Om aktörskap och självbestämmandets villkor inom LSS

Abstract

On agency and the conditions for self-determination in “Service for Persons with Certain Functional Impairments”

In this article, we approach the significance of moral stands in professional practices among practitioners in Support and Service for Persons with Certain Functional Impairments from the perspective of Bourdieu's concept of symbolic order and ethos.  Our study illustrates how negotiations about agency takes place within a network of relationships, where the normative and professional judgment of staff in practice becomes crucial in relation to how self-determination for users is conditioned in everyday life. This involves questions about how rights, obligations and norms are conveyed, negotiated and implemented. These everyday practices involve individual planning, follow-up, and relationships with support staff in various professional categories. The results illustrate how staff motivation in regard of their work to support and help others rests on emotional and ethical attributes linked to the professions. These ethic dispositions become indicative of the meaning that the concept of self-determination has for the staff. Ethos, is in this context regarded as a focal professional attribute of being able to place the ideal of users as active subjects within a social service context.