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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.
‘[T]he originality of this book is located in its thoroughgoing dismantling of the health and social care system. Little escapes Brown and Baker’s examination. […] [A] a refreshing departure from traditional economic and political accounts of neoliberalism.’ —Cherry M. Miller, ‘Political Studies Review’
B. J. Brown is a professor of health communication at De Montfort University, Leicester.
Sally Baker is a research fellow in the School of Social Sciences, Bangor University, Wales.
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