NINA HOLM VOHNSEN

From policy to practice

The project departs from an ethnographic study of the implementation of selected initiatives in the Action plan on sickness absence which was politically adopted in the Danish Parliament last November. The research aims to shed light on what happens in the translation from policy to practice – that is in the meeting between politics and individual life worlds.

The tools are anthropological fieldwork and theories from social science, which adress the relational and individual factors that characterize the meeting between politics, bureaucrat, and citizen. The project focuses on the unofficial and creative work that takes place in the translation from political action plan to concrete actions in the everyday life of case workers and the citizens they interact with. Further, it explores which elements in the programmes that are resisted and supported – by whom and especially how?

What, for instance, characterize the every day work life in which both case worker, public sector managers, citizens, and doctors need to make the action plan work?

How is succes and a job well-done constituted among the different actors and how does this influence on strategies and concerete actions and decisions?

The project is a collaboration between the Department of Anthropology and Ethnography at the University of Aarhus, MindLab, and the National Labour Market Authority.