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The practice of public administration is notably lacking in the practice of feminisms. Beyond claims for equal opportunities for women played out through appeals for affirmative action, the abolition of "glass ceilings" and sexual harassment, in the liberal feminist tradition, little attention has been given to fundamental disparities inherent in public administration discourses. This paper describes several feminist theories in relation to the liberal feminist paradigm, and introduces a postmodern notion of seriality as an alternative conception for the practice of feminisms.

PV Vo. II No. 1

Public Voices Vo. 1 No. 1

Vol. VIII, #2

This tale is of a bureaucrat-turned-innkeeper. He had "sleepwalked" through his job for years, a high salary and comfortable environment having made it too comfortable for him to leave. Ironically, he would have never left unless he had been given a push--having been threatened by the agency as a direct result of the integrity of his actions. But he has never regretted leaving the Washington bureaucracy, which remains immobile, but in which the cogs move on.

PV Vol.II No.2

Public Voices Vo. 1 No. 1

Nietzsche saw modern democracy as a society with nothing left to give life a powerful sense of purpose, while Tocqueville thought that democracy in America had not produced ambition directed towards lofty objects. Tolkien represents these unpromising tendencies of modern democracy and capitalism in his hobbits, but his work asserts wholeheartedly that virtuous heroism is still possible in our time. In an age when morale in public administration is at its nadir, Tolkien's hobbits provide the basis for a new optimism among those who serve.