Suchergebnisse

An analytic framework is developed for examining the processing of disputes in official bureaucracies. The model advances a social-constructionist concept of disputes & their processing that directs attention to how official intervention in activities actually creates disputes & gives them particular form. Primary focus is on official interventions that recognize & preserve a core element of conflict, & treat matters at issue as disputes. Following a critical review of the dispute transformation approach, the analysis shifts to consideration of the activities of public bureaucrats as outside parties intervening in, & disposing of, those disputes that come to their attention. It is suggested that the key to the process of intervention lies in when & how officials come to make inquiries about, understand, & ultimately align themselves in regard to dispute & the parties to it. 59 References. S. Millett

When social control and social service workers go into the field, into the "native habitat" of some problem, a variety of tacit structures and controls that mark office work with its standardized documents and formal meetings are weakened or absent entirely. As a result, compared to office settings, social control work in field settings tends to become open, contingent, unpredictable, and on occasion even wild. This article provides a strategic case study of the distinctive features of social control decision-making in the field, drawing on observations of field work by psychiatric emergency teams (PET) from the 1970s. PET typically went to the homes of psychiatrically-troubled persons in order to conduct evaluations for involuntary mental hospitalization. This article will analyze the varied, situationally-sensitive practices these workers adopted to evaluate such patients in their own homes.