Social skills, New Capitalism, and power in social work

ABSTRACT

Recently highly developed capitalist societies have witnessed a growing interest in social skills. This includes training of the unemployed in social skills. Theoretically this can be argued to follow the cultural and social logics of a new form of capitalism which is characterized by both postindustrialization and neoliberalization. It can also be argued that such training makes up a subtle but power-permeated attempt by an individualizing state to produce neoliberal, employable subjects. Using ethnographic data from a field work at a Danish Daghøjskole (daytime folk high school) it is demonstrated that social work that focuses on training the unemployed in social skills, is in practice characterized by much more than soft power and labor market logics. Care, emotional support and the inclusion of non-prudent forms of behavior was thus central elements of a social work that seemed to rely on a broad humanist view on human beings, at the same time as the social work was also characterized by soft power and did reflect current labor market demands. This illustrates contradictions in contemporary social work, which is forced to officially legitimize itself through a discursive repertoire that emphasizes labor market relevance; all the while social work is in practice often carried out in a way which is characterized by a broader understanding of social problems. Bourdieusian field theory might be an important analytical tool for understanding this relative autonomy.

KEYWORDS:

• New Capitalism
• social skills
• social work
• field theory
• governmentality

Acknowledgments

This article reports results from the ESSET project (see http://www.esset.aau.dk/). I thank my partners in the project, Annick Prieur, Oline Pedersen and Julie Laursen for their cooperation and sharing of thoughts and ideas throughout the research process. I also thank the service users and staff at the Daghøjskole for allowing me to do field work.

Notes

1. See Doogan for a somewhat skeptical treatment of the idea of a ‘new capitalism’ (Doogan 2009).

2. This reflects the ethnic composition of the town.

3. Due to their general life situation it was not feasible to formally present the analysis to the service users. But in some sense many of my informal conservations with them can be considered in situ validations of the analysis which started to emerge during the field work.

4. Based on a popularized account of Chapman (1995).

5. Jan Tønnesvang is Danish psychologist (see Tønnesvang 2002).

6. Each service user was assigned to a specific contact teacher, with whom they maintained regular contact, discussed personal and socials problems etc.

7. This analysis is off course not universal. On the contrary it may be specific to Nordic welfare regimes and their history of social democratic welfareism and high levels of state intervention. Other welfare regimes did perhaps not develop a strong humanist tradition of social work historically and it is therefore not in the same way present there as a counterweight to the social logics of contemporary capitalism.

Additional information

Funding

The ESSET project was funded by theDanish Council for Independent Research – Social Sciences (FSE). [12-125308].