List members may be interested in the following. Apologies for cross-posting.
Choice or voice or something else? User participation in public services
The issue of how best to get public service users to participate in such services has been an issue as long as such services have existed. Recent social policy scholarship has brought a focus to the topic that focuses on their agency (Deacon & Mann, 1999,
Greener, 2002, Hoggett, 2000, 2001, Le Grand, 1997, Needham, 2003), and suggests that the assumptions that we hold about user agency in policy has significant implications for how services interact with the public.
We can attempt to theorise the possibilities of interaction, following Hirschman (Hirschman, 1970), as those of exit and voice, and explore the circumstances through which users become loyal to public organisations, or express dissatisfaction through complaint or other means, or attempt to move to another service (Dowding, 1992). Equally however, there is a long history
of attempting to get service users to participate in the running of services in a role more usually identified with that of a citizen, through participating in the public sphere (Lister, 1997) in the formal organisation of services, or in civil society (Deakin, 2001) by volunteering or other means of co-production.
As such, participation appears to be characterised as either positioning users around individualistic positions such as consumers (Baldock, 2003, Shaw, 2003) or customers (Greener, 2005), or a more
collective agency based around citizenship (Marshall, 1981). But are there mechanisms by which consumers can act as citizens, or citizens as customers? Are these notions irredeemably opposed or is there scope for reconciling them?
This special edition aims to examine theoretical and empirical contributions that consider the relationships between individual and collective participation in public services. Contributions might examine how services position users according to typologies of consumer behaviour (Gabriel & Lang, 2006) and their implications for more collective participation, or consider how
more collective participation has been attempted, how it corresponds to notions of citizenship (Janosky, 1998, Lister, 1997), and what its implications are for individual user engagement. Theoretical accounts might explore the links between individually grounded notions of consumption and collective ideas around citizenship, or examine notions that might bridge the two, such as complaint or voluntarism.
Bibliography
Baldock J. (2003). On being a Welfare Consumer in a Consumer Society. Social Policy and Society 2: 65-71
Deacon A, Mann K. (1999). Agency, Modernity and Social Policy. Journal of Social Policy 28: 413-35
Deakin N. (2001). In search of civil society. London: Palgrave
Dowding K. (1992). Choice: Its Increase and Its Value. British Journal of Political Science 22: 301-14
Gabriel Y, Lang T. (2006). The Unmanageable Consumer. London: Sage
Greener I. (2002). Agency, social theory and social policy. Critical Social Policy 22: 688-706
Greener I. (2005). The Role of the Patient in Healthcare Reform: Customer, Consumer or Creator? In Future health organisations and systems, ed. S Dawson, C Sausmann, pp. 227-45. Basingstoke: Palgrave
Hirschman A. (1970). Exit, Voice and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations and States. London: Harvard University Press
Hoggett P. (2000). Emotional
Life and the Politics of Welfare. London: Palgrave
Hoggett P. (2001). Agency, Rationality and Social Policy. Journal of Social Policy 30: 37-56
Janosky T. (1998). Citizenship and Civil Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Le Grand J. (1997). Knights, Knaves or Pawns? Human Behaviour and Social Policy. Journal of Social Policy 26: 149-69
Lister R. (1997). Citizenship: Feminist Perspectives. London: Palgrave
Marshall T. (1981). The Right to Welfare and Other Essays. London: Heinemann
Needham C. (2003). Citizen-consumers: New Labour's marketplace democracy. London: Catalyst Forum
Shaw I. (2003). Introduction: Themed Section on
Consumerism and Social Policy. Social Policy and Society 2: 33-4