Antaki_et_al-2019-Sociology_of_Health_&_Illness (1).pdf (1.96 MB)
When the larger objective matters more: support workers’ epistemic and deontic authority over adult service-users
journal contribution
posted on 2019-05-20, 13:34 authored by Charles Antaki, Joseph WebbWe report on how support workers sometimes over-ride the wishes of people living with
cognitive impairments. This can happen when they are both involved in some project (such
as an institutionally-managed game, a physical journey, an educational activity and so on).
The support worker might use their deontic authority (to propose, decide, or announce
future actions) to do things that advance the over-arching project, in spite of proposals for
what are cast as diversions from the person with impairments. They might also use their
epistemic authority (their greater knowledge or cognitive capacity) to trump their clients'
choices and preferences in subordinate projects. Not orienting to suggested courses of
actions is generally interactionally dispreferred and troublesome, but, although the
providers do sometimes orient to their actions as balking their clients' wishes, they usually
do not, and encounter little resistance. We discuss how people with disabilities may resist or
palliate such loss of control, and the dilemmas that support staff face in carrying out their
duties.
Funding
Economic and Social Research Council. Grant Number: ES/M008339/1
History
School
- Social Sciences
Department
- Communication, Media, Social and Policy Studies
Published in
Sociology of Health and IllnessVolume
41Issue
8Pages
1549 - 1567Citation
ANTAKI, C. and WEBB, J., 2019. When the larger objective matters more: support workers’ epistemic and deontic authority over adult service-users. Sociology of Health and Illness, 41 (8), pp.1549-1567.Publisher
Wiley © The AuthorsVersion
- VoR (Version of Record)
Publisher statement
This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Acceptance date
2019-05-15Publication date
2019-06-18Notes
This is an Open Access article. It is published by Wiley under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY). Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ISSN
0141-9889Publisher version
Language
- en