April 1, 2007
We live increasingly under conditions of globally and systemically engendered insecurity and uncertainty within the neo-liberal mode of governance that places the emphasis on consumer freedom and individual responsibility in a world of fluid and fragmentary social bonds and individual identity. These global flows, with their underlying insecurity and uncertainty from perpetual downsizing and restructuring belie the promise of assertive individuality not only for the 'excluded' in the global city but for many of the 'included'.
Under this mode of governance freedom is modelled on freedom to choose how one satisfies individual desires and constructs one's identity via the medium of the consumer market. As a consequence freedom and individual fate have increasingly become 'privatised': we live with out private troubles and problems. An 'increasingly privatised life modelled on consumer freedom and 'individual empowerment' promotes 'biographical solutions to socially produced afflictions'.
So how do we translate private problems into public issues when the policies of state and commonwealth governments presuppose that economic growth, labour flexibility and enterprise are the answers to problems of social exclusion and wellbeing?
In this interview with Zygmunt Bauman says:
In the world of consumers, the poor who are currently un-performing consumer duties are, purely and simply, 'flawed consumers' and flawed beyond redemption (and vice versa: those who cannot behave as the right and proper consumer should consider themselves, and are viewed by others, as poor). Affairs may hum up in the future, but by no stretch of imagination will the poor be called then to active consumer service. Investing in their survival means money wasted; it may be called for by charitable impulses or for the sake of peace and quiet - but 'economic sense' it most certainly makes not. Such investing will only prolong, with little prospect of ever stopping, the frownedupon procedure of withdrawing money from the commodity market - the only site where spending money does make economic sense
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