages of Suffering. In: Theory & Psychology, 24(5):630-648. DOI: 10.1177/0959354314531523
Brinkmann, S. (2017). Perspectives on diagnosed suffering. In: Nordic Psychology, 69(1): 1-4. DOI: 10.1080/19012276.2016.1270404
Broderick, A. A. & Ne’eman, A. (2008). Autism as metaphor: narrative and counter-narrative. In: International Journal of Inclusive Education, 12(5-6): 459-476. https://doi.org/10.1080/13603110802377490
Bruner, J. (1990). Acts of meaning. Harvard: Harvard University Press.
Conrad, P. (2006). Identifying Hyperactive Children. The Medicalization of Deviant Behavior. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing.
Conrad, P. (2007). The Medicalization of Society. The Transformation of Human Conditions into Treatable Disorders. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Dannesboe, K. I., Kjær, B., Palludan, C., Bach, D. (2018). Parents of the welfare state: pedagogues as parenting guides. In: Social Policy and Society, Vol 17 (3): 467-480. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1474746417000562
Davis, L. (1997). Constructing Normalcy. The Bell Curve, the Novel, and the Invention of the Disabled Body in the Nineteenth Century. In: Davis, L. (ed.). The Disability Studies Reader. New York: Psychology Press.
Douglas, P., Runswick-Cole, K., Ryan, S. & Fogg, P. (2021). Mad mothering: learning from the intersections of madness, mothering, and disability. Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies, 15 (1): 39-56. https://doi.org/10.3828/jlcds.2021.3
Why Ignoring the Experts may be the Best for your Child. Chicago: Chicago Revies Press.
Goffman, E. (1963). Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. Touchstone: Simon & Schuster.
Goodley, D. (2016). Autism and the human. In: Runswick-Cole, K., Mallett, R. & Timimi, S. (eds.) Re-thinking Autism. Diagnosis, Identity and Equality. London & Philadelphia: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.
Gullestad, M. (1992). Egalitarian Individualism. In: Gullestad, M. (ed.) The Art of Social Relations. Essays on Culture, Social Action and Everyday Life in Modern Norway (pp. 183-200). Oslo: Scandinavian University Press.
Hacking, I. (1998). Mad Travellers. Reflections on the Reality of Transient Mental Illnesses.
København: Akademisk Forlag.
Horwitz, A. V. (2002). Creating Mental Illness. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
Jahreie, J. (2022). Constructing the School-Ready Child – A study of ECEC Teachers’ Experiences of Preparing Children for School. PhD Dissertation. Oslo: Oslo Metropolitan University.
Jenkins, R. (1996). Social Identity. London: Taylor & Francis.
Jensen, S.Q. (2011). Othering, identity formation and agency. In: Qualitative Studies, 2(2): 63-78. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7146/qs.v2i2.5510
Kjær, B. (2003). Forældre og forældresamarbejde - hvordan omtales forældre og hvordan udtaler de sig? I: Udvikling og perspektiver. Socialministeriets evaluering af formålsbestemmelsen om dagtilbud til børn i Lov om Social Service. (pp. 105-123) Rapport 3. CASA, Højvangseminariet og Roskilde University
Frederiksberg: Frydenlund Academic.
Kjær, B. (2023). Voicing the silenced: one million voices and the Danish disability experience. In: Social Work and Society, 20(2). https://ejournals.bib.uni-wuppertal.de/index.php/sws/article/view/807/1391
Lee, E., J. Bristow, C. Faircloth & J. Macvarish (eds.) (2014): Parenting Culture Studies. Basingstoke and New York: University of California Press.
Löfgren, O. (1991). Learning to Remember and Learning to Forget: Class and Memory in Modern Sweden.
Mattingly, C. (2012). Two virtue ethics and the anthropology of morality. In: Anthropological Theory 12(2), pp. 161-184. DOI: 10.1177/1463499612455284
Mattingly, C. (2013). Moral Selves and Moral Scenes: Narrative Experiments in Everyday Life, Ethnos, 78(3): 301-327.
Rose, N. (1999). Governing the Soul: The shaping of the Private Self. London & New York: Free Association books.
Rosenberg, C. (2007). Our Present Complaint. American Medicine, Then and Now. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Runswick-Cole, K., Lawtorn, R. & Goodley, D. (2016). The trouble with ’hard working families’. In: Community, Work & Family 19(2):257-260. https://doi.org/10.1080/13668803.2016.1134153
Spivak G. C. (1985). The Rani of Sirmur: an essay in reading the archives. History and Theory, 24(3), 247-272. https://doi.org/10.2307/2505169
Schepher-Hughes, N. (1990). Mother Love and Child Death in Northeast Brazil. In: J.W. Stigler, R.A. Shweder & G. Herdt (eds), Cultural Psychology. Essays on comparative human development (pp. 542-565). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Tyler, I. (2020). Stigma: The Machinery of Inequality. London: Zed Books.
Wright, S. (2017).
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright belongs to the author and Qualitative Studies
