Rehabiliteringspraksiser og normaliseringsdiskurser

Abstract

This chapter is a critical discourse analysis of legal and professional texts. Between 1960 and about 2015 we identified three social practices: those of revalidation, expanded revalidation and rehabilitation. We see three different forms of normalizing the public. From 1960 to the 1970s, revalidation practices are about discourses of training, and ‘back to normal’ work situations. The professions look at their patient or client as an object. In the period spanning 1980–2000, during years of expanded revalidation practices, we identify shifts in the discourses of normalization, where the public, patient or client is placed in the centre of the revalidation practice. These two different rationalities integrate after 2000 in rehabilitation practices. A new discourse emerges, concerned with prevention, intervention, and activation. This is linked to discourses of governing, bureaucratization, strategies, regulations and standardizations. The new policies have the aim of encouraging the client or user to be more active in the rehabilitation process.