Emotional Bureaucracies

Emotional Bureaucracies: Emotions, Civil Servants, and Immigrants in the Swedish Welfare
State
Author(s): Mark Graham
Source: Ethos, Vol. 30, No. 3 (Sep., 2002), pp. 199-226
Published by: Wiley on behalf of the American Anthropological Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3651871 .
Accessed: 26/03/2014 14:17
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Wiley and American Anthropological Association are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and
extend access to Ethos.
http://www.jstor.org
This content downloaded from 200.130.19.216 on Wed, 26 Mar 2014 14:17:41 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Emotional
Bureaucracies:
and
Emotions, Civil
Servants,
Swedish
Immigrants in the
Welfare
State
MARK GRAHAM
ABSTRACT This article examines how Swedish emotional expression is both reflected in and helps to reproduce the ideology
of the welfare state. A Swedish ideal of emotional compatibility
and continuity between welfare bureaucracies and their clients
has been challenged in the wake of refugee immigration. The resulting multicultural society is understood by civil servants to
translate into an emotional complexity that has consequences
for the levels of emotion in meetings with refugee clients, emotional barriers between staff and clients, emotional reciprocity,
and the gendering and mobilization of emotion in bureaucratic
encounters. The presence of refigee immigrants is shown to
have consequencesfor the welfare state's ability to ensure emotional reproduction in society. How Swedish civil servants respond to refugee clients provides insights into the emotional
dimension of bureaucracies in multicultural welfare states and
bureaucratic work more generally.
he subject of bureaucracy often inspires strong negative emotions among people outside them, who assume that those who
work within them often suffer from an emotional deficit. Real
and perceived bureaucratic incompetence and rigidity, the
opacity of decisions and the indifference and sometimes menace of bureaucracies that wield the power of the state contribute to this common perception. Not all bureaucracies suffer from a poor reputation,
however. The Scandinavian welfare states are known for their size, efficiency, and the support they enjoy among their citizens. Rather than an
? 2003,American
Ethos
Association.
30(3):199-226.
Copyright
Anthropological

200 ? ETHOS
emotional divide separating the institutions of the welfare state from the
populations they serve, in Scandinavian welfare states, and especially the
Swedish, there ought ideally to be an emotional continuity between bureaucracies and citizens that facilitates effective service and ensures popular support.
In this article, I examine how Swedish emotional expression is both
reflected in and helps to reproduce the ideology of the welfare state. Indeed one aspect of the welfare state's own role is to reproduce appropriate
forms and levels of emotion among society's members. The ideal of emotional compatibility between the welfare bureaucracies and the clients of
the welfare state is predicated upon the assumption of relative cultural
homogeneity. Until the 1970s this was true of Sweden, but since then refugee immigrants from outside Europe have introduced greater social and
cultural heterogeneity. What are the emotional consequences of this for
the work of civil servants in welfare and public service bureaucracies?
What are some of the emotional misunderstandings that result? In encounters with refugee clients, civil servants are obliged to reflect on what
they regard as the appropriate forms and levels of emotional expression in
their work, thus revealing some of the implicit emotional praxis of the
public sector services. Attention to the emotional dimensions of public
sector bureaucracies whose job it is to turn refugees into members of
Swedish society provides an insight into the emotional dimension of bureaucracies more generally.
Until quite recently, scholarly attention to the emotional aspects of
organizations was infrequent. This may in part be due to the Weberian
ideal-(stereo)type of formal bureaucratic rationality (Weber 1978:975).
Weber's writings on bureaucracy were part of a larger exploration of social
order and the rational-legal administration of the modern state; it is doubtful whether they were intended to serve as a general theory of organizations (Albrow 1997:97). Yet their adoption as such has until quite recently
contributed to the marginalization of the affective dimensions of organizations, apart from some attention to the negative emotion of bureaucratic
work (Crozier 1964; Flam 1993; Lipsky 1980). When emotion in formal
organizations has been examined, it has often been as part of the professional work cultures (see Fineman 1993) of, for example, nurses (James
1993), the police (Stenross and Kleinman 1989), and flight attendants
(Hochschild 1983) rather than public sector bureaucracies. More generally, Goffman, who was one of the first to address emotion as an integral
part of organizational functioning, considered the role of embarrassment
in maintaining organizational structure (1956). Bailey's (1983) work on
the "tactical uses of passion" addresses meetings and the manipulation of
emotion (and rhetorics) in the pursuit of aims. However, the stress of both
these authors on the manipulative and calculative deployment of emotions

Emotional Bureaucracies * 201
distances them, as we shall see, from central features of Sweden's public

bureaucracies. A specifically anthropological contribution to the study of
bureaucracies has been to see them as systems of taxonomies and categorization (Handelman 1981; Herzfeld 1992). Attention has recently been
paid to the links between policy and bureaucracy (Shore and Wright 1997)
and to the workings of the welfare state (Edgar and Russell 1998). Yet
despite the fact that few if any people in today's world are beyond the reach
of some kind of bureaucratic intervention and control, anthropological
research has paid little attention to the emotional aspects of public sector
bureaucracies.
Bureaucracies exist at all levels of society; they implement national
and local policy, and they reflect national traditions. My focus therefore
includes national welfare ideology, public services, social service policy,
and individual civil servants who meet clients. Emotions are present at all
these levels. Bureaucracies and the bureaucrats who staff them are part of
society; indeed, continuity between bureaucracies and society has been
an explicit goal of the postwar Swedish tradition. To understand the place
of emotions in Swedish public service bureaucracies, we need, therefore,
to situate them within the wider framework of Sweden's welfare ideology
and Swedish emotional display.
WELFARE
SWEDISH
The existence of an extensive and effective welfare state is an important part of Swedish society and Sweden's self-image (Lane 1991; Milner
1989). Unlike so-called residual welfare states that only provide a minimum safety net for citizens, the Swedish welfare state is meant to serve all
of society's members-including
the cradle to the
noncitizens-from
grave. Public services have both assumed and actively sought to create
cultural standardization and equality. The following definition of Sweden's
emerging welfare state, dubbed "The People's Home" (Folkhemmet) by
one of its founders, social-democratic Prime Minister Per Albin Hansson,
was presented to the Swedish parliament in 1982. It makes clear some of
the emotional underpinnings of the nascent welfare idyll:
The basis of the home is togethernessand common feeling. The good home does not
consider anyone as privilegedor unappreciated;it knows no special favoritesand no
stepchildren. There no one looks down upon anyone else, there no one tries to gain
advantageat someone else's expense, and the strongdo not suppressand plunderthe
weak. In the good home equality, consideration,co-operationand helpfulnessprevail.
Appliedto the great people's and citizen's home this means the breakingdown of all
social and economic barriersthat now divide citizens into the privilegedand the unfortunate,into rulers and subjects, into rich and poor, the glutted and the destitute,
the plunderersand the plundered.[Hansson1982, my translation]

202 ? ETHOS
Hansson speaks of the welfare state as a home, an egalitarian place of

