Paradoxes of Individualization

Social Control and Social Conflict in Contemporary Modernity

Dick Houtman, Stef Aupers, Willem de Koster

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781351912853
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Paradoxes of Individualization addresses one of the most hotly debated issues in contemporary sociology: whether a process of individualization is liberating selves from society so as to make them the authors of their personal biographies. The book adopts a cultural-sociological approach that firmly rejects such a notion of individualization as naïve. The process is instead conceptualized as an increasing social significance of moral notions of individual liberty, personal authenticity and cultural tolerance, which informs two paradoxes. Firstly, chapters about consumer behavior, computer gaming, new age spirituality and right-wing extremism demonstrate that this individualism entails a new, yet often unacknowledged, form of social control. The second paradox, addressed in chapters about religious, cultural and political conflict, is concerned with the fact that it is precisely individualism's increased social significance that has made it morally and politically contested. Paradoxes of Individualization, will therefore be of interest to scholars and students of cultural sociology, cultural anthropology, political science, and cultural, religious and media studies, and particularly to those with interests in social theory, culture, politics and religion.

Chapter 1
Introduction: The Myth of Individualization and the Dream of Individualism

Introduction

‘However plausible, and at first sight convincing it is to see an autonomous, self-directing, self-realizing individual emerging from the ashes of scarcity, religious belief, tradition, and authority, the diagnosis of individualization is empirically untenable’, Mark Elchardus (2009: 152) concludes about the theory of individualization brought forward by sociologists like Zygmunt Bauman (1995, 1997, 2001a), Anthony Giddens (1991) and Ulrich Beck (1992, Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 2002). If individualization would really have occurred, he maintains, strong relationships between ‘standard sociological characteristics’ (idem: 150) or ‘standard sociological variables (such as class, level of education, gender)’ (idem: 148) and how people think, feel and act would clearly be the last thing one would expect to find. With this argument Elchardus echoes Paul de Beer, who brings in similar evidence to demonstrate that what people think, feel and do is still strongly related to ‘their objective characteristics’ (2007: 394).

But how could it be otherwise? sociologically speaking, such a notion of individualization is not at all ‘plausible, and at first sight convincing’, but is in fact absurd since it suggests that the discipline’s distinctive approach to social life-based on the notion that people are inevitably socially shaped—can and needs to be treated as a testable hypothesis. Because of this, the question of whether or not ‘individuals’ are still socially shaped, produced and controlled is too general and non-sociological and hence needs to be replaced by the more feasible question of whether, why and how modes of social control are undergoing a process of transformation. We have, however, major doubts about whether a theory based on the notion that individualization is an inherently non-cultural process, as Elchardus and De Beer proclaim, can provide much of an answer to this question.

Even though it remains perfectly obscure why De Beer chooses to include religiosity as one of his ‘objective’ independent variables, while treating people’s moral and political values as ‘subjective’ dependent ones (idem: 394), the theory of individualization critiqued by him and Elchardus is informed by a distinction between ‘objective’ independent and ‘subjective’ dependent variables. This assumes that culture is basically irrelevant and non-consequential—that it is merely a ‘reflection’, ‘consequence’ or ‘outcome’ of a ‘more fundamental’ and ‘more real’ ‘underlying’ social reality. such a positivist account of culture as causally insignificant, Jeffrey Alexander (2003: 13) explains, assumes that:

explanatory power lies in the study of the “hard” variables of social structure, such that structured sets of meanings become superstructures and ideologies driven by these more “real” and tangible social forces’, whereby culture ''' defined as a “soft”, not really independent variable: it is more or less confined to participating in the reproduction of social relations.

To demonstrate how difficult it nonetheless is to dispel the specter of culture from a sociological theory of individualization, we start with an interrogation of the ambiguities of De Beer’s (2007) and Elchardus’s (2009) treatments of individualization and individualism. We then outline our own cultural-sociological theory that gives individualism, this modern cultural ideal par excellence, its full due as central to the process of individualization. Analogous to the late Bryan Wilson’s (1982: 149) conceptualization of secularization as ‘that process by which religious institutions, actions, and consciousness, lose their social significance’, we hence define individualization as ‘that process by which a moral notion of individualism increases in social significance.’ In doing so, we conceive of individualism as central to a (post)modern worldview that operates not unlike its religious counterparts in providing the world with meaning and informing the social actions of those who accept it (for example, Campbell 2007, Chaves 1994, Weber 1963 [1922]).

The Myth of Individualization and the Dream of Individualism

Individualization without Individualism?

De Beer’s (2007) and Elchardus’s (2009) notion that individualization can be understood as an inherently non-cultural process is not only remarkable for its sociologically naïve assumption that it is actually conceivable that selves are not socially shaped, so that this needs to be empirically studied, but even more so because the ambiguities in their own critiques confirm how difficult it actually is to dispel the cultural specter of individualism from a theory of individualization. Indeed, at a closer and more critical look, their accounts contain the seeds of a sociologically richer treatment of individualization that opens it up as a cultural-sociological problem.

For a start, De Beer (2007: 390) explains that the Netherlands constitutes an ideal case for the study of individualization because of ‘social and cultural trends over the last 25 years that (…) are most aptly characterized by the term “individualization”’ and also, referring to Ronald Inglehart’s work about ‘postmaterialist values’ and ‘postmodernization’, which both ‘clearly centre on the individual’, because this country ‘moreover [sic] stands out as one of the most progressive and liberal countries.’ Whereas the word ‘moreover’ suggests that these ‘cultural trends’ are somehow unrelated to and different from the non-cultural conception of individualization De Beer sets out to critique, he simultaneously asserts the exact opposite when he claims that the Netherlands is an ideal case study because of its marked progressive and liberal emphasis on liberty, cultural tolerance, postmaterialism, etcetera, which makes it one of the most individualized countries of the world.

Having thus effectively defined individualization in two competing ways, De Beer subsequently leaves his readers puzzled when he proclaims that ‘one must, of course, first define individualization’ (idem: 390), stating as a matter of fact that ‘individualization should clearly be distinguished from individualism’ (idem: 391, our emphasis). Given the immediately preceding argument about the Netherlands as an ideal case, it remains unclear why this is ‘clear’ and his explanation that ‘individualism is commonly understood as a personal attitude or preference’ (idem: 391, our emphasis) fails to convince for its absence of literature references and its failure to critique such a naïve and non-sociological conception of individualism. Indeed, towards the end of his article De Beer no longer asserts confidently that moral individualism has ‘clearly’ nothing to do with individualization, but more modestly acknowledges that his own analysis ‘does not shed any light on this interpretation of individualization which I prefer to call individualism’ (idem: 406, our emphasis). Needless to say, this leaves him caught between two competing notions of individualization, which urges him to defend the thesis that the Netherlands is highly individualized (the cultural basis for its selection), yet is not really individualized (going by the relationships between variables he has found). The principal conclusion to draw from De Beer’s article, then, is that despite his desire to dispel individualism, conceived as a cultural emphasis on individual liberty and cultural tolerance, from the theory of individualization, the awareness that it has in fact everything to do with it looms so large that it even informs his case selection.

A similar ambiguity can be found in Elchardus’s article (2009), which in its opening pages also insists on a distinction between ‘individualization’ and ‘individualism’—‘a property of the choices people make’ and ‘a discourse or a vocabulary of motives’, respectively (idem: 147)—, to enable him to effortlessly bash the resulting (‘plausible, and at first sight convincing’) sociologically naïve straw man to death. Having rejected the non-sociological notion that individual selves may be decreasingly shaped by social forces, Elchardus then proceeds to outline a more sociologically informed theory of individualization, central to which is the notion that the latter does not entail a disappearance of social control, but rather a transition to a new mode of social control: ‘This new mode of control is centered around the self. It is, literally, self-control, not in the 19th century meaning of self-restraint, but in the sense of control of the self through the self …, using among other things individualism as a vocabulary of motives, socially constructed as an individual that views itself as a choosing agent’ (idem: 153). s o there we are again: at second thought, Elchardus, much like De Beer, abandons his positivist notion that what people do is not culturally informed, so that cultural discourse is made causally irrelevant and comes in only as a legitimation of what they have already done. At the same time Elchardus recognizes that a good sociological theory of individualization must be a theory of social control, according to which people are increasingly socialized and stimulated to think of themselves as individuals, so that a cultural notion of individualism needs to be central to it after all.

Similarly, Atkinson (2007: 536) critiques the notion that the class constraints of the past have somehow made way for free, reflexive and unconstrained lifestyle choices within the context of an ongoing process of self-construction, pointing out that such a theory misses an awareness of ‘the role of resources and processes of inscription by privileged others in producing self-identity.’ The major problem with this type of individualization theory, Atkinson (idem: 542) echoes arguments made by Bellah et al. (1985), is that it cannot explain ‘why, exactly, … different individuals and groups choose different lifestyles’, commenting on Giddens that ‘it is hard to see how lifestyle choices, including the decision to change lifestyle altogether, could be made without being guided by the orientations furnished by the lifestyle already adopted. Either the self must somehow, in a way left unexplained by Giddens, be able to transcend the orientations of its lifestyle in order to choose or else lifestyle choices are not as “free” as he would like to make out’ (his emphasis).

Individualism as a Middle-Class Moral Ideal

The strain of individualization theory brought forward by Bauman, Giddens and Beck, Atkinson furthermore points out, moreover ‘resonates only with the experiences of the middle classes’ (idem: 536), informed as it is by middle-class longings for personal agency that are inappropriately generalized to Western populations as a whole. And indeed, as any number of studies conducted since the 1950s has demonstrated, he could hardly be more correct. It is, after all, the middle class that embraces ‘tolerance towards non-conformity’ (for example, Nunn et al. 1978, Stouffer 1955) and ‘self-direction’ rather than ‘conformity’ as a parental value (kohn 1977 [1969], kohn and Schooler 1983, kohn and Slomczynski 1990). This goes particularly for the ‘new’ middle class with its ‘postmaterialist’ value orientation that puts individual freedom and democracy above ‘materialist’ needs of security and social order (Inglehart 1977, 1990, 1997). To be more precise, the moral type of individualism that these notions capture is not so much embraced by ‘the middle class’ or ‘the affluent’ in an economic sense, as these and other ‘Marxist-lite’ theories have suggested since Lipset (1959) launched his theory of ‘working-class authoritarianism’ half a century ago. It is instead typical of those with a high level of education, particularly with degrees in non-economic, nontechnical, and non-administrative fields—by the well educated conceived as a socio-cultural rather than a socio-economic category, in short (Houtman 2003).

Indeed, the fact that this moral type of individualism is intimately tied up with education does as much to demonstrate that the social shaping of selves is not over and done with, as it does to point out that a sociological theory of individualization worth its salt needs to place the social processes at its center through which this individualism is constructed, transmitted, appropriated and acted upon. This, however, is not what De Beer, Elchardus and Atkinson do. Whereas they correctly identify the notion of a disappearance of the social shaping of the self as a modern myth, they hesitate to take individualism’s role in shaping contemporary social life very seriously, suggesting instead—however ambiguously and inconsistently, as we have seen—that ‘individualization has nothing to do with individualism.’ In this book, we aim to overcome this ambiguity by adopting an explicitly Weberian cultural-sociological understanding of individualization, central to which is the increased social significance of individualism.

The dual aim of this opening chapter is to develop this theoretical argument and to put some first empirical flesh on its bones so as to set the stage for the remainder of the book. We demonstrate that Max Weber’s classical cultural sociology already hinted in the direction of such a theory of individualization, although he was unfortunately hesitant to draw out the full implications of his theory of the disenchantment of the world. Critically confronting the latter with Durkheim’s struggle with the problem of individualism over the course of his career, however, reveals that he should have done so. t he thesis that we propose in this chapter, in short, is that carefully fleshing out and comparing Weber’s and Durkheim’s analyses of modern cultural discontents and their corollaries, yields a powerful cultural-sociological theory of individualization that is empirically supported by changes that have particularly unfolded since the counter culture of the 1960s.

Modernity and Cultural Disenchantment

Max Weber and the Disenchantment of the World

Weber’s narrative of the gradual disappearance of the metaphysical ‘Hinterwelt’ that once provided the Western world with solid meaning continues to evoke debate and arouse the intellectual imagination. This process of disenchantment took off, Weber argued, with the emergence of Judaic anti-magical monotheism in ancient times and was pushed a decisive step further forward when the Protestant Reformation unleashed its attack on Catholic magic and superstition in the sixteenth century. The latter’s further expulsion from the modern world has since been firmly supported by modern intellectualism’s imperative of pursuing truth and nothing but truth, significantly contributing to a world increasingly devoid of meaning—a world in which ‘processes … simply “are” and “happen” but no longer signify anything’ (Weber 1978 [1921]: 506).

Modern science, because of its anti-metaphysical and empirical orientation, cannot help but further the disenchantment of the world. Potent though it is, it cannot provide answers to what are ultimately the most significant questions faced by mankind—the meaning of life, the purpose of the world, and the life plans to pursue or refrain from: ‘Only a prophet or a savior can give the answers’ (Weber 1948 [1919]: 153). As an essentially ‘irreligious power’ (idem: 142), all science can do is rob the world of its remaining mysteries by laying bare causal chains: ‘[The disenchantment of the world … means that principally there are no mysterious incalculable forces that come into play, but rather that one can, in principle, master all things by calculation’, as Weber summarized his position in the probably most cited passage of his essay ‘science as a vocation’ (idem: 139). Once technologically instrumentalized, such causal chains yield a superior and quintessentially modern mode of controlling nature that further marginalizes magical practices: ‘[O]ne need no longer have recourse to magical means to master or implore the spirits, as did the savage, for whom such mysterious powers existed. Technical means and calculations perform the service’ (idem: 139). Technology liberates human beings from circumstances their ancestors simply had to bear and is meanwhile even deployed to improve and optimize their own bodies and minds (for example, Fukuyama 2002).

Although the variety of uses to which technology can be put is virtually infinite-ranging from curing diseases, increasing profits or countering global warming to exterminating ethnic or religious others—, science can only remain silent about the ends worth pursuing. It can only provide means to given ends, because it is unauthorized in the domain of moral values: '… it [cannot] be proved that the existence of the world which these sciences describe is worth while, that it has any “meaning”, or that it makes sense to live in such a world’ (Weber 1948 [1919]: 144). Although Weber acknowledged that, much to his horror, there are ‘big children in the natural sciences’ (idem: 142) who believe they can bestow ‘objective’ meaning upon the world, he firmly rejected such a position himself. Science, he insisted, simply cannot decide between competing value claims.

More than that: science can only further disenchantment by progressively destroying the metaphysical foundations on which mutually conflicting religious doctrines and political ideologies rely. science hence inevitably creates and aggravates modern problems of meaning. The fate of modern man, Weber held, is to face this stern reality as it is, without illusions—to heroically bear the modern fate of meaninglessness without taking refuge in utopian dreams or promises of religious salvation, because there simply is no way back. Although he took great efforts to take this imperative seriously in his own life as a man of science, the struggle with his ‘inner demons’ that resulted in a mental breakdown in the period 1897-1902 demonstrates how difficult a task this actually was (Radkau 2009).

Does Disenchantment Spark Reenchantment?

There is much to commend Weber’s analysis of the progressive dissolution of solidly grounded meaning in the modern world. Perhaps more than anything else, the emergence of postmodernism since the 1960s confirms Weber’s position. Contemporary culture, as postmodern thinkers have argued, has after all lost much of its metaphysical foundation now that most people no longer believe that they live in ‘natural’ or ‘solidly grounded’ social worlds, but instead inhabit a world ruled by insidiously rhizoming simulations that entail a virtual disappearance of ‘real’ or ‘authentic’ reality (Baudrillard 1993 [1976], Houtman 2008), a world in which depth has been superseded by surface (Jameson 1991) and in which even science’s authority to legislate truth has progressively dissolved (Bauman 1987, Rorty 1980). Hardly surprising, the Christian churches, these guardians of religious metaphysics in the West, have also lost much of their former appeal in this cultural climate (for example, Brown 2001, Houtman and Mascini 2002, Norris and Inglehart 2004). The progressive disenchantment of the world, predicted by Weber a century ago, seems a mere truism.

Or is it? Interestingly enough, the cultural climate in Weber’s own intellectual circles in the German city of Heidelberg at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth century already suggested otherwise. There and then, many a philosopher, psychologist, a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Dedication
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• List of Contributors
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Introduction: The Myth of Individualization and the Dream of Individualism
• 2 Agony of Choice?: The Social Embeddedness of Consumer Decisions
• 3 Beyond the Spiritual Supermarket: Why New Age Spirituality is Less Privatized Than They Say It Is
• 4 'Be Who You Want to Be'?: Commodified Agency in Online Computer Games
• 5 'Stormfront is like a Second Home to Me': Social Exclusion of Right-Wing Extremists
• 6 Contesting Individualism Online: Catholic, Protestant and Holistic Spiritual Appropriations of the World Wide Web
• 7 Two Lefts and Two Rights: Class Voting and Cultural Voting in the Netherlands, 2002
• 8 One Nation without God?: Post-Christian Cultural Conflict in the Netherlands
• 9 Secular Intolerance in a Post-Christian Society: The Case of Islam in the Netherlands
• Bibliography
• Index