Tags:
Add more tags...,
Individualization concept - From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The term "Individualization" is used in number of different areas, urban planning, architecture etc. but most frequently in political theory and sociology. Sociologists such as Ulrich Beck and Anthony Giddens view individualization as an unavoidable and necessary intermediate phase on the way to new forms of social life.
They speak of a First Modernity that was linked to the effects of the Industrial Revolution, and a Second Modernity that is linked to such events as the emergence of the computer, post-Fordist production methods, biotechnology and world-wide communication and transport networks. While in classical industrial society there were direct interconnections between class, family, marriage, sexual roles, the division of labor between men and women, today many more people have the opportunity or are forced to live biographies that deviate from this pattern: "do-it-yourself biographies" (Roland Hitzler) or "reflexive biographies" (Giddens). In this case, the reflexive element consists above all in the confrontation with the other. According to Beck, individualization also means first, the disembedding and second, the re-embedding of industrial society's ways of life by new ones in which the individuals must produce, stage, and cobble together their biographies themselves. Here is a list of the most important references for this topic. Bauman, Zygmunt (2000): "The Individualized Society", Polity Press. Beck, Ulrich/Beck-Gernsheim, Elisabeth (1992): "Risk society: towards a new modernity", Sage. Beck, Ulrich/Beck-Gernsheim, Elisabeth (2001): "Individualization: Institutionalized Individualism and its Social and Political Consequences", Sage. Beck, Ulrich/Giddens, Anthony and Lash, Scott (1994): "Reflexive Modernization", Stanford. Heinz, Walter R./Marshall, Victor W. (eds.) (2003): "Social dynamics of the life course: transitions, institutions, and interrelations", Aldine de Gruyter. Giddens, Anthony (1991): "Modernity and self-identity", Polity press.
Losing the traditional Now people must decide for themselves Now people are expected to take their lives into their own hands and pay a market prices for services they receive Dramatic plunge into modernity Disintegration of previously existing social forms But, through job market, welfare state and institutions people are tied into network of regulations and conditions New institutional pressure: for modern social advantages one has to do something, to make an active effort The reflective biography, the do-it-yourself biography The facade of prosperity, consumption can often mask the nearby precipice. And it's called "bad luck" People are now condemned to individualization. It itself demands an active contribution by individuals Opportunities and dangers that earlier predefined within the family association must now be perceived, interpreted, decided. The consequence is that people are often unable to take the necessary decision s by considering interests, morality and consequences. Individualization implies urbanization - in general this word should be used to design a trend
The de-routinization of the mundane Precarious freedoms Do-it-yourself biography God, nature and social system are being progressively replaced by the confused individual. Democratization of individualization processes? At the same time, basic conditions in society favour or enforce individualization Before there was no basis for material existance outside marriage After, marriage is justified deductively but with a moral exclamation mark as a conrnerstone of the Christian-bourgeoise order Then it became a branch office of the German state Now is an individual order which must be questioned and reconstructed by individuals as they go along. It is a sort of institutionalized individualism: it means in simple terms that you may and you must live your own independent life outside the old bonds of family, tribe, religion and you must do this within the new guidelines and rules which the state, the job market and bureaucracy lay down. An individual situation dependent on institutions.
Perspectives and controversies From the standpoint of individuals or from that of the whole? Founded on the structure of social action Individuals can become individuals only within society? What happens to institutions without individuals? They tremble! For some centuries the view of the totality has suppressed that of individuals ( as always, the Internet is a very good example for verifying in real-time these ideas) The antithesis between the individual and system-based view should be understood as a historical development Almost all sociology is based on negation of individuality and individual, considered as illusion of individuals who are denied insights into the social conditions Individuals started becoming the interference factor, a constant and incalculable source of irritation. The rising of the do-it-yourself What was previously regarded as background noise to be neglected is now being seen as a basic situation Individuals and society are breaking apart into antagonistic conceptions of public welfare, quality of life, future viability, justice and progress…A rift is opening…
Consider the vast amount of PARADOXES of the second modernity (start becoming a visionary, to understand complexity) Is it still at all possible to integratre highly individual societies? Strong temptation to react with the classical instruments (E.g. rebirth of nationalism) achieving the same goals through dramaturgy of violence and nationalism PRECARIOUS FREEDOMS --> Solution? Solutions? Trascendental consensus, integration through values Integration founded on material interests, share of prosperity National consciousness, no longer able to provide a basis for stable integration, breaking down with the mobilization on national identities Clear understanding of the situation and successfully mobilized and motivated for the challenges present at the centre of their lives, trying to forge new, politically open, creative forms of bond and alliance. The question is whether we still have the time, strength and imagination for doing this
