Social Policy

Abstract

These day it is becoming common to emphasize the significant role metaphor plays in the human sciences. Donald Schön, for example, has recently highlighted its importance in social policy. However, this article argues a more radical interpretation of metaphor's ubiquitous presence in social policy (and, implicitly, in all forms of knowledge and practice). In doing this, it notes certain symptomatic shortcomings in Schön's treatment: His restricted notion of metaphor makes him unnecessarily cautious and ambivalent in certain regards, and unwarrantedly optimistic, indeed innocent, in others. Metaphor must not be considered intuitive and insightful verbal imagery in contrast to a judicious rationality of “critical inquiry.”

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