Integrating cultural and social policy through family home visits in suburban areas of exclusion: examining the rationalities of Bookstart Göteborg

ABSTRACT

This article explores the rationality of the Bookstart home-visiting programme in Gothenburg, Sweden, concerning its general ambition to provide social inclusion through mixing cultural- and welfare policy. Through the Bookstart programme, librarians visit families in their homes to inform and instruct parents about reading books for their children to enhance language learning. The areas of the city chosen for intervention were described as socially vulnerable, typically with a majority of citizens born outside Sweden. The analysis outlines the rationality and technologies formed in a philanthropist tradition, targeting the moral potential of parenting and creating the subjectivities of the reading parent and child. Different welfare professionals employ slightly different discourses but all base their legitimacy on the benign power of knowledge about what is best for children in the city. Through this analysis, we contribute to the knowledge of how cultural policy is integrated into social policy in the contemporary advanced liberal welfare state.

KEYWORDS:

• Social impact
• Bookstart
• home-visits
• social policy
• social exclusion
• governmental rationality

Introduction

This article explores the Bookstart Göteborg project, a book-gifting scheme carried out through home visits in socio-economically vulnerable areas in the city, and how it has been implemented and promoted by different public actors. Bookstart Gothenburg is part of a wider national policy concern since 2015 over declining reading habits among Swedish children and young people, evidenced by the PISA reports (Dir. 2016:78, p. 3; Swedish Arts Council 2018; Sjödin Sundström 2019). Notably, in the government budget proposition for 2021, Bookstart is strengthened by additional funds to address the issue of diminishing reading capabilities among children (Prop. 2020/21:1), stressing the policy importance attributed to the Bookstart intervention.

From a perspective of cultural and social policy as keys of particular governmental rationality of contemporary welfare states (Rose 1999), with an empirical focus on Bookstart Göteborg, we particularly examine the technology of the home visit – a cornerstone of the local policy ambition to reach out to families in these areas. In this sense, we see the formation of children’s literacy as an example of how cultural policy, social policy, and educational policy intersect in the practice of municipal welfare services. Additionally, we see this technology in the tradition of social work with families and individuals in the marginalised communities of modern urban settings.

Concerns of (sub)urban social, economic and geographic exclusion have been on the agenda in Swedish public debate (Sernhede, Thörn, and Thörn 2016) and social policy transformations in the last decade (Franzén, Hertting, and Thörn 2016). Accordingly, social policy objectives, in terms of social inclusion or integration, have been top priorities (Dahlstedt and Eliassi 2018). These discussions must be viewed in the light of increasing immigration and increasing socio-economic segregation coinciding with ethnic segregation (Dahlstedt and Neergaard 2016) and resulting in increased stigmatisation of so-called suburban areas of exclusion (Backvall 2019). In Sweden, such a discourse of social exclusion has been heavily directed towards certain populations and areas of cities being in a state of otherness, which is referred to as ‘outsidership’ (Davidsson and Petersson 2017). In the 2000s, cultural policy was formulated with concern to social exclusion in many European welfare states (Bishop 2012; Kawashima 2006), consequently promoting culture as an instrument to achieve social inclusion (Belfiore and Bennett 2007), for instance in Sweden (Ekholm and Lindström Sol 2019).

This article aims to explore the governmental rationality of Bookstart Göteborg, concerning its general ambition to provide social inclusion. How are problems constructed in discourse, which is purportedly targeted in the policy of the intervention? How is the technology of home visits conducted and rationalised? How are the discourse and rationality of the objectives of the intervention formed? These questions are examined on the empirical basis of interviews with practitioners, professionals and policymakers working with Bookstart in Göteborg, Sweden, analysed through a governmentality perspective (cf. Rose 1999; Villadsen 2004). Through this analysis, we contribute to the knowledge of how cultural policy is integrated into welfare policy, and vice versa. In societies marked by growing inequality, migration flows, and welfare cuts, it is important to examine new conditions of cultural policy that arise to understand and address social problems.

Empirical context

Bookstart Göteborg is a book-giving programme organised in collaboration among the municipality administration, childcare centres, and libraries to promote early language development in children aged 0–3 years (Swedish Arts Council 2018). Bookstart originated in Great Britain in 1992 with the charity Booktrust and grew internationally throughout the 1990s (Moore and Wade 2003; O’Hare and Connolly 2014). Through a decree by the former centre-right government, The Swedish Arts Council introduced Bookstart as three-year pilot studies in five municipalities in Sweden in 2015 (among them Göteborg, Swedish Arts Council 2018), inspired by the Danish Bogstart (Espersen 2016).

Göteborg (Gothenburg) is Sweden’s second-largest municipality, with approximately 500 k inhabitants, providing an interesting example of contemporary cultural policy and welfare changes. The city is geographically segregated concerning socio-economic status and origin; a problem acknowledged through the city-wide scheme Jämlik Stad (Equal City) and the Swedish police authorities (2017). Bookstart Göteborg is part of a larger mobilisation called Staden där vi läser för våra barn (The City Where We Read For Our Children, CRC). Seven areas deemed at-risk or especially vulnerable with a comparatively high proportion of residents born outside Sweden were selected for the intervention (Equal Gothenburg 2014, 2017).

The purpose of Bookstart Göteborg is to encourage parents to read to and with their children from an early age to enhance language development and strengthen the children’s chances to finish school, and by extension, create an equal city (Widerberg 2018). Through information about families given by the childcare centres, librarians make home visits to families when the first child is six months old, and a subsequent visit when the child is 11 months old. During these visits, age-appropriate books are handed out to the families. When the child is 18 months old, the families are invited to visit the nearest library for another book gift. Although book-gifting has a history in the city that predates Bookstart, the method of home visits by librarians is typical of the Bookstart project.

Cultural policy context

Cultural policy researchers are typically critical towards the policy tendency since the late 1970’s ‘to use cultural ventures and investments as a means or instrument to attain goals in other areas’ (Vestheim 1994: 65, quoted in Nisbett 201: 558). Among others, Gray (2007) conceives of the instrumental utilisation of cultural practices as part of general commodification processes, and Belfiore (2002) have expressed criticism towards the attitude of using culture as a means of responding to social problems broadly. In contrast, others question the use of the concept ‘instrumentality’ in cultural policy discourse as it encompasses such a broad range of issues (Røyseng 2016) and point to the fact that all cultural policy initiatives serve a purpose and must therefore be understood as instrumental (Skot-Hansen 2006; Gibson 2008). For instance, Nisbett (2013), argues that cultural professionals are not opposed to instrumentalism but view it as a natural feature of cultural practices. Still, it is important to note that cultural policy in the Nordic countries was formulated to respect the autonomy of the arts and the principle of arts for art’s sake (Bakke 2001; Duelund 2008). Debates about undue political influence over the arts and culture sometimes erupt in Sweden (e.g. Power 2009).

Although we understand Bookstart as an instrumental policy project, it is not the instrumentalism per se that we wish to examine critically but the (implicit) assumptions about contemporary social problems to which culture is seen as a solution. We seek to study Bookstart as a social and cultural policy intervention that results from such assumptions that positions segments of the population in need of certain interventions, such as the home visit. These interventions are in turn, we argue, part of re-emerging philanthropic rationality in Swedish welfare, in contrast to or emerging alongside, the encompassing welfare rationality.

Research context

Much research on Bookstart and similar book-gifting schemes where librarians or health care actors cooperate in provision have been conducted internationally (Espersen 2016; Ghelani 1999; Hall 2001; Hashimoto 2012; Moore and Wade 2003; O’Hare and Connolly 2014; Tung-Wen Sun, Shih, and Walker 2014; Wray and Medwell 2015). Positive outcomes from book-gifting schemes concerning children’s attitudes to books and parent-child reading have been noticed (Moore and Wade 2003). In a more critical perspective, Vanobbergen, Daems, and Van Tilburg (2009, 286) discusses the ‘pedagogicalisation of the family’ as a discourse of making parents responsible for their children’s educational success and making the home a place for training and learning.

Much research focuses in general on literacy and parent-child relationship outcomes of Bookstart. Notably, in the Danish case, the outcomes are specifically directed towards what is called ‘ghetto areas’ (Espersen 2016, 10) through the method of home visits by librarians, with the hope of preventing future social problems. The purpose of the home visit is to encourage trust in official agents through a ‘psychology of persuasion’ to entice parents in socio-economic vulnerable areas with a majority of the immigrant population, encouraging residents to take greater responsibility for the language development of their children (Espersen 2016, 21). Librarians are seen as neutral agents in comparison to other municipal agents and thus well suited for creating non-stigmatising meetings in the homes of hard-to-reach target groups. The core mission of librarians is to promote culture and literacy to citizens, where the concept of culture is not specified and could signify both the Danish culture and aesthetic culture (Espersen 2016). The Danish model using home visits by librarians in ‘vulnerable areas’ was adopted by the Swedish Arts Council in 2015 in the form of pilot projects in selected municipalities (Swedish Arts Council 2018).

Research on Bookstart in the Swedish context is limited to research-based reports, such as the evaluation by the Swedish Arts Council in 2018, and evaluations of municipal book gift schemes and collaborations between health care and libraries (Hampson Lundh and Michnik 2014; Rydsjö 2012). Sjödin Sundström (2019) have focused on how the national concern about children’s dwindling reading habits and poor school results is constructed as a private concern for parents, which is why the public concern must be to govern parents through educating them on reading habits for children.

The cultural participation of children and young people is given prominence in the Swedish national cultural policy goals, as well as in the national library legislation (Hultgren and Johansson 2013; Hedemark and Lindberg 2017). Public libraries often set up ‘child spaces’ to promote active engagement with children’s literature (Hedemark and Lindberg 2018). In research on Swedish librarians’ professional role, it is found that collaboration with other professionals, such as childcare centres, is common to stimulate literacy in children. Librarians are known to educate parents about their roles in supporting their children’s early reading habits (Hedemark and Lindberg 2017, 2018). However, Hultgren and Johansson (2013) found that parents from other countries were largely absent from activities in their study of a children’s library.

