ABSTRACT
State agents' work is riddled with moral decision making. The identities of state agents, as for other political subjects, are fractured. After all, state workers have a structural authority over non-state workers, and this cultural ordering is rearticulated each time the authority is exercised. In the case of vocational rehabilitation (VR) counselors, the ultimate manifestation of power is whether or not to allocate funds. This chapter looks at the moral decisions of police officers and VR counselors and explores them as moments of identification and subjectification. Legal claims, such as articulations of discretionary allocations of state funds or decisions about whether to arrest, are interlaced with other claims that relate to identity, moral view and lived experience. Priorities conflicted around issues of compassion and empowerment and the competing interest in spending state funds appropriately. State actors are heterogeneous, in rank and position, certainly, but also in perspective, which is tightly tied to identity, to moral view and to lived experiences.
