TY - JOUR
T1 - Discretion and the values of fractal man. An anthropologist’s perspective on ‘Street-level bureaucracy’
AU - Kjaerulff, Jens
PY - 2020
Y1 - 2020
N2 - Michael Lipsky’s seminal book entitled ‘Street-level Bureaucracy’ has long been a core citation for a social work scholarship concerned with practice. This article takes issue with a key notion in Lipsky’s book, that of ‘discretion’. It argues that Lipsky’s notion of discretion relies on assumptions often associated with the trope of ‘Economic Man’, and that the notion of discretion remains inadequately theorised in the scholarship that routinely cites the book. To re-orient inquiry about street-level discretion, the article proposes that social work scholarship can usefully look to anthropological discussions of complexities pertaining to the notion of ‘value’.
AB - Michael Lipsky’s seminal book entitled ‘Street-level Bureaucracy’ has long been a core citation for a social work scholarship concerned with practice. This article takes issue with a key notion in Lipsky’s book, that of ‘discretion’. It argues that Lipsky’s notion of discretion relies on assumptions often associated with the trope of ‘Economic Man’, and that the notion of discretion remains inadequately theorised in the scholarship that routinely cites the book. To re-orient inquiry about street-level discretion, the article proposes that social work scholarship can usefully look to anthropological discussions of complexities pertaining to the notion of ‘value’.
KW - Agency
KW - discretion
KW - social work practice
KW - street-level bureaucracy
KW - value
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85058169023&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/13691457.2018.1553150
DO - 10.1080/13691457.2018.1553150
M3 - Journal article
SN - 1369-1457
VL - 23
SP - 634
EP - 644
JO - European Journal of Social Work
JF - European Journal of Social Work
IS - 4
ER -