TY - JOUR

T1 - Fashioning a Proper Institutional Position

T2 - Professional Identity Work in the Triadic Structure of the Care Planning Conference

AU - Hitzler, Sarah

PY - 2011/9

Y1 - 2011/9

N2 - Professionals do not only, as is today widely agreed on, work to construct institutionally workable identities for their clients in interaction, they also have to carry out substantial identity work themselves. Such work can be considerably more complicated in interactions which have a triadic structure, i.e. in which professionals from two different institutions and clients interact, demanding of professionals to invoke situational identities which match their relationships towards each other as well as towards the clients. By discussing the identity work of two professionals in a care planning conference, this article traces the difficulties that such a structure presents to practitioners. In addition, it sets out to show how ethnomethodologically informed membership categorization analysis and positioning analysis, as it was developed by discursive psychology, can be combined in the analysis of social work interactions in order to shed light on the identity work of social work professionals.

AB - Professionals do not only, as is today widely agreed on, work to construct institutionally workable identities for their clients in interaction, they also have to carry out substantial identity work themselves. Such work can be considerably more complicated in interactions which have a triadic structure, i.e. in which professionals from two different institutions and clients interact, demanding of professionals to invoke situational identities which match their relationships towards each other as well as towards the clients. By discussing the identity work of two professionals in a care planning conference, this article traces the difficulties that such a structure presents to practitioners. In addition, it sets out to show how ethnomethodologically informed membership categorization analysis and positioning analysis, as it was developed by discursive psychology, can be combined in the analysis of social work interactions in order to shed light on the identity work of social work professionals.

KW - Social Work and Social Pedagogics

KW - care planning

KW - interaction

KW - professional identity

KW - membership categorization analysis

KW - coalition building

KW - interaction building

KW - care planning

KW - conference

KW - coalition building

KW - interaction

KW - membership categorization analysis

KW - positioning

KW - analysis

KW - professional identity

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=80053582167&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1177/1473325011409476

DO - 10.1177/1473325011409476

M3 - Journal articles

VL - 10

SP - 293

EP - 310

JO - Qualitative Social Work

JF - Qualitative Social Work

SN - 1473-3250

IS - 3

ER -