Selected Articles + Chapters
This is a selection of some of my work. Most of my other academic research is available on Academia.edu. Or feel free to contact me.
Enjoy Your Work! The Fantasy of the Neoliberal Workplace and Its Consequences for the Entrepreneurial Subject. Administrative Theory & Praxis, 40, 99-118 (with Gary Marshall)
Why has “work” assumed such a prominent place in contemporary American society? Why do many expect so much from work and spend so much time working? Gary Marshall and I argue that the answers to these questions rest in changes to the ways in which identity and subjectivity are constructed and how these processes intersect with the demands of today’s political economy. Drawing from Lacanian psychoanalytic theory, we argue that the conditions for the contemporary individual or “subject” are characterized by the declining efficacy of the Symbolic order, which induces the production of people whose identities are fragile and unstable. Paradoxically, this instability emerges at a historical moment at which individuals are commanded to “self-actualize” and to not be limited by authority or tradition. Neoliberalism makes “Work” assume particular importance in this project. Workplace performance measures and audit practices offer seductive points of identification and “quantifiable” stability for the subject in search of her “authentic” self at work in particular. Yet, at the same time, these measures painfully ensnare the subject in external identifications and managerial validation in new, constraining ways.
Accomplishing the Encounter: A Case for Ethnomethodology in Public Administration Research. Perspectives on Public Management and Governance, 2, 125-137 (with Laura Hand)
Public encounters between street-level bureaucrats and citizens predominantly function through interpersonal interactions. However, there has been relatively little study of the role of talk, what we refer to as language-in-use, in accomplishing the tasks and related objectives within the encounter. Drawing on the rich but under-utilized sociological tradition of ethnomethodology, a methodology created for studying routine interactions, we provide an analytical example of the language-in-use in one encounter to demonstrate how ethnomethodology is uniquely appropriate for understanding public encounters. We argue that an ethnomethodological approach illuminates the mechanisms that make some outcomes possible, others improbable, and that these accomplishments are important for understanding a variety of program outcomes and the construction of everyday life.
The Quantified Self and the Evolution of Neoliberal Self-government. Administrative Theory & Praxis, 40, 3-22 (with Billie Sandberg).
We live in a world awash in data. Increasingly, individuals are using personal electronic devices like smart phones to collect data on themselves. What is this about? Why are people doing this? Is this a chapter in the ongoing story of our domination by numbers and quantification? Might these also be practices of self-care in the face of the disintegration of community and other forms of social connection? In this paper, Billie Sandberg and I pick up on the themes of our "Dangerous Government" article (see below) and analyze the dynamics of self-quantification.
Discipline, disadvantage, and participation: The long-term effects of suspension on the political and civic engagement of youth. Youth & Society, 47, 95-124 (with Aaron Kupchik).
To the best of our knowledge this is the first research to empirically investigate the relationship between school-place disciplinary practices and civic and political engagement of youth. We find that being suspended suppresses the likelihood of youth voting and volunteering after high school. We should all be concerned about the broader socio-political impacts of these disciplinary practices.
>Listen to a great discussion about this article on the “Talking About Kids Podcast”<
The courage to listen: Government, truth-telling, and care of the self. Administrative Theory & Praxis, 34, 197-218 (with Kelly Campbell Rawlings and Jeff Callen).
Democratic theory rightly gives a lot of attention to voice and talk. But the other side of the communcative infrastructure matters, too. In this paper, drawing from Michel Foucault's last lectures, we show how listening is an integral practices of care of the self and, in turn, the cultivation of a public sphere that is capable of responding to a particular kind of truthful speech called "parresia." We explore how to cultivate practices of good listening.
This paper considers the limits of the humanist bases of public administration. Drawing on Foucault and advances in medical bioscience, we argue that these bases have eroded and the era of a new recursive relationship with knowledge and practice is now in view that changes the traditional dichotomous view of the citizen as either maker of law (as sovereign) or receiver of it (as subject). We suggest that today the conditions that make us who are are are increasingly the terrain for political conflict and engagement.
‘Dangerous government’: Governmentality, active citizenship, and the Open Government Directive. Administration & Society 46, 223-254 (with Billie Sandberg).
There has been much debate about the change Barack Obama represents. In this piece, we consider this question by using concept of governmentality (a governing-mentality and related forms of knowledge) to explore the underlying governmental rationality of his administration’s policies and management practices, the Open Government Directive, in particular. We argue that this effort signals a mutation within neoliberalism, we we call info-liberalism—one that deploys a novel, integrative conception of social government and demands for a new kind of political subjectivity.
This is the first exploration in public administration scholarship of the status of the "animal" in administrative theory and praxis. We contend that the category of the animal is at the heart of the foundation of modern administration; serving as both an internal position used to exclude humans and as a constitutive outside to administrative practice. Animals are denigrated and radically othered; forming the original model for other forms of discrimination, marginalization, and exclusion.