ABSTRACT
An issue of major sociological interest, especially in the wake of recent theorizations over the nature of modernity, has been the question of identity transformation. It has been claimed that the conditions of modernity create both the opportunities as well as the need for social actors to take greater responsibility for their own identities, with the implication that individuals are now freer to fashion their identities. Thus, in Giddens (1991, 1992), we see the claim that self-identity is a reflexive enterprise sustained by a person’s capacity ‘to keep a particular narrative going’ (1991: 54, italics in original; see also Beck 1994). Bauman (2000), too, makes a similar point when he describes modernity as being ‘liquid’ and ‘fluid’, by which he means that it destroys traditionally ‘solid’ loyalties and obligations at all levels of society from the macro to the micro. According to Bauman, the result is ‘an individualized, privatized version of modernity, with the burden of pattern-weaving and the responsibility for failure falling primarily on the individual’s shoulders’ (Bauman 2000: 8). The position of these modernization theorists is neatly summarized by Kennedy (2001: 6) as follows:
… individuals are compelled to take greater control over the kinds of social identities they wish to assume … because once-powerful solidarities such as class, occupation, church, gender and family are slowly declining in their ability to define our life experiences.
