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The paper - based on a Copenhagen case study in a EU research programme (1) - is about politics of inclusion at the meso level: urban policy and politics of inclusion in Copenhagen with reference to the American and European discourse on underclass and social exclusion in the City. The argument in the paper is that contemporary urban policy in Denmark can be characterised by a duality between Participatory empowering welfare oriented inclusion strategies, which targets deprived districts and neighbourhoods (politics of positive selectivism recognising increasing spatial inequality as a political issue) - based on notions of the multicultural and solidaristic City. Neoelitist/corporative market driven strategic growth strategies, which are based on notions of the Entrepreneurial City. The tension between the two orientations represents the most important challenge for urban democracy and inclusive governance concerned with problems of overcoming social polarisation in the urban space. The first part of the paper reviews contemporary social sciences and outlines a broader framework for the understanding of present forms of social exclusion and integration in the City. The second part interprets the urban policy changes in a historical context with emphasis on how the transition towards a new post-industrial economy and urban form was mediated via political and institutional struggles over the form and content of urban policy in Copenhagen. In the conclusion we discuss dilemmas for overcoming the dualism of present urban governance between neo-corporate growth regimes and participatory politics of social inclusion.

Nordic cities are often perceived as frontrunners of urban sustainability and their planners increasingly embrace and combine environmentalist ideas with communicative planning approaches. We argue that how corporatist networks promote green growth strategies that can undermine sustainability targets is often overlooked. In this article, we examine how the City of Copenhagen is failing in its efforts to become the world's first carbon-neutral capital by 2025 partly because of corporatist capture of the decarbonisation agenda. Taking a phronetic social science approach we shed light on the production of knowledge and counter-knowledge in planning conflicts over energy infrastructure, in particular the iconic €530 million Copenhill waste-to-energy plant in Denmark. On one side of the conflict was a green coalition that initially blocked the proposed energy megaplant to defend the city's ambitious climate targets. On the other side was a corporatist coalition who subsequently succeeded in strong-arming the city council to accept the plant, even though that meant carbon emissions would increase significantly, instead of decreasing. We focus on this U-turn in the planning process as a case of dark planning and a knowledge co-creation fiasco. Our findings reveal how the sustainability concept can be utilised as an empty vessel to promote private sector export agendas. We suggest that environmentalist ideals may stand stronger in planning conflicts if they link up with a broader alternative socio-economic agenda capable of attracting coalition partners. The lesson to be learned for green coalitions is that it is crucial to combine expert, local, and political knowledge to be able to "read" the power configuration and develop strategic and tactical capacity to challenge dominant discourses.

This article concerns the experiences gained from the action research project, Quality in Elder Care, involving social dimensions of quality in public elder care. The aim of the project was to improve the professional skills and engagement of the care workers and to improve the life quality and participation of the residents. Furthermore, the idea was that the project could strengthen a public and professional discourse about more democratic and inclusive alternatives (for staff as well as residents) to the currently growing bureaucracy and expansion of top-down control systems in elder care. The project was inspired by critical utopian action research with future workshops as an important methodological tool. The project followed the core characteristics of action research to be "a shared commitment to democratic social change". The article discusses how the project contributed to changes in care quality in a joint effort between care workers, residents at the nursing home, and researchers. It concludes that the project led to empowerment of the residents and staff and played an important role in the development of democratic knowledge building about better quality and ethics in elder care ; This article concerns the experiences gained from the action research project, Quality in Elder Care, involving social dimensions of quality in public elder care. The aim of the project was to improve the professional skills and engagement of the care workers and to improve the life quality and participation of the residents. Furthermore, the idea was that the project could strengthen a public and professional discourse about more democratic and inclusive alternatives (for staff as well as residents) to the currently growing bureaucracy and expansion of top-down control systems in elder care. The project was inspired by critical utopian action research with future workshops as an important methodological tool. The project followed the core characteristics of action research to be "a shared commitment to democratic social change". The article discusses how the project contributed to changes in care quality in a joint effort between care workers, residents at the nursing home, and researchers. It concludes that the project led to empowerment of the residents and staff and played an important role in the development of democratic knowledge building about better quality and ethics in elder care

