ABSTRACT
According to definitions advanced by A. Hetzler, public identity refers to the legal rights economic, political and social and experiences people can gain as individuals encountering welfare state staff members. Her research on the welfare state has shown that there are different categories of identity, which she interprets as stages in a process of social change leading towards a fully developed public identity. Indeed, awareness of the ongoing contradictions and conflicts at the heart of the Nordic welfare state was central to the writings of Herbert Tingsten, one of the most vigorous champions of the Swedish welfare model. Reading between the lines of even the most optimistic pictures of welfare state functioning presented in this book indicates that possibilities for these black holes to develop are ever present in the interactions between welfare state staff and their clients.
