This Article Full Text (PDF) References Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in ISI Web of Science Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via HighWire Citing Articles via ISI Web of Science (2) Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by McSwite, O. C. Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                   What's this?

Creating Reality Through Administrative Practice

A Psychoanalytic Reading of Camilla Stivers’ Bureau Men, Settlement Women

Virginia Tech University and George Washington University

Camilla Stivers’book, Bureau Men, Settlement Women, is being misread as a feminist political tract and overlooked as the resource that it is for the field of public administration. A review of the current literature of feminism reveals that Stivers’work, a historical study of the New York Bureau of Municipal Research, cannot be described by any version of feminist theory. Rather, her central concern is how the male-dominated Bureau movement pushed the field away from the model of the city as "home"—which developed in the women’s reform movement—and toward the idea of the city as "business." A Lacanian psychoanalytic reading reveals a critical implication of her research: The women’s movement carried the potential to bring a balance to public agency discourse, one adequate for the new realities that the social problems of the day required. The administration as business model denies the achievement of this balance.

Key Words: public administration history • women • Lacan • social constructionism • poststructuralism

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    What's this?

This article has been cited by other articles:

				D. Burnier Erased History: Frances Perkins and the Emergence of Care-Centered Public Administration Administration Society, July 1, 2008; 40(4): 403 - 422. [Abstract] [PDF]

				T. J. Catlaw Authority, Representation, and the Contradictions of Posttraditional Governing The American Review of Public Administration, September 1, 2006; 36(3): 261 - 287. [Abstract] [PDF]

				C. Stivers A Place Like Home: Care and Action in Public Administration The American Review of Public Administration, March 1, 2005; 35(1): 26 - 41. [Abstract] [PDF]