Citizen-Consumers and Public Service Reform: At the Limits of Neoliberalism?

Abstract

This article addresses the question: what is not neoliberal? It explores the problem of treating neoliberalism's universalising ambitions as having come true in practice 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. Focusing 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 Kingdom to suggest that neoliberal 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.