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Studies of Discourse and Governmentality: New perspectives and methods
Edited by Paul McIlvenny, Julia Zhukova Klausen and Laura Bang Lindegaard
[Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture 66] 2016
► pp. 119–148

The art of not governing too much in vocational rehabilitation encounters

This chapter uses ethnomethodological conversation analysis (CA) to investigate the empirical manifestations of governmentality in vocational rehabilitation encounters in the Norwegian Labour and Welfare Administration. How can the counsellors’ actions be understood as conducting the conduct of clients in the setting of vocational rehabilitation? How do the counsellors’ practices, especially their ways of dealing with client resistance, relate to the core idea of governmentality as governing, not at the cost of, but through the freedom of individuals? The chapter analyses the dialogue techniques in six instances in which the client uses silence and minimal response tokens to resist the counsellor’s actions. Earlier CA research has suggested counsellors have a rather unilateral orientation to client resistance. However, this analysis reveals a more responsive orientation, since it demonstrates how counsellors choose inviting, non-intrusive action designs in the first place, as well as make adjustments to the cued client resistance. These practices may be understood as evidencing a technology of sensibility, co-constituting the client’s agency in situ.

Published online: 29 June 2016
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https://doi.org/10.1075/dapsac.66.04sol
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