Making Sense of Responsibility in Rural Sustainability Work

Abstract This study aims to deepen our knowledge of how employees make themselves into responsible subjects when involved in sustainability initiatives in rural welfare services. The analysis was guided by the question of how employees make sense of themselves as responsible actors, capable of addressing managerial aspirations for enhanced sustainability in the public services they deliver. Data were collected through ethnographic field studies following sustainability work in a public housing company in a rural municipality in southern Sweden. The analysis draws on sensemaking theory and a Foucault-inspired conceptualization of how actors define themselves as subjects. The results identify two main modes of responding to management aspirations, linking to the emergence of two types of subjects; the habitual selves and the struggling selves. In total, the results depict four different responses as the main modes contain varieties, illustrating a wide range to make sense of responsibility. Furthermore, the analysis depicts an interplay between rural practices and the relational dimensions of responsibility (relations to management), diverging from established rural discourses as well as from a conventional Foucauldian conceptualization of managerial power as urging discipline at a distance.