I often listen to sport on the radio in the car; my preference is for Test Match Special, when it’s on, but I do listen to football.

I am not alone in this; the average UK motorist apparently listens to football on the radio three times a month. 21% do so  every week and over 6% do so every day, which is two million people all tuning in to football daily as they drive. However, sport, at least not in all its forms, may not necessarily be good for your health. Listening to football commentary on the radio while you are driving could be dangerous and lead to accidents, according to a report commissioned by esure, the car insurance company. 

The research, carried out by the University of Leicester and published in a report called Football Focus, received media attention on 27 May 27, the day of the Champions League Final.

Football is emotional; there’s no doubt about that. Sport elicits powerful commitment and the thought of fans extending the exuberance and distress of the terraces to their driving practices is alarming.

Young man in a car, with raised fist.
[image © copyright Photos.com]

This research suggests that the behaviour of fans is very different from casual listeners, who do not adjust their behaviour behind the wheel in such extreme ways (tail-gating, erratic acceleration and sudden lane changes). I have, for a long time wondered about the embodied responses of spectatorship, for example in being a spectator at the game, especially, in the case of boxing, which I have written about in my book, Boxing, Masculinity and Identity, the i of the tiger (published by Routledge), where being at the fight is a very different experience from the more sanitised spectatorship of pay-for-view television.

However, I have also noted the physical reactions of the sporting follower who is listening at a distance, especially in the case of football with its distinctive style of commentary. I have felt disquiet as the rising crescendo of commentary increases my heart rate and seems to implicate the embodied listener in the waves of emotion evoked in the reporting of the game, even  when I care little for the outcome and my team is not involved at all. 

Sport is sensational, not only in the sense of media hyperbole - it appeals to and implicates all the senses of everyone involved.

The voice of the commentary could itself be a part of the total experience of sport. The research distinguishes between the fan and the uncommitted listener, but I think that there may be something more in the synthesis of the embodied experience that is particular to sport and specific to some sports, especially the genre of football commentary. It is clear that anxiety and exhilaration might lead to other embodied practices, such as accelerating.

This research demonstrates that it is not only sport, on the pitch, and spectatorship, at the ground, that is embodied; so too is the empathy and identification that people have with sport. As I demonstrate in another book, Embodied Sporting Practices (published by Palgrave Macmillan), sport is not only all about bodies, about embodied sporting practices (that is, what sort of physical activities make up what we call sport) it is also about the interaction between everyone involved, including those listening in their cars.  The research also indicates that sport is sensational, not only in the sense of media hyperbole - it appeals to and implicates all the senses of everyone involved.

About the author

Kath Woodward is Profesor of Sociology at the Open University, focusing on gendered identities. She has recently completed research into anti-racist organisations in sport.

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The drastic cuts in public services that are now touted as necessary to meet the cost of the folly of the banks, and the “light touch” of regulators and government, contain some familiar and unfamiliar features for those of us with long memories of public sector reform: outsourcing and reengineering on the one hand, and a cut in spending on, and better value for money from, IT on the other.

“the greater the overall power of the IT industry in a country, the lower the performance of government IT systems.”

The claim that “a 20% saving on the estimated £16 billion spend (equivalent to £3.2billion) [on IT] appears to be achievable.” appears in a document published recently by the Treasury - Operational Efficiency Programme: back office operations and IT.

This report also estimates that back office operations across government and the public sector cost £18 billion, on which savings of 20 to 25 per cent – “a reduction of around £4 billion” - are achievable. One of the primary ways in which this will be achieved is through business process reengineering (BPR), and surprise, surprise, outsourcing. Neither is a new feature of the public sector, of course. BPR was a staple of the reforms of the 1990s, as it was in the private sector. And in both sectors many BPR initiatives failed to deliver the promised benefits. Outsourcing has an even longer pedigree. Indeed, as I’ve discussed here previously, the UK government and its advisors have been particularly zealous advocates of this approach to organisational change.

While the Operational Efficiency report’s authors have obviously taken a rigorous approach to collecting and analysing the data on which their conclusions and recommendations are based, a number of unrecognised contradictions and omissions did catch my eye.

First, the report notes that “Devolution and fragmentation across the public sector mean that there is a wide variation and substantial complexity in back office operations.” (p.38).

Houses of Parliament.
[Image © copyright Photos.com]

Unfortunately it then fails to acknowledge that much of this is due to the extent to which functions have been outsourced, and the lack of serious consideration that is too often given to the wider - or “hidden” –-costs and implications of this.

Second, the report goes to some lengths to explain why it is difficult to estimate the amount spent on IT and why international comparisons are “very difficult”. Nevertheless, based on an analysis of data from a number of sources it concludes that “the UK public sector’s IT spend is much more than other similar countries and that the UK does not get a proportionate return from this much higher spend.” (p.60).

Given that the report also notes that “£13.2 billion of public sector IT expenditure [of the estimated £16 billion] was committed to external contracts in 2007-08” (p.55), this isn’t exactly a ringing endorsement of the value of outsourcing, either. Furthermore – and despite many references to the lessons that can be learned from the private sector – there is no mention that I can see of the now established trend (particularly amongst large private sector companies) to insource IT requirements.

The most significant omission that struck me was, however, the report’s ignorance of a piece of research that is of direct relevance, particularly to the finding above: Digital Era Governance: IT corporations, the state and e-government. Published in late 2006, and based on research spanning five years funded by the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council, this book details and discusses findings from an international comparative study of, amongst other things, the performance of government IT. Amongst its many findings is this: “the greater the overall power of the IT industry in a country, the lower the performance of government IT systems.” (p.6).

Fingers on keyboard.
[image by Mike Traboe, some rights reserved]

It’s no secret that in the UK by the early 2000s five IT services and supply companies held 90 per cent of the government market: a situation that is unlikely to have changed, given the figure for external contracts I note above. So, rather than pursue the tired logic and questionable returns from outsourcing and reengineering, why not address an underlying problem. Put in place effective mechanisms to address this dominance and dependency. Unfortunately, without a shock to the system of the magnitude of the MP’s expenses scandal - which wasted spending on IT dwarfs, of course - I suspect that may never happen.

About the author

Ivan Horrocks is a lecturer and member of the Technology Management Group at The Open University. He has written many publications about the relationship between information and communication technologies (ICTs) and government and politics.

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OK - I'm sorry - more of an essay than a blog post, but I’ve got to get all this off my chest in one go. In the 1980s across Europe you would see stickers with a sparky little cartoon atom character shouting ‘nuclear power - no thanks!'.

environmentalists clustered earlier this year to say 'regretfully I’ve changed my mind – climate change is so big it justifies turning to nuclear power’

There was a minor media flurry when two or three prominent UK environmentalists clustered earlier this year to say 'regretfully I’ve changed my mind – climate change is so big it justifies turning to nuclear power’.

Having been asked several times in the last fortnight what I reckon to this argument I’ve decided to pull my thoughts together into one place. Here are the arguments put by the nuclear public relations folks, with my own response to them:

• New Jobs! It’ll be French and German companies and technicians that are most likely to benefit from UK growth in nuclear generation, and we'll be paying top whack as there'll be an acute skills shortage if the industry grows as fast as it hopes. And these are very expensive jobs to ‘create’ in the sense that other kinds of energy related investment generate many more.

• Too Cheap to Meter! (and this time we mean it!) This bold promise was never delivered in the 20th century – on the contrary – nuclear always needed government cash. But everyone anticipates that energy and climate crunches together will see the cost of carbon-based fuels rise and hence the competitiveness of nuclear and renewables increase. Although it’s likely that we'd still need to see central government reaching into its pocket to cover decommissioning/waste issues nuclear is going to become much more competitive. But, it still requires really immense initial capital investment and long time scales.

OK so it may be a French company that’s asking to build them, but it is hardly an investment risk. They’ll only put up the money if prices are guaranteed and waste costs covered by future UK taxpayers. Eggs in several baskets!

Nuclear power plant, Biblis Germany.
[Image by Bigod, some rights reserved]

 The nuclear PR folks are politely pro renewable energy. They suggest it’s good to spread our energy investments. The difficulty with this is that in periods where central government and private investment is under pressure there are opportunity costs carried by any choice. It is simply politically naive to suggest that major commitments to N power will not result in reduced investments in energy efficiency programmes or renewables. Renewables can't do it all & carbon capture and storage are untried and costly! Probably the best card in the N hand. But it assumes that we have to match or grow current levels of energy demand and do nothing to reduce it.

Almost all of developed world society processes and products are 'energy blind'. They developed in an era of very low cost energy and are hugely wasteful. Why not spend the 15 years and many billions we might invest in a decent sized N programme in really aggressive demand-management and clean green re-design of much that we do. Unlike an investment in N power many of these measures would carry plenty of other environmental and social benefits: the collateral benefits of N investment are largely confined to those getting jobs and research funding.

The PR insists that nuclear power's waste issues were always exaggerated and the greens' criticisms were emotional not rational. Whatever the truth of the matter, the industry must be the last people on the planet that think that human systems are infallible.

radwaste is a classic case study of how we pursue short term interests and discount future generations

Having said that the new systems produce less waste and there are much more convincing ways of dealing with particularly the low level stuff. And we already have a big pile of it in the UK anyway. But I think radwaste is a classic case study of how we pursue short term interests and discount future generations - the formal economic process of calculating discount rates generally considers that the best gift you can offer to future generations is a wealthy present. Hence economic and policy analysis has favoured N power in the present and not considered costs to the future of these technologies (including opportunity costs mentioned above).

So in summary – yes we need to invest in effective waste management to deal with the pile we’ve got but let’s not compound the problem further. There's a climate monster behind the door! This is the argument that whatever the downsides we must at all costs avoid a climate tipping point.

The UEA's Professor Tim Lenton says be careful with painting a picture of a threat of one great tipping point - it will propel us towards over hasty techno fixes that may generate new problems, and is in any case a bit of a distraction in terms of how to represent climate change. He makes this point in relation to geo-engineering but the same goes for N. He's lead author on nuanced paper on 'Tipping Elements'.

Well, the industry is set to expand but this raises the geopolitics/terrorism question. I don't think this is the best moment to pick to promote an industry that requires high levels of centralised control and regulation, high levels of security and a great deal of care around the tracking of fuel, waste and protection of plant. It intensifies the heat in already fraught political contexts. How will we decide on who has the tech, on what 'safe' and 'civilian' amounts to and what the wider consequences of sustaining big postgraduate N professions across the world?

Politicians have to agree to drive energy demand down dramatically

I'd agree with anyone that this much endangered low hanging fruit won't deliver the kinds of emissions cuts that might mitigate the threat of dangerous climate change. Politicians have to agree to drive energy demand down dramatically. Politically impossible to make our housing stock decent, our towns and cities pleasant and healthy, and our experience of travel more rewarding? For this and a host of other reasons we need to redefine quality of life.

To say to other nations that 'we can have nuclear power but you aren't mature enough' is not going to help gather an international community to address global challenges.

The sibling issue is that the west chasing after nuclear again makes it appear that this is the 'developed' choice. That's despite the Finns working on a new plant whose installation will overshoot by several years and lots of cash and has Finnish contractors and government and the French and German builders bickering over whose fault it is.

In short: there are fast, cheap ways of cutting energy consumption in the near term that we've still not done and those will deliver emissions cuts years before the nuclear engineers reach for the 'on' button.

About the author

Joe Smith is a lecturer in the environment at the Open University and chair of Interdependence Day. He has written books on climate change and sustainability, the media and global issues, and the green movement.

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Two millennia ago the great Roman historian and senator, Tacitus, advised the world that in a state where corruption abounds, laws must be very numerous indeed. In the seventeenth century William Shakespeare’s Cardinal Wolsey confided that ‘corruption wins not more than honesty’. A century later Edward Gibbons told us that corruption was the most ‘infallible symptom of constitutional liberty’. And in the last century Mahatma Gandhi declared that corruption ‘need not be an inevitable product of democracy’, while former Prime Minister Anthony Eden thought that corruption had ‘never been compulsory’ and that there was always another way. All these wise sagacious words over the centuries, and yet, pardon me for observing, isn’t the scandal over politician expenses rather too predictable? We should have seen it coming.

Britain is perceived as becoming more and more corrupt according to the anti-corruption group

With increasing sleaze enveloping the Brown Government during 2009 at the peak of the recession, it is worth reminding ourselves of the findings of the corruption league table for nations, as produced each year by Transparency International. Their latest report was published before the scandal broke over the Prime Minister’s advisor’s email crisis in April 2009, before the controversy around MP second home allowances and before the fall out from the politician expenses furore this month.

Britain is perceived as becoming more and more corrupt according to the anti-corruption group. As examples Transparency International referred to Britain’s ‘wretched and woeful record’ in prosecuting business executives for paying bribes to foreign politicians and officials to win contracts, the plethora of political scandals about ‘cash for honours’ and the government’s decision to drop the investigation into allegations that BAE paid bribes to Saudi royals. These events contributed to a significant increase in the perceived level of corruption in Britain, with a corresponding fall from 12^th to 16^th place in the world corruption rankings between 2007 and 2008. This is the UK’s worst performance since 1995 when records began.

The survey, which focused upon how we are perceived by people in other countries, revealed that Denmark, New Zealand and Sweden shared top spot, followed by Singapore, Finland and Switzerland, with Afghanistan, Haiti, Iraq, Burma and Somalia in the bottom five of 180 nations. The higher the corruption perception score, the lower the perceived degree of corruption within a country. In global terms it seems Britain compares relatively well but there are obvious grounds for improvement, even more so now that the world media have feasted on the slow seeping of allegations about the conduct of not so ‘honourable’ Members from all parties.

Britain’s ‘wretched and woeful record’ in prosecuting business executives

Remarkably, since Britain signed an Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development global anti-corruption treaty in 1997, we have prosecuted only one person for bribing an official from another government. The Department of Business defended the government’s record in February this year, explaining that twenty bribery cases were currently being investigated following the only solitary successful prosecution in September 2008.

Is it therefore surprising that a government so reluctant to prosecute corruption turns a blind eye to failures of its own, even though, as MPs painfully keep repeating, they were only following guidelines; guidelines of course they themselves set. The herd instinct can have dangerous repercussions where integrity and honesty are questioned.

National media have been rightly appalled at the scale of the exposed expense racket. Whether it be to claim for second homes close to their first home, in one case a mere 100 yards from the second property, or to conveniently change the status of homes to suit their financial best interests, or make claims for repairs and maintenance on properties owned outright by a third party, MPs have badly exceeded the spirit of the guidelines. They have endorsed Gibbons but taken no notice of Eden’s warning.

But I was more concerned about claims for more everyday items, those items which you and I can only purchase with our own salaries.

These items include:

• Five pence for a carrier bag from a supermarket
• Christmas tree decorations
• Light bulbs
• Bin liners
• Lavatory seats
• Tampons
• Chandeliers
• Remembrance Day wreaths
• Lawnmowers and lawnmower repairs
• Moat maintenance
• Swimming pool cleaning
• Dog food
• Dog enclosure
• Chauffeurs
• An ironing board
• Slotted spoons
• Comics
• Nappies
• The removal of moles from a lawn
• Pipe repairs under a tennis court
• Sky sport subscriptions
• A pram
• Hanging baskets
• An IKEA bathrobe
• Mock Tudor beams
• Food when the Commons is no longer sitting
• Council tax discounts
• Coat hangers
• Sachets of mulled wine
• A mousetrap
• A lemon
• A wooden spoon
• A plug

Not to mention the John Lewis shopping list of Plasma television sets, furniture and fittings. Seriously, I ask you, since when is having a clean moat vital in order to be an effective Member of Parliament? And consider the other side of privilege - pensioners struggling on benefits or injured UK soldiers in hospital having to pay to watch television.

According to the Independent, Labour MPs have just been sent an email from the parliamentary Labour party informing them that media reports suggesting that ‘MPS are generally claiming excessively’ are not true. Some experts tell us the expense rip off is because we now have a ‘professional’ politician at Westminster. But I think this insults the integrity of many professionals working in Britain.

What seems clear is that the rising scandal over expenses damages the integrity of our political system. As Transparency International warned us last year we had already begun to slip down the corruption credibility league. I can imagine we may sink without trace once this lot is sorted out. If I were you check the Transparency International website next February and see where Britain has come in 2009. Out of the top thirty is my bet. For a Government obsessed with league tables this CPI league table is one the Government will want to hide from view.

By then of course we might have an ‘independent’ panel assessing all MP claims or a different system to fund second homes but something in what Ghandi told us persuades me that the next generation of MPs may find a way round even the most zealous of watchdogs. Give them a moral compass and they still would want to claim for it.

It gives me no pleasure at all to reflect that while many of these MPs may indeed lose their seats in the General Election of 2010 because of excessive expense claims a few will get to keep those lavatory seats we have paid for.

About the author

Richard Skellington edits Society Matters for the Faculty of Social Sciences at the Open University. He’s an administrator who manages the Environment, Development and International Studies programme.

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In a remote corner of western Ghana, close to the border of Côte d’Ivoire, is a new village. But it’s unlike the many villages you drive through to get there, with their mud houses and now seemingly ubiquitous mobile phone card sellers sitting under their bright, branded umbrellas.

