Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Introduction
- Part I Overview: theory, method and analysis
- Part II Private and public identities: constructing who we are
- Editors' introduction
- 5 Identity à la carte: you are what you eat
- 6 Workplace narratives, professional identity and relational practice
- 7 Identity and personal/institutional relations: people and tragedy in a health insurance customer service
- 8 The discursive construction of teacher identities in a research interview
- 9 Becoming a mother after DES: intensive mothering in spite of it all
- Part III The gendered self: becoming and being a man
- Part IV The in-between self: negotiating person and place
- References
- index
7 - Identity and personal/institutional relations: people and tragedy in a health insurance customer service
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 November 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Introduction
- Part I Overview: theory, method and analysis
- Part II Private and public identities: constructing who we are
- Editors' introduction
- 5 Identity à la carte: you are what you eat
- 6 Workplace narratives, professional identity and relational practice
- 7 Identity and personal/institutional relations: people and tragedy in a health insurance customer service
- 8 The discursive construction of teacher identities in a research interview
- 9 Becoming a mother after DES: intensive mothering in spite of it all
- Part III The gendered self: becoming and being a man
- Part IV The in-between self: negotiating person and place
- References
- index
Summary
Introduction
There is much more to late modernity than the comfort it has brought to our daily lives: this age of rapid and sometimes radical change in which we live has also rendered more complex the interactions between human beings. One example of this complexity is the bureaucratization of interpersonal relations, brought about by the expanding commercialization of services. Modern society all too often trivializes the contact between service providers and clients, and this has resulted in efforts to make direct contact between individuals and organizations more frequent. In past decades, high-quality relationships with customers were considered a key element of success in bureaucratic organizations (Dubar 2000: 113). Yet the focus on the customer has further problematized the question of communication in individual–organization interactions. The client's evaluation of the service is directly related to his/her expectations, which are invested with subjectivity. The success of the company's engagement in providing a service that will satisfy the client depends, therefore, on communication that favors a better reciprocal understanding and a shared sense of the actions of the participants (Zarifian 2001).
The focus of this chapter is on communication in a health insurance service. One relevant aspect of this communication is the negotiation of the sense of health and the contractual conditions that regulate the client/company relationship. In this context, the processes by which the participants construct their identity become crucial to mutual understanding and to the consequent validation of the service provided.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Discourse and Identity , pp. 188 - 212Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2006
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