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Abstract:
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In a time where partnerships seem the solution to any challenge, this master thesis will focus on one specific
partnership. Specifically, it is the purpose of the thesis to investigate how this specific partnership is
constructed as the solution to a number of challenges within the area of self-governing day care in the
municipality of Copenhagen. In later years, the self-governing day care institutions have experienced a
significant decline and their existence can be characterised a threatened. The specific partnership project was
initiated by the umbrella organisation, Menighedernes Daginstitutioner (MDI) with support from the
Ministry of Finance, which granted DKK 5 million to the project. The project spans three years and the
objective is to develop a new model for collaboration between the self-governing day care institutions, MDI
and the municipalities of Copenhagen, Aarhus and Svendborg. The hope is that this partnership model will
inspire other municipalities and self-governing institutions to reconsider and discuss their existing
frameworks for collaboration. Based on this, the thesis intends to provide an answer to the question: What is
the potential for the partnership project as a strategy for survival for the self-governing day care institutions
in the municipality of Copenhagen organised under MDI? The study is based on the discourse theory as
Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe have formulated it. We thereby construct the partnership as a hegemonic
intervention in the sense that the project aims to re-establish order in the area of self-governing day care and
thereby offer the stakeholders within this area an alternative way of self-identification. As will be
demonstrated in the first analysis of the thesis, the potential of the project builds upon a successful balancing
act between the articulation of too many and too few elements and thereby on the complex interplay between
the logic of equivalence and the logic of difference. However, prior to identification agreement must be
reached regarding the meaning of the bearing elements of the construction. Following the first analysis, we
therefore make the social struggles over meaning the object of our next analysis and in this context we can
conclude that the project is at risk of loosing support simply because it does not provide an antagonistic
boundary and thereby does not provide any limit to the participation. |
