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This chapter critically evaluates the balance between compulsion and choice in contemporary narratives around the University, as scripted by policy documents and critiqued in the literature. Specifically, it analyses the cultural script of the ‘student- as- consumer’, and its impact on the academic– student relationship. For young people making the decision about whether to go to University, where to go, and what to study, the process is replete with choices – reflecting the landscape laid out in the 2010 Browne Report, which presented the increase in tuition fees as enabling students to benefit from an enhanced range of choices offered by a competitive marketplace. Yet, the study reveals that this choice is limited to decisions about where to go to university rather than deeper considerations about whether to proceed to Higher Education. This reflects tensions within the logics of massification, marketisation and politicisation. The analysis reveals an iterative reconfiguration of the purpose of Higher Education, through the augmentation of the ‘student- as- consumer’ and the gradual disappearance of the academic as central to the work of the University. As such, the chapter argues that deprofessionalisation and waning autonomy are not unintended consequences of policy developments, but critical prerequisites for the situation of Higher Education as the expected next step for increasing proportions of school leavers.

A key, if often under-explored, dimension of the power and resources to which corporations have access is their level of ‘moral capital’ – the ways in and the extent to which private corporate activity is valorised through a range of representations, claims and assumptions. This chapter examines the social construction of corporate morality over the thirty years before the crisis – that is, the emergence and consolidation of the moral capital of private capital under neo-liberalism. The elevated moral capital of private capital in general is not pure ‘ideology’, but a product of material changes in the organisation of economic and social life. Indeed, it is the combination of the ideological strength and thoroughgoing material basis for the elevated moral status of private capital which makes ‘freedom’ for capital difficult to resist: the superiority of the private over the allegedly wasteful, inefficient, intrusive and freedom-negating public sector becomes obvious.

In this chapter Moira Hulme offers a comparative, historical and ecological perspective on teacher education. The chapter begins by discussing the nature of comparative perspectives in analysing teacher education and how this relates to the idea of ‘travelling policy’ in education. This has been fostered under the auspices of increasingly global analyses of performance in schools (such as PISA) and by the increasing recognition of the importance of the quality of teaching. Taking an historical and transnational perspective, the chapter then considers how teacher education has been positioned in education systems and in society more generally over the last century. Finally, an ecological perspective is applied to the recalibration of teacher education in the 21^st century. A contrast is made between the discourses of ‘the profession’ and of ‘the market’ respectively, a binary which creates tensions within teacher education.

The chapters in the book demonstrate the sheer scale of marketisation and privatisation that has occurred in criminal justice in the UK. There is evidence similar marketisation has occurred in other states around the world. As this book demonstrates, there are a whole array of other means by which the market has been used to shape the delivery of experiences of criminal justice. The chapters in this book expose a range of modes of governance and accountability that are at play and demonstrate the ways in which marketisation has impacted on criminal justice at macro-, meso- and micro-levels. Importantly, they have shown what the impact of this has been on the broader field, the individuals working within those fields and the service users that are subjected to systems of power delivered in newly formed markets. In this concluding chapter we attempt to draw some of the themes that run across the earlier chapters together and consider what the future might hold for criminal justice and marketisation.

This chapter discusses housing practices and their related problems before China's economic reforms. It also describes the process and constraints of the privatisation of public housing in urban areas, and the initiatives taken by central government to regulate the property market and meet the housing needs of different social groups. Additionally, the development of rural housing and the needs of land-losing farmers are presented. The impact of housing reforms on the well-being of citizens is then considered. Housing development in China has focused on marketisation and localisation. Housing inequality in China was partly caused by the operation of a free housing market, and partly by the domination of work units in the subsidised housing market. Generally, housing reform in China over the past two-and-a-half decades has widened the housing gap between the rich and poor and between migrant workers and local residents.

This chapter provides an overview of developments in different health care systems in order to identify global concepts of modernisation and major areas of change. The US and Britain serve as reference points for market-driven and state-centred systems. The discussion also takes into account examples from continental Europe and Canada. Two key strategies of modernising health care are emerging, namely marketisation and managerialism coupled with consumerism, on the one hand, and the introduction and strengthening of primary care models based on integrated care concepts, on the other. New forms of flexible governance and ‘soft bureaucracy’ flank these global patterns of restructuring health care systems. The common goals of health care systems across countries are integration and coordination of provider services in order to improve both the efficiency and quality of care.

This chapter focuses on the rebirth of Venice and the issue of mass tourism in the city. It begins by describing the asylums on the islands of San Clemente and San Servolo, as well as the impact of neo-liberalism on Venice. It then examines whether the promised advantages of marketisation have trickled down into the lives of Venetians. It also cites some of the melodramatic events that have taken place in contemporary Venice, such as the Pink Floyd concert with its related Expo debate and the seizure of the Campanile of San Marco. The chapter concludes by discussing some of the greatest environmental issues confronting Venice, with particular reference to concerns that the city could sink beneath the waves and the initiatives that have been proposed to prevent this from happening; modernisation proposals that have divided Venetians, including the Fondaco restoration and the Calatrava bridge; and the expansion of the city's universities.

This concluding chapter discusses views that continue to see social work in Britain as being compatible with values of social justice and of seeking social change, despite the current dominant belief that neoliberalism is here to stay and is the best we can hope for. Neoliberalism's concern with marketisation and reducing public expenditure has seen the introduction of managerialism to control financial costs and in turn social workers. In a culture of choice and self-expression, at the very least happiness and well-being demand a balance by way of emotional closeness, respect, and collective solidarity, values that in turn connect to notions of social justice and diversity. The belief in free markets and limited state intervention remains intact and the resulting policies are affecting developments in social work and social care to the extent that they threaten the very existence of the profession. New Labour embraced the new welfare culture, envisaging a modernised welfare state as having to work with the grain of market imperatives.

