Transforming the State through Social Work in Burgas, Bulgaria
My PhD project ethnographically investigates social work practices and relations to understand (relational) state transformations in Burgas, Bulgaria. It focuses primarily on social workers-in-training within both state and non-state domains to explore learned expertise as a situated, contested practice, leading to particular re-productions of “the state” as a relational and processual entity. Morally-laden negotiations of deservingness, needs and obligations as central elements of the social services provision for state citizens are central to grasp these “transformative” processes and their broader consequences. Relatedly, the production of difference and exclusion (rather than solely positive inclusion) through such care practices is observed to gain nuanced insights into possible non-linear state constellations.
My project is part of the interdisciplinary doc.funds doctoral programme “The Dynamics of Change and the Logics of Transformation: State, Society, and Economy at Critical Junctures”, which aims to critically develop Karl Polanyi’s seminal work The Great Transformation to come up with a new understanding of past and present transformation processes in (former) socialist countries.