While international studies have mainly focused on evaluative approaches for understanding the potential of Bookstart and similar programmes, few studies situate this form of intervention in a policy context, scrutinising the policy significance and effects of the intervention promotion. Our article aligns with a critical policy approach, by exploring the governmental rationality underpinning the intervention, examining both how the intervention is made intelligible and the policy effects made possible by the intervention. This article thus fills a critical knowledge gap in the context of Bookstart in Sweden and book-gifting employing the home visit by librarians. Additionally, the article provides a general contribution to the field of research by spotlighting and interrogating how culture policy and social policy are intertwined in the practical utilisation of interventions on the municipal level of government.

Theoretical framework

The governmentality perspective concerns how power can be understood in modern and liberal societies; as a productive force rather than a means of oppression (Foucault 1991). Accordingly, for power to operate in an advanced liberal society, it needs to be exercised through subtle forms of shaping the conduct (actions, behaviours, wills, subjectivities) of subjects – not through coercion, but voluntary participation (Foucault 1991; Rose 1999). The ways of conceiving how to govern the conduct of individuals and populations are from this perspective called governmental rationality (Gordon 1991; Rose 1999) because governing is based on discursive knowledge about problems as well as technologies of intervention and knowledge about people and their needs. From this approach, we seek to problematise the rationality of the intervention to understand the potential effects, in the form of cultural and social policy schemes, of public professionals entering the homes of families.

Villadsen has mapped out the governmental rationality of neo-philanthropy (2004, 2007, 2008a, 2008b, 2009, 2011), and directed attention towards the technology of the home visit. He particularly explores how technologies of providing aid and support to – governing – the poor, vulnerable and excluded were developed through philanthropy in the late 1800s and gradually integrated into professional social work of the welfare states in the 1900s.

An essential facet of philanthropist work was to provide educational efforts that addressed the moral reflection, competencies and will of the targeted subjects, especially directed at vulnerable parts of the urban geography (Villadsen 2007). Philanthropic organisations devised a variety of social work routines, such as home visits to the poor and vulnerable – an approach through which the moral character and willpower of the poor and excluded could be assessed and determined, while at the same time facilitating aid and support within the realm of the family (Donzelot 1979; Villadsen 2007). Such technologies were integrated into the post-war welfare states, which came to dominate social work (Donzelot 1988), assessing how poverty and vulnerability were seen as consequences of or interwoven with structural conditions that the individual could hardly change on his/her own (Villadsen 2007).

The key to the contemporary neo-philanthropic turn in social work was how the power of the will re-appeared as the central object of government. Notably, the discourse of philanthropic social work and neo-philanthropy centres around at least four recurring objectives and ideals: first, the objective of a governing intervention is the morality, responsibility, and willpower of individuals. Second, aid and support should be directed to (and limited to) those deemed in need and those deemed to have the ability to develop and improve. Third, individuals must be made part of, and integrated into a moral community (Villadsen 2004). Fourth, help and support should be provided as help-to-self-help and must create the conditions for recipients to help themselves, so they no longer require outside assistance (Villadsen 2007).

In Villadsen’s (2011) analysis the variety of discourses and means of philanthropy and neo-philanthropy intersect through technologies like the home visit. Through home-visiting, the moral character of subjects in need could be ranked and categorised. In this way, the philanthropic predecessors of the modern social worker could simultaneously emerge as mediators, judges and practitioners of aid and support (Villadsen 2007). As a mediator, the philanthropist assumed the role of distributing help and support to the vulnerable. He/she acted as a link between the included community and the excluded poor and vulnerable.

Furthermore, he/she also took on the role of assessing and articulating the needs of the poor and the vulnerable (Villadsen 2007, 2011). As a judge, the philanthropist was able to investigate and assess the moral qualities of the poor and excluded (and their families). As a practitioner, the philanthropist was able to offer education and support. Giving was primarily directed towards advice and guidance, thus not towards alms or material necessities (Villadsen 2007, 2011). Establishing a common social subjectivity and morality of the individual citizen and the families was made possible by the professional performing social work, and thereby becoming a bridge between the included normality of society and the individual, family or group of deviants (Philp 1979; Villadsen 2004).

With this historical and theoretical framework, we wish to discuss Bookstart as a provider of services for the vulnerable, and above all, as a rationality of government. We examine how the ways of thinking about, talking about and organising different activities, contribute to changing our ways of thinking about social problems and cultural solutions, as well as our way of looking at the people who are considered in need of help and support.

Methods

The empirical data consists of interviews with respondents from Göteborg, selected due to being knowledgeable about and central to Bookstart Göteborg, representing levels of policymakers, administrators, and professionals.

Two representatives from the Political Committees, one part of the Cultural Committee and one of the Social Resource Committee were interviewed. Both are involved in supporting and initiating mobilisation towards equality work and projects such as CRC, of which Bookstart Göteborg is part.

Bookstart primarily concerns the Cultural Affairs Administration with responsibility for the libraries, and the Social Resource Management, with the responsibility for childcare centres and central management for Equal City and CRC. Persons interviewed for this study were the project coordinator and the communications officer for CRC as well as the manager for the City library. They were actors with the responsibility, and ability, to influence the policy.

