This book shows the workings of power in the micro dynamics of welfare encounters. By staying close to real world welfare encounters, the book contributes to the broad scholarly field of welfare studies that either takes a Foucauldian perspective on governance, Weberian approach to the bureaucracy or contributes to the sociology of professions.

1 IntroductionPart I Power and professions in welfare work2 Professions, de-professionalisation and welfare work3 Soft power and welfare work4 Powerful encounters as seen from an interactionist perspectivePart II The bureaucratic, market and psychology-inspired contexts5 The bureaucratic context: administrator-client6 The market context: service-consumer7 The psychology-inspired context: coach-coacheePart III Welfare encounters in practice 8 The power of bureaucracy, market and psychology in citizen-staff encounters 9 ConclusionIndex

This book addresses the crucial issue of the interrelation between macro and micro structures within citizen-professional encounters of the modern welfare state. Since the 1990s, European welfare states have moved towards a so-called governance approach; a bottom-up approach that emphasises the activeness, engagement, co-production, and cooperation of citizens. This framing of the encounter means that citizens are no longer best described as the passive clients of the bureaucracy, and welfare workers are no longer automatically the powerful party of the encounter. However, the welfare encounter is structured by other factors as well; factors such as market values and bureaucratic principles which often pull in different directions than the governance approach to citizens. Nevertheless, most current research is inspired by either a Weberian approach (highlighting bureaucratic principle) or a Foucauldian approach (often referring to market values or norms from psychology) and therefore singularly fails to adequately grasp the complexities of the empirical world. For this reason, this book engages with the sociology of professions as well as both Weberian and Foucauldian inspired approaches to the welfare encounter in order to qualify its analyses. Aside from chapters on the sociology of professions, symbolic interactionism, power in welfare encounters, bureaucratic principles, market values, norms from psychology, the book includes a double-length chapter that qualifies the conclusions through empirical analyses of encounters between citizens and doctors, caseworkers and social workers. The book will be of interest to academics, postgraduates, and undergraduates within sociology, anthropology and political science.