Zygmunt Bauman

Risks and contradictions go on being socially produced; it is just the duty and the necessity to cope with them which are being individualized.

The individual is the citizen’s worst enemy, de Tocqueville suggested. The ‘citizen’ is a person inclined to seek her or his own welfare through the well-being of the city – while the individual tends to be lukewarm, sceptical or wary about ‘common cause’, ‘common good’, ‘good society’ or ‘just society’.

The only two useful things one would expect, and wish, ‘public power’ to deliver are to observe ‘human rights’,