The ‘Human’ Touch

Abstract

This article critically discusses the almost mythical conception of voluntary and ‘grass-roots’ organizations as problem solvers in current welfare policy – a myth, which over the last twenty years has become increasingly dominant in social policy programmes in advanced liberal welfare states. In particular, the article examines the assumption that voluntary and local organizations are permeated by a different rationality that enables human beings to act as ‘real humans’ rather than as professionals and clients – a rationality which is, however, permanently at risk of being contaminated by bureaucratic influence. It is demonstrated that among the conditions of possibility for this discourse are explanatory models and concepts in modern organizational theory and in voluntary sector studies. The article argues that the conceptualizations of power, rationality and social change dominant in these studies are unsatisfactory. Instead, it applies a Foucauldian approach to the domain of drug addiction treatment, analysing a social work ‘regime’ that transgresses the traditional boundaries between state and voluntary sector.

Key words:

• Voluntary organizations
• power
• Foucault
• regimes of practice
• drug addiction treatment

Notes

There are a number of studies that acknowledge differences between the degree of resistance and bargaining power that voluntary organizations have in relation to statutory agencies. These may, for instance, differentiate between large organizations with independent economic resources as opposed to smaller and more vulnerable organizations (for the Danish context see, for example, Henriksen 2004).

Many of these textbooks refer back to Carl Rogers (1951), the founding father of ‘client-centred therapy’. The textbook on motivational therapy by Swedish psychologist Per Revstedt (1995: 48) strikingly proclaims the existence of an innate positive core.