Individualization as an Interpretive Scheme of Inequality: Why Class and Inequality Persist

Ulrich Beck

“…If institutionalized individualization means that there is a growing pressure towards reflexive life styles and individualized biographies and that meaning and identity need to be discovered individually, 11 can there still be a collective identity of class? When individualization generalizes the mode of self-accountability and self-responsibility (Wohlrab-Sahr 2003)-both as expectation of others and as selfimage-but at the same time social inequalities are intensifying, how can this ambivalence of an individualized class society be sociologically and politically decoded (Nollmann/Strasser 2007)? 12 The argument of the individualization theorists is that objective features (income, position in the hierarchy) and subjective features (consciousness, lifestyle, leisure interests, political attitude) diverge.…”

“…There emerges a 11 These are the themes of the conceptually and empirically highly differentiated life course research; for recent work/research see Cosmo Howard (2007) or on specific topics Budgeon (2003), Elliott (2001), Furlong/Cartmel (1997), Mayer (2004), Mills (2007), Mythen (2005), Nies (2007) and many others. 12 Nollmann/Strasser (2007) try to build a bridge between theories of individualization and class. 'Individualisation theorists argue that individuals no longer consider themselves as class members with a common fate and destination.…”

Late Modernity, Individualization and Socialism

“…(Savage 2000:105) Bourdieu's theory of social practice is a common influence here, particularly the way in which certain fields require the development of a habitus, itself determined by a reflexive identification or disidentification with others and ideas (Bourdieu 1984, Adams 2006. Consequently, reflexivity, as 'an emotional, embodied and cognitive process in which social actors have feelings about and try to understand and alter their lives in relation to their social and natural environment and to others' (Holmes 2010:140), is culturally (Adams 2003); temporally (Jackson 2010); morally (Yeatman 2007); and spatially (Adkins 2000) situated within categories of class (Plumridge andThomson 2003, Nollmann andStrasser 2007); gender (Skelton 2005); and life course (Dickens 1999, Heaphy andYip 2003). The effects of this on political individualization are multi-faceted.…”

“…Also, the possibility of having reflexive choices recognized requires the holding and utilization of forms of capital, notably cultural capital (Lewis 2006, Banks andMilestone 2011). This, it is argued, produces an awareness of the inequalities of the possibility of truly 'freely' making reflexive choices: some can but I can't (Nollmann and Strasser 2007).…”

“…In this field we can see the continued relevance of the inequalities of embedded individualization, since members of a 'lower' class continue to contribute more proportionally to charity than their more well-off counterparts (Piff et al 2010). These are two examples of increased political individualization since they rely upon an expansion of choice and increasingly political connotations to such choices, which can also be seen in choices of work and at work (Nollmann and Strasser 2007), public sector employee choices (Hoggett et al 2007), childcare (Brady 2007), joining or leaving social movements (King 2006, Ødegårda andBerglund 2008) and relationship choices (Smart and Shipman 2004). All of these areas, as part of everyday life, demonstrate this increased politicization and the juggling of political and moral questions, and they reflect how individualization is a 'process by which a moral notion of individualism increases in social significance' (Houtman et al 2011:2).…”