中文摘要
在贫困与边缘性的治理中,一支由各类一线工作者组成的复杂队伍管理者社会苦难。这些工作者既受纵向与横向生产关系的赋能,又受其制约,经常跨组织边界重新分配工作。近期研究常将这种再分配化约为单一动态:“负担转移”(burden shuffling)。本研究拓展并复杂化了这一框架。基于三项案例研究——救护车急救人员、儿童虐待法定强制报告人以及治疗慢性疼痛的医生——我们对一线工作者的实践判断与道德判断如何塑造再分配的形式与正当性依据进行了理论化。工作者在“感到自身具备应对能力”与“认为任务有价值”两个维度上的差异,产生了三种不同的策略:负担转移(能力不足的工作者卸下其不认为有价值的任务)、期望性转介(aspirational referrals,能力不足的工作者为其认为有价值的任务寻求更有能力的行为主体)以及弃置(abandonment,能力充足的工作者从其认为不值得的任务中抽身并将其留给他人)。通过对再分配加以分解并追溯其关系性条件,本文展示了治理如何在一线被实施——也被延宕,并提供了一个理解当代劳动中工作者如何应对碎片化与不均衡责任的分析框架。
Abstract
In the governance of poverty and marginality, a complex array of frontline workers manages social suffering. Enabled and constrained by vertical and horizontal relations of production, these workers frequently redistribute work across organizational boundaries. Recent scholarship often reduces such redistribution to a single dynamic: “burden shuffling.” This study extends and complicates that framework. Drawing on three case studies—ambulance crews, mandated reporters of child maltreatment, and physicians treating chronic pain—we theorize how frontline workers’ practical and moral judgments structure the form and justification of redistribution. Variation in the extent to which workers feel equipped and see tasks as worthwhile produces three distinct tactics: burden shuffling (when ill-equipped workers offload tasks they do not consider worthwhile), aspirational referrals (when ill-equipped workers seek better-equipped actors for tasks they view as worthwhile), and abandonment (when well-equipped workers disengage from tasks they deem unworthy and leave them to others). By disaggregating redistribution and tracing its relational conditions, this article shows how governance is enacted—and deferred—on the frontlines, and we offer a framework for understanding how workers navigate fragmentation and uneven responsibility in contemporary labor.