This chapter summarises key themes from the book and emphasises that the energies for change and the potential to build a more democratic system are dispersed and will involve the combined efforts of local and central government professional bodies, teachers, parents, students, communities, sponsors and partners. The chapter also concludes that things in the past can be changed to bring about more meaning and participation to the everyday environment. The old education system of marketisation and micro-management is breaking down. This breaking down of the old education system posits different reactions. Some people were enthusiastic about it while others were dispirited in the imposed and narrow philosophy of education. The drivers for democracy, however, continually provide an impetus for changes that signals new directions. The chains of the old way may not be lost, but they are loosening. They may further be loosened and be undone if the dispersed sources of change within the system are inspired by a larger vision of democratic and holistic education linked together in a bigger picture.

The chapter discusses the challenges that night time industries and bouncers pose to public policy. These industries have become relevant in the formulation of jobs and the development of the environment of cities. The chapter identifies the trends introduced in the government to address these problems — private and public policing, alcohol licensing and planning law. Normative issues in connection with the processes of marketisation and deregulation are also discussed. The chapter ends with an assessment of strategies to prevent the occurrence of crime within these night time industries.

In 2011, the Government committed to the introduction of Universal Health Insurance (UHI) ‘with equal access to care for all’ by 2016 (Government of Ireland 2011: 2). This chapter explores how proposals to implement a system in which every member of the population would be expected to take out health insurance – and mooted by politicians as a way to end Ireland’s two-tier health system – exhibited particular characteristics of advanced liberal modes of governing.Specifically, drawing on Rose and Miller’s (1992) conceptualisation of the ‘aspirations’ of advanced liberal government – governing at a distance, the management of risk, engendering individuals to take responsibility through choice, and the fragmentation of the social state into multiple communities – this chapter demonstrates how while a political rhetoric may have stressed the significance of UHI as a basis for promoting solidarity and fairness, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the policy would have represented a further shift towards the marketization of Irish healthcare.

This chapter explores social work and women's oppression, with a focus on gender and class. It discusses the lives of poorer working-class women, who are overrepresented as service users in the social-work sector, particularly in relation to childcare and child-protection work. The chapter also assesses the discrimination faced by women in the labour market and from the state, as well as its impact on levels of poverty, inequality, health, and wellbeing. In addition, it considers how welfare developments linked to the marketisation and privatisation of social provision have had a negative impact on the lives of poorer women. Throughout, the chapter challenges stereotypes of poor women that focus on individualistic and moralistic character deficiencies, and highlights the key role of poverty and inequality in shaping their lives. Finally, it examines how sexual objectification of women and young girls has reinforced discrimination within and outside the workplace, and how it negatively has affected women's self-image and self-worth.

This chapter argues that the tensions inherent in the competing value systems around participation and involvement mean that there are risks for service users and their movements attached to participating in the state's and service system's user involvement agenda, an agenda which, through its origins in managerialist/consumerist approaches to social policy, is part of the pursuit of the marketisation of state welfare. It draws on examples from the experiences of two UK service user movements — the disabled people's movement and the survivors movement and identifies two key risks. It concludes by arguing for increased reflexivity on the part of service users and their movements around participation and involvement, as well as greater recognition, ideally in partnership with service users and their organisations, within academic social policy of the importance of the issue.

This chapter draws on primary data that details how school governors in England are being trained and responsibilised in new ways to enhance the integrity of market-based developments in public education. I consider the extent to which corporate strategies are evident in the kinds of everyday work engaged with and produced by agents of school governance, namely school governors. Moreover, I explore whether ‘corporate elitism’ – the capacity and willingness of school governing bodies to reconstitute themselves in the image of corporate boards – is implicit to decisions concerning who and why certain people get to enter governance roles, and consider the implications of these reforms for any robust, democratic system of school governance.

In chapter 6 we explore the impact of commissioning and policy changes on early intervention and preventative services for children delivered by the charitable sector. The definition of early intervention and preventative services is highly contested and politicised within policy and commissioning processes. This reflects an ongoing debate regarding the shifting paradigm of prevention. As the commissioning narrative has developed, there has been an overall disengagement between the voluntary sector providers and State. As the charitable sector is increasingly exposed to intensifying marketization, polarisation of relationships increases. We identify here three ‘types’ of organisational responses to this ever-changing environments; conformers – those charities who align themselves close to the State and regularly reinterpret their mission to fit State logic; the outliers – those charities which reject State approaches to early intervention and seek to deliver services completely independently of the State; and the intermediaries – those charities which walk between conformity and dissent, working with the State when necessary or too their advantage, and walking away when not. We discuss how these types fundamentally alter children’s charities perspectives and experiences of commissioning and the impact this has on their wider work.

Economic theory seeks to determine the most effective use of scarce resources in achieving a given goal. This chapter discusses evaluation of criminal justice interventions with a view to increasing efficiency of service provision. Such analyses support evidence informed policy by comparing measured costs with benefits of interventions. However, in a political climate that promotes an increasing reliance on the private sector through marketisation, the very choice of intervention studied, and the costs and benefit to be measured, are based on value judgements. This chapter highlights the distinction between the positivist (value-neutral) values of economics and the normative (values-based) choice of the way economics is used.