Comparative replication study 'gentle inspectors'

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Jan Wehrheim
• Subject Area: Empirical Social Research
• Term: from 2016 to 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 289782537

Questioning the handling of social work professionals with deviance and their performance of social control, in the German scientific community the study 'Gentle Inspectors' ('Die sanften Kontrolleure') from Helge Peters und Helga Cremer-Schäfer from 1975 is still the benchmark study. Back then, the key findings claimed that social workers exercise social control, while not attributing the clientele as deviant and therefore avoiding to add to the process of criminalization. In the last forty years the self-perception of the professional social workers and the perception of their addressees changed. Also relationships of cooperation with other institutions of social control were established. Furthermore an economization of social work took place. In this new post-welfare context one needs to ask if, and if yes, how performing social control and the interrelated practices of interaction of social workers have changed. Oriented at the premises of the Symbolic Interactionism as well as the Institutional Ethnography the proposed project wants to pursue this issue in a comparative replication study. Correspondingly to the initial study, we will analyse the juvenile court assistance and the social services for parenting support. By means of participatory observations and qualitative interview analyses method, we explore, what kind of practices of interaction the professional social workers apply by performing social control. Thereby we also inquire into if, and if yes, how establishing and insuring employability is part of the practices of interaction - as it was the second, unconfirmed assumption in 1975. Additional we want to figure out by a document analysis, if and if yes, how the specific institutional framework (e.g. software solutions, formalised relationships of cooperation) influences the practices of interaction. Because of the diversified fields of social work as well as working conditions of the juvenile court assistance and social services for parenting support, we initially examine two institutions, which differ in diverse features. In the following step we will explore two or maximal four other institutions by using the method of open, theory generating sampling. Through comparing our data with the entire available protocols of observations from the initial study, for the first time it will be possible to adopt a real comparative perspective and draw conclusions about the change of the performance of social control and the interrelated practices of interaction in the investigated fields of social work.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants