Strangers/outsiders/insiders : examining the impact of degrees of community membership on the roles available to rural bureaucrats

Holland-Macdonald, Wendy Ruth (1988) Strangers/outsiders/insiders : examining the impact of degrees of community membership on the roles available to rural bureaucrats. Masters thesis, Memorial University of Newfoundland.

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Abstract

In the last decade or so there has been an increasing interest in the study of factors which influence the decision-making process of street-level bureaucrats, defined as those who deliver policies or services to a client population (examples of whom include teachers, social workers and police). The majority of this research has been confined to policy implementors working in either urban or colonial environment where a defining characteristic of the bureaucratic role is separation - geographic, cultural or social - from the client population which negates client input as a factor in the decision-making process. There have been few, if any, studies that have focused on the roles and decision-making processes available to bureaucrats working in rural environments where simultaneously they are seen in the role of bureaucrat and resident member of the client community. -- In this thesis I review the literature on the decision-making processes and roles available to those bureaucrats who work in urban and colonial situations. I then explore the role alternatives available to bureaucrats who work and live in a contemporary rural community in Newfoundland. My interest in rural bureaucrats necessitated a re-examination of the stranger/outsider/insider concept which has been the traditional model used to classify rural populations in Newfoundland ethnographies. I discovered that the actions and reactions of rural bureaucrats are, in large measure, a function of their degree of community membership and, regardless of how it occurs, once a degree of community membership has been established it will impinge on the decision-making processes and roles available to the rural bureaucrats.

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