Individualization : Institutionalized Individualism and Its Social and Political Consequences

by Ulrich Beck

• ISBN13: 9780761961116
• ISBN10: 0761961119
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2002-02-04
• Publisher: Sage Publications Ltd

Summary

Individualization argues that we are in the midst of a fundamental change in the nature of society and politics. This change hinges around two processes: globalization and individualization. The book demonstrates that individualization is a structural characteristic of highly differentiated societies, and does not imperil social cohesion, but actually makes it possible. Ulrich Beck and Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim argue that it is vital to distinguish between the neo-liberal idea of the free-market individual and the concept of individualization. The result is the most complete discussion of individualization currently available, showing how individualization relates to basic social rights and also paid employment; and concluding that in as much as basic rights are internalized and everyone wants to or must be economically active, the spiral of individualization destroys the given foundations of social co-existence. Acute, assured and compelling, the book will be required reading for the growing body of readers interested in risk society, but especially students of sociology, political science and cultural studies.

Table of Contents

Foreword: Individualization in a non-linear mode	vii
Scott Lash
Foreword: Individually, together	xiv
Zygmunt Bauman
Authors' preface: Institutionalized individualism	xx
Losing the traditional: Individualization and `precarious freedoms'	1	(21)
A life of one's own in a runaway world: Individualization, globalization and politics	22	(8)
Beyond status and class?	30	(12)
The ambivalent social structure: Poverty and wealth in a `self-driven culture'	42	(12)
From `living for others' to `a life of one's own': Individualization and women	54	(31)
On the way to a post-familial family: From a community of need to elective affinities	85	(16)
Division of labour, self-image and life projects: New conflicts in the family	101	(18)
Declining birthrates and the wish to have children	119	(10)
Apparatuses do not care for people	129	(10)
Health and responsibility in the age of genetic technology	139	(12)
Death of one's own, life of one's own: Hopes from transience	151	(5)
Freedom's children	156	(16)
Freedom's fathers	172	(30)
Zombie categories: Interview with Ulrich Beck	202	(12)
Index	214