Suchergebnisse

Higher education can function as an important marker of seriousness in fields characterized by diffuse professional standards. Using the case of a fine arts institute, the article outlines the role of higher education in promoting the interconnection of a professional and individual subjectivity; being an artist is not merely something one does but something one is. By primarily examining interview material, it explores how an ideal position of individual self-reliance relates to the alumni of the institute. Some respondents were not "in sync" with this position and needed to seek out other resources in order to construct themselves as professional artists. However, they seldom rejected the kind of subjectivity promoted by their education, but rather renegotiated it as part of the uncertainty of their chosen field.Keywords: arts professionals, artistic education, self-reliance, discursive repertoire

This article explores the rationality of the Bookstart home-visiting programme in Gothenburg, Sweden, concerning its general ambition to provide social inclusion through mixing cultural- and welfare policy. Through the Bookstart programme, librarians visit families in their homes to inform and instruct parents about reading books for their children to enhance language learning. The areas of the city chosen for intervention were described as socially vulnerable, typically with a majority of citizens born outside Sweden. The analysis outlines the rationality and technologies formed in a philanthropist tradition, targeting the moral potential of parenting and creating the subjectivities of the reading parent and child. Different welfare professionals employ slightly different discourses but all base their legitimacy on the benign power of knowledge about what is best for children in the city. Through this analysis, we contribute to the knowledge of how cultural policy is integrated into social policy in the contemporary advanced liberal welfare state. © 2021 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.