The Anthropology of Welfare

275 Pages·1998·3.06 MB·English

by  Iain Edgar

The Anthropology of Welfare
The Anthropology of Welfare provides an overview of what anthropology has to offer welfare
studies and vice versa. Case studies from anthropologists in the field examine different
branches of welfare and community care, for example:
• Maternity services
(cid:127) Children with learning difficulties
(cid:127) Children’s homes
(cid:127) Mothers’ centres
(cid:127) People with HIV
(cid:127) Mental health centres
(cid:127) Housing
(cid:127) Care and provision for the elderly
Examples are taken from urban and rural areas of the UK, USA, Sweden, Germany,
Portugal and New Zealand. In each case the theoretical and methodological
appropriateness of social anthropology for the study of welfare, and the insights gained by
bringing anthropology and welfare together, are examined.
The Anthropology of Welfare will be essential reading for those studying anthropology,
social work and social policy and will be of interest to teachers, practitioners and
researchers in applied social welfare fields.
Iain R.Edgar and Andrew Russell are both Lecturers in Anthropology at the
University of Durham.
The Anthropology of Welfare
Edited by Iain R.Edgar and Andrew Russell
London and New York
First published 1998 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005.
“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of
thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York,
NY 10001
© 1998 Iain R.Edgar and Andrew Russell, selection and editorial matter; individual chapters, the
contributors.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or
by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission
in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data
The anthropology of welfare/edited by Iain Edgar and Andrew Russell.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Public welfare. 2. Social service. 3. Ethnology.
4. Community organization. 5. Social policy.
I. Edgar, Iain R., 1948–. II. Russell, Andrew, 1958–.
HV40.A786 1998 361.8–dc21 97–49568 CIP
ISBN 0-203-02889-9 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-20060-8 (Adobe eReader Format)
ISBN 0-415-16964-X (hbk)
ISBN 0-415-16965-8 (pbk)
Contents
Notes on contributors vi
Acknowledgements ix
1 Research and practice in the anthropology of welfare 1
Andrew Russell and Iain R.Edgar
2 ‘You just get on with it’: questioning models of welfare 15
dependency in a rural community
Pia Christensen, Jenny Hockey and Allison James
3 Concepts of community in changing health care: a study of 31
change in midwifery practice
Christine McCourt
4 The child welfare debate in Portugal: a case study of a children’s 55
home
Karen Aarre
5 ‘Equal, but different’? Welfare, gender ideology and a 71
‘mothers’ centre’ in southern Germany
Lisa Hoecklin
6 The co-operation concept in a team of Swedish social workers: 93
applying grid and group to studies of community care
Steve Trevillion and David Green
7 Caring communities or effective networks? Community care 115
and people with learning difficulties in South Wales
Charlotte Aull Davies
8 Staff models and practice: managing ‘trouble’ in a community- 133
based programme for chronically mentally ill adults in the
USA
Dana M.Baldwin
9 A local anthropology of exclusion 157
John Given
v
10 Considering the culture of community care: anthropological 179
accounts of the experiences of frontline carers, older people
and a researcher
Lorna Warren
11 Treasures on Earth: housing assets, public policy and older 205
people in New Zealand
Sally Keeling
12 Residents’ participation in the management of retirement 223
housing in the UK
Peter Lloyd
13 Using experiential research methods: the potential 239
contribution of humanistic groupwork methods to
anthropology and welfare research
Iain R.Edgar
Index 255
Contributors
Karen Aarre graduated in social anthropology and development studies at the School
of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, in 1994. The thesis for her MPhil
degree in social anthropology at Oxford was about ‘the child’ in Portugal, based on
fieldwork in a Portuguese children’s home. She is currently on an ESRC Research
Studentship doing fieldwork in another Portuguese children’s home for her DPhil
dissertation, also at Oxford.
Dana M.Baldwin is a researcher in the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute Drug Abuse
Research Center. She received her PhD in anthropology from the University of
California at Los Angeles, and has served as a consultant at the RAND Corporation and
as a researcher in the Organizational Research Department of the Kaiser Permanente
Medical Care Program in California. Her research interests include medical
anthropology, qualitative research methods, mental health, and substance abuse.
Pia Christensen is a social anthropologist with research interests in the sociology and
anthropology of childhood. Author of a number of publications on the cultural
performance of children’s sickness, she is currently carrying out research into the social
organization of children’s time at the University of Hull.
Charlotte Aull Davies is lecturer in the Department of Sociology and
Anthropology, University of Wales Swansea. Her research interests include learning
disabilities, gender and ethnic identities, nationalism and migration. She is the author
of Welsh Nationalism in the Twentieth Century: The Ethnic Option and the Modern State
(Praeger 1989).
Iain R.Edgar is a lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Durham.
Previously he practised as a qualified social worker and then taught social work at the
University of Northumbria. During this later period, he studied first therapeutic
communities and then dreamwork groups to gain a PhD in Social Anthropology from
the University of Keele.
John Given is a senior lecturer at the University of Northumbria at Newcastle- upon-
Tyne, who established and ran an applied social research centre focusing upon urban
issues. He is currently teaching and researching in narrative method.
vii
David Green is a researcher at Brunel University. For the past three years he has been
