Citizen-consumers and public service reform: At the limits of neo-liberalism?

Clarke, John (2007). Citizen-consumers and public service reform: At the limits of neo-liberalism? Policy Futures in Education, 5(2) pp. 239–248.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2304/pfie.2007.5.2.239

Abstract

This article addresses the question: what is not neoliberal? It explores the problem of treating neoliberalism's universalising ambitions as having come true and argues that this obscures both the uneven and partial impact of neoliberalism and the forms of political cultural work that are needed to make it come true. Focussing on one quintessential neoliberal development - the transformation of citizens into consumers - the article uses evidence from a recent study of public service reform in the United Kingdomn to suggest that beoliberal subjects have not (yet) materialised in this specific context. It considers how New Labour and neoliberal discourses 'tell the time' of other social imaginaries, attempting to residualise them as leftovers from earlier ways of thinking.

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