The study considers interviews with three librarians who are making home visits (including the Bookstart project leader). These were actors that also had power over the specific content of the local implementation of Bookstart and with experience of meeting families in socio-economically vulnerable areas.

The study also considers a group interview with four nurses at a family care centre in one city district, who were cooperating with the librarians in the Bookstart project. Their responsibility was to provide the librarians with information on children born in the district, as well as to promote reading for children among parents.

The interviews followed a thematic guide focused on issues of (1) desired outcomes, (2) procedures in home-visits, and (3) risks, problems and possibilities arising in Bookstart. Respondents’ names are made confidential. All respondents were offered the opportunity to read the transcripts of the interviews and to approve their quotes in the draft of the article.

To the empirical material outlined, social policy and technologies of governing cannot only be understood through formal policy discourse and documentation. Instead, social policy discourse needs to be assessed and examined in the variety of strategies, articulations and discursive practices promoted to facilitate processes of social change (Bacchi and Bonham 2014). In the analysis, we approach policy as well as technologies of governing in the form of productive power, methodologically as discourse analysis. Any discourse is the result of conflict and struggles, enabling how things and objects are talked about and acted upon (Foucault 1980). Governmental rationality, in this sense, refers to the ways relations between the problems constructed, technologies of intervention, and objectives of interventions are constructed in discourse (Gordon 1991). The analysis is guided by the general understanding of how governing rationalities are formed in the nexus of problematisation, technologies of intervention, and objectives of the rule.

Based on the guiding framework, spotlighting governmental rationality (in terms of the problematisations, technologies and objectives of government), we have explored the discourse and rationality of the Bookstart project. We constructed four themes through the analytical process of a close reading of our material: compensating for inequalities in life trajectories, the benign power of home-visiting, mobilisation of organisational cooperation, and facilitating the subject of inclusion. Altogether, the four themes and discursive elements intertwined form the governmental rationality explored and analysed.

Results and analysis

The following analysis is structured in the four subsections mentioned above, presenting the technologies of governing of the Bookstart intervention analysed, aligning with the rationalities of neo-philanthropy sketched out above.

Compensating for inequalities in life trajectories

Inequalities in life trajectories are discursively associated with access to and attitudes towards reading books. Reading books is seen as an indication of good life trajectories, for education, health, security, and welfare in life. Accordingly, providing aid and support in book reading is a way of compensating for social inequalities and of ameliorating risk among the marginalised and excluded population of the segregated city. Accordingly, risk assessment, and targeting those deemed in need, is a key for the rationality of governing promoted.

A discourse of inequality underpins the motives and legitimacy of the Bookstart project. The CRC project coordinator, for instance, says that ‘we need to identify: where, in the areas we work, are there groups of people that we may not reach? And how to best reach them.’ Here, against such backdrop, a particular population of the vulnerable parts of the urban geography is deemed to require aid and support.

When asked a question about the causes of socio-economic inequality and segregation and the policies outlined to target such problems, a civil servant of the administration for allocation of social welfare, working in the communications office for CRC, explains:

The reason why a city is segregated is very complicated. […] One way to go about (segregation) is to look at what city districts in Gothenburg have the least resources, and to consider how we can reach families that today, we are not in contact with. It can mean that their children are not attending preschool, it can mean that you are not visiting the childcare centre. […] If there is one thing you can do to increase equality or to invest in children, it is: read to your children!

Here, the civil servant frames the discourse of inequality through understanding inequality as the absence of families or target groups from social services such as public childcare. She also asserts that addressing inequality through caring about children and their reading habits has been a successful strategy to gain full political support, as well as for engaging the private and civil sector to support the programme.

Bookstart Göteborg started as pilot projects limited to selected areas in the city. In the words of the librarian from Bergsjön city district, ‘Bookstart was always located in east Bergsjön, where there are the greatest … We are going to these vulnerable areas, but east Bergsjön is the most socio-economically vulnerable of them all’. Locating the needs assessed to the areas of socio-economic exposure and social exclusion is often associated with reaching out and of accessing the people living there. The coordinator for CRC elaborates on the selective outreach to a more general intervention. She says, ‘from the point of view of equality this could be a typical general intervention provided to all … but then, we could also work with the book more directly.’ She specifies that the selective intervention rationality needs to target ‘these areas where we can expect, in the socio-economic weaker areas, they do not have many books at home’, adding that ‘not much reading is done there, they do not have these reading habits’. Again, assessing the needs is the underpinning of the selective outreach, and the intervention can compensate for the socio-economic inequalities noted as well as the lack of reading and parental support from the home. Considering the Scandinavian and Swedish model of governing welfare, with a high emphasis on universal right and general outreach (Larsson, Letell, and Eds 2012), such selective provision and targeting is noteworthy and, not least, symptomatic of philanthropic notions of aid and support to those in need (Villadsen 2007, 2011).

