Den ‘tekno-innovative’ vendingen i eldreomsorgen – tvingende nødvendighet eller bidrag til en omsorgskrise i velferdsstaten?

Project summary

This postdoctoral project is part of the strategic and capacity-building research project (ISP), “The politics of a changing institutional ecology: coordinating and prioritizing healthcare and welfare services in the municipal landscape.” ISP examines how social and structural dynamics shape the conditions of municipal health and care services and identifies factors that may promote or hinder collaboration and prioritization within these services. It aims to contribute to theoretical development in the research field, as well as interacting with ongoing discussions about transformations in public welfare services. ISP has an interdisciplinary and comparative orientation and is organised into four work packages. The postdoctoral project is situated within Work Package 1: “Crisis in the Norwegian welfare state?”, and Work Package 2: “Municipal organisation in encountering the Coordination Reform.” The main aim of the postdoctoral project is to publish articles based on the empirical material from the PhD thesis (2023): "Welfare Technology in Norwegian Home Care Services: A Praxeological Analysis of State Visions, Market Dynamics, and Municipal Realities". The data material consists of document analyses of healthcare policies and technological advertisements from 1970–2022, as well as observational and interview data from fieldwork, conducted at various levels of municipal home care contexts. Article 1 examines the role of the state in promoting the welfare technology industry within the Norwegian welfare-state context. Theoretically, it draws on Pierre Bourdieu’s analysis of the intertwined relationship between the state and the economic field in The Social Structures of the Economy. The article was published in the journal Praktiske grunde in autumn 2025. Article 2 will analyse how the state’s investment in welfare technology can be understood as an expression of different forms of welfare-state privatization—both in terms of for‑profit market actors taking over tasks in health and care services, and in the form of more hidden forms of privatization like shifts in the responsibility for care to family members, volunteers, and self-care. Theoretically, the article will draw on Bourdieu’s writings on the consequences of neoliberalism for European welfare states, as well as ongoing theoretical debates on the privatization of welfare within feminist political economy and poststructuralist feminist perspectives. The article will be submitted to Praxeologi in spring 2026. Article 3 will be co-autored with Professor Anette Fagertun and aims to discuss tensions and dilemmas arising in municipal contexts when national guidelines on telecare are interpreted and implemented by a female‑dominated field of home care in collaboration with a male‑dominated technology sector. Empirically, the article is based on both observational and interview data, and will be interpreted through Bourdieu’s theory of symbolic power and symbolic violence. The article engages with current feminist discussions on the growing care crisis in the Nordic welfare states and will be submitted to the European Journal of Politics and Gender in autumn 2026. Article 4 is linked to Work Package 2 of the ISP project and will be co‑authored with researchers in ISP. Thematically, it examines how innovation has emerged as a universal cure for the care crisis in Norwegian policy discourse. The analysis draws on theoretical perspectives such as Foucault’s biopolitics, Felt’s concept of “sociotechnological imaginaries,” and poststructuralist contributions discussing technologization as neoliberalism’s response to the care crisis. The article will be published as part of a special issue on the care crisis in the Nordics in International Journal of Care and Caring, in cooperation with the research group CARE at Roskilde University, Denmark.