ABSTRACT
The informal and voluntary efforts of private individuals merged with the knowledge base to form the social service professions of the twentieth century. Practice worries arise in the actions of an individual-not in words or ideas, but in murky psychological events that are registered as oppositions, resistances, feelings of awe, or moments of malaise. A series of careful studies has been made of the problems experienced by professionals in their everyday practice. These studies identify the confrontations and confusions that appear as leitmotifs running through all accounts of the work of the minor professions. An ideal solution for practice worries would arise if one could, somehow, reconstitute the webbing of social meaning and make it more robust for the individuals contained within it. But there is very low-fidelity communication of practice worries among people in a bureaucratic network. The metaphor of an intelligent network implies a managerial approach to dealing with the problems that exist within the network.
