The grip of personalization in adult social care: Between managerial domination and fantasy

Abstract

This paper examines the ‘ideological grip’ of personalization. It does so empirically, tracking the trajectory of personalization through austerity budgeting in one English local authority. In this case, personalization continued to signify hope and liberation even though the most draconian cuts in the Council’s history effectively rendered personalization a practical impossibility. This requires critical theorization. Two bodies of theory are interrogated. First Boltanski’s sociology of critique, and, in particular, his notion of managerial domination illuminate the way in which change imperatives and crises come to cement ideological formations. Here it is argued that the articulation of personalization with transformation lends itself to managerial domination. It is further argued, though, that while institutional actors may be able to manipulate the symbolic to evade, what Boltanski terms, deconstructionist critique, this cannot entirely explain the hold of this particular discourse. Here, the Lacanian concept of enjoyment is deployed to interrogate its extra-symbolic function and fantasmatic form. Finally, the paper explores the political implications of such affective attachment and, in particular, the guarantee that personalization offers in a period of welfare state decline.

”I trust what’s written but I don’t think it’s good”: Old age pensioners’ persistency in the practice of obtaining information from the news media

“…Desire-driven fantasy is by far the most important ingredient in this logic, which builds on the Lacanian axiom of an inherent lack, or incompleteness, in any subject, social practice, or discourse. Fantasies off er explanations that organize the desire for their fulfi lment and, thereby, serve to cover up the ontological lack, i.e., that the desire can never be fulfi lled (West, 2013). In this sense, fantasies about the good life, the perfected democracy, and the good citizen provide an image of fullness and, thereby, place into the background the inability ever to fulfi l the fantasies (Glynos & Howarth, 2007, p. 145).…”

Fantasies of subjugation: a discourse theoretical account of British policy on the European Union

“…The critical logics approach has now been used to address a range of public policy issues in the UK and elsewhere (see Glynos and Speed 2012;Eleveld 2012;West 2011West , 2013Clarke 2011;Griggs and Howarth 2011). These studies demonstrate the way in which specific signifiers are rearticulated within specific discursive formations, combining disparate, and sometimes contradictory, elements within a single chain of equivalence.…”

Neoliberalism, markets, fantasy: The case of health and social care

“…First it shifts our attention away from the concrete 'micro' practices where the impact of neoliberalising policies is felt most acutely, to the broader 'macro' practices that make them possible. Looking at the wider social and cultural context in which arguments for marketisation are being promoted or contested, we can ask after the fantasies that underpin these policy debates, in particular the way they 'grip' policy makers and the population who serve as their target (see, for example, Healy, 2008, Fotaki, 2010, West, 2013. Key terms such as 'competition', 'choice', and the figure of the 'entrepreneur' would no doubt loom large in such analyses of policy debates and popular TV series (for example, The Apprentice or Dragon's Den).…”