Overview
- Includes nation-specific, comparative and transnational perspectives
- Offers the first comprehensive and systematic analysis of the making and role of the sovereign consumer in modern and contemporary political economy
- Illuminates a region (Scandinavia), a period (post 1970) and a theme (neoliberalism’s entrance into the public sector) that has never been explored in depth in the field before
Part of the book series: Consumption and Public Life (CUCO)
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About this book
This book presents a new intellectual history of neoliberalism through the exploration of the sovereign consumer. Invented by neoliberal thinkers in the interwar period, this figure has been crucial to the construction and legimitization of neoliberal ideology and politics.
Analysis of the sovereign consumer across time and space demonstrates how neoliberals have linked the figure both to the idea of democracy as a method of choice, and also to a re-invention of the market as the democratic forum par excellence. Moreover, Olsen contemplates how the sovereign consumer has served to marketize politics and functioned as a major driver in a wide-ranging transformation in political thinking, subjecting traditional political values to the narrow pursuit of economic growth.
A politically timely project, The Sovereign Consumer will have a wide appeal in academic circles, especially for those interested in consumer and welfarestudies, and in political, economic and cultural thought in the twentieth century.
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Keywords
Table of contents (8 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Reviews
“In the dramaturgy of neoliberal thinking and policy, the character given the starring role is the ‘sovereign consumer,’ as honoring individual preferences amidst a cornucopia of goods and services becomes the touchstone of freedom and justice. Niklas Olsen takes the contemporary analysis of neoliberalism in an exciting and productive new direction by providing a genealogy of the script and a study of this neoliberal persona. It is a thrilling achievement.” (Samuel Moyn, Professor of Law and History, Yale University, USA)
“Niklas Olsen’s work provides us with a great example of the perplexing ways the original work of neoliberal intellectuals came to matter many years after their original conception. Ridiculed by many due to his apparent backwardness and atavism, Ludwig von Mises idea of “consumer sovereignty” provided neoliberalism with freshwater that came to feed streams of relevant work close to and apparently detached from the neoliberal source. Via George Stigler’s “efficient consumer” and post-Keynesian Social Democracy, Olsen reconnects intellectual origins and subsequent manifestations of neoliberal consumerism. He does a terrific job where others fail in neoliberalism studies: clarifying both the common thread at the ideational level and the wider influences and variety of real world experiences.” (Dieter Plehwe, Research Fellow of the President’s Project Group, Berlin Social Science Center, Germany)
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Niklas Olsen is Associate Professor at the SAXO-Institute, and Chair of Centre of Modern European Studies, at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: The Sovereign Consumer
Book Subtitle: A New Intellectual History of Neoliberalism
Authors: Niklas Olsen
Series Title: Consumption and Public Life
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89584-0
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Social Sciences, Social Sciences (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2019
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-319-89583-3Published: 10 September 2018
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-07808-9Published: 01 February 2019
eBook ISBN: 978-3-319-89584-0Published: 25 August 2018
Series ISSN: 2947-8227
Series E-ISSN: 2947-8235
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: X, 308
Topics: Organizational Studies, Economic Sociology, Political Sociology, Social Policy, International Political Economy