The Individualisation thesis Flashcards
What does the individualisation thesis argue?
Traditional social structures such as class, gender and family have lost their influence over us.
What do Giddens and Beck explore in particular?
Individual choice upon families and relationships.
What were people’s lives like in the past?
People’s lives were defined by fixed roles that largely prevented them from choosing their own life course. E.g. everyone was expected to marry. However, individuals in today’s society have fewer fixed roles to follow.
What has happened now according to individualisation thesis?
We have become free from traditional roles and structures, leaving us more freedom to choose how we lead our lives.
According to Giddens why is there greater choice in family and why have relationships between men and women become more equal?
Contraception - has allowed sex and intimacy rather than reproduction to become the main reason for the relationship’s existence
Women have gained independence as a result of feminism and because of greater opportunities in education and work.
How has the basis of family and marriage changed?
In the past, traditional family relationships were held together by external forces e.g. laws governing the marriage contract.
Today, couples are free to define their relationship themselves, rather than acting out roles that have been defined in advance by laws/tradition.
What does Giddens talk about?
The pure relationship
What is the pure relationship?
Relationships are no longer bound by traditional norms but are based on individual choice and equality.
What is the key feature of the pure relationship?
It exists solely to satisfy each partner’s needs. Couples stay together because of love, happiness or sexual attraction, rather than because of tradition and children.
However, what does Giddens note?
With more choice, personal relationships become less stable. The pure relationship can be ended at will by either partner, rather than a permanent commitment. This in turn produces greater family diversity by creating more lone parent families etc.
What does Giddens say about same-sex couples?
Sees them as leading the way towards new family types and creating more democratic and equal relationships.
This is because same-sex couples aren’t influenced by tradition to the extent that heterosexual relationships are.
Therefore, same-sex couples have been able to develop relationships based on choice rather than traditional roles.
This has enabled those in same-sex couples to negotiate personal relationships and to actively create family structures that serve their own needs.
What does Beck talk about?
The negotiated family
What does Beck argue?
We now live in a ‘risk society’ where tradition has less influence and people have more choice. As a result, we are more aware of risks. This is because making choices involves calculating the risks and rewards of the different options open to us.
How does this contrast with the past?
In the past people’s roles were fixed by tradition and social norms dictated how they should behave.
For example, the traditional patriarchal family (woman=housewife and man=breadwinner).
Although it was unequal and oppressive, it provided stable and predictable roles for family life.
What two trends has the patriarchal family been undermined by?
Greater gender equality : has challenged male domination in all spheres of life. Women now expect equality both at work and in marriage.
Greater individualism : where people’s actions are influenced more by calculations of their own self-interest than by a sense of obligation to others.
