The Danish Health Visitor Scheme 1937-1980; between state and God
CHEF Talk
Date: February 10, 2022, 15.00 - 16.00
Venue: Online. Participants will recieve a Zoom-Link closer to the event.
Fee: Free
Registration deadline: February 10, 2022, at 07:00
Speaker: Nitya Nanda Timsina
Abstract
With a desire to reduce the high infant mortality rate, the Danish parliament introduced a law in 1937: Act on Combating Morbidity and Mortality among Children in the First Year of Life. The law made it possible for the Danish municipalities to employ health visitors. With a micro historical perspective on the everyday life of two deaconess sisters, Sister Dagmar (1911-2008) and Sister Alice (1913-2006), we will draw a portrait of the history and significance of the health visitor scheme in Denmark from 1937 to 1980. In our presentation, we will elaborate on the establishment of the higher education for health visitors as well as the basic conditions for deaconesses. Based on our case study, we will provide insight into how the health visitor scheme has affected women with new-borns, and how it has been experienced and practiced in everyday life. A significant part of the formation of the health visitor scheme is connected with the idea of the Danish welfare state and in relation the social democratic party. We, however, argue that the health visitors in their practice also relied heavily on the tradition and ideology of Christian philanthropy.
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Towards neoliberalism: The dominant philosophy driving higher education policy globally
CHEF Talk
Date: February 24, 2022, 15.00 - 16.00
Venue: Online. Participants will recieve a Zoom-Link closer to the event.
Fee: Free
Registration deadline: February 24, 2022, at 07:00
Speakers: Pernille Svare Nygaard, PhD student, Aarhus University
Astrid Elkjær Sørensen, PhD, Postdoc, Aarhus University
Abstract
In this talk, I will argue that the dominant philosophy driving higher education policy globally is “neoliberalism”—a constitutive part of globalization. It is concerned with economic survival of nations and economic security for individuals. It lays the blame on low growth rates and unemployment to welfare policies and labor market barriers created by the interventionist state. It calls for the minimalist state. It ascribes learning to earning. It is concerned with deriving richness of life through market futures in education, competitive salary, comparable jobs and competitive exams. It takes an individual like the figure of a supermarket to earn profit or perish. It creates winners and losers in education as in a horse race. It objectivizes students as “entrepreneurs” of education or as “money-earning creatures”. It devalues other forms of education which do not produce economic values. It is, in short, the economic theory of modern states, concerned with global markets, or a ‘managerial state’. It refers mainly to the experiences in the OECD countries. It makes us imagine that the rest of the world is void and empty of meaning.