“…A second question relates to how the principles are translated into the concrete care provided by the carers. By translation is meant the process by which a principle is transferred from one context to another (Kjær & Pedersen, ) and the creative and dynamic ways in which actors draw upon principles (Newman & Tonkens, ). In an earlier study carried out a decade ago, care workers in Copenhagen, Denmark, stated that they provided help according to the principle of help to self‐help, and examples of the principle were observed in practice (Swane, ).…”
Healthy and active ageing has become an ideal in Western societies. In the Nordic countries, this ideal has been supported through a policy of help to self‐help in elder care since the 1980s. However, reforms inspired by New Public Management (NPM) have introduced a new policy principle of consumer‐oriented service that stresses the wishes and priorities of older people. We have studied how these two principles are applied by care workers in Denmark. Is one principle or logic replacing the other, or do they coexist? Do they create tensions between professional knowledge and the autonomy of older people? Using neo‐institutional theory and feminist care theory, we analysed the articulation of the two policy principles in interviews and their logics in observations in four local authorities. We conclude that help to self‐help is the dominant principle, that it is deeply entrenched in the identity of the professional care worker and that it coexists with consumer‐oriented service and without major tensions in the logics identified in their practices.
“…A second question relates to how the principles are translated into the concrete care provided by the carers. By translation is meant the process by which a principle is transferred from one context to another (Kjær & Pedersen, ) and the creative and dynamic ways in which actors draw upon principles (Newman & Tonkens, ). In an earlier study carried out a decade ago, care workers in Copenhagen, Denmark, stated that they provided help according to the principle of help to self‐help, and examples of the principle were observed in practice (Swane, ).…”
Healthy and active ageing has become an ideal in Western societies. In the Nordic countries, this ideal has been supported through a policy of help to self‐help in elder care since the 1980s. However, reforms inspired by New Public Management (NPM) have introduced a new policy principle of consumer‐oriented service that stresses the wishes and priorities of older people. We have studied how these two principles are applied by care workers in Denmark. Is one principle or logic replacing the other, or do they coexist? Do they create tensions between professional knowledge and the autonomy of older people? Using neo‐institutional theory and feminist care theory, we analysed the articulation of the two policy principles in interviews and their logics in observations in four local authorities. We conclude that help to self‐help is the dominant principle, that it is deeply entrenched in the identity of the professional care worker and that it coexists with consumer‐oriented service and without major tensions in the logics identified in their practices.
“…Through post-positivist discourse theory, this can be investigated with a focus on how certain, “high-modernist” (Scott, 1999) ideas become “part of a contextually specific process of articulation and institutionalization” (Kjaer and Pedersen, 2001; also Haikola and Anshelm, 2022; Hajer, 1996). Discourse, in this view, amounts to a “specific ensemble of ideas, concepts and categorizations that are produced, reproduced and transformed in a particular set of practices and through which meaning is given to physical and social realities” (Hajer, 1996: 44).…”
Section: Theory and Methods – The Role Of Ideas In Discoursementioning
The paper traces a discursive shift in Swedish transport decarbonisation discourse, by which neoliberal hegemony has been increasingly challenged through the emergence of an eco-Keynesian discourse coalition encompassing trade unions, business and industry, and green and left-wing members of parliament. The investigation testifies to the importance of political ideas in effecting discursive change, and in restricting subject positions within discourses. The Swedish case is informative for transport decarbonisation in general for the tensions it harbours between classic Social Democratic industrial policy and neoliberalism, and between historical continuity and radical discontinuity. In particular, it reveals how the return to a specific historical idea of the state determines the subject positions of actors within the new discourse coalition.
“…Their focus on fairly precise policy ideas gave them a clear position on coherence and tightness: the ideational elements they traced had high individual coherence (‘believers’ took up consistent packages of ideas), low group coherence (groups were often split by competing policy ideas), and were quite tight (packages of ideas led closely to certain policy choices) (Parsons, 2007, p. 128; see also Carstensen, 2011; Kjær and Pedersen, 2001). …”
Section: The Role Of Ideas In Mainstream Ideational Researchmentioning
Most theories about ideas in politics implicitly conceptualise ideas as relatively stable entities that act as a catalyst for political change in times of crisis. In these theories political change is usually brought on by the full and sudden replacement of old ideas with new ones. This article's main charge against the mainstream view of ideas is that it is based on a simplified conception of ideas which in turn creates a bias within the theories that leads them to focus on how ideas trigger change in times of crisis. In effect, the theories overlook incremental yet significant ideational change in times of stability.With inspiration from discourse theory and 'the interpretive approach', the article develops a more dynamic understanding of ideas as being composed of several related elements of meaning that typically do not reach a final stage of stability or equilibrium. Furthermore, it is argued that this theory of the micro structure of ideas can account for both incremental and paradigmatic ideational change. Two types of incremental ideational change are discussed and exemplified with empirical examples from British politics: first, a change in the relation between the existing elements of an idea and, second, a change of one or more (but not all) elements of an idea.
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