ABSTRACT
In his 1998 book, The New Insecurity: The End of the Standard Job and Family, Jerald Wallulis describes what he perceives as a steady shift in American social life since the 1970s, from the struggle to achieve “employment” to the struggle to achieve “employability;” from the struggle to achieve “marriage” to the struggle to achieve “marriageability.” Shifts in capitalist modes of production towards functional flexibility combined with the erosion of social assistance under the Reagan, Bush, and Clinton administrations, have created an environment in which individuals themselves, no longer able to carry out life planning under the guaranteed security of such programs as disability compensation, support for the role of homemaking, or social security, must now become their own individual “planning office,” as Wallulis puts it, functioning as the sole manager of his or her own biography (Beck 1995 in Wallulis 1998: 6). The era of long-term career ladders, company loyalty, and the permanent marriage has passed. And, according to Wallulis, along with greater flexibility, individuals now face a considerable degree of anxiety and fear – fear of loneliness, unemployment (owing to corporate reengineering or global competition), inadequacy, and the struggle to maintain employability (8). More than ever, upward mobility is perceived to rest on the individual as a transportable and self-contained package of goods.
