individualisation thesis definition sociology

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Individualisation: Understanding its Significance and Implications

Table of Contents

Theoretical foundations of individualisation, dimensions of individualisation, implications of individualisation.

• Critiques and Counterarguments

Individualisation is a crucial concept in contemporary sociology that reflects the transformation of social structures and personal identities in late modernity. It signifies a shift from traditional, collective forms of social life to a society where individuals are increasingly responsible for their own life choices and identities. This concept has been extensively explored by sociologists like Ulrich Beck and Anthony Giddens , who argue that the processes of globalisation, technological advancement, and changing socio-economic conditions have led to new forms of individualism. This essay aims to outline and explain the concept of individualisation, its theoretical foundations, and its implications for understanding social life in modern societies.

Classical Theories of Individualism

Individualisation can be traced back to classical sociological theories, which often contrasted individual agency with social structure. Émile Durkheim, for instance, discussed the concept of ‘anomie,’ a state of normlessness resulting from the breakdown of social norms and values , which leads to increased individualism. Max Weber’s work on the ‘Protestant Ethic’ and the ‘spirit of capitalism’ also highlighted how individualistic values were integral to the development of modern capitalist societies. These early theories laid the groundwork for understanding how individuals navigate and negotiate their positions within changing social structures.

The Reflexive Modernisation Thesis

Ulrich Beck and Anthony Giddens have been central to the contemporary understanding of individualisation through their reflexive modernisation thesis. Beck’s concept of the ‘risk society’ suggests that in late modernity , individuals must constantly negotiate and manage risks in a rapidly changing world. This creates a necessity for self-reflection and personal decision-making, leading to greater individualisation. Giddens similarly argues that in a ‘runaway world,’ traditional frameworks of identity and community are destabilised, necessitating a continual process of self-identity construction through reflexivity.

The Role of Globalisation

Globalisation has significantly influenced individualisation by transforming economic, cultural, and social landscapes. The global flow of information, capital, and people has eroded traditional boundaries and created a more interconnected world. This interconnectedness fosters a sense of individual agency as people are exposed to diverse lifestyles and ideologies , compelling them to make conscious choices about their own identities and social roles. The global context thus provides a backdrop for the processes of individualisation, where traditional social anchors are weakened, and individuals must navigate a complex web of possibilities and risks.

Economic Individualisation

Economic changes have played a crucial role in fostering individualisation. The shift from industrial to post-industrial economies has resulted in more flexible, knowledge-based labour markets. In these new economies, individuals are often required to take responsibility for their own career paths, leading to the concept of the ‘portfolio worker,’ who must continuously update their skills and adapt to changing job markets. This economic individualisation is characterised by a decline in stable, lifelong employment and an increase in short-term contracts, freelancing, and gig work, which require a high degree of personal initiative and self-management.

Social and Cultural Individualisation

Social and cultural individualisation refers to the transformation of traditional social ties and cultural norms . In contemporary societies, traditional institutions like the family, religion , and community have lost their centrality, leading to more fluid and diverse forms of social relationships and cultural expressions. Individuals are now more likely to construct their own social networks and cultural identities rather than inheriting them from previous generations. This process is facilitated by technological advancements, particularly the internet and social media , which provide platforms for self-expression and the formation of virtual communities based on shared interests and values.

Political Individualisation

Political individualisation involves the changing nature of political engagement and citizenship. In modern societies, traditional forms of political participation, such as voting and party membership, have declined, while new forms of activism and engagement have emerged. Individuals are more likely to engage in issue-based politics, social movements, and digital activism, reflecting a shift towards more personalised and flexible forms of political involvement. This trend highlights the increasing importance of individual agency in shaping political agendas and influencing social change.

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Individualisation Thesis

The individualisation thesis was created by Chambers who argues that traditional relationships, roles and beliefs have lost their influence over individuals. As a result of increased individualisation, individuals have become increasingly inwardly focused and concerned about how society and networks can be used to provide instant gratification for them.

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Summary of Zygmunt Bauman’s ‘The Individualised Society’ (part 1/3)

Last Updated on July 24, 2017 by Karl Thompson

Chapter One  – The Rise and Fall of Labour

This chapter explains that the decline of the labour movement is due the extraterritorial power of Capital.

The industrial revolution led to labour being uprooted from its age old link to nature and then becoming tied to capital in commodity form, thus it could be bought and exchanged. In the era of heavy modernity, where profit derived from Fordist/ Taylorist big scale heavy production, capital and labour were dependent on each other for their well-being and reproduction because they were rooted in place,  hence the historic power of unions and the welfare state. It was in everyone’s interests to keep labour in good condition.

All of the above gave rise to a long-term (and collective?) mentality– as illustrated in collective bargaining through unions and also through the fact that pretty much all nineteenth century thinkers thought that there would be an end point to constant change, even if the means and ends to reach that end point differed.

All that has changed now – we have moved from a long term mentality to a short term one. The features of work today are as follows:

Such uncertainties are a powerful indivdualising force – when work is like a campsite (not a home) there is little incentive to take an interest in the organisation, and thus solidarity is lost. We find ourselves in a time of weak ties (Grannoveter) or fleeting associations (Sennet).

This disengagement between capital and labour is not one-sided – Capital has set itself loose from from its dependency on labour, its reproduction and growth have become by and large independent of the duration of any particular local engagement with labour. Extraterritorial capital is not yet completely free of local ties – it still has to deal with governments but, paradoxically, the only way for governments to attract Capital is to convince it that it is free to move away – and to give it what it requires.

Speed of Movement (following Crozier) now seems to be the main stratifier in the hierarchy of domination – ideas are now more profitable than production, and ideas are had only once, not reproduced a thousand times, and when it comes to making ideas profitable the objects of competition are consumers not producers, and this is now Capital’s primary relation – thus the ‘holding power’ of the local labour force is weakened.

Following Peyrefitte, Bauman now characterises Modernity as an attempt to build confidence and trust – in oneself, in others and in institutions – Modernity did this and work was its primary vehicle – there was trust in the general frame – now this is gone – when de-layering and downsizing is the norm, people no longer invest in it – they would rather trust (e.g.) the fleeting stock market than the collective bargaining power of unions.

Summary/ commentary/ questions

As a result workers mass-labourers are powerless – they are rooted to place, as are national governments – both can only compete in a race to the bottom to try and make things as attractive as possible to globally mobile capital.

For such workers, their efforts are in vein – they are expendable and they know it, hence they are less likely to join unions and less likely to get involved in politics – neither of these make any sense when they don’t have a grip on the present – when they do not have any purchase on security of livelihood.

Q: This could be an untestable theory? How does one measure the ‘mobility of Capital’ and its effects on employment?

The opposite of order is chaos – or a situation where there is always a 50-50 chance of any two events happening.

However, in every culture there are those who transgress boundaries, who do not fit, those who are ambivalent, and such ambivalences are unlikely to disappear because in reality no attempt to classify the complexities of the world are ever going to be able to accommodate the actual complexity of the world, and hence the more culture or order there is, the more ambivalence.

Order is also important in the global power struggle – Imposing order onto others is one way of gaining power. The more routine and predictable one’s life is, the more order, the less power. Order is something the powerless suffer and which the powerful impose, whereas they themselves (the elite) are relatively free to move as they please.

In terms of knowledge, space matters much less than it did in the past, and according to Paul Virillio, it doesn’t matter at all. In the age of instantaneous global communications, local knowledges which are based on face to face interactions and gatherings have much less authority. We get our information through cyberspace, and thus actual space matters less. However, for those doomed to be local, this is felt as powerlessness.

Summary/ Comment/ Questions

However, the elite no longer have to be present to impose order – they manage to do this by being free-floating – it is volatility which keeps people individualised and thus powerless and doomed to be local. (Limited to only certain types of freedom, but not the freedom to construct a more stable society).

Question – Doesn’t this somewhat overlook Glocalism – especially Permacultural elements of the green movement – albeit extremely fringe?

In other words, there is a trade-off between the need for freedom and the need for security – we need both, but to get one we have to sacrifice the other, and the sacrifice of either results in suffering. It follows that happiness can only ever be a fleeting thing as we flit between too much freedom or too much security, and finding the best-trade off is an ongoing process.