Criticizing the ruling class of today, sociology could make this highly complex thematic context transparent Integration "in thought" The future of post-traditional societies is a measure of their integration The sense of possibility: the capacity to think how everything could "just as easily" be, and to attach no more importance to what is than to what is not Ideas are nothing else than as yet unborn realities (Musil, the man without qualities, 1961)
Individualization, globalization and politics We talk about "our own lives" and "epidemic of egoism" The social order on national state, class, ethnicity and the traditional family is in decline Any attempt to create a new form of social cohesion has to start from the recognition that individualism, diversity and skepticism are written into Western culture People are integrated into society only in their partial aspects as taxpayers, consumers, voters, patient, producers, mothers, sisters… People are only partly and temporary involved The legal norms of the welfare state make individuals (not groups) the recipients of benefits. Individuals become actors, stagers The life of one owns is completely dependent on institutions, institutions guidelines. It's a set of guidelines that demand individuals to run their own lives on pain of economic direct or indirect sanction This kind of life is condemned to activity, because failure becomes personal failure. It's a form of self responsibility and individual blame Some problems can be directly turned into psychological dispositions: guilt feelings, anxieties, conflicts Nomadic life, people are unstuck, place polygamy, people spread their lives across different worlds (8) Detraditionalization and risk society. It creates also conflicts among different cultures, it's contextual cohexistance (9) There are no historical models for the conduct of life, individual and social life have to be brought back into harmony (10) Reflexive life and social categories become "zombie categories" (11) Only detraditionalization, global opening and a new multiplicity of functional logics give social space and meaning to individualization (12) Culture can be defined as an area of freedom which protect each group of individuals and has the capacity to produce and defend its own individualization People are better adapted to the future than are social institutions and their representatives Before the self had to be subordinated to pattern of collectivity, and these new "we" can create a cooperative or altruistic individualism Sub-politicization of society and depoliticization of national politics (Kant: critique on representative democracy) The individual only counts at the source of democratic legitimacy. The increasingly fragmented political structure of society, weakens the potential of political societies, eroding its consensus The closer space of national politics no longer exists Society and the public realm are constituted out of conflictual spaces that are at once individualized, transnationally open and defined in opposition to one another
Beyond status and class The structure of social inequality in western countries display a surprising stability We live in a country already beyond class society, in which the imagery of class is preserved only for want of a better alternative Entry into the labour market has repeatedly released people from fixed ties A tendency to individualized lifestyles forces people - for the sake of material survival - to make themselves the centre of their own life plans and conduct A process historically contradictory to that of socialization The consequences of individualization are of general interest for an understanding of major social shifts in the phase of advanced modernity Today is evident that such processes can be quite precarious, especially when people are forced to confront radical disruptions of their lifestyles Individualization is a product of the labour market and manifests itself in the acquisition of a variety of work skills The emergence of non-corporate class of identities The group of those not dependent on a wage becomes even smaller and the group of those dependent on a wage even larger One difference is that here it is no longer class categories but the very cultural and political dynamic of it
Staging the self, the practice of freedom and self-organization The self-organization geared to action and not just to the ballot box. Not only mere participation, but the right to charge of matters they deem important It's an autonomous set of organization set apart from the money economy and the ballot-box democracy Centrifugal dynamic All this requires: basic social and political rights, preparedness for conflict, capacity for compromise, civil courage, curiosity, tolerance of ambiguity
Self-politics and state politics Are consumer society and direct politics thus beginning to come together ...Outcomes in which individual can feel themselves to be author of global political acts The non political becomes the political and vice versa As the new self-politics becomes conscious of itself politically, a new kind of competitive relationship arises The political system is losing its monopoly of politics Forms and forums of politically self-active culture are taking shape (Internet, of course) Weaknesses: its lack of resources (money, time, law) but its relative strength comes from its combination of universality with ad hoc forms of commitment that shield from outside control. Impressionist imperialism Kant's critique on representative democracy The more a self culture is planned and promoted by the state, the weaker it is likely to be Gidden's active trust as the basis of the self culture, as recognition of individualization and of the presence of dissent
Sharpening of social inequality Productivity of capital arises without labour... Since poverty and unemployment correspond less and less to class stereotypes, it is becoming increasnigly difficult to identify them and to organize a movement around them
Dynamic poverty and unemployment Poverty as a phase in a person's life Lives become more varied, discontinuous, heterogeneous Sociologists speaks of dynamic poverty and unemployment, usually hidden away behind the four walls of the home So, historically specific forms of poverty and wealth, momentary wealth overlapping momentary poverty An ambivalent society without social structure With greater or less artistic skills and awareness we try to get control of our life, with the hope of moving to the next job application, the next marriage The new poverty vanishes and grows in the atmosphere pf silence
| Comments () >> |
 |
 |
