Practicing knowledge-agency in highly vulnerable communities: the frontlines of Governance in delivering Brazilian Human services

Gabriela Lotta, Steven Maynard-Moody and Michael Musheno

Public Management Review, 2025, vol. 27, issue 8, 1938-1958

Abstract: Knowledge-agency represents the skills and cognitive understandings that frontline workers acquire and practice in governing populations. Using an abductive approach, this paper explores how diverse expressions of knowledge shape frontline workers’ encounters with diverse people and places in stressful contexts. Analysing interviews with 98 frontline workers from four different policy domains serving the same communities in Brazil, we found three expressions of knowledge-agency: professional, socialized, and experiential. Our study provides a window into how frontline workers contextually mobilize their knowledge-agency when engaged in the everyday of governing citizens. We show that workers are both subjects and agents of knowledge practices.

Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1080/14719037.2023.2288250

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