"togetherness and common feeling." The reference to "common feeling"
alerts us to assumptions about emotional homogeneity. Hansson's remonstration against "looking down" on others, by which he means class contempt, is suggestive of "feeling rules" that specify what emotions are
appropriate in a given setting, their type, duration, intensity, and especially their direction (Hochschild 1979). The affect-laden familial metaphors of home and the absence of unfortunate, and presumably unhappy,
"stepchildren" are conspicuous.
An important justification for an extension of the welfare state in
Sweden was the creation of the "strong society." Its aim has been to provide citizens with enough financial and other support to remove the fears
associated in the past with unemployment, divorce, and sickness. The aim
has been to create "security." The Swedish word for this is trygghet.
Trygghet often refers to material security and is ubiquitous in discussions
of virtually every aspect of the welfare state, the rights and conditions of
workers, and the state of society in general. But it also refers to individual
self-assurance and confidence. More like a feeling tone or long-lived sentiment than a specific emotion, trygghet is a property of society as a whole.
It is generated by and dependent on the material conditions for which the
welfare state has responsibility, and it is the emotional foundation for individual independence and well-being. But Swedish individualism, in the
sense of independence, does not automatically translate into individuality.
Rather, conformity-often understood as equality-is expected and valued.
There is also a strong collective dimension in Swedish society that exists
parallel to the stress on individual independence. The great majority of
workers are union members, and a plethora of associations, clubs, federations, study groups, and committees structure society and provide collective support for individual opinions (Daun 1991). These organizations
have also contributed to society's relative emotional as well as cultural and
social homogenization.
The strong stress on egalitarianism among Swedes (its decline during
the 1980s and 1990s notwithstanding) translates into expectations of a
high degree of emotional uniformity. The "common feeling" of which
Hansson spoke ought to encompass relations between public services and
the people they serve. This continuity reflects the positioning of emotions
in Swedish social-democratic society: namely, the desire to lay a common
ground among equals. The emphasis on egalitarianism in Swedish culture
is the legacy of half a century of social-democratic hegemony, both political and ideological, which has only been seriously challenged during the
last decade or so. The welfare state has been an important instrument of
this hegemony. For the most part, state intervention in Sweden has not
been seen as a threat, in strong contrast to many other countries where

EmotionalBureaucracies * 203
relations between the general population and public sector bureaucracies

are permeated by suspicion.
Up until the 1990s, public attitudes in Sweden toward the welfare
state were generally positive and stable, and the state still enjoys considerable support. In a study entitled "The Irritated Citizen" (Ahrne 1985),
the attitudes of Swedes to public services were examined. While there was
mild irritation with bureaucratic mistakes, by and large most people were
pleased with the help they received. Without the risk of too much exaggeration, the Swedish welfare state can be characterized as a machine for
the suppression of negative emotions. It has attempted to create an environment in which emotions are kept at a reasonable level in the interests
of bureaucratic efficiency and social peace. Since the 1990s, however,
relatively high levels of unemployment, large public sector cutbacks,
greater inequality, and increased ethnic segregation have increased the
negative emotional tone in society. Refugee immigrants have been particularly hard hit. Without the basic security the welfare state has sought to
ensure, and with the increase in cultural diversity, the question of whether
the state can reproduce emotional continuity becomes relevant. There are
indications that the government has abandoned, at least in part, attempts
to solve these problems and has placed its trust in market solutions, such
as immigrant businesses (see Graham and Soininen 2000).
SWEDISH
EMOTIONS
Generalizing about the emotional character of almost nine million
people is a hazardous enterprise, and it is as well to begin with a caveat.
The emotional characteristics of Swedes have been and are the object of
debate and self-criticism in Sweden (Daun 1996:139), especially in the
light of a number of recent developments. Mass immigration from outside
Europe, the effective end of Sweden's neutrality, high unemployment, financial scandals, the murder of a Prime Minister in 1986, economic savings, cuts in public services, membership of the European Union, and a
greater openness to international mass media, have left their mark on the
country's cultural, social, and to some extent emotional landscape especially during the last two decades. Nevertheless, public sector bureaucracies are products of 50 years of social-democratic hegemony and do not
change overnight. Their ideology and praxis still reflect emotional ideals
even as these are weakening in society at large.
When Swedes discuss their emotional qualities, words such as reserved, taciturn, withdrawn, inward, and serious are common. Displays
of strong negative emotions are still relatively unusual and ideally confined
to private contexts (Daun 1996:123). Displays of anger are suspect. They
disturb smooth social intercourse and enable the angry party to dominate

204 ? ETHOS
interaction, something that conflicts with the ideal of mutual and equal
exchange of views. Strong criticisms are also unusual as they are often
taken personally and regarded as hurtful. Conflicts in general are avoided
whenever possible. But the strong positive emotions, especially pride and
overconfidence, are also troublesome. The cultural prescription against
them is called the "Jante Law" (Jantelagen). It warns people not to think
that they are special or better than others. There is also a widespread
opinion in Sweden that Swedes are unusually envious, a quality dignified
with the phrase "The Royal Swedish Envy." Both strong negative and positive emotions therefore pose a threat to egalitarian ideals if deployed in an
overbearing manner.
The careful control and setting of boundaries around emotional display also extends to relationships. It is common to meet Swedes at a party
and then to be ignored the following day if one happens to pass them in a
corridor or on the street. Outside a clearly defined circle of family and
friends, there is no compunction to be sociable or even acknowledge the
presence of another person unless it has been agreed on in advance. This
accords well with the stress on independence that is central to the welfare
state ideology of the "strong society." In this context, individualism translates into independence, the avoidance, and even dread, of relationships
of debt with other people, and wanting to have strong control over the
frequency and intensity of social contacts.
These aspects of emotional display are also reflected in the strong
tradition of social planning. A "humanist rationalism" (Zetterberg 1984)
permeates the Swedish welfare state. One important aspect of this is a
general problem-solving focus in Swedish culture. This expresses itself in
a cultural seriousness that many foreigners find somewhat oppressive and
that is ridiculed in caricatures of the dour, humorless Swede and Ingemar
Bergman films. According to Swedish traditions, decision-making processes ought to be factual and based on consensus. An argument presented
in a factual manner without strong emotional display is more likely to be
taken seriously than a fiery display of rhetoric. The latter is likely to arouse
suspicion regardless of the argument's merits. The control of emotion extends to the Swedish policy-making process. Political debates in Sweden,
compared with those in, for example, the British House of Commons, are
noticeably flat. In Sweden's political culture, legislation that is likely to stir
up strong and emotive reactions has often tended to be avoided. Thus, one
of the reasons why Swedish governments until recently have had difficulty
legislating against ethnic discrimination in working life has been the fear
of provoking the majority ethnic population. Only after international pressure from, among other sources, the International Labour Organisation,
did the Swedish government pass tough legislation against ethnic discrimination. It drew considerable criticism, especially from employers (see

Graham and Soininen 1998, 2000). The ability of immigrant issues to increase the emotional temperature in society is a topic to which I shall
return shortly.
RFIDWORK
The fieldwork on which the present article is based was carried out in
Haninge, a suburb of Stockholm, between 1991 and 1993, with additional
periods of work in 1993 and 1994. The bureaus with which this article is
concerned include employment services, job-training services, housing
services, adult education, cultural and recreational services, the immigrant bureau, and social insurance offices. In all, 73 interviews were carried out with bureaucracy personnel. I was present at meetings between
teachers and students enrolled in the course in Swedish-language instruction for immigrants (SFI), as well as meetings between staff and clients at
the Culture and Recreation Department, the Employability Institute
(which has responsibility for job training), and the employment services.
I also visited the adult education center for immigrants and attended meetings between representatives of immigrant associations and the municipality's liaison officer who was responsible for providing the associations
with financial support. The collection of material also involved repeated
visits to the Iranian, Chilean, Finnish, and Yugoslav immigrant associations; socializing with people at their homes and elsewhere; and visits to
local schools, the outdoor market and the shopping center, and the library,
which was a place where many people met. The ethnography gathered in
this way was supplemented by extensive documentation from the local
authority archives, as well as national policy documents and statements,
and with newspaper cuttings from local, regional, and national newspapers. Finally, when the fieldwork was begun in 1991, I had already lived in
Sweden for three years. As an immigrant, although not a refugee, from the
UK, I have personal experience of the country's welfare state similar to that
of most other immigrants. At the time of writing I can draw on a total of
11 years of living and working in Sweden, during which time I have had
my fair share of contact with the bureaucracies, and although I have not
drawn directly on my own experience, it nonetheless informs what I write
here about Swedish emotional display and the Swedish welfare state.
RECEIVING
REFUGEES
The first major wave of immigrants to Sweden were labor migrants
from Finland, Greece, Italy, and the former Yugoslavia who arrived during
the 1950s and 1960s. Many were recruited directly in their home countries