working with Steve Trevillion on the development of new social network and
comparative approaches to the study of community care.
Jenny Hockey is a social anthropologist teaching health studies at Hull University.
Her publications include Experiences of Death (Edinburgh University Press) and Growing
Up and Growing Old (Sage 1993, with A.James). She co-edits the Journal of Gender
Studies.
Lisa Hoecklin is completing a DPhil in social anthropology at Oxford. She has an
MBA from Washington University and worked for five years in management consulting
in the United States and England. In 1992, she conducted a major research project
commissioned by the Economist Intelligence Unit into the assumptions and strategies
with which multinational organizations manage cultural differences. Her interests in
social anthropology are on issues of gender, social policy and organizational
management.
Allison James is a social anthropologist at Hull University whose research interests
centre on the new social studies of childhood and the life course. Her publications
include After Writing Culture (Routledge 1997, co-edited with J. Hockey and
A.Dawson) and Theorising Childhood (Polity Press 1997, with C. Jenks and A.Prout).
Sally Keeling completed an honours degree in social anthropology at the University of
Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand in the early 1970s. Since then she has worked in social
and educational service management throughout New Zealand. Following a period
managing community and residential aged care services, she returned to university to
undertake doctoral studies.
Peter Lloyd is emeritus professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Sussex.
Since his virtual retirement from teaching he has been involved in many projects
relating to the welfare of older people. He was founder of Social Anthropology, Social
and Community Work (SASCW), which merged in 1988 to form the British
Association of Social Anthropology in Policy and Practice (BASAPP), now
Anthropology in Action (A-in-A). He is also Volunteer Community Care Policy
Advisor to the Sussex Rural Community Council.
Christine McCourt is a senior lecturer in Health Services Research at the Wolfson
Institute, Thames Valley University. She trained in anthropology at the London School
of Economics and completed a doctorate in social anthropology and social policy there
in 1990. Her research interests are in psychiatry, childbirth and the analysis of
institutional change, particularly from the perspectives of people using such services.
Andrew Russell is a lecturer in the Department of Anthropology at the University of
Durham. His specializations are in medical anthropology and applied/development
anthropology. His DPhil research in social anthropology was carried out amongst the
Yakha in the middle hills of East Nepal. He is convenor of the Centre for the Study of
Contraceptive Issues at Durham and University College Stockton.
viii
Steve Trevillion is reader in Social Work and Social Policy at Brunel University. He
is associated with the development of networking and collaboration. For the past three
years he has been working with David Green on the development of new social
network and comparative approaches to the study of community care.
Lorna Warren is a lecturer in the Department of Sociological Studies at the
University of Sheffield. She has been working on studies of community care since
1983. Her publications include Changing Services for Older People (1996).
Acknowledgements
Many human threads are temporally and creatively woven into the outcome of this book.
It probably began, unbeknown, with the first meeting of the group Social Anthropology,
Social and Community Work (SASCW), which Iain Edgar attended in 1985. SASCW was
initiated by Peter Lloyd, following the Grillo report into vocational prospects for
anthropology graduates, and it was initially supported by the Wenner-Gren foundation.
SASCW progressively brought together social anthropologists working full-time in
welfare work as practitioners or researchers, and academic anthropologists with
professional interests in this branch of ‘anthropology at home’. At the first meeting of
SASCW Rosemary Lamb, now deceased, movingly spoke about how she used her
anthropological training in her welfare work in rural Northumberland. Ears pricked up;
something original and exciting was on the move.
SASCW became the British Association for the Study of Anthropology in Policy and
Practice in 1989 with the merger of SASCW with GAPP (Group for Anthropology in
Policy and Practice) and ATE (Anthropology in Teaching and Education). As happens,
BASAPP later begat Anthropology in Action (A-in-A).
The actual beginning of the book happened at a memorial seminar for David Brooks in
Durham in 1994. David, an anthropology lecturer at Durham University, had been a
formidable influence on the creative thinking of a generation of social anthropology
graduates there, and the gathering was an opportunity for his academic friends and ex-
students to meet and honour his memory. Several future contributors to this volume were
there. At the meeting, Sue Wright suggested the idea for the book to the editors, who
then developed a workshop on the theme of ‘Poor Culture, Good Economy? The
Anthropology of Community Care’ at the 1996 European Association of Social
Anthropology (EASA) bi-annual conference in Barcelona. The book rapidly developed
thereafter with the excellent support of Heather Gibson and Fiona Bailey, in particular, at
Routledge.
Further thanks are due the University of Durham and the British Academy for their
financial support for the development of the workshop at the EASA conference. In the
final stages, several people supported our (and the book’s) welfare in adversity. Todd Rae
provided advice on converting computer files and dealing with their viruses, and Malia
Fullerton dealt with the vagaries of the Internet. Sally Keeling’s input as proofreader for a
number of final chapter drafts was also much appreciated. Finally we would like to thank