Evidence from the ‘Frontline’? An Ethnographic Problematisation of Welfare-to-Work Administrator Opinions
本文质疑社会科学研究中直接采信福利转就业管理者意见的做法，主张其日常工作的物质条件才是观点的主要来源，呼吁采用更情境化的民族志分析。
Researchers both supportive and critical of welfare schemes regularly explore the influence, legitimacy and effects of welfare administrator opinions. However, the ‘origins’ of those opinions are generally less well considered. This article explores and problematises the use of welfare-to-work administrator testimony in social science and social policy research. Rejecting both Foucauldian models of ‘elite conceptual download’, and approaches that take administrator views at face value, it argues that the material circumstances of day-to-day working may constitute the most significant influence on administrator views. This both supports a more materialist, less idealist and/or positivistic approach, and also suggests the pressing need for more contextualised, ethnographic analysis of data in welfare-to-work debates.