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

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.