The Bookstart intervention is motivated and underpinned by a risk assessment and prevention rationality (cf. Rose 1999). For instance, the politician in the cultural committee explains, ‘interventions for children and youth need to come at an early age, […] because what we do for children and youths will have an impact in the long run’. In this way, she specifies the importance of interventions today based on effects in the future. This rationality aligns particularly with potential risks that need to be avoided or combatted. Notably, the intervention aims to provide powers of resilience to those deemed in need and deemed at-risk. Risk becomes meaningful through a discourse of social exclusion. Accordingly, when the communications officer at the administration for allocation of social welfare pinpoints the risks that need to be averted, she means, ‘they risk ending up in a state of exclusion’. Accordingly, she continues, ‘this is all about power and resources, the educational level of parents’ and how this facilitates ‘the language development of the child [and] it becomes a chain of happenings … going to school, succeeding in school, being admitted to high school and having the power over your own life, being able to make decisions’. Moreover, the risk highlighted is associated with limited democratic and citizen participation. According to the Bookstart project leader, these children ‘risk growing up … without having their democratic right to make their voice heard’.

The discourse of risk articulated can be understood in two, intertwined ways. In one instance, the risk is a condition caused by socio-economic segregation. According to the Bergsjön librarian, the areas targeted are characterised by ‘very low-income levels … the lowest in Göteborg’. In the other instance, the associated risk is the effect of how parents residing in the area lack the knowledge and competences required to provide for their children. One of the nurses at the child care centre reflects on the situation by saying that ‘parents themselves do what they believe is best, but sometimes they do not realise that there are problems that can have serious effects’ in terms of future social problems and social exclusion. Increasing vocabulary and language skills is promoted to enter society with the means to compensate for parent’s lack of economic capital and to avoid poverty and social exclusion.

In the following excerpt, the Bergsjön librarian explains why it is important to reach out to the children living in families in the areas excluded and marginalised.

Because literacy, I mean the preschools and schools cannot compensate for the gap that arises. […] If you read at home, you have a larger vocabulary when you start school, and that is what these children are lacking, it is not about them being multilingual in the first place, it is about them not having been exposed to reading, and that is what we want to change. […] This is something we need to make clear to the parents, for them to be aware.

According to this way of presenting the situation, socio-economic divisions and segregation are manifested in unequal reading habits and language skills, which in turn affect how school success can be estimated. This way, the Bergsjön librarian describes the compensation and risk protection rationality of the intervention, but moreover animate the parents as a target for intervention. Accordingly, parents need to be informed about the importance of reading. It is through this way of conceiving the problem that the technology of home-visiting emerges as a way to reach out to those deemed in need, to compensate for the inequality observed, to prevent risk and to promote social inclusion. Here, reading, culture and books, become facilitators of reaching out to the families – and in, to the homes – of those at risk and in need.

The benign power of home visiting

Seeing that families and parents are problematised as a source of exclusion and risk as well as a potential location of the solution, the strategies outlined by welfare professionals are about entering the homes to access the families. Importantly, the home visit governing technology needs to be enacted as a non-hierarchical encounter based on trust and mutual relations while simultaneously involving assessment and observation of the home and the parenting carried out, as well as pursuing interventions by the book.

Home-visiting, as described by professionals, enables the formation of relations with parents and families that are non-hierarchical and based on mutual interests. The project leader of Bookstart Göteborg, says ‘the home visit is one of the biggest successes, the actual meeting’, that is created between professionals, parents, and families. Face-to-face communication, in this meaning, is facilitated by the power of the book. One of the nurses at the childcare centre, for instance, stresses that visiting parents in the home should lead to the parents ‘knowing what a book is’. In this way, the technology of home visits is composed of three constitutive forces of governing: establishing relations and entering the families, observation, and diagnosis, as well as intervention by the book.

First, in interviews, home visits can be portrayed as a means of creating non-hierarchical social relations between professionals and parents. A nurse at the childcare centre, for instance, says that ‘you are on the family’s turf and not here (in the care centre), the meeting is more on their terms.’ Home-visiting, in this regard, is not only a means of finding common ground but is also described as essential for reaching out (and into the families) respectfully, as stated by the Bookstart Göteborg project leader, ‘home visits … they are … for me one of the cornerstones of a respectful treatment’. In contrast, the library is more generally known to be spaces that require specific behaviour, such as to ‘be quiet and treat books gently, not cause any commotion’ (Hedemark and Lindberg 2018, 431). Similarly, the librarian at the Angered library muses about the differences between meeting a family at the local library compared to the home visit: ‘when we come home to a family, the power balance is levelled, it is more of an equal meeting, we are in their home, we are their guests, and we have to adjust to their situation’. Accordingly, ‘this makes most parents relax, makes them more comfortable’. Here, the home visit is understood as a means to level the aspect of unequal power positions between professionals/citizens. Principally, visiting parents and families in the home is a way to form trust and is also a way to show that the governing authorities of welfare have a benign interest in families. The librarian from Angered library notes that ‘people are delighted and grateful when we come and we are showing an interest in their child, who of course is the most important thing in the world for them.’ The benign care and provision of support, as well as the selective outreach, is characterised by a relation between provider and receiver, a relation based on moral obligations and responsibility recognised in philanthropic support to the poor and marginalised (Villadsen 2007, 2011). This relationship also benefits the welfare professionals as it is based on acts of mutual interest and perceived equality.

