Responsible Citizens

Individuals, Health and Policy under Neoliberalism

By (author) B. J. Brown, Sally Baker

Publication date:

01 June 2012

Publisher

Anthem Press

Dimensions:

229x153mm
6x9"

ISBN-13: 9780857284587

The individual has never been more important in society – in almost every sphere of public and private life, the individual is sovereign. Yet the importance and apparent power assigned to the individual is not all that it seems. As ‘Responsible Citizens’ investigates via its UK-based case studies, this emphasis on the individual has gone hand in hand with a rise in subtle authoritarianism, which has insinuated itself into the government of the population. Whilst present throughout the public services, this authoritarianism is most conspicuous in the health and social welfare sectors, such that a kind of ‘governance through responsibility’ is today enforced upon the population.

Acknowledgements; Preface; 1. Introduction; 2. Individualism, Neoliberalism and the Imperatives of Personal Governance; 3. Individualism in Healthcare; 4. Enlisting, Measuring and Shaping the Individual in Healthcare Policy and Practice; 5. Mental Health and Personal Responsibility; 6. Responsibility in Therapy and the Therapeutic State; 7. The Punitive Turn in Public Services: Coercing Responsibility; 8. Thinking about Ourselves; 9. Talking Citizenship into Being; References; Index

‘Brown and Baker have produced a vital study of the central place of the responsible individual in the contemporary remaking of public services. They brilliantly demonstrate how the idea of responsibility is the link that connects the image of the wisely choosing citizen-consumer, the coercive enforcement of responsible behaviour, and the punitive sanctioning of those who fail to act responsibly. In these austere times, their work illuminates how the championing of responsibility licenses the turn to authoritarian measures.’ —Professor John Clarke, The Open University