From ‘professions’ to ‘the field of welfare work’

Abstract

The article deals with public sector employee groups and their work considered as part of a Danish welfare state intervention. Using a critique of the concept of profession as a launching pad, the article suggests adopting a cross-professional approach which builds on a historical and sociological perspective. The sociologist Pierre Bourdieu’s understanding of modern society as divided into a number of relatively autonomous fields leads to the formulation of the question: Which structures have historically characterised ‘the field of welfare work’? The article presents the results of a study that constructs such a field on the basis of analyses of empirical materials in the form of trade periodicals for selected groups within the public welfare sector, namely social workers, nurses, ‘social educators’ and school teachers. The structure of this field is examined via the ways in which these ‘welfare workers’ relate to the work they do, in terms of their attitudes to the job’s objectives, content and concrete methods. A synchronic part of the analysis hones in on the logics of welfare work at particular moments in time, examining periodicals for the four groups across disciplinary boundaries. A diachronic part of the analysis progresses chronologically and establishes a characterisation of stability and changes in the overall field over a period of fifty years. The field’s structures are conceived theoretically with the aid of Bourdieu’s concept of capital, which is used to localise relationships outside the field, particularly to the state bureaucratic field. By honing in on the empirical data from the years 1955, 1975 and 2005, it is shown how the field is fundamentally held together by a common conviction regarding the importance of the work for national cohesion and progress. In addition, it is shown how disagreements about the work’s objectives and concrete approaches have pervaded the field historically, which can be understood as tension between, on the one hand, a number of humanist logics often based on the idea of a ‘calling’, and, on the other hand, economic and bureaucratic logics. It is concluded that the field of welfare work is characterised by very little autonomy and can be understood as a sub-field of the bureaucratic field. One of the analysis’ central points is that the logics of welfare work can be seen as crossing disciplinary boundaries as they vary more in terms of certain historical and societal logics. Finally, the results of the analysis are related to transformations in the rationale of the Danish welfare state during the last century.