206 ? ETHOS
by Swedish companies. Jobs and housing awaited them in Sweden, as well

as access to schools, health care, and all the services of the welfare state.
Many immigrants from this time tell of how they arrived in Sweden on a
Friday and started work the following Monday. While there were instances
of ethnic discrimination and local animosity toward the new arrivals, for
the majority the process of immigration was relatively smooth and without
emotional trauma. Responsibility for these labor migrants lay with the National Labor Market Board. Welfare bureaucracies were not faced with a
huge task as the immigrants had jobs, were able to support themselves,
and found much of the initial help they needed from fellow countrymen.
Sweden's Immigrant Policy was formulated in 1974 and promised
"cultural freedom of choice." This vague formulation allowed the retention
of culture that did not conflict with Swedish norms and seemed to reject
cultural, and by implication emotional, assimilation. In fact, most immigrants, a large majority of whom were from neighboring Finland, were expected to return home. Things changed in the 1980s when European labor
immigrants were almost completely replaced by refugees from South
America, the Middle East, Africa, and Southeast Asia.
The arrival of large numbers of refugees raised questions about the desirability of their being the responsibility of the Labor MarketBoard. In 1981,
an inquiry recommended that the Immigration Board take over responsibility
for the Refugee Reception Program (RRP). It argued that the labor market
authorities neglected the cultural backgrounds and special experiences associated with being a refugee. There was the assumption, however poorly
articulated, that there was a modal type of refugee suffering from trauma and
emotional turmoil and in need of therapeutic care (cf. Malkki 1995, 1996).
By the time the reform of the RRP was introduced in 1985, the
number of refugees arriving annually had increased from 5,000 to 14,000,
and many were sent to municipalities that had no experience in receiving
refugees. As a result, the RRP was adapted to the requirements of local
social services rather than to those of refugees (Soininen 1992). In fact,
the reliance on a universal welfare state with standard services for all has
never created much space for an ethnically differentiated service in Sweden. The dominant ethos of Swedish refugee policy has been that of therapeutic intervention in order to help refugees adapt to the Swedish setting.
The following description of refugee children and their families is taken
from a letter written by a member of the Recreation Department to Haninge's budget committee. In it she argues why her work with refugee children ought to escape budget cuts.
Many refugees are alone and isolated in this foreign country. Feelings of isolation, alienation and loneliness are common among refugees. Children, in particular, have a
very difficult time. They do not have secure, well functioning parents who give them
security and are an asset for them .... Many of the parents are insecure and feel unwell.
These mothers and fathers do not have the energy to help their children.

The fact that these opinions surface in the area of recreation, not an area
of service provision normally associated with severe emotional problems,
illustrates the pervasiveness of the "people in chaos" model and how it can
be mobilized to protect the resources of a municipal service. Notice also
the emphasis throughout the letter on the word security.
EMOTIVE
IMMIGRANTS
One Swedish word all immigrants will at some time have explained
for them is the meaning of the adjective lagom. It is common for Swedes
to claim that the word is untranslatable although in the English language
alone there are several similes and phrases that capture its various meanings, among them reasonable, just right, appropriate, moderate, not too
much, and not too little. The Swedish fondness for a lagom approach resembles Aristotle's liking for the "median" that lies somewhere between
what in any specific context is considered to be excessive and deficient
(1962 [Nicomachean Ethics 1106a-1113]). The word can be applied to
emotional display with ease.
The subject of refugee immigration and the presence of refugees in
Swedish society have often proved recalcitrant to any lagom debate and
emotional response. On the contrary, feelings have at times run very high
indeed. Issues such as illegal immigration, worries about the overrepresentation of immigrants in crime statistics, resentment at immigrants "stealing" jobs from Swedes, and fears about the "threat" to Swedish culture
posed by an immigrant population have not proved conducive to sober
debate. A low point was reached in September 1993 when the evening
newspaper Expressen published a "survey" that purported to show that
Swedes wanted immigrants to be driven out of the country. The banner
headline literally read, "Drive them out!" The newspaper's action was denounced in many quarters as inflammatory and racist in indignant, and
emotionally charged, language.
The tone of political debate also became more strident in 1991 when
the populist party New Democracy won ten percent of the votes in the
national election. Its antiestablishment platform expressed a general xenophobia and included demands for a halt to immigration. The leaders of the
main political parties walked off the television set on the night of the election when the two jubilant New Democracy leaders arrived. It was a display
of their contempt, but it was also a way for them to avoid an acrimonious
debate.
The emotive nature of immigrant questions has extended to the actions of individual local governments. As larger numbers of refugees arrived in Sweden during the late 1970s and early 1980s, it became clear
that the cities and larger towns were bearing the brunt of the economic

208 ? ETHOS
costs of caring for them. It was therefore decided to spread responsibility

for their reception and care more equitably throughout the country. The
National Immigration Board encouraged municipal governments to sign
contracts committing them to accepting an agreed annual quota of refugees. Press releases directed at the municipalities spoke of the need to
"spread refugees to a large majority of the country's municipalities in the
interests of solidarity" (Soininen 1992:41). The word solidarity (solidaritet)
in Swedish carries a much stronger emotional charge than the English
word. It draws on the social-democratic tradition of class struggle for
equality and social justice, and suggests the common good of society and
the undesirability of self-interest. The Board also organized conferences at
national, regional, and municipal levels at which municipal councils were
encouraged to act together and to monitor each other. Local council representatives responsible for the RRP compared the scale of their own commitments with those of other councils. The wish not to appear lacking in
solidarity resulted in councils outbidding each other to accept the largest
number of refugees (Soininen 1992:43).
Refusal to sign a contract was presented as a lack of solidarity and
something over which the municipality ought to feel "shame," while the
more "honorable" municipalities played their part. In September 1988,
the inhabitants of Sjobo in southern Sweden voted against entering into
an agreement with the Board. The municipality was denounced in the
press as xenophobic. For the Centre Party, which governed in Sj6bo, the
entire affair was described in the vocabulary of emotion as a "shameful
stain" on the party image. Well over a decade later, the municipality has
still not received a single refugee through contracting with the National
Immigration Board. Sjobo aside, the highly successful, and also unorthodox, strategy of the Board was to mobilize emotions in order to use moral
pressure to drive through a policy in the absence of any coercive powers
to do so.
MOTIONAL
CARTOGRAPHY
Post-1945 immigration to Sweden, and especially refugee immigration since the 1970s, put an end to Sweden's relative cultural homogeneity. By 1994, when the main period of fieldwork was completed, almost
four percent of Sweden's population was people born in countries outside
of Europe and North America. The cultural variety a heterogeneous immigrant population represents is understood to translate into a comparable
emotional complexity, or what I shall term an "emotional cartography,"
by civil servants in Haninge. The following emotional catalog was provided
quite spontaneously without any prompting from me in the course of a
conversation with a psychologist employed by the social services.

EmotionalBureaucracies ? 209
Rumanians are the most paranoid. They have great difficulty adapting. Bangladeshis
are obedient and polite, but you never know what they are thinking inside. The Vietnamese laugh when they are talking about terrible things. The Lebanese cry and show
their feelings. Different groups have different ways of showing their feelings. Different
municipalities have their own shopping lists, depending, in part, on the kind of emotional goods they want.
How this psychologist ascribed emotions to different categories of refugee

immigrants is fairly representative of how other personnel described clients from different national and ethnic groups. It is significant that she did
not mention the Swedes as a group with its own specific emotional characteristics. Unlike the ideal of emotional transparency among Swedes,
emotions among Bangladeshis and Vietnamese conceal rather than express inner states, something that was also often said about Iranians by
other personnel. Her final comment strongly suggests a desire within the
welfare bureaucracies to be able to manage "emotional" clients.
The arrival of significant numbers of refugees from an unfamiliar national or ethnic group provided the occasion for discussions of emotion
among the staff of different bureaus. Such discussions included the kinds
of emotions "typical" of the new group and the practico-emotional consequences for the civil servant. For example, the arrival of large numbers of
Bosnian Muslims in Sweden was high on the agenda during fieldwork. Discussions centered on the kinds of emotional problems this new group of
refugees could be expected to have, given the very traumatic experiences
through which many had lived. A new piece was added to the emotional
cartography of the municipality.
Individual refugees who did not conform to emotional expectations
were sometimes viewed as suspect. Their status as true refugees was called
into question if, for example, they were too cheerful or appeared to be
enjoying themselves too much. Refugees were often expected to "perform"
emotionally in accordance with stereotypes of "appropriate" refugee behavior. A lack of agency and initiative, depression, an undemanding relationship with the authorities, and displays of gratitude were among the
expected characteristics.
AND
BUREAUS
BOUNDARIES
The meaning of the word bureaucrat (one who rules from a desk)
immediately conjures up a vision of a barrier between the office holder and
the member of the public. In Swedish bureaucracies today the desk is still
present, but the client and civil servant are likely to be facing each other
without any physical barrier intervening between them. However, the absence of a physical barrier does not signify the absence of a social barrier
between bureaucracies and the general population. Meetings are still

210 ? ETHOS
between the relatively powerful bureaucrat and the relatively powerless

client. The greater informality of Swedish bureaucracies, compared with
those in many other countries, is the result of a process of "informalization" in which the stern, unyielding, and totally unsympathetic approach
has gradually been replaced by a degree of flexibility, openness, and empathy (Lofgren 1988) to create a bureaucracy with a more human face and
one in keeping with the Swedish bureaucratic ethos. But informalization
still requires emotional management from civil servants and clients. It also
demands that actors recognize a new set of boundaries and that they do
not overstep them. For immigrant clients used to bureaucracies that have
not undergone this informalization process, the welcoming Swedish bureaucracy is sometimes seen as an invitation to divulge themselves to an
extent that some civil servants feel is excessive. A staff member at the
Recreation Department recalled how during a discussion about the size of
the grant to the Muslim association, one of the representatives, an Iraqi
man, suddenly began to tell her about his 13-year-old nephew who had
been blown up in the Iran-Iraq war. His obvious sadness and the strong
sense of grief that had not been addressed hung like a cloud over the discussion and stayed with her for the rest of the day.
Contacts with bureaucracy personnel involve the exchange of information like any other social encounter. Personnel need to be informed in
order to make decisions, evaluate client claims, formulate a problem definition, and decide on a course of action. There is an unavoidable emotional component in such exchanges. A frequent complaint among
bureaucracy personnel is that of emotional strain, which can lead to an
"inability to cope" and to feelings of being "overburdened," "burnt out,"
"overwhelmed," and even "eaten up." These terms suggest beliefs about
optimal levels of emotion or "amounts" of emotion present among personnel. Some personnel feel that they ought to be able to cope with more, but
do not feel that they can. A staff member of the employment services, who
had worked a great deal with immigrant clients and who had an immigrant
background herself, made an explicit link between immigrant clients and
strain at work: "Workingwith immigrants they way we do is not something
you can do for more than a couple of years. After that time someone else
has to take over." Her viewpoint illustrates the belief found among many
civil servants that too much contact and exposure to cultural differences
on a daily basis is debilitating especially when this involves the revelation
of traumatic and emotional personal stories. This can result in what is
understood to be an emotional overload for the civil servant. At the same
time, civil servants also refer to themselves as a "tough breed" capable of
putting up with just about anything.
An unwillingness to respond to the emotions of clients has been described as bureaucratic "indifference" by Michael Herzfeld (1992). Herzfeld

traces indifference among bureaucrats to its roots in violations of a conceptual order organized around dominant idioms of kinship and national
community on which the bureaucracy draws when dealing with people.
Clients who cannot be accommodated within this system, such as foreigners, may find themselves confronted by a wall of bureaucratic indifference.
However, this explanation does not leave much space for emotional factors. In many circumstances bureaucratic indifference may be more likely
to be the result of emotional exhaustion-or even the anticipation of emotional exhaustion-rather than the result of category violation.
The idea that emotions are "exchanged" or "passed on" from client to
civil servant, thereby leading to an emotional excess within the latter, also
implies that there was a prior state of emotional balance or equilibrium
that the transaction has disturbed. This disturbance is not specific to relations between civil servants and their immigrant or refugees clients; it
can also be true of meetings with Swedish clients. However, given that
many refugee clients do have harrowing stories to tell, they are often said
to be potentially more emotionally difficult to deal with.
Knowledge among staff that a client from a particular immigrant group
is coming for an appointment also has emotional implications that both
precede and extend beyond the temporal span of the meeting itself. Some
personnel in the Immigrant Bureau, for example, were looking forward to
the time when all the Iranians had passed through their particular bureau.
Iranians are a category of refugees who were almost universally viewed as
difficult because of the demands they made on staff. As one member of the
immigrant bureau put it: "I'd like a boatload of Vietnamese [after the Iranians]. They're so undemanding and grateful. After them I can take another difficult group." Emotional coping in this view is cyclical: a
"difficult" group must be succeeded by an undemanding group so that
emotional recharging can take place, thus preparing personnel for their
next emotional challenge.
Although some emotions expressed by clients are felt to be inappropriate and excessive, insufficient emotional display is also problematic.
Civil servants often complained that because some "Yugoslavs" were so
placid, undemanding, and fairly undemonstrative, they give little back
emotionally. Without a sufficient emotional response, civil servants found
it difficult to interpret how people were thinking. Emotional cues thus
helped personnel to understand clients. A certain level of emotional display and exchange was considered necessary to enable civil servants to
perform their duties.
Recourse to interpreters with clients who were unable to communicate
in a language everyone understood also had emotional consequences. A
common complaint from civil servants was that the mediation of the interpreter lessened the sense of contact and that the "gap"was an emotional

212 ? ETHOS
one. What we can call the feeling tone of the meeting was missing. There
was another emotional dimension to the use of interpreters. Suspicions
existed among some personnel that interpreters from some groups, such
as Somalis, added too many of their own opinions when translating what
was being said. According to one staff member of the Immigrant Bureau,
"Somali interpreters spread gossip to other people which makes some
clients nervous and they tell clients what they think about us and make
people uncertain." An interpreter who is a complete stranger may not be
fully trusted by a client and may frighten people away from the Immigrant
Bureau and other public services. For these reasons, the use of an interpreter can be an emotional trial for some clients and staff members.
GUILT
AND
EMOTIONAL
DUES
A topic on which there are some strong opinions and emotions among
staff is the use of emotions by clients in order to influence decision making. If personnel are of the opinion that "too much" emotion is displayed
by a client, they may view it as a device to coerce the civil servant. However, the extent to which emotional displays, such as showing anger when
being refused a welfare payment, are actually deliberate attempts to manipulate a staff member is not easy for many civil servants to determine.
The meaning of emotion is not always self-evident.
One female member of the Social Services with a Latin American
background who worked with refugees with psychological problems
claimed that:
There are Iranians in Iran who send their children to Sweden, or some other European
country unaccompanied. It costs Sweden a fortune to look after them. The parents are
exploiting the system and their children. There are organizations that arrange the
whole thing. The children want to go home to their parents, but as soon as the child
gets a residence permit the family comes to Sweden straightaway. The kids have special
stories they've been taught to tell to the authorities. They ought to be sent back at once.
But Swedes actually like to be exploited.
In her opinion, Iranians were using their own children to manipulate

the emotions of Swedes. There was an element of truth in what she said.
In the early 1990s, some parents active in the Mujahedin movement in
Iran did send their children to Sweden unaccompanied. But, according to
the staff member, instead of hardening their hearts, the Swedish authorities allowed compassion to persuade them of the veracity of the children's
stories. This staff member, however, had her own explanation for why this
was the case: Swedish guilt. "Sweden helped the Nazis during the Second
World War and is now atoning by advertising to the world how incredibly
generous their refugee policy is." She did not consider her own reaction to
be informed by feelings of guilt like Swedes but, rather, by moral indignation

over the exploitation of children. The emotional contrast between herself

and that of Swedes coincided with a contrast between her own perspicacity and what she understood to be Swedish gullibility attributable to judgment clouded by guilt. Emotions, in this instance, serve as signals that
reveal something about one's own qualities and the acceptability of one's
behavior and beliefs, as well as the qualities and behavior of others (Denzin
1984:245).
The question of guilt was also in evidence when the emotional responses of personnel to the wishes of clients obviously deviated from what
they deemed to be appropriate. For example, personnel disliked being
made to feel guilty by suspicious and disgruntled clients, rather than feel
satisfaction from having attempted to help them, as in the following case
from the employment services:
Sometimes they [Iranians] even make me feel guilty, as though I'm not doing my best
to help them and not using all the resources at my disposal. I get the impression that
they suspect I have the perfect job for them hidden in my desk drawer ... I have to
admit that I do get fed up with them sometimes; they never leave you in peace!
The Iranian clients' lack of understanding about how the service actually
works leads to the wrong expectations and the wrong demands. This leads
in turn to resentment, suspicion, and frustration among the clients, and
misplaced guilt among civil servants.
Feelings of guilt are conventionally understood in Euro-American
countries as arising from inside the individual. Indeed, the development
of guilt may signal the successful creation of a person with an internal
moral gyroscope that prevents the transgression of rule. One feels guilty
because one has infringed a moral prescription, even if the moral lapse is
never discovered. By contrast, shame is often seen as externally imposed
by a group when the individual has failed to live up to a positive ideal and
this has become public knowledge. The creation of guilt feelings generated
within personnel suggests that the agency of Iranians is capable of acting
"inside" the civil servant. By generating such a negative emotion through
their own negative emotional displays, Iranians violated Swedish emotional rules. They introduced moral inequality into a relationship that, if
anything, ought to have had the civil servant in the superior position. This
may be seen as another instance of a breached emotional boundary between civil servant self and client other. A client's ability to elicit feelings
of guilt rather than satisfaction in return for what the individual civil servant perceives as help also conflicts with the feeling rules that cover emotional reciprocity in the bureaucratic context. Statements by personnel
revealed the existence of expectations about an optimal emotional exchange or reciprocity involving appropriate emotional responses to the
help received from civil servants. Small signs of gratitude were appreciated, but they should not be too effusive, in keeping with the avoidance of

214 * ETHOS
excessive positive emotional display. Civil servants did not normally state
that they expected or were entitled to them (although some did), but it
could be inferred from their complaints when nothing approximating
gratitude was expressed. Their complaints about guilt and gratitude were
indirect statements about correct relations between themselves and clients (cf. Lutz and Abu-Lughod 1990:11).
GENDERED
EMOTIONS
In general, female personnel in Haninge were of the opinion that male
clients took their word less seriously than the word of male colleagues. The
worst incidences of this involved certain categories of immigrant men,
especially "Arabs." Occasionally, male colleagues were called in to confirm what a female civil servant had already said. Mild annoyance or firmness on the part of male personnel had a greater impact on an unsatisfied
client than the reasonable and more accommodating attempts to explain
and placate by women, especially when the client was a man. And many,
though not all, female personnel were of the opinion that they were emotionally "softer" in their approach or more "accommodating" than their
male colleagues. Resentment arose on both sides of the encounter: among
Arab men who resented the authority of women and among female civil
servants who resented not being taken seriously by male clients. The Arab
men's attitude conflicts strongly with the stress on gender equality in Sweden. Most Swedish men know better than to express dissatisfaction with
public services in terms that might indicate a lack of respect for female
civil servants. The bureaucracies where women predominate in Haninge
are often those in which there is direct contact with the public. They do
not have the same status as "heavy weight" matters such as town planning,
and finance. Much of the kind of work women perform involves "streetlevel" encounters where there is more emotional friction than faced by
senior personnel (cf. Lipsky 1980). Female civil servants can be seen as
emotional buffers between the public they meet on a regular basis and the
upper echelons of the welfare bureaucracies, where men are better represented and where policy decisions are made. The women themselves were
well aware of this. A lack of emotional rapport might be best seen as a
"luxury" of the upper and male-dominated echelons of the welfare state,
whereas emotional skill is not a specifically female virtue or skill but a
feature of the street-level bureaucrat's job.
"ENVY"
AND
AMBITION
The topic of envious bureaucrats is a sensitive one. Admitting to feelings
of envy or jealousy that immigrant clients might one day attain a higher
standing than the individual civil servant who is currently in a socially

superior position to them is not something that most people would be

willing to discuss openly. When the topic did arise, it was almost always
brought up by immigrants who accused Swedes of being afraid of competition: "Highly educated immigrants are considered a threat. It's better
with passive clients. It also makes it easier [for Swedes] to make a career
if there isn't any competition." This quote is from someone who works
with job retraining and placement who is herself an immigrant with an
East European background. What she meant was that immigrants-by
definition experts on immigrant matters, it seems-would
represent
strong competition for the kinds of jobs Swedish civil servants currently
monopolize. Those immigrants who do not know their place in the class
and career hierarchy and are judged to be "too ambitious" by personnel
are regarded with a degree of suspicion, an opinion that is shared by many
immigrants. There were complaints made by immigrant clients and civil
servants that emotions were used to block the ambition of immigrants,
through, for example, displays of irritation or a patronizing attitude toward
those who want to study at university. Some informants even mentioned
angry reactions, although I personally never witnessed this, and it would
be very out of keeping with usual bureaucratic behavior. However, I have
heard personnel respond with incredulity or in a patronizing tone to what
they consider to be "unrealistic" or "excessive" ambition among immigrant clients. On one occasion a young Iraqi woman had been sent from
the Adult Education College, where she had studied Swedish for Immigrants (SFI), to the Employment Services. She had with her a certificate
stating that she had successfully completed the course in basic Swedish
and was thus eligible for help finding work. She was made to wait outside
the door of the staff member who was to help her. The staff member was
doubtful as the woman had completed the course in only four months instead of the usual six; she phoned another colleague to ask for advice and
questioned whether this could be serious and if it were really possible for
anyone to learn enough Swedish in such a short time. The tone of her voice
left no doubt that she personally did not think it was possible. "No, I don't
think this can be right. We'll send her back to SFI and they'll have to take
another look," was the conclusion she very audibly reached on the phone.
The woman was called in and told in a friendly manner that there were
doubts about whether she "really"had the language skills SFI claimed. The
Iraqi woman was referred back to SFI and told that the employment services would look into the matter. Although the face-to-face interaction with
the woman had not involved any negative emotional display, the fact that
she had overheard the telephone conversation between the personnel had
meant her exposure to negative judgment of her own abilities, and also a
negative and even patronizing assessment of SFI's own assessment skills.

216 ? ETHOS
From the perspective of immigrants themselves, the negative emotional responses of personnel were felt to be a barrier in the way of immigrants exercising agency and realizing their potential. Emotion was
understood by clients and some personnel to have been deployed in a
calculated manner intended to control clients and keep them in their "correct" social place. Such emotional displays are in conflict with correct
bureaucratic practice, but they signal to clients what the expectations are
regarding the appropriate social status of immigrants. If such emotional
displays discourage and dissuade immigrants from applying for a course at
a university or college, or block certain job ambitions, then clearly emotions do actively contribute to determining the class position of immigrants.
CREATING
EOTIONAL
CNSENSUS
Civil servants are supposed to keep their emotions firmly under control in meetings with the general public. There are official manuals containing guidelines that cover the praxis of different bureaus. Showing
strong emotions can be interpreted as threatening a client through an illegitimate exercise of power. In other settings, however, emotions can be
freely displayed. One such setting was the "Joint Workgroup for Immigrant
Questions," or SAGI (Samarbetsgrupp for invandrarfragor) as it was called
by those who participated in it. This informal group met once every two
or three months. Participants included the staff of the local Immigrant
Bureau and Refugee Section, personnel from the Recreation and Culture
Department and the local Adult Education College, and administrative
staff from the Education Department. On occasion, representatives from
voluntary organizations also took part. SAGI provided a forum in which
the participants shared experiences, expressed their opinions, and kept
each other informed about various matters of relevance for immigrant policy. The meetings were an occasion on which people could vent their feelings about politicians and express their frustration with policy makers who
were remote from the emotionally charged events created by their economic savings and reorganizations. SAGI allowed the reenactment of emotions experienced during work, which were then discussed among
participants and often confirmed as the "correct" emotional responses by
them. Given that there was often a considerable degree of agreement and
shared experience among the participants, the meetings usually served to
confirm what everyone "already"knew. There was a retroactive construction
and justification of the emotional response of individual civil servants.
Because immigrant questions in the municipality were the responsibility of several different bureaus, SAGI was seen as a context for creating
a degree of group identity among those who worked with immigrant clients

on a regular basis. However, participants did not always see the meetings
in a uniformly positive light. One former participant who had stopped attending felt that they were cosmetic. The problems associated with a dispersed organizational structure were not solved by SAGI; rather, they
might even be exacerbated if the meetings became the occasion for mutual
criticisms. Thus, rather than acting in Durkheimian fashion to create solidarity, the meetings were seen by some as reproducing differences of opinion, understanding, and emotional responses to the problems at hand.
Civil servants in Haninge were not engaged in the kind of emotional
management described by Hochschild (1983) in her study of flight attendants. Unlike flight attendants, these personnel did not strenuously attempt to transform their emotions in order to bring them into line with
how the company pays them to feel. However, they were engaged in emotional work in the sense of managing the expression of their feelings so that
they did not disrupt meetings with clients or conflict with good practice.
If personnel were irritated by a client, they were likely to conceal the fact
as best they could, and justified doing so because getting angry was not
seen as worth the trouble. The payoff from the emotional response was not
sufficient to outweigh the emotional costs of the civil servant's own display
of anger. Thus, a civil servant who felt "impatience" did not try to transform it to "sympathy" for a client's own impatience with the bureaucracy.
Emotional responses to one's own emotions were sometimes subjected to further emotional work, however. For example, worries about
having felt too irritated with a client that might indicate a lapse of professionalism were worked into justifiable feelings of irritation in contexts like
the SAGI meeting. However, irritation over a lapse of professionalism also
points to the presence of "passionate" bureaucrats who try to adhere to
high professional standards. In a classic essay on bureaucracy and personality, Merton pointed out that the bureaucrat must be "buttressed by
strong sentiments which entail devotion to one's duties, [and] a keen sense
of the limitation of one's authority and competence" (1940:562). This certainly applied to civil servants in Haninge.
SAGI also provided a context for an emotional discussion of emotions.
Irritation "caused" by Iranian clients, for example, became (a milder) irritation displayed when talking about Iranians with other personnel. The
emotion was "recreated" in a more manageable form, what Scheff, discussing the management of emotion in ritual, refers to as the "distancing of
emotions" (1977). In some instances, irritation was also magnified, resulting in an emotional inflation. The emotions acknowledged, recreated, and
dispersed informed subsequent meetings with Iranian clients by giving
them an anticipatory emotional tenor.
Much of the emotion talk in SAGI meetings was about troublesome
feelings, such as frustration, annoyance, and impatience. Rather like news

218 ? ETHOS
broadcasts, bad emotional news attracted attention. However, some talk

was about good emotions: happiness when seeing how satisfied a job
seeker was on hearing that she had been employed; sharing in someone's
enthusiasm about getting a place on a training scheme; satisfaction when
listening to a client who had successfully negotiated a section of the private
sector bureaucracy, such as when opening a bank account; sharing a client's relief at passing an examination; or meeting the overjoyed members
of a family who had just been notified that a relative had been granted a
visa. Civil servants also spoke of there being never a dull moment and
expressed pride in being flexible. There was therefore something of a discrepancy between the occurrence of feelings and emotions in bureaucratic
work and talk about emotions in settings like SAGI, where they became
the objects of analysis and where the troublesome emotions frequently
received most attention.
The emotional accounting in Haninge's bureaucracies was a selective
process and tended to concentrate on problem emotions. The Swedish
expression "health keeps silent" well describes the fact that when things
are going as they should, they do not attract attention or occasion complaint. Some feelings and emotions, often the positive ones, were not part
of the calculations, because they were "silent" and escaped initial detection.
COMPElTIVE
EMPATHY
Although emotions were sometimes regarded as problematic, there
were occasions when the emotional competence among personnel needed
for the successful execution of tasks became the object of attention. On
occasion, this took the form of competitive claims about who was most
competent to meet the emotional needs of clients.
At one SAGI meeting, Lotta, a representative from a voluntary sector
organization called "Verdandi," was invited to tell the participants about
the organization's work with immigrants. The meeting with Lotta lasted
for 95 minutes and was headed by Barbro, the head of the Immigrant Bureau. The topics discussed ranged over Verdandi's activities, their
Swedish-language classes for immigrants, their support work, and how
local services and Verdandi might cooperate more with each other. The
question of whether Verdandi "took people away" from local welfare services and painted an unflattering picture of how the social services operate
was also raised. The issue of competition between the public and voluntary
sector permeated the entire meeting.
Lotta began by presenting Verdandi and its work and then went on to
describe how the organization helps immigrants and people who experience
difficulties integrating into Swedish society. Verdandi befriends people,

she told the meeting participants, and provides them with the "long-term
and intensive contact with people" needed to create the empathy that can
act as a bridge between self and other. For Lotta, emotion was something
passed between people, transacted in a contagionlike manner (cf. Lutz and
White 1986:415). Lotta also claimed that Verdandi translated individual
problems into propositions that the authorities could understand. This
involved placing a gloss on the vague physiological states or feelings of the
people Verdandi helped and labeling them as specific emotions. In fact,
this went beyond providing the correct word; it also extended to the active
creation of an appropriate and justified emotional response among those
who turned to Verdandi for help. This usually happened after they felt they
had been wronged by local services. As Lotta put it: "We hold them by the
hand and go with them to the Social Security Office, or the Social Insurance Office."
After hearing this, Barbro asked her: "What is your attitude to the
authorities in my department, for example, and to social services?" Lotta
answered "Fine!" Barbro continued:
Before, when I used to work in Socialen [Social Security], it was like when you frightened children with the chimney sweep you frightened someone with Socialen. That is
the impression we get from your side [about Verdandil. [But] we have a double function. You have immigrants and refugees as your group; so do we and we are responsible
for introducing them to society. But we have a double role. We are an authority, we
have to take care of money .... And we also have the other part of our service-we are
called "Mamma socialen" after all. We aren't only the chimney sweep, are we? So it's
very double. But if I send someone to Verdandi I want to be sure that they get a correct
picture of the authorities, a more neutral picture and not only the frightening one.
People can actually get help from the authorities.
Lotta nodded in agreement and said: "Exactly, exactly." She absorbed

Barbro's barely disguised annoyance. She was good at this; I had seen her
do it before. But it could cause irritation among people who were trying to
provoke her or force her to admit that Verdandi had erred. She then went
on to explain how Verdandi actually works to help people get over their
fear of Socialen by telling of a young woman of Chilean background who
was "climbing up the walls" at the thought of having to visit it. The Social
Security Office, which is responsible for providing the poorest in society
with welfare support, is one of the few that generates strong negative emotions. Going to the Socialen for help can be a stigmatized and emotionally
fraught last resort for some people who have no other means of support.
Lotta accompanied the woman to the Socialen where the meeting turned
out to be very helpful.
Barbro interrupted her with a question clearly intended to puncture
the image of empathy and emotional support Lotta had painted: "So, you
are a paid friend?" Lotta answered: "Unfortunately it's become that way.
A lot of the time I have to provide the friendly support. But because I don't

220 ? ETHOS
have enough time I try to deal with things at the pace I can manage."
Barbro drove the point home: "It's quite strange, the role of paid friend. I
can't ever be a friend with [my clients] because I'm employed by the local
authority." Lotta replied, "Exactly, exactly. But we [the client and I] live
in different circumstances, we are members of the same organization." For
the third time, Barbro stressed the economic nature of the Verdandi relationships: "But you are paid to be his friend, he isn't being paid to be yours.
If people are happy with the social worker and everything is going fine,
they don't do anything. When a person meets opposition from the social
services and feels bad about it, then they turn to others and mobilize what
resources they have." Barbro attempted to present Verdandi's companionate relationships as based on financial remuneration. Lotta gets paid, and
a large amount of the money comes from grants awarded by the local council against which Verdandi is seen as competing. Barbro recalculated the
nature of Lotta's empathy into monetary terms, thus robbing it of authenticity: genuine empathy and friendship cannot be bought with money.
Both Lotta and Barbro were describing how emotions have consequences for agency. Emotions help to propel people into alternative
courses of action. An unfavorable decision by the Socialen leads to clients
experiencing negative emotions of anger and disappointment. They then
turn to Verdandi for help, where, depending on one's point of view, the
negative image of the social services is reinforced by "alarmist propaganda," or emotional support is provided and the rightness of the client's
emotional response is confirmed. The client withdraws faith in social services and transfers it to Verdandi. Future contacts with the authorities are
colored by the new emotional configuration.
A few weeks later, I met Margareta, the representative at SAGI meetings for the College of Adult Education. She brought up the topic of Verdandi: "[Verdandi] specializes in Chileans and little else. That's what they
think they are good at." The implication was clear enough: While the local
public sector services and welfare agencies had to deal with a wide range
of national and ethnic categories of people and the entire emotional register this is believed to entail, Verdandi only manages to deal with one, the
Chileans. In short, Verdandi lacked the empathetic range and professional
expertise possessed by the public sector personnel. Furthermore, in order
to attract Chileans, Verdandi had to frighten people away from the "chimney sweep" authorities.
Having attended several meetings and events organized by Verdandi
where many Chilean refugees were present, I was able to see and hear
some of the negative opinions expressed about Haninge's public services.
While it is too strong to suggest that the organization deliberately used fear
to recruit members, it did not attempt to instill much confidence in local
services. At a meeting of one of the Latin American associations where a

group of around 20 people were preparing for a party, Lotta explained that
Verdandi's grant from the municipality had been cut "because they see us
as left-wing trouble makers." And at a meeting with new members (an
Iranian and two Chileans), a Verdandi representative commented: "As an
organization the local authority is bad, even if individual staff in it can be
OK," and "the local authority makes people passive."
The SAGI meeting illustrates struggles between the public sector and
a voluntary organization over claims about their respective ability to empathize. Against common expectations, the personnel of the welfare state
bureaucracies were proud of their empathetic skills, which they considered to be superior in terms of range and quality to those of the voluntary
sector. But as the comments from Barbro indicate, there was also an
awareness that the formal, hierarchical relations between the public services and clients militated against close ties of friendship. The very egalitarian Verdandi, which has its roots in the 19th-century temperance
movement and social democracy, made a point of establishing emotional
ties with members but was able to do so precisely because it lacked the
formal powers and resources of the welfare bureaucracies. Verdandi members understood their role in terms of an emotional division of labor. The
secondary institutions of the public bureaucracies lacked empathy,
whereas Verdandi's role was closer to that of a primary institution like the
family, providing support for people who had often been emotionally injured in their contacts with welfare services. This division of labor was
disputed by the public sector personnel.
Personnel did not only compare themselves with the voluntary services, they also made comparisons between different public sector bureaucracies and their emotional skills. For example, social secretaries, who have
the power to grant or withhold welfare payments, were described by staff
in recreation services, education, and the staff of the Immigrant Bureau as
being less friendly and not possessing as much empathy as they did. There
was, then, an emotional cartography even within the welfare bureaucracies themselves.
CONCLUSION
This article has shown how immigrant clients are understood in emotional terms by civil servants with the help of the bureaucratic mapping of
an emotional cartography onto individual clients and through the emotional reactions of bureaucracy personnel themselves. There are clearly
beliefs present about optimal levels of emotion "inside" civil servants, and
complaints that these are exceeded when mainly refugee clients breach
emotional barriers. Personnel also heeded their own emotional responses
in order to be able to understand clients. They felt that certain emotional

222 ? ETHOS
responses were due them and that their own emotional responses to those
of immigrant clients ought to signal to themselves a job well done; they
should not be made to feel guilty by clients. Emotions were also assigned
different weights according to their "gender" by clients and civil servants.
Meetings between the staff of different bureaus could confirm emotional
responses to the behavior of clients and the appropriateness of the emotional reply delivered to clients, but they could also reproduce emotional
differences principally around irritation with what were perceived as organizational failings. Yet however problematic the emotional dimensions
of the job might be, an ability to understand and respond to emotions was
valued among staff and could on occasion give rise to rivalry between different organizations.
It can be argued that emotions and feelings are an integral component
of all social practice, including the bureaucratic. It is the feeling tones that
enable particular practices to be felt as "right" without reflecting on why
this is so, thereby enabling practice to continue without interruption. The
positive emotions and feeling tones that permeate work and give it purpose
and focus tended to be missing from the emotion talk and emotional calculation of Haninge personnel. As we have seen, civil servants often seemed
to miss some of their own more positive emotional responses when they
were put into a position where they had to try to give a systematic account
of their emotions and their significance.
When the technical rational work was disturbed by emotions that ought
not to be there-guilt, irritation, anger-they got noticed. These troublesome emotions that are considered extrinsic to the job were often (but not
exclusively) part of meetings with refugee clients. They conflicted with the
ideal of emotional continuity between civil servant and client. The contrast is between hypocognition of the routine background emotions that
are continuous with the correct operations of institutions (Barbalet
2001:16) and the hypercognition of troublesome emotions that conflict
with it (on hypo- and hypercognition see Levy 1973:324; 1984). Hypocognized emotions, according to Levy (1973:324,342) in his study of Tahitians,
are interpreted as other than specific emotions. Instead, they are interpreted as vague feelings or as aspects of a relationship. Levy focuses largely
on the hypocognition of negative emotions of sadness, grief, and guilt. But
in the case of civil servants in Haninge, it was the positive emotions that
were hypocognized, while negative emotions received most attention.
Public service bureaucracies are problem-solving and problem-focused organizations. People without any problems do not normally use them. Their
problem focus is amplified by the more general seriousness of Swedish
culture. There may be an additional factor at work here. If civil servants
were to dwell too much on the positive emotions, this would mean discussing their successes. This could be interpreted as boasting, something that