This new village has around 250 Chinese in it, 60 Pakistanis, and 2000 Ghanaian workers, many with families. The houses are prefabricated cabins laid out in neat rows and it even has broadband connection. Barely twelve months ago this village did not exist, but is the work camp for the Bui Dam. This hydroelectric project is being built by the Chinese company Sinohydro and is one of a growing number of dam projects in Africa and the rest of the developing world being funded and built by China.

The workcamp for Ghanaian workers.
[Image by Giles Mohan © copyright Giles Mohan]

The case against such dams is persuasive. They are seen as ecologically damaging and socially disruptive and they often arise out of non-transparent governance arrangements. Moreover, some people question whether such energy-intensive development should be encouraged at all. On the other hand, for many African countries, their infrastructure is so poor that basic welfare is compromised as roads are often impassable and electricity for basic activities is erratic or non-existent. So things like the Bui Dam can be seen as absolutely vital for Ghana and countries like it. Such questions are important and there are no easy answers. One approach is to evaluate them on a case by case basis.

The company contracted to build Bui Dam is the Sinohydro Corporation. It was one of the main contractors on the Three Gorges Dam in China and, as part of the government’s “Go Out” policy, has embarked on an ambitious internationalisation strategy with projects in 50 countries. However, according to the International Rivers Network, Sinohydro has repeatedly received low grades by China’s State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission for its poor safety record, construction and environmental accidents, and pollution. Indeed, some even blame the Sichuan earthquake of May 2008 on geological problems created by dam construction in the region.

The Bui Dam, and others built by Sinohydro, are “EPC” projects, meaning “engineering, procurement, construction”. This is the preferred route for many African governments since the price is agreed up front and fixed. The Chinese favoured the dam project as opposed to the Ghanaian Government’s preferred option of a railway from the coast to Burkina Faso in the North, because the sale of electricity would guarantee repayment in a way that a railway could not.

When it comes to these large Chinese projects, rumours abound about the importation of labour, some of it even sourced from convicts, and also that the Chinese import all the capital equipment and inputs and that they treat local workers badly. How true is this?

Much of the capital equipment is Chinese. Most of the heavy vehicles and the quarrying and aggregate plant are Chinese (although the aggregate crusher is American). The dam is the first in Ghana to be built using roller compacted concrete as opposed to rock fill and so requires huge amounts of cement which is coming from Ghacem, in Ghana’s main port city of Tema, which is German-owned.

The dam site.
[Image by Giles Mohan © copyright Giles Mohan]

The contract with Sinohydro specified the upper limits of Chinese labour on the project, which meant recruitment of unskilled and semi-skilled labourers from within Ghana. Interestingly, the Chinese have brought in 60 Pakistanis to drive the heavy equipment who count as “Chinese” for purposes of the imported labour quota. Communication is a problem but the Chinese organise in small work teams with one Chinese foreman and one Ghanaian foreman, both of whom have some English, and 3-4 Ghanaian labourers under them. Even then much communication is via drawings. Chinese corporations in general do not encourage trade unions, and originally did not allow for it at Bui. But a deputation from the Ghana TUC argued that it was enshrined both in Ghanaian law and the contract and so they had to. The union has pushed for better protection from the debilitating black fly which comes during the rainy season, although this threat affects all workers and is being dealt with through a daily insecticide programme.

All the Chinese labour is male and they sleep in the dormitories. In theory, they are not allowed to drink alcohol, but socialise in a club with TV and table tennis. Mixing between Ghanaian and Chinese workers of all levels is limited although there are “inter-national” soccer games, which one Ghanaian official told me proudly were always won by the Ghanaians and that in general the Chinese were “not friendly”. The Bui Power Authority’s role during construction is essentially to monitor the delivery of the contract and so it has its own engineers to report on quality and progress, and to monitor health and safety and environmental standards. One engineer joked that the Chinese don’t care about hard hats and pointed to a tree that they had saved given that the Chinese were too willing to remove it.

Chinese and Ghanaian workers.
[Image by Giles Mohan © copyright Giles Mohan]

Sinohydro and other Chinese firms are looking to deepen their footprint in Ghana and Africa more broadly. Although the Chinese seemed to have got a foothold in Africa through these semi-commercial, Chinese government-supported projects they are now competing more openly for tenders and, as one European aid official told me, “winning in straight fights”. For example, one Chinese firm is building roads in Northern Ghana funded by French aid, and Sinohydro also has plans for four smaller dams in Ghana.

