ABSTRACT
The idea that we live at a time of unprecedented change is widespread. For Britain’s monarch, marking a half-century on the throne, this was the dominant theme of a lifetime:
These changes are indeed far-reaching and have encompassed many of the areas touched on in this book. The eminent sociologist Manuel Castells has spoken of this as coming together in the rise of a network society, where fixed and direct relationships of all kinds are being replaced by open systems of coordination based on what he calls ‘networks of networks’ (Castells 1996). Ulrich Beck has a rather different perspective, arguing that we live in an age where the ethic of ‘individual self-fulfilment and achievement is the most powerful current in modern society’ (Beck 2000: 165). For Beck, the sources of collective identity and meaning which underpinned Western industrial societies – family, national state, ethnicity, class and job – are exhausted and no longer provide for either personal security or social
integration. Beck’s thesis suggests that ‘bowling alone’ is simply a byproduct of the growth of individualism and the individualisation of social relations. Postmodern conditions may also explain the rising academic and wider interest in social capital. ‘Social capital’, it has been suggested, ‘perhaps matches the spirit of an uncertain, questing age’ (Schuller et al. 2000: 38). The very insecurity of our own connections in a period of what Kirchhöfer (2000: 15) calls ‘the individualised social shaping of the individual’ may just be what is drawing our attention to their value.
