ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines the ways in which the bourgeois public sphere has shaped thinking around “public services”. With the emergence of a bourgeois public sphere we see the creation and extension of universal notions of collectivity. But as with the bourgeois public sphere more generally, liberal conceptions of public services are inherently attenuated in practice; created and moulded largely in the interests of capital accumulation and essential to the growth of market economies. The “public” label has played a critical role in legitimating this process, while at the same time obscuring their public-private distinction, muddying the meaning of what constitutes a public service and who produces them. The result is a liberal conception of public services which traps us on a public-private continuum in which private companies and state agencies are deemed equally capable of providing public goods.
