Social Representations in Street-Level Bureaucracies – Production and Reproduction of Knowledge Within Public Administration

Authors

  • John Brauer School of Law, Psychology and Social Work, Örebro University, Sweden
  • Björn Johansson School of Law, Psychology and Social Work, Örebro University, Sweden
  • Anders Bruhn School of Law, Psychology and Social Work, Örebro University, Sweden

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.58235/sjpa.v25i2.7120

Keywords:

street-level bureaucracy, social representations, knowledge, public administration, policy

Abstract

The concept of street-level bureaucracy is central to understanding public administration because it pinpoints the role of individual civil servants in the realization of policy. An issue in need of further illumination is that of knowledge production and reproduction in street-level bureaucracies. This article seeks to examine these issues by linking street-level bureaucracy with the theory of social representations. Social representations offer a social-psychological understanding of how individuals make sense of their reality in day-to-day interaction. The aim of this article is to describe and demonstrate how an integration of these two concepts can enrich the analysis of street-level bureaucracies. The synthesis is also demonstrated by presenting an analysis of social representations of unemployment among two groups of street-level bureaucrats.

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Author Biographies

John Brauer, School of Law, Psychology and Social Work, Örebro University, Sweden

John Brauer is a PhD student in Social Work at Örebro university. His research interest concerns the welfare state including its governance and geography. He is especially interested in the intersection between labour market policies and social policies.

Björn Johansson, School of Law, Psychology and Social Work, Örebro University, Sweden

Björn Johansson is PhD in Sociology and Associate Professor in Social Work at Örebro university. His research focuses mainly on children’s and adolescents’ experiences and consequences of school bullying and other forms of degrading treatment in school, as well as evaluations of and the evidence of preventive interventions in school. In recent years he has also been working on research related to school absenteeism and school dropouts.

Anders Bruhn, School of Law, Psychology and Social Work, Örebro University, Sweden

Anders Bruhn is associate professor in Sociology and professor emeritus in Social Work at Örebro university. His main research areas are working life and working cultures, organisation, professions, and occupational roles. In later years he has published research first and foremost about prison policy, culture, and officers, and working conditions among different kinds of social workers.

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Published

2021-06-15

How to Cite

Brauer, J., Johansson, B., & Bruhn, A. (2021). Social Representations in Street-Level Bureaucracies – Production and Reproduction of Knowledge Within Public Administration. Scandinavian Journal of Public Administration, 25(2), 99–122. https://doi.org/10.58235/sjpa.v25i2.7120

Issue

Vol. 25 No. 2 (2021)

Section

Original Articles

License

Copyright (c) 2022 John Brauer, Björn Johansson, Anders Bruhn

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Authors contributing to Scandinavian Journal of Public Administration agree to publish their articles under a Creative Commons CC BY-NC 4.0 license. This means means articles are free for anybody to read and download, and to copy and disseminate for non-commercial purposes as long as appropriate credit is given, a link is provided to the license, and any changes made are clearly indicated. Authors retain copyright of their work.