The work of care in the age of innovation

Project summary

In my PhD project, I will put under close investigation imaginations of, dilemmas in and local level solutions to the complex task of providing, organizing and prioritizing health and care services to elderly (“care”). The ethnographical context will be the Norwegian municipal care sector in a historical phase where the problematic of “care” unfold in the tension between a present municipal reality of limited budgets, great complexity and established “modes of productions”, and strong government calls to change the beaten path. My PhD will build on experiences and knowledge gained through 15 years of professional work with marginalized groups within the Norwegian health and welfare sector, and will analytically and theoretically deal with themes related to labor, innovation and societal and cultural change, as also highlighted in my previous academic work for the Cand.polit degree (Hansen 2000).

My main research questions relates; How is the challenge (s) related to “elderly care” problematized and understood in care practice, municipal administration and municipal political decision-making?  Are the municipal “notions of care” changing, if so, in what directions, and based on which knowledge and which facts, and through which processes? How does national policy documents frame the problematic and are state discourses translated into local realities and do they bring about societal consequences on the ground?

 

Method

Qualitative methods; fieldwork, inteviews, participant observation

Survey

Litterature review; policy papers, municipal plans and -strategic documents, historical docments