Emotional Bureaucracies ? 223
conflicts with the Swedish Jante Law. The lack of negative emotional display by civil servants did not mean that civil servants did not feel negative
emotions. On the contrary, negative emotions experienced as part of work
received a lot of attention in contexts such as SAGI. So much so that we
may talk of their hypercognition (Levy 1984). Again, this is fully compatible with the problem focus of the public services and the culture more
generally.
The removal of negative emotions among society's members remains
a major goal of Sweden's universal welfare state. Yet contacts between
refugee immigrants and civil servants generate more negative emotion
than is normally the case in the work of the public services. Refugee immigrants from outside Euro-American countries have provoked unusually
strong emotional reactions in Sweden's national policy debates and the
mass media and in local bureaucratic praxis. The manipulation and tactical use of emotion in the mostly academic contexts described by Bailey
(1983) is foreign to the professional ideals of Swedish public service bureaucracies. But the use of shame by the National Immigration Board to
compel compliance with its aims, and the perception among clients and
civil servants alike that the "other side" manipulates emotions are not
conventionally part of Swedish emotional ideology and its modern welfare
ethos. When emotions are displayed, they ought to reflect what the person
feels, not conceal it. Emotional manipulation by public service personnel
or clients and the projection of an emotional facade prevents shared emotional understanding and continuity. The emotional cartography in Haninge contained examples of this opacity.
Officially, Sweden is a multicultural country in which immigrants are
not obliged to assimilate and may retain cultural forms as long as they do
not conflict with Swedish law. Acceptance of multiculturalism also entails
the acceptance of multi-emotionalism in society and, it should not to be
forgotten, within the Swedish bureaucracies themselves as they slowly but
surely recruit staff from within immigrant populations. Earlier, I noted
important changes in Sweden that have posed serious challenges for its
universal welfare state, among them unemployment, ethnic and racial segregation, growing regional and class differences in wealth, and the increased influence of global capital and markets. In addition, there has been
a reduction in the size and responsibilities of Sweden's welfare state and a
greater reliance on the private sector and markets during the last decade.
All of these developments make it difficult to guarantee the security
(trygghet) of yesteryear. In the absence of this security, the reproduction
of emotional continuity and homogeneity among society's members becomes impossible. Civil servants in Haninge in the first half of the 1990s
predicted that some of the problems that were overrepresented among
immigrants would increasingly affect other sections of society. Although

224 * ETHOS
they did not phrase it so, the consequences of these problems among refugee immigrants-greater emotional burdens, emotional opacity, less of a
taken-for-granted emotional tone to work, and a greater range and complexity of emotional displays among staff and clients-were a taste of things
to come.
forWomen's
MARK
intheCentre
fellow
GRAHAM
teaches
intheDepartment
ofSocialAnthropology
andisa research
atStockholm
Studies
University.
CITED
REFERECES
Ahrne,Goran
1985 Den irriterademedborgaren.Stockholm:Sociologiskainstitutionen, Stockholms
universitet.
Albrow,Martin
1997 Do OrganizationsHaveFeelings?London:Routledge.
Aristotle
1962 NicomacheanEthics.MartinOswald,trans.New York:Bobbs-Merril.
Bailey,FrederikG.
1983 The TacticalUsesof Passion:An Essayon Power,ReasonandReality.Ithaca:Cornell
UniversityPress.
Barbalet,John M.
2001 Emotion,SocialTheory,and Social Structure:A Macrosociological
Approach.Cambridge:CambridgeUniversityPress.
Crozier,Michel
1964 The BureaucraticPhenomenon.Chicago:ChicagoUniversityPress.
Daun,Ake
1991 Individualismand CollectivityamongSwedes.Ethnos56:165-172.
1996 SwedishMentality.Jan Teeland,trans.UniversityPark:PennsylvaniaState University Press.
Denzin,Norman
1984 On UnderstandingEmotion.San Francisco:Jossey-Bass.
Edgar,Ian, and A. Russell,eds.
1998 The Anthropologyof Welfare.London:Routledge.
Fineman,Stephen,ed.
1993 Emotionin Organizations.London:Sage.
Flam,Helena
1993 Fear, Loyaltyand Greedy Organizations.In Emotionsin Organizations.Stephen
Fineman,ed. Pp. 58-75. London:Sage.
Goffman,Erving
1956 Embarrassment
and SocialOrganization.
AmericanJournalof Sociology62:264-274.
Graham,Mark,and MarittaSoininen
1998 A ModelforImmigrants?The SwedishCorporateModelandthe Preventionof Ethnic
Discrimination.Journalof Ethnic and MigrationStudies24:523-539.
2000 Positive Action in Sweden: From Central Solutions to Local Responsibilitiesfor
CombatingEthnic Discrimination.In CombatingRacial Discrimination:Affirmative
Actionas a ModelforEurope.ErnaAppeltandMonikaJarosch,eds. Pp. 183-200. Oxford:
Berg.

Emotional Bureaucracies
* 225
Handelman, Don
1981 Introduction: The Idea of Bureaucratic Organization. Social Analysis 9:5-23.
Hansson, Per
1982 Fran Fram till folkhemmet. Introduction by A. Berking. Solna: Metodica Press.
Herzfeld, Michael
1992 The Social Production of Indifference: Exploring the Symbolic Roots of Western
Bureaucracy. New York: Berg.
Hochschild, Arlie
1979 Emotion Work, Feeling Rules and Social Structure. American Journal of Sociology
85:551-575.
1983 The Managed Heart: The Commercialization of Human Feeling. Berkeley: University
of California Press.
James, Nicky
1993 Divisions of Emotional Labor: Disclosure and Cancer. In Emotion in Organizations.
Stephen Fineman, ed. Pp. 94-117. London: Sage.
Lane, Jan-Erik, ed.
1991 Understanding the Swedish Model. London: Frank Cass.
Levy, Robert I.
1973 Tahitians: Mind and Experience in the Society Islands. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
1984 Emotion, Knowing, and Culture. In Culture Theory: Essays on Mind, Self, and
Emotion. Richard A. Schweder and Robert A. LeVine, eds. Pp. 214-237. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Lipsky, Michael
1980 Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of the Individual in Public Services. New York:
Russell Sage.
Lofgren, Orvar
1988 Hej det ar fran f6rsikringskassan! Informaliseringen av Sverige. Stockholm: Natur
och Kultur.
Lutz, Catherine, and Lila Abu-Lughod
1990 Introduction: Emotion, Discourse and the Politics of Everyday Life. In Language and
the Politics of Emotion. Catherine Lutz and Lila Abu-Lughod, eds. Pp. 1-23. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Lutz, Catherine, and Geoffrey White
1986 The Anthropology of Emotions. Annual Review of Anthropology 15:405-436.
Malkki, Liisa
1995 Refugees and Exile: From "Refugee Studies" to the National Order of Things. Annual
Review of Anthropology 24:495-523.
1996 Speechless Emissaries: Refugees, Humanitarianism and Dehistoricization. Cultural
Anthropology 11(3):377-404.
Merton, Robert K.
1940 Bureaucratic Structure and Personality. Social Forces 18(4):560-568.
Milner, Henry
1989 Sweden: Social Democracy in Practice. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Scheff, Thomas J.
1977 The Distancing of Emotion in Ritual. Current Anthropology 18:483-505.
Shore, Cris, and Susan Wright
1997 Policy: A New Field of Anthropology. In Anthropology of Policy: Critical Perspectives
on Governance and Power. Cris Shore and Susan Wright, eds. Pp. 3-39. London:
Routledge.

226 ? ETHOS
Soininen, Maritta
1992 Det kommunala flyktingmottagandet: Genomforande och organization. Stockholm:
Ceifo.
Stenross, Barbara, and Sherryl Kleinman
1989 The Highs and Lows of Emotional Labor: Detectives' Encounters with Criminals and
Victims. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 17:435-475.
Weber, Max
1978 Economy and Society. G. Roth and C. Wittich, trans. Berkley: University of California Press.
Zetterberg, Hans
1984 The Rational Humanitarians. Daedalus: Journal of the American Academy of Arts
and Sciences 113:75-92.


Emotional Bureaucracies

Transféré par

Informations du document

Titre original

Copyright

Formats disponibles

Partager ce document

Partager ou intégrer le document

Options de partage

Avez-vous trouvé ce document utile ?

Ce contenu est-il inapproprié ?

Droits d'auteur :

Formats disponibles

Emotional Bureaucracies

Transféré par

Droits d'auteur :

Formats disponibles

Emotional Bureaucracies: Emotions, Civil Servants, and Immigrants in the Swedish Welfare

This content downloaded from 200.130.19.216 on Wed, 26 Mar 2014 14:17:41 PM

This content downloaded from 200.130.19.216 on Wed, 26 Mar 2014 14:17:41 PM

This content downloaded from 200.130.19.216 on Wed, 26 Mar 2014 14:17:41 PM