ABSTRACT
One of the tensions which runs through this account of post-16 'choice' is that between a view of the individual as 'thoroughly social and cultural but at the same time unique and creative' (Branson, 1991, p. 93). On the one hand there is the danger of 'a process of infinite reduction' (Jones and Wallace, 1992, p. 14) and on the other, the danger of reifying complexity and re-articulating structural simplicities. We want to recognize both the individual construction of social identities and the different structural possibilities and conditions for such construction. Identity needs to be understood as something 'created in response to a set of circumstances' (Tsolidis, 1996, p. 276), as forged out of categories of perception and acquired dispositions, and as the product of the logic of individuality (Grossberg, 1996, p. 97). That is, the individual is seen as both 'cause and effect' as 'both subject and subjected' (Grossberg, 1996). This recognizes that, 'it may be that subjectivity as a value necessary for life is also unequally distributed' (Grossberg, 1996, p. 99). The social, personal and material resources needed to live a reflexively organized biography are not equally available to all. The 'new democracy' of individualization which 'compels' people 'for the sake of their own material survival to make themselves the centre of their own planning and conduct of life' (Beck, 1992, p. 88), may rest upon an exaggeration of the extent to which 'the traditional parameters of industrial society: class-culture and consciousness, gender and family roles . . .' (p. 87) have been 'dissolved'.
