Abstract
In this talk, I will take up the concept of inter-subjectivity as an analytical starting point for the anthropological investigation of welfare state relationality. Based on six years of ethnographic fieldwork with Danish police officers engaged in various reformatory interventions, such as gang exit programs and counter-radicalization programs, I will discuss how interpersonal state encounters serve as drivers of welfare state interventions. I focus on a case in which a Danish gang exit program engages police officers and gang defectors in a project that focuses on belonging. The project implies that gang defectors cut off relationships to the gang environment, which often include ties of belonging to close friends and family relatives. During this process, the police officers become “significant others” placed in a position of trust, who can temporarily replace kin and social relations, and function as “hinges” to a new (non-criminal) and allegedly “better” social world. I will use the case of the exit program to show the inherently intimate aspect of the notion of belonging, in which kin and state relatedness are deeply rooted in interpersonal spaces and relationships.
20 Jan 2021