Abstract
‘Choice’ has become a keyword in public policy debate in the United Kingdom, perhaps even ‘the mantra of health, education and pension provision’.2This coincides with the emergence of ‘the consumer’ as the privileged figure of policy discourse. The assumption underlying this proliferation of choice in policy discourse is that consumerism has transformed people’s expectations, so that public services must now be restructured in line with the demands of citizen-consumers who demand efficiency, responsiveness, choice and flexibility. The ubiquity of the choice paradigm can be interpreted as the outcome of a determined effort to recast the balance of responsibility between the state and citizens. What has been dubbed the ‘personalisation agenda’ now ‘stretches right across government’, encompassing health initiatives and pensions policy.3The stated aim of this agenda is to reframe the role of state-led initiatives in terms of empowering individuals to make informed choices, based on information provided by government. Choice is in turn presented as a means of making service-providers more responsive to the variegated needs of citizens. One can see this individualization of responsibility in a number of fields, extending beyond the realm of the state as such. For example, the individualization of health risks has also
John:‘Everyone says they were happy 20 years ago’.
Karen:I think in some ways though life was just simpler.
I think all this choice and stuff‖’
Arum‘‖has just complicated things’.1
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© 2007 Alice Malpass, Clive Barnett, Nick Clarke and Paul Cloke
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Malpass, A., Barnett, C., Clarke, N., Cloke, P. (2007). Problematizing Choice: Responsible Consumers and Sceptical Citizens. In: Bevir, M., Trentmann, F. (eds) Governance, Consumers and Citizens. Consumption and Public Life. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230591363_10
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