Discretion and the values of fractal man. An anthropologist’s perspective on ‘Street-level bureaucracy’

Jens Kjaerulff

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articleResearchpeer-review

4 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

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’.
Original languageEnglish
JournalEuropean Journal of Social Work
Volume23
Issue number4
Pages (from-to)634-644
Number of pages11
ISSN1369-1457
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2020

Keywords

  • Agency
  • discretion
  • social work practice
  • street-level bureaucracy
  • value

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