Economic rationalism in action

In February 1998 the New Zealand Government distributed the draft code of s ocial and family responsibility as a public discussion document. The code a ddressed eleven social issues and called for public responses to the docume nt. In assuming the document constitutes political communication we have us ed discourse analysis to examine its rhetoric in terms of practical ideolog ies. Focussing on subject positioning, discourses and warranting devices we identify the constraints of economic rationalist discourse in constructing notions of social and family responsibility. We conclude that the code rel ies on individualised constructions of social problems and their solutions.