Second, the professionals observe the household and families concerning the presence of books in the home, and the attitude towards books and reading in the home. They also assess the need for governing intervention. The benign care and intervention rationality are expressed through observation of the household. In the following description by the librarian from Angered library, observation is described as a key element of the home visit technology.

Most of the time, the families open (the door), sometimes they have not received the letter, you can only speculate, but most of the time, someone opens. […] Each visit is very different depending on how many are at home, is the child sleeping or is it awake? Is there only one parent home, perhaps they have forgotten that we were coming, are there others there visiting? Are there animals in the home? Is the TV on or not, have they just woken up or not? It is very different.

Here, the librarian explains how the professionals making home visits try to assess the situation and the people in the home; what type of information and interaction with the child and parents is possible, how long the visit is going to take. Through the visit and the observation, the visitor takes the form of a judge, diagnosing the needs and deciding the potential of the parents and children, and offering aid and support in the form of education – which, again, is something that can be recognised from the traditional aid and support of the philanthropists (Villadsen 2007, 2011).

Third, based on the assessment of the home, aid and support can be provided in the form of book gifts. For this support to operate in the home and through the families, the book needs to be presented as something for everyone, and the habit of reading as something fun, enjoyable, and easy-going. The librarian from Angered library pinpoints the duality between presenting the book as something enjoyable, while at the same time using the symbolic force of the book to provide aid and support. She says, ‘people can have too much respect for the book … it is okay if the child chews on it’.

The pedagogical task is to make the book a natural part of the lives of their children, no matter if they use the book in what would be considered ‘wrong’ ways, such as putting the book in their mouths. A nurse at the childcare centre elaborates on this further, while also mentioning that there may be a certain resistance from parents. She says that parents may be ‘a little sceptical when you tell them to read for their child; they do not understand, and they do not listen.’ Accordingly ‘the parents think that when we say read, that we are going to … that they are supposed to read … that is not what it is about’; instead you should ‘talk about the pictures in the book, attempt this conversation’, and that is ‘actually a common misunderstanding among our parents’.

Accordingly, the governing rationality of the intervention means to help parents to provide for their children themselves, and to emancipate them from dependence on aid and support, to empower the families – to help them help themselves (cf. Villadsen 2007, 2011). Providing this necessary information and visualisation about reading (or at least how to become familiar with the book), represents the parent as a recipient of education and provision. Following this discourse, parents are made a particular target of the governing intervention.

Mobilisation and organisational cooperation

The home visit is described not only as a technology to enter the house-holds and families of the excluded population but also as a way to mobilise a variety of social actors from different social sectors, engaged in various measures of forming the conduct of subjects, in this governing endeavour. Childcare centre professionals visit families and provide names and addresses for librarians and their visits. This mobilisation is used to introduce the families to the institutions of the inclusive society, perceived as being in contact with and visiting certain important social/cultural institutions, notably the childcare centres and the libraries.

The project coordinator for the mobilisation CRC elaborates on how the home visit ‘lowers the thresholds to visit not only the library but also other arenas that provide support for children and families … open playgroups, family centres, and other meeting places’. Through mobilisation of a variety of service providers, the libraries can be integrated into the complex of welfare provision, and in the government of the conduct of parents, families and eventually children. The manager of the City library says ‘of course, I see the library as a crucial part of the welfare structure’. She continues, ‘I believe that libraries equalise life conditions in a way … the library cannot function if it is isolated.’ Accordingly, ‘we cannot fulfil our mission [if isolated] but need to cooperate with, for example, schools, preschools, and childcare centres, as well as other bodies such as associations’. Through such discourse and rationality of collaboration and mobilisation through home visits, the provision of welfare is represented as a joint responsibility for all kinds of actors engaged in compensating for inequalities. The various actors are joined through a collaborative technology of accessing and overseeing the families.

The governing actors and agencies involved can collaboratively enter the homes and families to provide books and reading support but can also provide general information about Swedish society. Introducing welfare institutions to the families is thus a two-fold technology: first, it concerns the penetration of professionals into the house-hold, second, it concerns opening up the house-hold and families so that the families can enter society and the institutions beyond. Accordingly, the home visits are an opportunity to increase the chances of parents and families visiting the library as well as interconnected social institutions such as family centres offering child-centred activities. In the following excerpt, the Bergsjön librarian expounds on this matter.

We usually tell them about the library […] that you are welcome here to ask questions. Sometimes there are questions about children, siblings with late language development which worries them. We can say: visit us in the library and bring the child; we can see if there is anything for you. […] You meet mothers who have been mostly at home during their time in Sweden. […] There are many books for you in your language, and they step out of their roles as mothers for a moment and say ‘I am also going to read!’

In this rationality of governing, professionals become mediators between the excluded population and the institutions of the inclusive society. Thus, visiting the library provides an opportunity for families to leave home and to engage in society beyond. For the two-fold strategy to be realised, the relations facilitated through the home-visits are vital.

