Read any useful research lately, unanswered research questions
From:
Pete Thomson
Date:
Jul 23 08:17 UTC
Short link
Simon Smith wrote:
> it could be argued that this type of consumerist democracy still
> constitutes what Eriksen calls a general public sphere of consumers,
> 'co-deciding' (in the current jargon) about public policy outcomes through
> their spending decisions
but that's in contrast to most public services, where customers/consumers don't
make any spending decisions, and it's not obvious how the decisions they can
make influence spending. It's more like the private sector, where customers'
spending decisions at the supermarket or the car showroom have a direct
influence on issues like fair trade, retail location and climate change which
might be considered matters of public policy. Often the individual decisions
made in those contexts are in conflict with the policy approach that
democratically chosen representatives decide.
Maybe the consumerisation of citizens is not so much a ploy by politicians and
their servants to reduce opposition to their authority, more a retreat (both by
citizens themselves, and by politicians and their servants) from democratic
mechanisms that aren't perceived as working to market mechanisms that are; or
from a situation that exposes conflicts between individual and collective
interests, to one that hides the conflicts within individual choices.