Abstract
This chapter explores the incidence and consequence of health and social care for vulnerable people through the distinctly post-structuralist lens of governmentality. This will enable us to consider the implications of the re-figuration of the relationship between the state and social care. This re-figuring constructs an ambiguous place for vulnerable people: they feature either as a resource – captured in the idea of the ‘active citizen’, as affluent consumers, volunteers or providers of child care – or as a problem in the context of poverty and risk. In many ways, policy provides three trajectories for career people: first, as independent self-health and social care consumers with private means and resources; second, as people in need of some support to enable them to continue to self-health and social care; and third, as dependent and unable to commit to self-governance. Governmentality provides the theoretical framework through which to view policy and practice that is largely governed by discourses of personalisation, safeguarding, capability and risk.
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Powell, J. (2023). Governmentality and Health and Social Care. In: New Perspectives on Health and Social Care. International Perspectives on Social Policy, Administration, and Practice. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25432-1_5
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