Introduction

This chapter explores questions of agency and social structure in relation to retirement and pensions policy. Some sociological accounts of risk, reflexivity, identity, ‘lifestyle’ and consumption are contrasted with structural features of contemporary capitalist societies; pension funds and their investment strategies, risk management, and the significance of these funds in the money markets. It will be claimed that there are tensions between these ‘new’ – or at least new to social policy – sociological approaches and the ‘older’ ideas and traditions within social policy. However, by considering retirement in the context of risk, identity and reflexivity we can try to evaluate the usefulness of both the ‘old’ (the schlock) social policy approaches and the new as we rethink social policy (Lewis et al, 2000). Viewing social policy through these ‘new’ lenses can provide some fresh insights and important challenges. Simultaneously, they may obscure some older sociological landmarks that structure opportunities and restrain reflexivity (Giddens, 1991, 1994, 1998; Beck, 1992, 2000; Adam et al, 2000; Mann, 2001; Taylor-Gooby, 2001).

Changes and chances in a risk society

Over a quarter of a century ago (so hardly very new) Baudrillard (1975, p 144) suggested people are “mobilised as consumers, their needs become as essential as their labour power”. And in the context of retirement Mike Featherstone observed 16 years ago that “Pre-retirement planning today is presented as the management of life-style and consumption opportunities to enable retirement to be a progressive set of options and choices” (1987, p 134). However, for most of the 20th century pensioners were assumed (erroneously perhaps) to have rather modest expectations and despite the evidence of relative poverty there was an oft-stated commitment to a universal pension funded by revenue collected by the state (Abel-Smith and Townsend, 1965; Townsend, 1979). Retirees were generally portrayed as deserving and their welfare dependency rarely evoked criticism. Yet by the last quarter of the 20th century some retirees appeared to be quite comfortably off, while some (paid) workers were noticeably struggling on low incomes. Retirees appeared to have higher expectations of what their retirement lifestyle would be like and many seemed reluctant to wait until they reached the state pension age before enjoying their retirement (PIU, 2000). This shift in expectations and lifestyles provides a major challenge to the traditional ‘universal’ models of welfare (the schlock?) and requires social policy to consider some of the new(ish) ideas that offer a response.