Challenging choices: Ideology, consumerism and policy

Michael Clarke

feb 2010 · Policy Press

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Choice pervades our society: it is founded on political rights to choose and our economy on market choices, but we have now reached the point where choice is extended almost everywhere. This lively and topical book provides a critique of choice in contemporary society and policy, arguing that we can have too much of a good thing. And there are alternatives. In part one, the author shows how choice works at a personal level, its demands, and how it can fail. By examining healthcare, education and pensions, he then explores the alternatives, such as provision. In part two the book reviews the impact of choice through the life cycle, in areas such as careers, relationships fertility, retirement and death. The author considers whether this enhances or burdens our lives, and questions the assumption that more choice is always for the better.

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Michael Clarke held posts in the departments of Sociology at the Universities of Birmingham and of Liverpool, where his research was mainly on business crime and regulation. He is now retired and lives in Herefordshire, where he cultivates his garden.