11. 🏁 Module in Review 🏁

Main point

Since the 1980s, governments around the world have introduced major reforms to healthcare and other public services. Instead of governments providing all services directly, businesses and other organisations increasingly compete to provide them. Meanwhile, you are increasingly expected to choose what kind of care you want, who provides it, and how to manage it.

We have analysed these changes using the theory of neoliberalism.

In the interactive tasks, we broke neoliberalism down into five principles: marketisation, individual responsibility, cost–benefit efficiency, outsourcing, and moralised citizenship. We then applied these principles to the NDIS. We saw that some features of the NDIS fit neoliberalism quite well, but others do not. After all, the NDIS involves substantial government funding. So neoliberalism helps us understand the NDIS, but it doesn't explain everything about it.

 Significance

The significance goes well beyond the NDIS. We can see similar reforms in education, public transport, aged care, employment services and other areas, not just in Australia but around the world.

But for me, there's something even more interesting. I've realised that I've internalised some neoliberal values myself. I tend to think that having more choices is a good thing. I compare services, assume that I should take responsibility for managing my own health and wellbeing. I try to find ways to measure how efficient and productive with my time. And when something goes wrong, my first thought is often what I should have done differently, rather than whether there's something wrong with the system.

Of course, none of these attitudes is necessarily bad. But where did they come from? Are they simply my personal values? Or have I learned to think this way because I live in a society increasingly organised around neoliberal principles?

This takes us back to governmentality from the previous module. Government isn't just about laws and policies imposed on us. It's also about how we come to govern ourselves. Foucault actually treated neoliberalism as yet another form of governmentality. According to this way of thinking, neoliberalism doesn't just change how care is provided. It can change how you think about yourself/

 Looking ahead: Self-Care

But what happens when the neoliberal system doesn't care for you adequately? What happens when you can't afford the services you need, when providers aren't available, or when institutions discriminate against you?

For many African Americans, experiences of racism, exclusion and inadequate healthcare have made these questions especially important. One response has been to develop their own practices and organisations for looking after themselves and their communities.

This brings us to the concepts in our next module: Self Care and Radical Care.

We'll see that self-care can mean something quite different from the neoliberal ideal of an independent, responsible individual. It can be a **collective practice of care, solidarity and resistance**. Rather than simply taking responsibility for yourself, it can mean caring for one another in a society that doesn't always care for you.