Impotence and inadequacy are the diseases of our late modern, post modern times. It is not the fear of non-conformity but the fear of not being able to conform, not transgression but boundlessness which are our problems. (Unlike in modern times, big brother is gone and there are numerous Joneses who couldn’t care less about our quests for our ‘true selves’).

Following Norbert Elias’ book title ‘The society of individuals’ – society consists of two forces locked in a battle of freedom and domination – society shaping the individuality of its members, and the individuals forming society out of their actions while pursuing strategies plausible and feasible within the socially woven web of their dependencies.

However, individualisation today is a fate and not a choice. In the land of individual freedom of choice the option to escape individualisation and not participate are not on the agenda. We are told that if we fail it is our fault, and we must find biographical solutions to problems which are socially created.

The Self-Assertive ability of men falls short of what genuine self-assertion would require – the choices we are free to make are generally trivial.

Togetherness, individual style

The root of the problem is the flight of power from politics – capital is extraterritorial and politics remains rooted to space – and the political solutions to the problems mobile capital creates is yet more freedom for capital – because there is no global institution that is capable of doing the job of regulating it. No one seems to have any solutions!

Democracy is an anarchic force – one best recognises democracy when it is complaining about not being democratic enough. Democracy is a constant battle to find the right balance between freedom and security. For most of modernity the fight has been for more freedom, now we need to focus more on security. However, the biggest danger of all is that we call off the fight to get the balance right by opting out of the social process (and engage with society only as indivduals).

I think Bauman is trying to say too much in this section – It’s much easier to understand some of what he says by cutting out about a third of it and reording it….

Instead, we seek biographical (personal) solutions to these systemic problems – . Rather than getting involved in long-haul politics, we limit our range of vision, our range of options to choosing how to better surviving or cope in this precarious world – we spend our time re-training, or improving our C.V.  (marketing) to make us more employable or promotable, for example. (Bauman says that selfishness and shortermism are a rational response to a precarious world). We are spured on by our efforts because we know that if we fail in our efforts we will be held responsible for the the consequences of our inability to keep ourselves employable.

Chapter Four – Modernity and Clarity – The Story of a Failed Romance.

In considering freedom we need to consider the difference between the range of viable possibilities on offer, which possibilities I wish to achieve and my ability to achieve them. If the volume of possibilities exceeds the capacity of the will then restlessness and anxiety are the result, but if I lack the means to attain a possibility I desire then withdrawal is the result.

The mission of modernity was (in Freudian terms) was to restrain the pleasure principle with the reality principle, or (in Durkheimian terms) to socialise the individual so that they would never want what they couldn’t achieve  and would want to do what was socially useful – real freedom meant to live like a slave (to one’s desires), society’s job was to get people to agree to acceptable freedoms and duties. In short, Modernity was about cutting the ‘I want’ down to the ‘I can’. Restricting people’s desires was the way Modernity dealt with the problem of ambivalence.

Today it is desire itself which fuels social change – Needs creation seems to be the main thing which Capitalism does (following Bourdieu). The way we integrate into society is as consumers – and we can only integrate if our wants constantly exceed our current level of satisfaction. (The only exception to this is the underclass, but they are the minority – their wants are managed, limited).

A second reason why modernity failed to tackle ambivalence is because modernity was always local, and it resulted in many localities with different solutions to ambivalence. Hence why we have neotribalisms and fundamentalism – these aim to heal the pain of ambivalence by cutting down choices – but the nature of these responses is that they are unpredictable.

When we have too much freedom, ambivalence is the result (ambivalence is a mixture of the doubts of reason (uncertainty over the probability of events) and the resulting indecision)

However, there is a growing gap between our growing (unfulfilled) desires and our ability to achieve them, and this creates ambivalence, which today is functional for Capitalism.

There are movements which offer alternatives to consumerism – Fundamentalisms and Neotribalisms – but these do not offer the possiblity for systemic reproduction because they tend to be local, and are thus only ‘guerilla movements’ between the brightly lit shopping malls which perpetuate ambivalence at the levels of the system and the lifeworld in general.

