Orders of Knowledge in Help Processes Generating Participation in Integration Assistance between Experiential Knowledge, Expertise and Organisational Knowledge

• Applicants: Professorin Dr. Mechthild Bereswill; Dr. Patrik Müller-Behme
• Subject Area: Empirical Social Research
• Term: since 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 534693494

The empirical starting point of the project, which is based on a reconstructive sociology of knowledge, is the currently ongoing gradual introduction and implementation of the Federal Participation Law (Bundesteilhabegesetz, BTHG). The expansion of individual rights of users to more self-determination in welfare state assistance and to social participation entailed in the BTHG is expected to lead users to participate more strongly in the negotiation of assistance measures than before. At the same time, those seeking help must meet the demands and attributions of organizations and navigate bureaucratic processes in order to receive support. This means that the legal introduction of participation and its implementation in assistance processes sets in motion a dynamic reconfiguration of the relations between the experiential knowledge of users, the expert knowledge of professionals and the organizational knowledge of the social bureaucracy. This study plans to analyze this reconfiguration regarding to the relationship between change and tendencies of persistence of action-relevant knowledge relations of social participation in integration assistance. The study examines interpretative patterns of participation for people who are considered to be chronically mentally ill and whose experiences of help are characterized by the tension between self-determination and heteronomy. The study investigates interpretations of participation in relation to the biographical experiential knowledge of users, the expert knowledge of professionals, and the organizational knowledge of the social bureaucracy. These actor-specific interpretations of participation are reconstructed regarding mutual openings and closings as well as compatibilities and incompatibilities by comparatively analyzing the collected data. This results in a theoretically saturated typification of the characteristics of relational knowledge orders of participation. The planned research promises insights into how participation is generated in the context of a reorganization of assistance processes. Finally, an empirically saturated theory of relational knowledge orders of participation will be formulated.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants