Losing the Traditional Individualization and 'Precarious Freedoms' A Life of One's Own in a Runaway World Individualization, Globalization and Politics Beyond Status and Class? The Ambivalent Social Structure Poverty and Wealth in a 'Self-Driven Culture' From 'Living for Others' to 'A Life of One's Own' Individualization and Women On the Way to the Post-Familial Family From a Community of Need to Elective Affinities Division of Labour, Self-Imaging and Life Projects New Conflicts in the Family Declining Birthrates and the Wish to Have Children Apparatuses Do Not Care for People Health and Responsibility in the Age of Genetic Technology Death of One's Own, Life of One's Own Hopes from Transience Freedom's Children Freedom's Fathers Zombie Categories Interview with Ulrich Beck

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Individualization: Institutionalized Individualism and its Social and Political Consequences

Scholars in management and economics widely share the assumption that business firms focus on profits only, while it is the task of the state system to provide public goods. In this view business firms are conceived of as economic actors, and governments and their state agencies are considered the only political actors. We suggest that, under the conditions of globalization, the strict division of labour between private business and nation-state governance does not hold any more. Many business firms have started to assume social and political responsibilities that go beyond legal requirements and fill the regulatory vacuum in global governance. Our review of the literature shows that there are a growing number of publications from various disciplines that propose a politicized concept of corporate social responsibility. We consider the implications of this new perspective for theorizing about the business firm, governance, and democracy.

https://www.springer.com/cda/content/document/cda_downloaddocument/9783834931795-c1.pdf?SGWID=0-0-45-1347110-p174325274

The New Political Role of Business in a Globalized World: A Review of a New Perspective on CSR and its Implications for the Firm, Governance, and Democracy

This article argues that marriage has undergone a process of deinstitutionalization—a weakening of the social norms that define partners’ behavior—over the past few decades. Examples are presented involving the increasing number and complexity of cohabiting unions and the emergence of same-sex marriage. Two transitions in the meaning of marriage that occurred in the United States during the 20th century have created the social context for deinstitutionalization. The first transition, noted by Ernest Burgess, was from the institutional marriage to the companionate marriage. The second transition was to the individualized marriage in which the emphasis on personal choice and self-development expanded. Although the practical importance of marriage has declined, its symbolic significance has remained high and may even have increased. It has become a marker of prestige and personal achievement. Examples of its symbolic significance are presented. The implications for the current state of marriage and its future direction are discussed. A quarter century ago, in an article entitled ‘‘Remarriage as an Incomplete Institution’’ (Cherlin, 1978), I argued that American society lacked norms about the way that members of stepfamilies should act toward each other. Parents and children in first marriages, in contrast, could rely on well-established norms, such as when it is appropriate to discipline a child. I predicted that, over time, as remarriage after divorce became common, norms would begin to emerge concerning proper behavior in stepfamilies—for example, what kind of relationship a stepfather should have with his stepchildren. In other words, I expected that remarriage would become institutionalized, that it would become more like first marriage. But just the opposite has happened. Remarriage has not become more like first marriage; rather, first marriage has become more like remarriage. Instead of the institutionalization of remarriage,

https://soc.jhu.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/28/2012/02/Cherlin_JMFmarriagepaper.pdf

The deinstitutionalization of American marriage

From the Arab Spring and los indignados in Spain, to Occupy Wall Street (and beyond), large-scale, sustained protests are using digital media in ways that go beyond sending and receiving messages. Some of these action formations contain relatively small roles for formal brick and mortar organizations. Others involve well-established advocacy organizations, in hybrid relations with other organizations, using technologies that enable personalized public engagement. Both stand in contrast to the more familiar organizationally managed and brokered action conventionally associated with social movement and issue advocacy. This article examines the organizational dynamics that emerge when communication becomes a prominent part of organizational structure. It argues that understanding such variations in large-scale action networks requires distinguishing between at least two logics that may be in play: The familiar logic of collective action associated with high levels of organizational resources and the formatio...

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The Logic of Connective Action

This article presents a series of possible conceptual frames for engaging with what has come to be known as post‐feminism. It understands post‐feminism to refer to an active process by which femini...

http://pages.erau.edu/~andrewsa/Project_3/Love_Rebecca/postfeminism2_love.pdf

Post‐feminism and popular culture

La individualización: el individualismo institucionalizado y sus consecuencias sociales y políticas

Is there such a thing as ‘global generations’? What does ‘global generation’ mean? Can we, as we did so far, still understand the concept of generation in a national frame of reference? Or do we need a cosmopolitan outlook to understand the generational dynamics that exacerbate inter-generational tensions within nations and intra-generational affinities and conflicts between nations? For example, globalized ‘Consumer Generations’ comprise very different fractions; not only those who buy and live with consumer brands and images, but also those who are unable to buy and live with these symbols, but risk their lives to become migrants to the consumer paradises of the Western World or Dubai. Our thesis is: A cosmopolitan sociology is required in order to understand the situations, impacts, divisions, contradictions, and desires of the global generations. A cosmopolitan sociology means a sociology that gets rid off ‘methodological nationalism’ and takes globality and (human) social life on planet Earth seriously. A cosmopolitan sociology differs from a universalistic one by starting, not from anything supposedly general, but from global variability, global interconnectedness, and global intercommunication. It means treating the global generations not as a single, universal generation with common symbols and a unique consciousness. Rather, it conceptualizes and analyses a multiplicity of global generations that appear as a set of intertwined transnational generational constellations.

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Global Generations and the Trap of Methodological Nationalism For a Cosmopolitan Turn in the Sociology of Youth and Generation

Zusammenfassung Die Individualisierungsdiskussion hat breite Kreise gezogen. Der Beitrag versucht eine Zwischenbilanz. Am Beispiel des vorstehenden Aufsatzes von Günter Burkart wird gezeigt, daß „Individualisierung“ Auflösung und Ablösung industriegesellschaftlicher Lebensformen durch solche meint, in denen die Individuen ihre Lebensformen und sozialen Bindungen unter sozialstaatlichen Vorgaben selbst herstellen, inszenieren, zusammenbasteln müssen. Insbesondere zwei Mißverständnisse blockieren die Diskussion: das individualistische und das rationalistische Mißverständnis. Beim ersten wird letztlich eine Auflösung der Gesellschaft unterstellt, beim zweiten davon ausgegangen, daß Individualisierung bewußte und autonome Entscheidungen impliziert. Damit werden die biographischen Unsicherheiten und Dilemmata verkannt, die mit fortschreitender Individualisierung alltäglich werden.

Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim

Papers

La individualización: el individualismo institucionalizado y sus consecuencias sociales y políticas

Global Generations and the Trap of Methodological Nationalism For a Cosmopolitan Turn in the Sociology of Youth and Generation

Nicht Autonomie, sondern Bastelbiographie. Anmerkungen zur Individualisierungsdiskussion am Beispiel des Aufsatzes von Günter Burkart

Das halbierte Leben : Männerwelt Beruf, Frauenwelt Familie

El normal caos del amor: las nuevas formas de la relación amorosa