I think Bauman maybe ignores elemts of the green movement and the anti-consumerist movement – these have the potential to resocialise people into constraining their desires on the basis of a global ethics of responsibility for the other, and do, in fact, specifically focus on how the local and the global intersect.

According to Levinas, our starting point should be ethics – I am my brothers keeper, because his well-being hinges on what I do and refrain from doing. He is dependent on me. To question this dependence by asking the question ‘Am I my brother’s keeper’, asking for reasons why I should care, is to stop being a moral being, because morality hinges on (internalising?) this crucial dependent relationship.

However, the nature of unemployment has changed today – They are not a reserve army of labour because downsizing means they are unlikely to be recalled by industry, and they have no social function – they are not needed for work and they are not useful as consumers – because the products they need are low profit and they cannot afford anything else. Hence the recasting of them as the underclass – society would be better off without them, so best to forget them! Free floating capital has no need to keep local-underclasses nourished. To illustrate this Bauman draws on Beck’s ‘The Brave New World of Work’ – only 1 in 2 Europeans have regular, full-time employment.

Because there is no rational economic reason for the welfare state, we should go back and make the ethical argument for it….. I am my brothers keeper, we are all dependent on each other and a society should be measured by its weakest link.

I don’t think this needs any translating, for once just summarising it once makes it understandable.

The things which contribute to this are as follows:

For the better off the messiness of strangers can be avoided – For those in the suburbs, strangers are an occasional pleasure when they want to interact with them, and those who provide services for them. For the poor, however, dealing with strangers cannot be avoided, and they are experienced as a threat to their sense of orderliness. They live in areas where they are not able to choose, and lack the money to escape, so they vent their frustrations in other ways – everything from racism to riots for example. Following Cohen, people feel as if they are losing their sense of home because of the stranger (but the strangers are not the real cause of course, they are just a symptom).

We tend to see strangers as either exotic pleasure sources or as exaggerated threats… and this in turn stems from polarisation of wealth and life chances, but also of the capacity for genuine individuality… until we sort this out the detoxification of strangers and a move forwards to genuine new global concepts of citizenship are a long way off.

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4 Individual, Individuality, Individualism

• Published: April 2022
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‘Individual, Individuality, Individualism’ engages with a number of terms that could be described as buzzwords of modern society, having a status similar to terms like ‘power,’ ‘freedom,’ ‘(un)consciousnesses,’ or ‘education.’ Their commonsense status seems to suggest that it is clear what they mean, but the closer one looks, the more vague and ambiguous such definitions appear. Classical sociology tried to provide such a definition when the debate between individualism and collectivism was in vogue and sociology needed to present its own version of the relationship between individual and society. Perhaps the success of the approach developed during this period is one reason why certain assumptions have not been explored in further detail, thus preventing a more in-depth clarification. The historical semantics of individual, individuality, and individualism aims to reveal insights that were brushed aside by classical sociology. The chapter also assesses the ability of classical sociology itself, namely to what extent it can reappear in its own subject area as a semantics that at the same time gives substance to its own thinking. Reconstructing all that is not an easy process, but this detailed, fine-grained, and nuanced analysis of a semantics of nature, contract, and values of the individual yields remarkable results that unravel inventions of self-determined autonomy, shifts from inclusion to exclusion as the basis for modern individuality, but also makes profound suggestions for how the individual can be conceived from the perspective of sociological theory without requiring a normative definition of it.

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Individualisation: Beyond Class and Social Communities?

• First Online: 11 December 2021

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• Klaus Rasborg 2  

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Environmental issues may have been the starting point for Beck’s general diagnosis of the risk society, as noted in Chap. 3 , but the concept is not only tied in with damage inflicted on the planet but also in a broader sense with the de-traditionalisation and individualisation of modern society. On the one hand, this process frees us from traditional ways of life and communities (the church, the local area, classes, political parties, the family, etc.); on the other hand, it exacerbates existential uncertainty, as we lose what were previously the fixed anchors in life (Beck, 1992 [1986]: part 2). This process brings us to the second key component in Beck’s diagnosis of the risk society: his ‘individualisation thesis’.