But these are essentially turnkey projects and so have limited multipliers locally, which is why it is so imperative that African governments ensure that local content agreements are written into contracts. That said, African infrastructure needs are so chronic and have been so overlooked by donors for years that the Chinese are welcome for the investment they bring and the speed of their operations. They look set to continue for many years to come.

For more information on China and Africa see http://www.geography.dur.ac.uk/projects/china-africa/. And on the Bui Dam see
http://www.sinohydro.com/ and http://www.buipowerauthority.com/.

About the author

Dr Giles Mohan is a Reader in the Politics of International Development at the Open University. His research has examined politics in Africa, particularly ways in which rural communities access the government as well the role of diasporas in national politics.

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It often starts with an event or a phenomenon. It could be a mass killing, a spreading flu, increasing migrants, or decreasing credit. Before we understand its causes, its consequences are predicted with ferocious repetition. "We are facing an unprecedented enemy that is well organized". "It could cost billions to contain the pandemic". "Are we prepared to provide services demanded by migrants?" "With the collapsed economy we may be facing a depression not seen since 1929."

"It seems governments, businesses, nongovernmental and news organisations all have some vested interest in these disproportionate responses."

These predicted consequences become progressively disproportionate to actual consequences. The collective response becomes equally disproportionate. Armies invade countries with dodgy dossiers that look credible to some. Mass mobilisations are enlisted to contain pandemics that are not. Massive investments are made in border control and tracking methods. Trillions and billions are printed and pumped into markets with fancy names such as "quantitative easing".

It seems governments, businesses, nongovernmental and news organisations all have some vested interest in these disproportionate responses. A few academics, journalists, scientists, and activists warn against disproportionate responses and call for better understanding of causes rather than focusing on predictions of consequences. "There is no justification for war." "More people are killed on the road than by terrorist attacks." "Migrants contribute to the economy and we need them." These voices are drowned out, mostly by the argument that, had there not been dramatic responses, situations would have been worse - claims that are impossible to verify. Do you remember The Millennium bug?

"…after every cycle we have gone through, we realise that the responses we were led to believe to have been appropriate proved to be well beyond what was necessary."

What follows is more prophecies, prognostications, predictions, and various scenarios. Having determined the dramatic consequences to follow, explanations that fit those consequences are offered. In other words, in a strange but social twist of logic, consequences are made to explain causes. For lack of a better term, I can’t help but call these cycles of neurosis. In the twentieth century psychoanalysts called the disproportionate response to perceived dangers neurosis - a term that is no longer used in psychology to define any disorder. But it persists outside established science and many sociologists have used the term to define collective phenomena of anxiety, hysteria or unease.

I think it is apt to use the term "neurosis" and to name our response "neurotic" because the cycle that starts with a bang almost always ends with a whimper. It seems that, after every cycle we have gone through, we realise that the responses we were led to believe to have been appropriate proved to be well beyond what was necessary. Is Al Qaeda really the threat that it was presented to be? Are migrants really the threat that they were represented to be? Is there really an economic collapse to the extent that has been suggested? In a short time it has already been demonstrated that the most recent cycle - swine flu - may have been an over-reaction. The headlines already declare that swine flu did not spread as fast as predicted. The BBC News reported tests showing that the swine flu virus in Mexico may be less virulent than first feared, and asked "Did Mexico over-react on swine flu?" It is as though it was only Mexico that over-reacted.

Ten years ago the New Yorker cartoonist, Roz Chast, introduced "the neuro" as "the first official worldwide currency" in one of her cartoons. It may have been prescient. We really need to understand why it has become so. What are the reasons for the collective neurosis of our times?

Find Out More 

Isin, E.F. (2004) The Neurotic Citizen, Citizenship Studies, 8 (3), 217-235.

Horney, K. (1937) The Neurotic Personality of Our Time, New York, W.W. Norton.

Fromm, E. (1944) Individual and Social Origins of Neurosis, American Sociological Review, 9 (4), 380-384.

Roz Chast, The Back Page, “Introducing the Neuro - The First Official Worldwide Currency,” The New Yorker, April 26, 1999, p. 196.

About the author

Engin F Isin is professor in politics and international studies and director of the Centre for Citizenship, Identities and Governance at the Open University.

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