State work : public administration and mass intellectuality /

What does the work that public administrators actually do mean for the larger society? Harney (sociology, City University of New York at Staten Island) examines society's conflicting images of public servants and the reasons for those images. Reflecting on his experience with an antiracism initiative in the New Democratic Party's tenure in the Ontario provincial government in the early 1990s, he concludes that "state work" primarily serves the capitalist accumulation order and its imperial expansion through globalization. Further, it seeks to discipline the public in serving that order through policing and surveillance, control of credit, and the state educational system. This is far different from the paradigms put forth by today's public administration scholars, which he summarizes and criticizes. Readers should be familiar with the concepts and language of neomarxist structuralist thought, the abstractness of which tends to obscure a message that deserves consideration by a wider audience. Recommended for graduate students, researchers, and faculty. W. C. Johnson Bethel College (MN)