Individualisering av barn : En kritisk diskursstudie av barns kompetens i offentliga texter inom social barnavård

Abstract

Individualization of Children: A Critical Discourse Study of Childrens' Competence in Public Texts on Social Care of Children

The aim of this study is to critically examine and discuss overarching notions and discourses
on children and individualization, with a starting point in public texts within the field of social
work with children. The empirical material has been two SOU-reports (“Swedish Government
Official Reports”), two paragraphs from socialtjänstlagen (“The Social Services Act”), and the
BBIC-model (“The Child's Need in the Center”), which all has been viewed as examples of
social practice within the field social work with children. The orders of discourse have been
categorized as a “subject-oriented” and an “object-oriented” view on children. These have
been studied, using the method “critical discourse analysis” (CDA) with an ideology-critical
aim, in order to study how, primary, the “subject”-view on children might have effects on
childrens' situation in society. Theories of individualization have been used, as well as
perspectives gathered from disciplines such as philosophy, history of ideas, law and sociology.
The study relates the shift towards a “subject-oriented” view on children to social work, to see
in what ways public texts on social work relates to this shift in view of children, which in my
study is part of a wider individualization-process in the society. The results of the study shows
for example that a more individualized view on children is gaining ground in public texts on
social work, mainly through the “subject-oriented” order of discourse, but that this is not the
only order of discourse present. Children are, though, to a larger degree viewed as competent
subjects, unique individuals, and partly liberated from their parents. The result of the study
has also showed that individualization is valued as part of a desirable progress towards a
modern society, by one of the SOU-reports, which also recognizes that the prospects of
socially integrating people might be low in a individualized society and that an individualized
and highly differentiated society might have negative effects on young people's psychical
health, suggesting that “new competences” has to be taught in school. The study also suggests
that the individualization of children seems to fit well into a modern society where the double
loyalties between work-life and family-life are problematic for actors that need full loyalty,
and not shared. The shift towards individualized children also fits well into a society where
the family-institution is individualized, more uncertain, and therefore maybe obsolete for its
task. Hence, the individualization of children might prepare children for handling this new
situation by their own means, which is a well recognized feature of an individualized society,
and if they become fully individualized, their voices might not be regarded as different from
other individualized human beings, which contradicts the fact that the “subject-oriented” view
on children promotes, namely children as independent actors. Due to childrens' dependent
state, individualization might cause the opposite effect on them, leaving them vulnerable in a
new way.

• author: Karlsson, Jeremiah
• supervisor: Lina Ponnert
• organization: School of Social Work
• course: SOAM21 20151
• year: 2015
• type: H2 - Master's Degree (Two Years)
• subject: Social Sciences
• keywords: Swedish social work., children as subjects, rights of children, individualization, Modernization
• language: Swedish
• id: 7764021
• date added to LUP: 2015-08-24 11:23:25
• date last changed: 2015-08-24 11:23:25