Communication

Contemporary politics as conflicts of voice

June 11, 2011 987

Politics today in Britain is marked by conflicts between claims to extend or defend voice, some of them deeply misleading.

UK Health Secretary Andrew Lansley said in the House of Commons on 26 April 2011 that his controversial legislation ‘substantially improves public and patient voice in the National Health Service’. His claim is based on the power over health service commissioning to be given to local doctors (GPs), yet many fear this will replace publicly accountable health provision with market mechanisms that shift real power to large private health providers and the profitable insurers that feed off them. There is a prospect of a US-style health market that converts the public voice in health provision, so distinctive of post-war UK, into a distant memory.

The 2010 university reforms offer an even clearer contradiction. The Browne  report announced a fundamental restructuring of university finances that would move power to student ‘consumers’, free to choose on market information the degree best able to equip them for a job long-term, a classic model of the ’free market’ providing consumer voice and through that mechanism better overall outcomes for the society and economy. Yet the removal of public subsidy for most university  teaching will guarantee, many think,  that the choice-horizon of the university ‘consumer’ (the student) will be massively reduced over the longer-term, with economic factors (will this degree be the most likely to secure me a job?) overriding broader educational ambition. School students expressed this vividly in last autumn’s demonstrations, arguing it was their ‘future’ that was being taken away, their future voice.

In these two sectors, health and education, neoliberal market reforms are being taken to an advanced stage, with market competition offered as the most efficient and empowering way of organising resource. But markets only provide ‘voice’ in one, strictly limited version: the voice of the consumer who chooses this or that product, the producer who competes to sell or buys-in services at the best price. In markets everyone has a ‘voice’, yet few know the value of voice in a richer and more lasting sense. Consumer voice that changes the nature of market provision is rare, and in any case must work through system effects. Markets are not meant to provide voice in the sense of mechanisms for taking full account of the voice (the particular narrative of the world) that each individual has.

This contradiction is not accidental, but a central dynamic of what I call ‘neoliberal cultures’ whose institutions are impelled at every stage to offer voice, but over the long-term must retract that offer, and replace it with something very different: blind trust that the market will provide. The contradiction runs through debates about the 2008 financial crisis and the long-term destructive effects of what French sociologists Boltanski and Chiapello call ‘the new spirit of capitalism’ on life-conditions today.

Grasping this contradiction means distinguishing between a mere multiplication of voices (who does not claim to want that?) and the organization of resources as if voice really mattered, as if it was important to take account of people’s ability, as human beings, to give an account of themselves.

Nick Couldry is lecturer in Media at Goldsmiths, University of London, and author of ‘Why Voice Matters’.

Related Articles

Gazan Publisher, Late Ukrainian Writer Receive Publisher Group’s Prix Voltaire Award
Bookshelf
December 6, 2024

Gazan Publisher, Late Ukrainian Writer Receive Publisher Group’s Prix Voltaire Award

Read Now
From the University to the Edu-Factory: Understanding the Crisis of Higher Education
Industry
November 25, 2024

From the University to the Edu-Factory: Understanding the Crisis of Higher Education

Read Now
Canada’s Storytellers Challenge Seeks Compelling Narratives About Student Research
Communication
November 21, 2024

Canada’s Storytellers Challenge Seeks Compelling Narratives About Student Research

Read Now
Deciphering the Mystery of the Working-Class Voter: A View From Britain
Insights
November 14, 2024

Deciphering the Mystery of the Working-Class Voter: A View From Britain

Read Now
Julia Ebner on Violent Extremism

Julia Ebner on Violent Extremism

As an investigative journalist, Julia Ebner had the freedom to do something she freely admits that as an academic (the hat she […]

Read Now
Ninth Edition of ‘The Evidence’: Tackling the Gender Pay Gap 

Ninth Edition of ‘The Evidence’: Tackling the Gender Pay Gap 

This month’s installment of The Evidence kicks off Gloria Media’s annual equal pay campaign. Starting from November 8, the average French woman […]

Read Now
The Conversation Podcast Series Examines Class in British Politics

The Conversation Podcast Series Examines Class in British Politics

Even in the 21st century, social class is a part of being British. We talk of living in a post-class era but, […]

Read Now
0 0 votes
Article Rating
Subscribe
Notify of
guest

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

0 Comments
Newest
Oldest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments