BIO206H5 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Vocational Rehabilitation, Human Services, International Tropical Timber Organization
Document Summary
State agent or citizen agent: two narratives of discretion. State-agent narrative acknowledges inevitability of discretion and emphasizes that selfinterest guides street-level choices: street-level workers use their discretion to make their work easier, safer, and more rewarding. In addition the dominant narrative describes street-level workers as policy makers, yet it worries about the threat that street-level discretion poses to democratic governance. Street-level workers, themselves, tell a different story, a counter narrative of the worker acting as a citizen agent. These two stories tell of encounters between citizens and the state. The first is told by a police officer who has risen from working the street to the position of assistant chief and the second is told by a seasoned vocational rehabilitation counsellor. The power the state has to frighten citizens with late night intrusions and thirty to forty minute gruff interrogations is juxtaposed against the power the state has to heal: the officer takes the hand of the frightened african-
