Hermeneutic Reflections on Meetings between Citizens and Professionals

Institutions are generally considered meeting places for people of different backgrounds, opinions and knowledge. At times, differences become visible through discrepancies in ways of thinking and acting. However, meetings between professionals and citizens within daily institutional practice contexts normally call for solutions to be made, hopefully in agreement between those involved. In such meetings, when the status quo is ‘business as usual’, we normally do not delve deeper into questions about implicit values and expectations. However, when differences in opinions arise, there might be a reason to address these questions. Daily institutional practices can take these differences into account in various ways, but if a challenge is handled only with a view to pragmatic parameters, then something important is overlooked. Notably, beneath the surface of any encounter between human beings, ethical and value-related dimensions usually have an impact on the situation. This chapter presents a theoretical tool for shedding light on such underlying values and presumptions. Lurking behind practical problem-solving, we find a range of hidden, yet critical, premises that can be made visible by means of what is referred to as a ‘hermeneutic reflection tool’.