In this way, the angle of possible political and social intervention changes. It is not socio-structural factors which decide whether unemployment, alcoholism, criminality, child abuse, etc. can be solved, but instead individual-subjective categories. Self-esteem thus has much more to do with self-assessment than with self-respect, as the self continuously has to be measured, judged, and disciplined in order to gear personal "empowerment" to collective yardsticks...
What were previously extra-economic domains are now rendered economic and are colonized by criteria of economic efficiency; this enables a close link to be forged between economic prosperity and personal well-being. As regards labor relations, for example, this means that work and leisure time are no longer inimical opposites, but tend to supplement each other...
Neo-liberalism is a political rationality that tries to render the social domain economic and to link a reduction in state services and security services to the increasing call for "personal responsibility" and "self-care". In this way, we can decipher the neo-liberal harmony in which not only the individual body, but also collective bodies and institutions (government, universities, corporations) have to be "lean", "fit", "flexible", and "autonomous": it is a technique of power.
-Thomas Lemke