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The German sociologist Markus Schroer, to whom Beck refers with regard to individualisation (Beck & Willms, 2004 : 62), distinguishes between three different lines of tradition in classical and modern sociology, each representing a particular view of individualisation: (1) ‘positive individualisation’ characterised by a ‘dangerous individual’ (Durkheim, Parsons and Luhmann); (2) ‘negative individualisation’ characterised by an ‘endangered individual’ (Weber , Horkheimer, Adorno and Foucault) and (3) ‘ambivalent individualisation’ characterised by a ‘risk individual’ (Simmel , Elias and Beck) (Schroer, 2000 ).

In the context of Beck’s ‘cosmopolitan turn’, which we will look at more closely in Chap. 7 , it is intriguing that Simmel identifies a link between individualisation and cosmopolitanism/cosmopolitanisation in modern society as early as 1888.

Beck’s concept of ‘individualisation’ (liberation) and Giddens’ concept of ‘disembedding’ can to a large degree be seen as congruent concepts, even though the latter cannot be reduced simply to the former.

The concept of ‘institutionalised individualism’ originates from Parsons, who refers to the fact that (utilitarian) self-interest and solidarity (altruism) are not necessarily opposites but can in fact go hand in hand in modern society (Parsons, 1978 : 321 f.). Beck, however, prefers to speak of ‘institutional individuali sation ’ because he wants to avoid the confusion of individualisation’s ‘objective’ dimension (individualisation) with its ‘subjective’ dimension (individualism) (Beck, 2007 : 682, 702, note 6).

The later—cosmopolitan—Beck (cf. Chap. 7 ) also critiques his own theory of individualisation for having been too closely tied to a nation-state perspective (Beck, 2007 : 680, 687).

Although Beck refers to Simmel when addressing the relationship between individualisation and standardisation (Beck, 1992 [1986]: 130–31), when it comes to the relationship between individualisation and cosmopolitanisation in modern society, he does not seem to be aware of the connection to Simmel and refers to Durkheim instead (Beck, 2010 : 96).

Here, Ziehe seems to follow Habermas’ ( 1997 ) distinction between, on the one hand, morals (norms), which relate to ‘the right’ (Kant ) and can therefore be generalised and, on the other hand, ethics (values), which are about ‘the good’ (Aristotle’s ‘the good life’), which will always be bound to particular life forms and therefore cannot be generalised (Ziehe, 1997 : 131).

While Beck does not make any explicit references to Ziehe, Ziehe occasionally refers explicitly to Beck (e.g. Ziehe, 2004 : 173 and 215). For example, Ziehe states that with regard to the diagnosis of the times: ‘I am close to the concept of ‘second modernity’ in Ulrich Beck and Anthony Giddens’ (Ziehe, 2004 : 8). One possible explanation for this silence may be that Ziehe is often perceived as an exponent of a socio-psychological approach to individualisation, an approach from which Beck explicitly distances himself in an overview of research contributions to the German individualisation debate, only including sociological ones (Beck, 1995b : 186–87).

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Rasborg, K. (2021). Individualisation: Beyond Class and Social Communities?. In: Ulrich Beck. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89201-2_4

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89201-2_4

Published : 11 December 2021

Publisher Name : Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

Print ISBN : 978-3-030-89200-5

Online ISBN : 978-3-030-89201-2

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Individualization Institutionalized Individualism and its Social and Political Consequences

• Ulrich Beck - University of Munich, Germany
• Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim - F.A.-University Erlangen-Nurnberg, Germany
• Description

`Ulrich Beck's Risk Society, and indeed the theory of "reflexive modernization" is characterized by two theses: an environmental thesis and individualization thesis.... In Anglo-Saxon sociology the risk thesis has been enormously influential. The individualization thesis, for its part, has passed virtually ignored. That is the shortcoming that this book Individualization addressess.... In this single volume this thesis receives the exclusive attention of Ulrich Beck and Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim. This book represents the other half of Beck's work. And this half today may be the most important half' - Scott Lash, from the Foreword

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Individualization: Author's Preface

Individualization: Losing the Traditional

Individualization: A Life of One's Own in a Runaway World

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The Individualization Thesis

• Created by: georgiamckibbin
• Created on: 16-01-17 10:48

• Families and households

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