NUDGE: IMPROVING DECISIONS ABOUT HEALTH, WEALTH, AND HAPPINESS by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein Penguin Books, 2009, 312 pp, ISBN 978-0-14-311526-7This book is best described formally as a general explanation of and advocacy for libertarian paternalism, a term coined by the authors in earlier publications. Informally, it is about how leaders, systems, organizations, and governments can nudge people to do the things the nudgers want and need done for the betterment of the nudgees, or of society. It is paternalism in the sense that "it is legitimate for choice architects to try to influence people's behavior in order to make their lives longer, healthier, and better", (p. 5) It is libertarian in that "people should be free to do what they like - and to opt out of undesirable arrangements if they want to do so", (p. 5) The built-in possibility of opting out or making a different choice preserves freedom of choice even though people's behavior has been influenced by the nature of the presentation of the information or by the structure of the decisionmaking system. I had never heard of libertarian paternalism before reading this book, and I now find it fascinating.Written for a general audience, this book contains mostly social and behavioral science theory and models, but there is considerable discussion of structure and process that has roots in mathematical and quantitative modeling. One of the main applications of this social system is economic choice in investing, selecting and purchasing products and services, systems of taxes, banking (mortgages, borrowing, savings), and retirement systems. Other quantitative social choice systems discussed include environmental effects, health care plans, gambling, and organ donations. Softer issues that are also subject to a nudge-based approach are marriage, education, eating, drinking, smoking, influence, spread of information, and politics. There is something in this book for everyone.The basis for this libertarian paternalism concept is in the social theory called "science of choice", the study of the design and implementation of influence systems on various kinds of people. The terms Econs and Humans, are used to refer to people with either considerable or little rational decision-making talent, respectively. The various libertarian paternalism concepts and systems presented are tested and compared in light of these two types of people. Two foundational issues that this book has in common with another book, Network of Echoes: Imitation, Innovation and Invisible Leaders, that was also reviewed for this issue of the Journal are that 1 ) there are two modes of thinking (or components of the brain) - an automatic (intuitive) process and a reflective (rational) process and 2) the need for conformity and the desire for imitation are powerful forces in human behavior. …

Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness

語用論(Pragmatics)を考える

The third way: the renewal of social democracy

List of Boxes. List of Tables and Figure. Preface. Abbreviations. Introduction. 1. Capitalism and the Capitalist Type of State. 2. The Keynesian Welfare National State. 3. The Schumpeterian Competition State. 4. Social Reproduction and the Workfare State. 5. The Political Economy of State Rescaling. 6. From Mixed Economy to Metagovernance. 7. Towards Schumpeterian Workfare Postnational Regimes?. Notes. References. Index.

The Future of the Capitalist State.

The Future of the Capitalist State

The increasing significance of ‘managerialism’ in contemporary forms of governance has been widely observed. This article demonstrates how this operates at the level of language. Specifically, the analysis postulates a new sociosemantic category of ‘Managing Actions’, encoding varying degrees of coerciveness. The paper discusses their salient role in texturing the ‘soft power’ of contemporary governance, constructing a form of ‘managed autonomy’ for the governed subject and helping to manage the complex networks of dispersed power through an indirect form of agency. The analysis combines a corpus-based approach to critical discourse analysis with a political economic theory of transformations in the capitalist state. Drawing evidence from a corpus of UK education policy discourse, the analysis illustrates the managerialist form that governance takes under New Labour, while at the same time highlighting the subtle hegemony underlying this new ‘enabling’ technique of governance, which works by assuming, rat...

The grammar of governance

This paper presents selected findings from a historical analysis of change in the discursive construction of social identity in UK education policy discourse from 1972–2005. My chief argument is that through its linguistic forms of self‐identification the government construes educational roles, relations and responsibilities not only for itself, but also for other educational actors and wider society. More specifically, I argue that New Labour's distinctive mode of self‐representation is an important element in its hegemonic project, textually manufacturing consent over its policy decisions, and helping to articulate its self‐styled ‘enabling’ model of governance. As evidence for these claims I discuss two prominent trends in New Labour's education policy rhetoric, which I characterise as ‘personalisation’ and ‘managerialisation’. Respectively, these relate to the discursive representation of social identity and social action.

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Manufacturing Consent: A corpus-based critical discourse analysis of New Labour's educational governance

This article presents findings from a critical historical analysis of UK education policy discourse from 1972 onwards. It argues that the pronoun we was introduced as an important rhetorical tool by which New Labour was able to legitimate its policy decisions through the idea of a neoliberal ‘consensus’ on the context of education, while at the same time articulating a ‘politics of inclusion’. The study combined a corpus-aided approach to critical discourse analysis with political economic theory in order to interpret the data in relation to its historical context of a profound rethink of the relationship between education, the state and the economy. The analysis reveals how the flexible semantics of person deixis are exploited in a highly systematic way so as to claim consensus over politically contestable claims.

The hegemony of inclusion: A corpus-based critical discourse analysis of deixis in education policy:

This paper explores changes in educational discourse in the United Kingdom during three decades of crisis and radical change in British capitalism. Combining critical discourse analysis with corpus linguistic tools, it examines a corpus of seventeen White Papers spanning five Prime Ministers from Edward Heath to Tony Blair who, between them, led four alternating periods of Conservative and Labour rule. By linking social theory with corpus linguistic ‘keywords’ tools, the analysis identifies three successive educational policy concerns: a technocratic focus on educational outputs under Thatcher’s neo-liberal government; a visionary discourse of competitiveness under Major’s caretaker government; and a strategic policy aimed at building an internationally competitive, skills-based, economy under Blair’s New Labour Government. As well as discussing the implications of these textual findings for education’s role in economic policy, the chapter notes the contribution of this methodology to a systematic interdisciplinary investigation of public discourse.

Using keywords analysis in CDA: evolving discourses of the knowledge economy in education

This study investigates the multimodal strategies used in social marketing to emotionally manipulate and persuade children and their parents to adopt healthier lifestyles. The UK government's anti-...

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Jane Mulderrig

Papers

The grammar of governance

Manufacturing Consent: A corpus-based critical discourse analysis of New Labour's educational governance

The hegemony of inclusion: A corpus-based critical discourse analysis of deixis in education policy:

Using keywords analysis in CDA: evolving discourses of the knowledge economy in education

Multimodal strategies of emotional governance: a critical analysis of ‘nudge’ tactics in health policy