Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / States are contingently formed, enacting modes of governing in diverse and prosaic ways. States’ roles in social governing are shaped by the specificities of institutional contexts and peopled practices. Yet much recent analysis of social governing ignores the influence of state institutions and workers. In such analyses, social governing is taken to be largely driven by an overarching mode of governance—neoliberalism. Indeed for many researchers, techniques of social governing such as interagency working represent practices through which to trace neoliberalism’s enactments, variabilities, co-options and resistances. In obscuring the prosaics of peopled states, our understandings centre on ‘the state’ as a coherent and cogent entity, one that increasingly governs the social in neoliberalised ways. The premise of this thesis is that interagency practices of social governing need to be examined from prosaic perspectives. Such an attention to everyday practice widens the analytical lens on social governing; allowing for disjunctive possibilities of everyday governing rather than focusing on over-determined discoveries of neoliberal rule. Indeed, a prosaics of state institutions relocates interagency workers and institutions from their positioning at the end-points of neoliberal rule and, instead, welcomes their diverse political and social actions as the very foundations on which governing is shaped. In so doing, it reveals practices of state institutions and interagency workers that can be creative, emotive and, as I assert, caring. In accessing everyday spaces through my research, I utilise a case study interagency programme of the New South Wales Government entitled Families First, which attempts to better facilitate the support of families with young children. It is an examination of the spaces of Families First that reveals the multiple ideological framings, congested institutional histories, changeable politics and everyday practices of workers that characterise state institutions and form the foundations of social governing. Rather than rehearse or raze understandings of neoliberal governing, the inclusiveness of a prosaic approach allows neoliberalism to co-exist as a potential practice of diverse interagency contexts; supporting hopeful perspectives on interagency working and nurturing a mutual language of prosaic politics, governing and ethics.

Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / States are contingently formed, enacting modes of governing in diverse and prosaic ways. States’ roles in social governing are shaped by the specificities of institutional contexts and peopled practices. Yet much recent analysis of social governing ignores the influence of state institutions and workers. In such analyses, social governing is taken to be largely driven by an overarching mode of governance—neoliberalism. Indeed for many researchers, techniques of social governing such as interagency working represent practices through which to trace neoliberalism’s enactments, variabilities, co-options and resistances. In obscuring the prosaics of peopled states, our understandings centre on ‘the state’ as a coherent and cogent entity, one that increasingly governs the social in neoliberalised ways. The premise of this thesis is that interagency practices of social governing need to be examined from prosaic perspectives. Such an attention to everyday practice widens the analytical lens on social governing; allowing for disjunctive possibilities of everyday governing rather than focusing on over-determined discoveries of neoliberal rule. Indeed, a prosaics of state institutions relocates interagency workers and institutions from their positioning at the end-points of neoliberal rule and, instead, welcomes their diverse political and social actions as the very foundations on which governing is shaped. In so doing, it reveals practices of state institutions and interagency workers that can be creative, emotive and, as I assert, caring. In accessing everyday spaces through my research, I utilise a case study interagency programme of the New South Wales Government entitled Families First, which attempts to better facilitate the support of families with young children. It is an examination of the spaces of Families First that reveals the multiple ideological framings, congested institutional histories, changeable politics and everyday practices of workers that characterise state institutions and form the foundations of social governing. Rather than rehearse or raze understandings of neoliberal governing, the inclusiveness of a prosaic approach allows neoliberalism to co-exist as a potential practice of diverse interagency contexts; supporting hopeful perspectives on interagency working and nurturing a mutual language of prosaic politics, governing and ethics.

The purpose of this thesis is to describe and analyse the institutionalized Swedish Psychiatric practice during the period 1850 and 1970 - the era of the large mental hospitals - in terms of a modem disciplinary project. Point of departure relates to the meeting between the admitted patient and the educational work of the mental hospital and its everyday practice. The main sources of information for this study consists among other things of case sheets and texts closely related to the work of the mental hospitals. The study has two important aspects. The first deals with the normalized procedures in the practice of mental care, and draws the attention to the relation between social and cultural standards and the way the mental hospitals reviews, treats and handles the patient. The second aspect deals with the actual administration and the techniques of the hospital to correct the patient and his/her actions in a desirable direction. An overarching discussion deals with the relation between liberating and Controlling practitioners, and how the Controlling power of the hospital relates to the modem society's conception of a independent man. At the same time as the physical coercion of the mental hospital diminished, controlling methods were required which were not merely based on obedience and Submission, but also on the participation and will of the patient. Informal system of rewards, confession-techniques as well as various forms of a conditionalised and regulated freedom is combined with a more concealed potential of coercion of the institution. The compulsory work is being analysed as the most important educational therapy - both socially and ethically. Work is being described as a liberal Controlling technique. By connecting work to the system of rewards as well as increased physical freedom enables the hospital to exercise control and predictability without resorting to coercion. How the hospital looked upon and handled the sexual body, and how cultural conceptions regarding sexual normality dominated the practical care-taking is being analysed with the starting point in case sheets. The sexual behaviour, especially concerning women, resulted in a meeting of different opinions between restraining and testing practitioners where moral reliability was a condition for physical freedom. The thesis describes a movement over time towards increased physical freedoms for the patients of the mental hospitals. This did not imply that the control or the normalization decreased in intensity. But rather that the forms and the conditions for these processes changed. The freedom that was placed in sight was always connected with the well behaviour of the patient. / digitalisering@umu