Organised Individualisation
Norbert Ebert
Macquarie University
Abstract
The aim of this paper is to theoretically reconsider some of the features of
contemporary individualisation in order to be able to raise questions about possible
social pathologies which cannot be sufficiently understood with the aid of existing
conceptualisations of individualisation. Hence, this paper explores structural and
normative aspects of individualisation and how they unfold under conditions of
contemporary network capitalism. My argument is that individualisation becomes an
ideological and ambiguous process of liberation. While it comprises liberating
aspects, it also starts to serve as a means for systemic coordination and reproduction.
Individualisation thus can be redefined as structurally enabled but also as normative
individualisation, while the pathologies can be captured as organised
individualisation.
Keywords: individualisation, organised individualisation, network capitalism
Introduction
In the article Freedom and the Individual, originally published in 1913, Georg
Simmel wrote:
The general European consensus is that the era of the Italian Renaissance
created what we call individuality. By this is meant a state of inner and
external liberation of the individual from the communal forms of the Middle
Ages, forms which had constricted the pattern of his life, his activities, and his
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fundamental impulses through homogenising groups. These had, as it were,
allowed the boundaries of the individual to become blurred, suppressing the
development of personal freedom, of intrinsic uniqueness, and of the sense of
responsibility for one‟s self. (1971: 217)
Almost a hundred years later, individualisation is perhaps more topical than ever and
is still associated with a sense of liberation. Moreover, most people have no qualms
in identifying personal freedom, intrinsic uniqueness and responsibility for one‟s self
as elementary features of contemporary individualisation or self-realisation. Yet
Zygmunt Bauman claims that:
„[i]ndividualisation‟ now means something very different from what it meant
100 years ago and what it conveyed in the early times of the modern era – the
times of extolled human „emancipation‟ from the tightly knit web of
communal dependency, surveillance and enforcement. (2002: xiv)
And so it is worthwhile to briefly overview the transformation of the very meaning of
the concept of individualisation. The classical sociological theorists associated
individualisation mainly with the transition from pre-modern to modern societies and
thus with the liberation of the individual from rigid normative structures. Later,
Talcott Parsons‟ term „institutionalised individualism‟ became influential in
describing individualisation in industrial societies as “an individualistic system of
goal achievement” (1964: 183). This concept comprises a more general definition of
norms and values, permitting individuals to have a greater level of choice.
Today, it is most prominently Ulrich Beck who defines contemporary
individualisation as the individual‟s release „from industrial society into the
turbulence of the global risk society‟ (1994: 7). Beck and Beck-Gernsheim specify
what, in their opinion, characterises contemporary individualisation. „For the first
time in history‟, they write, „the individual is becoming the basic unit of social
reproduction‟ (2002). Part of those reproduction processes is, as Beck and Beck-
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Gernsheim point out, that they „not only permit, but demand, an active contribution
by individuals‟ (1996: 27). As a consequence, individualisation as a process of
liberation has become ambiguous in late modernity. It can no longer be described
merely in terms of individuals having the capacity to free themselves from restrictive
structures. The compulsion for individuals to use their capacities and abilities to
handle freedom becomes an equally important, if not more important, aspect of late
modern individualisation, which also affects underlying questions of differentiation
and integration.
Individual liberation, however, must not be equated with independence from social
structures. From its beginning, sociology has linked individualisation and structural
differentiation, be it on the basis of a Durkheimian social division of labour,
Weberian rationalisation processes, Parsons‟ or Luhmann‟s systemic differentiation
or the Habermasian uncoupling of systems and lifeworlds. The core of modern
liberation processes is grasped by Habermas, who stresses the interdependence of
structure and individualisation when he writes that „an autonomous ego and an
emancipated society reciprocally require one another‟ (1976: 71). More recently,
Axel Honneth points out that „the claim of an increase in the autonomy of the
individual subject ultimately remains tied back to the viewpoint of the participant in
social interaction‟ (2004: 464). And so the sense of liberation associated with
individualisation is not only dependent upon the social structures that individuals live
in, but is grounded in the very nature of social interaction between individuals
through which they construct their social world.
Structurally enabled and normative individualization
Individuals are what Giddens identifies as „knowledgeable actors‟ (1979: 144), but
they can only be so with the aid of the structures through which individuals have
acquired and learned a particular cultural knowledge. One aspect of individualisation
therefore is that is it not independent of social structures. Moreover, social structures
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should not only be described as constraining but also as enabling. While we can say
that individualisation is structurally enabled, individuals do not just act passively
according to given rules and norms.
Another aspect of individualisation comes to the froe when we acknowledge that
individuals in everyday life are not just reflexive, but reflective, impulsive, creative
and spontaneous actors. They have „the ability to give one‟s own needs their due in
… communicative structures‟ (Habermas 1976: 78). Individuals not only act on the
basis of learned norms and values, but equally they have the abilities to make
normative claims. They continuously seek approval for these claims from the wider
community in terms of a „struggle for recognition‟ (Honneth 1996: 83).
Individualisation thus can also be described as normative individualisation, where
individuals use their autonomy to make a difference to an existing normative
infrastructure.
At first sight, a heightened sense of individual autonomy on the basis of a more
differentiated social order seems to weaken the relationship between individual and
society. In fact the converse is true, because the integration of individuals into
society becomes more complex and ambiguous – or even paradoxical. As Beck
states:
The place of traditional ties and social forms (social class, nuclear family) is
taken by secondary agencies and institutions, which stamp the biography of
the individual and make that person dependent upon fashions, social policy,
economic cycles and markets, contrary to the image of individual control
which establishes itself in consciousness. (1992: 131)
While most people in everyday life associate individualisation predominantly with a
sense of liberation and self-realisation, the increasing organisational dependencies
seem to go rather unnoticed. Investigating these organisational dependencies and
their consequences on individualisation is one of the major challenges in this area. It
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is not that the ties between individual and society evaporate, but they seem
inconspicuously to transform. The more rigid nexuses based on traditional forms of
ascription or institutionally defined unitary goals are increasingly fragmented and
pluralised. An ambiguity emerges at this point. On the one hand, individualisation is
strongly affiliated with a sense of liberation and differentiation. On the other hand, it
is characterised by individual dependencies on agencies, institutions and networks of
organisations that become the reference points for an individualised form of
integration. The striving for individual autonomy and the reproduction of society
fundamentally draw upon and from each other. As a consequence, “the borders
between culture and the economy, lifeworld and system, [can] no longer be
unambiguously determined” (Honneth and Hartmann 2006: 41). The negotiation of
those blurred boundaries between lifeworld and system, the individual and
organisations are the defining feature of individualisation in late modernity.
Individualisation and Network Capitalism
The social context within which processes of individualisation, differentiation and
integration are currently taking place can be described as network capitalism. In The
Coming of Post-Industrial Society, Daniel Bell writes:
The major intellectual and sociological problems of the post-industrial society
are … those of “organised complexity” – the management of large-scale
systems, with large numbers of interacting variables, which have to be
coordinated to achieve specific goals. (1973: 29)
My argument is that „organised individualisation‟ as a third aspect of contemporary
individualisation assigns the key role to the individual in the coordination and
reproduction of those ambiguous complexities. One of the main reasons for this lies
in the transformation of capitalism, which has not only undergone changes, but is still
in the midst of constant fundamental economic reforms. Profound processes of
restructuring centred round the notions of flexibility, deregulation and privatisation
have established networks as the primary, yet quite „fluid‟ pattern of social interaction
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for both organisations and individuals. As Jeremy Rifkin writes: “The most
important feature of the modern market system … [is] access between servers and
clients operating in a network relationship” (2000: 4-5). The underlying change,
however, is the shift towards a knowledge economy where „productivity and
competitiveness are … a function of knowledge generation and information
processing; firms and territories are organised in networks of production,
management and distribution‟ (Castells 2001: 52). In the same vein, Peter Drucker
states that “the absolutely decisive „factor of production‟ is now neither capital, nor
land, nor labour. It is knowledge” (1995: 5). While these are crucial topics, it is my
conviction that the processing, handling, generation and use of knowledge cannot do
without the abilities, capacities and qualities that no one else but individuals can
provide.
Most importantly, however, the administration of those markets lies in the hands of
modern corporations, as the primary form of organisation in late modernity. As
Craig Calhoun points out, modern corporations have „received very little attention in
sociological theory even though it is central to modern institutional arrangements‟
(1992: 215). He points out that „corporations, large-scale markets, and other
organisations of indirect relationships have grown in size and importance throughout
the modern era. … Computers and new telecommunications technologies continue
this pattern‟ (1992: 218). With those transformations of Western capitalism
occurring over the last decades, individualisation has slowly become an ideological
organising principle on the institutional and organisational levels of late modern
political and economic systems. Individualisation as individuals‟ striving for selfrealisation has become the „engine room‟ for the self-motivated realisation of
systemic imperatives1. The deep-seated sense of liberation that individuals hold is
Boltanski and Chiapello in their study The new spirit of capitalism refer to this as „people‟s
commitment to capitalism‟ (2005: 162).
1
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„inverted into compulsions and expectations‟ (Honneth 2004: 474) through an
increasing marketisation and corporatisation of late modern societies.
My aim is not to provide an all-encompassing sociological theory of the modern
corporation; this must be left to future investigations. However, modern corporations
hold a key position in my argument. They are the nucleus of what I describe as
„organised‟ in terms of guiding and influencing individual behaviour on the basis of
norms and values that are in principle not negotiable. As the predominant form of
organisation in contemporary societies the influence of corporations reaches far
beyond the immediate corporate sphere into the various spheres of contemporary
society, and defines to a large degree late modern work societies and their varied
forms of integration.
These developments are underpinned by an often unarticulated shift in the power
relationship between civil society, the state and the market on an institutional level;
and the transition, on an organisational level, from publicly controlled organisations
to profit-driven corporations. While the market has become the primary institution of
our time, the corporation can be said to be the primary form of organisation. This
shift in power, however, stems from the distinction between legitimation and
justification. While civil society, on the basis of normative individualisation, has the
power to legitimate a political order, the state can legislate in order to both protect the
norms and values emerging from public discourses in civil society and to regulate or
deregulate the rules for the market, so as to ensure economic prosperity and its own
existence. The impact of marketisation and corporatisation on the possible
negotiation of norms and values amounts to „organised individualisation‟, on an
organisational level, and on an institutional level, a potential „legitimation crises‟ in
the Habermasian sense (see e.g. 1979).
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Sociology has ignored corporations as major organisational players in modern
societies. This is largely the result of the assumption that they are merely systemic
associations. They cannot be based on anything other than concrete social
relationships however, mediated by power, money and scientifically generated
knowledge. For corporations to be put into the sociological limelight, one needs to
fundamentally acknowledge that „the member of an organisation is simultaneously
and ineradicably a speaking subject, a labouring subject, and an embodied subject‟
(Clegg 1989: 194) of a larger social order. Thus, on an organisational level,
corporatisation shifts the power relationship by controlling individuals‟ discursive
and reflective capacities. Individualisation becomes a structural demand, while its
normative aspects are rationalised and instrumentalised for organisational purposes.
Organised Individualisation
The sociological approaches to the relationship between individual and society have
predominantly been characterised by an opposition between the individual striving
for autonomy on the one hand, and restrictive, mainly economic or governmental
structures on the other. Investigating the characteristics of contemporary
individualisation offers us clues that this theoretical model of oppositions may no
longer hold. The relationship between individual and society has become more fluid
and permeable and, as a result, ambiguous. Contemporary individualisation is
characterised by a convergence of individuals‟ emancipatory capacities as thinking
and acting human beings and the systemic coordination and reproduction of society.
This results not so much in an opposition or contradiction between individual and
society, but in intensified frictions along the demarcation between systems and
lifeworlds that lead to a general proliferation of ambiguities. Moreover, these
tensions and ambiguities assign the responsibility to negotiate between systemic and
normative processes onto individuals. As the more collective reference points, like
class and status, break away, communicative processes no longer stand in clear
opposition to instrumental or strategic economic actions. For individuals, these
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modes of action have become rather immediate and are increasingly difficult to
distinguish. Equally, forms of systemic and social integration are easily mistaken for
one another. Hence, contemporary individualisation is characterised by the
individualised negotiation of the meshed boundaries between systems and lifeworlds,
social and systemic integration, normative self-organisation and organisational
(systemic) dependencies. We are, therefore, not necessarily speaking about a
colonisation of the lifeworld through systems – although it is certainly an obvious
risk. The focus is, however, more on a proliferation of ambiguities along the lines of
systems and lifeworlds. The negotiation of these complexities and ambiguities is the
crucial and defining moment of contemporary individualisation.
One of the reasons for the emergence of an individualised border between systems
and lifeworlds, has its origin in the last thirty years of economic development. This
period has been variously described as the end of Fordist organisation of production,
post-Taylorism or the neo-liberal reform project. Whatever the label, we can describe
these processes on an institutional level as intensified marketisation and on an
organisational level as progressive corporatisation. While these developments
essentially frame contemporary individualisation and have to be dealt with to some
extent, they are not the main focus here. Rather, the crucial point is how they have
transposed the individual striving for autonomy and individualisation into an
essentially self-propelled productive force in contemporary network capitalism.
On an organisational level, various management tools embrace autonomy, so as to
encourage individuals to make their own decisions. And again I have to say,
although significant for an investigation of individualisation, the focal point is not on
managerial techniques as such. What is of interest to me are the instrumentalising
pressures which make individuals‟ desires and motivations match those of
corporations or markets. If this becomes the case, individuals are trusted because
their own thinking and feelings automatically trigger the right decision for the
organisation. The individual is expected to be involved with his/her whole
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personality to benefit the organisation. It is a distortion of individuals‟ capacities,
done to make a difference to an existing normative infrastructure. These capacities,
driven by a sense of liberation, become a means for the realisation of organisationally
given goals, forming the cornerstone of „organised individualisation‟. Moreover, the
result of individuals mistaking that reversal for their own choice and free decision
becomes the self-fulfilling justification for more of the same, namely, deregulation
and marketisation. The result is that individuals have to be flexible, show initiative
and motivation, to a degree so far unseen.
It would be wrong, however, to construe these rather complex developments as
deliberate or totally instrumentalising. Neither the market nor corporations should be
regarded as the culprits nor perpetrators of a single defining feature of late modernity.
The world we live in is the result of separate and yet interdependent social processes,
namely: individualisation, as individuals‟ striving for liberation and autonomy;
structural differentiation, as contradictory, ambiguous or even paradoxical forms of
rationalisation in society‟s various spheres of action; and integration, as a range of
ways and opportunities for individuals to participate in and contribute to the
reproduction of society. As a result, under the institutional transformations of
Western capitalism over the last twenty years, individualisation has developed into an
ideology and productive force of a largely deregulated economic system at both the
institutional and the organisational level.
Conclusion
Individualisation can be redefined as individuals‟ need and ability to negotiate the
boundaries between systems and lifeworlds. This negotiation process has become an
ambiguous, but defining feature of late modern societies. On the one hand, it is
characterised by an increase in individual autonomy that structurally enables
individualisation. On the other hand, there exists a convergence of normative and
systemic processes that bears some risks of instrumentalisation. While it still carries
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a sense of liberation, individuals are equally required to negotiate a fragmented,
pluralised and ambiguous social order by themselves. Under conditions of
marketisation and corporatisation the emancipatory qualities and motivations defining
normative individualisation are sidestepped and transformed from a normative
negotiation process into a means for the coordination and reproduction of systemic
imperatives fuelled by individuals„ qualities and capacities for self-realisation.
Weighing up the various aspects of individualisation against the social conditions of
late modernity I suggest to redefine and critique the ambiguous features of
contemporary individualisation as „organised individualisation‟.
Given the pace of social change in late modern societies, sociological analyses are
always at risk of lagging behind. Reflections like mine, therefore, are intrinsically at
risk of being nothing but a sociological snapshot of social conditions in a fast
changing world. The reflections presented in this paper, theoretical and brief as they
may be, have their starting point in individuals‟ practical experiences of everyday
social interactions. This is important, since the critique of contemporary
individualisation that I offer is not intended to identify pathologies in individuals‟
abilities to be ever more individualistic rational actors. The potential pathologies that
I want to bring to the fore, with this analysis of contemporary individualisation under
conditions of network capitalism, are social pathologies that have their origins in
deficient modes of the negotiation of norms and values that underpin our everyday
life.
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