The glamour and grammar of innovation: notes on the spectacular reimagination of municipal care in Norway.

Abstract

The expert report Innovation in the Care Services (NOU 2011: 11) promotes “innovation” as a radical new idea and solution to public care in Norway. We critically analyze three dimensions of this idea in policy and argue that it represents a “spectacular reimagination” where the glamour of future technological and market-driven solutions to “old issues” of taking care of long-term needs is obtained by translating the social problematic of care into a grammar of liberal economic theory.