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An innovative contribution to political theory, State Work examines the labor of government workers in North America. Arguing that this work needs to be theorized precisely because it is vital to the creation and persistence of the state, Stefano Harney draws on thinking from public administration and organizational sociology, as well as poststructuralist theory and performance studies, to launch a cultural studies of the state. Countering conceptions of the government and its employees as remote and inflexible, Harney uses the theory of mass intellectuality developed by Italian worker-theorists to illuminate the potential for genuine political progress inherent within state work.
State Work begins with an ethnographic account of Harney's work as a midlevel manager within an Ontario government initiative charged with leading the province's efforts to combat racism. Through readings of material such as The X-Files and Law & Order , Harney then reviews how popular images of the state and government labor are formed within American culture and how these ideas shape everyday life. He highlights the mutually dependent roles played in state work by the citizenry and civil servants. Using as case studies Al Gore's National Partnership for Reinventing Government and a community-policing project in New York City, Harney also critiques public management literature and performance measurement theories. He concludes his study with a look at the motivations of state workers.

Tabla de contenidos provista por Syndetics

• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Hands of a Government Man
• 1 Yes, Minister: The Rise and Fall of the Ontario Antiracism Secretariat
• 2 Reengineering Immaterial G-Men
• 3 Reinventing Statolatry: From Nicos Poulantzas to Al Gore
• 4 Generalizing Social Terror: Public Management and Performance by Objectives
• 5 The Administration of Motivation: Any Cook Can Network
• Notes
• Selected Bibliography
• Index

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CHOICE Review

What does the work that public administrators actually do mean for the larger society? Harney (sociology, City University of New York at Staten Island) examines society's conflicting images of public servants and the reasons for those images. Reflecting on his experience with an antiracism initiative in the New Democratic Party's tenure in the Ontario provincial government in the early 1990s, he concludes that "state work" primarily serves the capitalist accumulation order and its imperial expansion through globalization. Further, it seeks to discipline the public in serving that order through policing and surveillance, control of credit, and the state educational system. This is far different from the paradigms put forth by today's public administration scholars, which he summarizes and criticizes. Readers should be familiar with the concepts and language of neomarxist structuralist thought, the abstractness of which tends to obscure a message that deserves consideration by a wider audience. Recommended for graduate students, researchers, and faculty. W. C. Johnson Bethel College (MN)

Notas de autor provistas por Syndetics

Stefano Harney is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the City University of New York, College of Staten Island.