119 SEVEN The consumer in education Catherine M. Farrell introduction The consumer role in education is one that has historically existed prior to legislative reform. Parents have always had choices about ‘which school’ in terms of private or state school, religious or non-religious, and also choices about where they live and, by implication, where their children go to school. It is now almost 30 years since the introduction of legislative reforms promoting additional elements of choice in the UK education service. Following the reforms put in place during
We are all ‘glass consumers’. Organisations know so much about us, they can almost see through us. Governments and businesses collect and process our personal information on a massive scale. Everything we do, and everywhere we go, leaves a trail. But is this in our interests?
The glass consumer appraises this relentless scrutiny of consumers’ lives. It reviews what is known about how personal information is used and examines the benefits and risks to consumers. The book takes the debate beyond privacy issues, arguing that we are living in a world in which - more than ever before - our personal information defines our opportunities in life.
This book is essential reading for anyone concerned with the future of information use, data protection and privacy. It will also appeal more widely to those with an interest in technology and society, social policy, consumption, marketing and business studies.
Targeted as the ‘grey consumer’, people retiring now participated in the creation of the post-war consumer culture. These consumers have grown older but have not stopped consuming.
Based on extensive analysis over two years, this unique book examines the engagement of older people with consumer society in Britain since the 1960s. It charts the changes in the experience of later life in the UK over the last 50 years, the rise of the ‘individualised consumer citizen’ and what this means for health and social policies.
The book will appeal to students, lecturers, researchers and policy analysts. It will provide material for teaching on undergraduate courses and postgraduate courses in sociology, social policy and social gerontology. It will also have considerable appeal to private industry engaged with older consumers as well as to voluntary and non-governmental organisations addressing ageing in Britain.
In this chapter, the focus shifts from recognizing that discard is foundational to being human, and thus unavoidable, to seeing how consumer discard, and acts of discarding, are baked in to many economies. In this regard, I want to go beyond the largely theoretical accounts in the social sciences that see discard as an inevitable aspect of economic organization, particularly under capitalism. To be clear, I am not dismissing the power of these arguments. There is much that is of merit in them. Not least is that they establish key general principles that help
101 SIX More than a matter of choice? Consumerism and the modernisation of health care Janet Newman and Elizabeth Vidler Introduction The current cycles of health service modernisation open up important questions about the future of the welfare state and of the solidaristic citizen identifications with which it is traditionally associated. The figure of the demanding citizen-consumer who strides assertively through the pages of policy documents and the scripts of ministerial speeches stands as a central icon of the current reforms in general, and of the
99 SIx The healthcare consumer Martin Powell and Ian Greener introduction Conceptualising users of health services remains a contentious issue. On the one hand, some authors have claimed that ‘the essential problem with the healthcare industry is that it has been shielded from consumer control – by employers, insurers and the government’ (Herzlinger, 2002, in Spiers, 2003, p 6). On the other hand, however, writers such as Titmuss (1968) and Stacey (1976) argued that the consumer has no place in healthcare (see Clarke et al, 2007; Le Grand, 2007; Needham
The modern individual within consumer culture is made conscious that he speaks not only with his clothes, but with his home, furnishings, decoration, car and other activities [sic]. 1 While recognizing that the preceding comment by Featherstone had not quite caught up with changing gender politics, this general observation nonetheless identifies one of the key developments of modernity, which generates both pleasure and angst, but which has become turbocharged in the marketized neoliberal era to the extent that it challenges both the direction of our
81 FIVE Consumers and citizens Our earlier analysis of the policy context considered the very different meanings being ascribed to ‘user involvement’. Certain of the tensions within that start to become evident in the case studies of the two groups we have described. In Chapter 1 we also highlighted the importance of distinguishing the roles of ‘consumer’ and ‘citizen’ when considering changes in the nature of relationships between the state and those who use public services. Having looked in some detail at two examples of user self-organisation and the
161 EIGHT Advocacy and consumer participation Until very recently, no-one would believe the abuse and harm that had been done to us! The awfulness we experienced as children has cast long shadows over our adult lives. (Care Leavers Australia Network1) Over the past 15 years, Care Leavers Australia Network (CLAN) has been instrumental in the development of social policy responses to adult care-leavers in Australia. CLAN has engaged in a range of advocacy activities, including regular protests about the treatment of adult care-leavers in Australia and the