This article concerns the experiences gained from the action research project, Quality in Elder Care, involving social dimensions of quality in public elder care. The aim of the project was to improve the professional skills and engagement of the care workers and to improve the life quality and participation of the residents. Furthermore, the idea was that the project could strengthen a public and professional discourse about more democratic and inclusive alternatives (for staff as well as residents) to the currently growing bureaucracy and expansion of top-down control systems in elder care. The project was inspired by critical utopian action research with future workshops as an important methodological tool. The project followed the core characteristics of action research to be "a shared commitment to democratic social change". The article discusses how the project contributed to changes in care quality in a joint effort between care workers, residents at the nursing home, and researchers. It concludes that the project led to empowerment of the residents and staff and played an important role in the development of democratic knowledge building about better quality and ethics in elder care.

Socialforskningen i Grønland har gennem årtier dokumenteret sociale problemer. Populært sagt har socialforskningen i Grønland indtil for nylig kun bestået af beskrivende, kvantitativ elendighedsforskning. Der eksisterer således (modsat fx socialforskning med canadisk inuit) stort set ikke nogen kvalitativ eller deltagerorienteret forskning om vilkår for indsatser og praksis i forhold til at håndtere de sociale udfordringer. Der har således manglet sociologisk og handlingsorienteret praksisviden, der kan understøtte professionel og organisatorisk kapacitetsopbygning i det socialpolitiske felt. Denne artikel handler om empowerment og aktionsforskning med socialarbejdere i Grønland og bygger på Steven Arnfjords ph.d. projekt fra 2014.


ENGELSK ABSTRACT:

Steven Arnfjord and John Andersen: Social Work and Action Research in Greenland

Years of social science research in Greenland has documented a range of social problems in the country. However social research in Greenland has been limited to quantitative research that has focused only on misery. Contrary to what we have seen in Canadian Inuit research, there has been no qualitative nor participatory research into the concrete circumstances under which Greenlandic social workers deal with the social challenges they face daily. This article draws on a research project that, for the first time, employed exploratory interviews with social workers. Analysis of these interviews uncovered the social workers' feelings of despair and their atomised sense of loneliness because of having no references to an external network of professionals (e.g. through a union). The research was then extended to an action research project, which set out to form a social workers union in order to create a sense of unity and professional group awareness within the profession.

Keywords: Greenland, action research, empowerment, social work, social planning, marxism.

This article discusses the 'feminization of poverty' and the hypothesis that women in Danish society are at greater risk of experiencing relative poverty (lack of resources) than men, while social disintegration and dis empowerment—social exclusion—are increasingly problems for men. On the social and personal level, women are often more capable than men of developing new life strategies, and women have created a number of 'empowerment bases' in the Danish welfare state, for example, daytime folk high schools and local social experimental projects.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to discuss and theorise the links and possible dilemmas posed by the politics of redistribution and the politics of recognition taking the case of Denmark as the point of departure.Design/methodology/approachThe empirical observations in this paper consist of the political and discursive climate around legislation on ethnic minority matters, information from the Danish Statistical Bureau, the "Danish Level of Living Survey", and the experiences from Danish urban districts which have a high concentration of immigrants.FindingsSince the 1990s, the political discourse has changed with the emergence of right‐wing, anti‐immigration populism seriously affecting immigrants' and refugees' legal rights and their possibilities for socio‐cultural and socio‐economic inclusion. On the one hand, these changes have been driven by a strong "work first" discourse which has led to a reduction of the duration and level of social benefits, and increased poverty. On the other hand, other policy changes have been more inclusive examples being education policy, active labour market policy measures and innovative empowerment programmes in deprived urban districts.Practical implicationsSocial innovation – here defined as the ability to organise bottom linked collective action/empowerment (including efficient political representation) – is a condition for reaching sustainable democratic and social development. But without more far‐reaching changes in the socio‐cultural and socio‐economic opportunity structures based on universal welfare principles and which also clearly address structural ethnic discrimination in all spheres of the social fabric, local empowerment and recognition strategies are likely to fail.Originality/valueThe paper addresses a crucial issue in the Danish and other European societies in relation to the exclusion and marginalisation of immigrants. The value of the paper is that it integrates different theoretical approaches to inclusion and exclusion of immigrants and employs different empirical material (quantitative and qualitative) to both underpin, discuss and challenge these theoretical approaches.