Citizens

Summary

Jon Alexander of the New Citizenship Project, writing with Ariane Conrad, sorts history into three stories of who we are: Subject, Consumer and Citizen. The Consumer Story rests on “the central falsehood that choice from a menu of options constitutes power”. The Citizen Story, he says, is already emerging and “needs to be named, nurtured and accelerated”.

Rationale

He calls it a story, but describes something nearer our cultural habits: the Consumer is “ritualised into the context of everything we do”, down to job titles and room names.