Facilitating the subjects of inclusion

The goals of the home-visit technology can be understood to a variety of objectives anticipated, in addition to the mobilisation of the variety of social actors and agencies outlined above, altogether concerning the formation of self-including subjects. This regards both forming conditions for education of the parents and the children. Accordingly, the home visit aims to construct an idealised communicative and competent parent as well as a learning subject child that can potentially grow up to be an included subject citizen. Thus, the governing rationality is centred around the conduct of families, parents and, ultimately, the children at risk and in need.

The construction of ideal parental competences arises in two ways in discourse. The communicative parent is a parent who reads to their children, a parent who understands that children need to engage with their parents verbally to develop language skills. Therefore, as the Angered librarian puts it, her role is to encourage the parents ‘to show, inspire, and to put words to things they are already doing, or can easily do. To cheer them on and affirm that it is important to talk to and read to their child and that their child, above all, loves to hear their voice’. Developing communicative skills is a path to becoming a competent parent – the ideal parent knows that it is important to read and talk to the child. According to a nurse at the child care centre, ‘Some (parents) do not understand the importance of talking to their children … […] they do not have that knowledge that a child needs someone to listen to, to be able to answer. To meet the child’. Following this rationality, being competent means knowing that reading and talking to the child is instrumental, even if the child does not respond, and understanding the importance of forming relations to and through the book. In this sense, and according to this rationality, it is the conduct of the parent that needs to be fostered in order to affect the children.

The project coordinator of Bookstart Göteborg continues by saying that ‘the home visit programme that we’re talking about … the aim is to support parents in their role in supporting their children and giving them good living conditions.’ By way of providing such powers, the rationality of provision can be described as a form of assistance to self-help (cf. Villadsen 2007, 2011), in the way that parents are aided to provide support to their children and families, emancipating themselves from the need for future support and provision. In this way, the image of the parent’s importance for the child’s linguistic development is conveyed. As a guiding agent, the parent – through the home visit – is constructed both as a target (i.e. to be integrated into society and developed as competent parents) and as a means of control (i.e. as an agent to guide the child to future prosperity and protect the child from risk). From the intervention, the parent is targeted and strategically formed as a mediator and agent of governing. Simultaneously, the parent is mobilised and activated as a means of providing for the child and for preventing risk as well as for facilitating the development of language skills. Parents are formed as means and mediators of rule, ultimately shaped to shape their children in a manner following the competencies outlined by professionals. In both meanings and positions, parents are governed through a form of education that tries to shape an includable citizen subject.

When it comes to the ideal subject child, the goal is outlined above in terms of providing for good conditions for the child and of developing resilience against the risks they may face in the future. Here, the learning child is a repeated discursive figure. The children need to be educable and learning to be prepared for school, so that, in turn, they do not fail in school, which protects them from risks associated with social exclusion. Seemingly, learning and being educable enable social inclusion and citizen participation. When asked what the long-term effect of the Bookstart project and the home visit interventions would be, the project coordinator for the mobilisation CRC outlines the following:

It is about us wanting children to finish school. We know that a good language ability, an early reading ability, to have an early developed vocabulary, contributes to and affects your school performance, your ability to finish school and to pass your grades, to further studies, to have a good life, future possibilities on the labour market and so on. But it is not only that; it is also strongly related to democratic values, that we get citizens that can partake in society.

Here, development of language skills is associated with education progress, employment, and labour market opportunities. Moreover, this process of progress, of risk prevention, is noted as a way of social inclusion and democratic participation. According to the governing rationality promoted, the future conduct and competencies of children can be steered this way, and risks can be prevented. Here, a benign and unthreatening form of power, operating through the librarian is promoted, providing aid and support for the vulnerable and those at risk.

Discussion

In this article, we have outlined the governmental rationality of Bookstart Göteborg. Looking at the rationality and technology promoted through home visits, they are fundamentally informed and underpinned by rationalities of philanthropy sketched out previously (Villadsen 2004, 2007). The educational elements of interventions target the willpower and competencies of individuals, i.e. the parents. The measures targeting individuals and families as units are promoted as responses to problems explicitly understood to be caused by structural inequalities. Accordingly, such measures are explicitly reflected upon in terms of compensation, but still providing support to risk resilience. Also, the intervention is explicitly targeting those deemed to be in need or at-risk of future and advanced social exclusion. The measures taken are underpinned by notions about how the targeted parents, families and children are seen as having the potential to develop and refine their competencies and capabilities (c.f. Vanobbergen, Daems, and Van Tilburg 2009). Also, the intervention strives to promote inclusion and integration in the community. The community is promoted both in the form of relations with mediating professionals representing the welfare machinery of society and the public sector and in the form of adaptation to the norms, culture and conduct associated with the majority culture and society. That is, principally language skills. Moreover, considering the families as a unit of government, and parents as the means and ends of governing technologies, provision comes in the form of assistance with self-help, aiming to support the families to provide for themselves, to form reading habits and to conduct themselves independently.

The culture, health, and social professionals, i.e. the conductors of home visits, are positioned in the discourse as mediators, judges and practitioners of social inclusion (cf. Villadsen 2007, 2011). As representatives of the welfare machinery penetrating the families and households of those in need, introducing them to the institutions of society, they have a mediating function between society and families, inclusion, and exclusion. Although the librarians emphasise the pleasure in reading and the book as a way to form parent-child relationships, they are, in the observation opportunity provided through the home visit, positioned as judges assessing the moral and educational potential of the parents and children, diagnosing their educational needs and assessing their potential prosperity and risk resilience. Positioned as practitioners, the professionals enter the families and instruct the parents on how to read to their children, both visualising the practice and forming the parents as agents, means and ends of the intervention. As shown by previous research on the librarian profession, targeting parents to support children’s early literacy development is not new (Hedemark and Lindberg 2017, 2018). However, this article highlights the home visit as a novel aspect of cultural policy conduct. Provision, here, comes in the form of educational guidance of the parents, not through material assistance or support directed to the children. The professionals conduct their practices within the realm of the families.

By analysing the educational ambitions of social/cultural policy, and will to govern the home, families and parents through facilitating reading habits and familiarity with books, we show precisely how the philanthropic rationality of provision permeates the professional welfare interventions on the level of the municipality (cf. Villadsen 2004, 2008a, 2008b, 2009). When utilising a cultural practice as a means of educational goals and with the objectives of preventing risk and exclusion, the rationalities and technologies interrogated can be analysed in terms of the ongoing interweaving of cultural policy, educational policy and social policy (cf. Sjödin Sundström 2019) at the local level. Distinctions between these policy areas are contingent upon and produced in discourse; however, they are disturbed in practical interventions by professionals operating on all fields simultaneously.

In conclusion, we must interrogate the conditions under which such governmental rationality can emerge and manifest itself as a reasonable approach to promoting social inclusion and to combating risk and social problems. Selective governmental rationality can only be realised in a landscape of increasing social inequalities and advanced social segregation (Equality report 2014; 2017). Such conditions are a prerequisite for directing governing interventions towards populations deemed to be in need or at risk. The segregation spotlighted cannot be politically combatted by broader social reforms of the structures causing inequalities and segregation. It is in this respect that the rationality promoted aligns with a post-political discourse (cf. Sjödin Sundström 2019). Both rationalities of selectivity and non-reformist agendas are illustrative of the gradual transformations of the Swedish and Scandinavian model and state of welfare, moving from welfarist and social-democratic ideals towards advanced liberal governmentality (Larsson, Letell, and Eds 2012). In this line of argument, cultural policy, and the neo-philanthropic rationality of government at the local level makes a productive force in this ongoing transformation. With regards to the home-visit, reaching out to those deemed at risk of exclusion, it also marks a shift in Swedish cultural policy which traditionally has relied on inviting people to institutions of cultural practices to offer democratic fostering.

Additionally, the educative elements of social change directed towards cultural adaptation and learning of language skills through the home visit are premised by an understanding of cultural homogeneity and community. When such conditions mapped out are enforced by cuts in social investment and austerity policies and reluctance for broad social reforms as well as policies promoting cultural and educative elements, philanthropic rationalities of government emerge in new institutional forms.

When based on selective assessment and provision of those deemed in need, the promotion of literacy skills through the willpower and conduct of subjects as a condition for inclusion makes out an institutional form to (re-)”philanthropise” the state of welfare. Neither the instrumentalisation of cultural policy (Skot-Hansen 2006; Gibson 2008), the home-visit as a technology of government and provision (Donzelot 1979), or the philanthropic rationalities of welfare (Villadsen 2004) are new per se. Also, instructing the parents and involving the families to influence their children is a common strategy of librarians for the promotion of reading (Hedemark and Lindberg 2017, 2018). Furthermore, home-visits are a common measure of social work (Villadsen 2011). What is made visible from our analysis of the Bookstart discourse and rationality is how these traditions and technologies intersect and intertwine, enabling a new and transformed form of the home-visit, and how this technology illustrates important aspects of a transforming state of welfare in Sweden, in particular. Cultural policy, then, formed as an instrument of social policy objectives provides a discursive arena where such rationalities of neo-philanthropy are introduced into the welfare machinery of contemporary welfare states, in particular Sweden.

Acknowledgments

This paper is part of a research project funded by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (The Swedish Foundation for Humanities and Social Sciences, ref. RMP17-0979:1) and the Cultural Affairs Administration of Gothenburg City, Sweden.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Riksbankens Jubileumsfond [RMP17-0979:1].

Notes on contributors

Sofia Lindström Sol

Sofia Lindström Sol is a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Borås, the centre for cultural policy research (KPC), Sweden. Her current research project explores participatory processes and methods in local cultural policy. Her research interests are national and local cultural policies and arts management, especially the intersection between cultural and social policies.

David Ekholm

David Ekholm is a researcher and lecturer at Linköping University, Sweden. Ekholm’s main research interests are in the sociology of social work and social policy, with a particular focus on youth interventions aiming at social inclusion. Ekholm’s research is characterised by critical and constructionist perspectives on contemporary social policy transformations.