ABSTRACT
But how could it be otherwise? Sociologically speaking, such a notion of individualization is not at all ‘plausible, and at first sight convincing’, but is in fact absurd since it suggests that the discipline’s distinctive approach to social lifebased on the notion that people are inevitably socially shaped-can and needs to be treated as a testable hypothesis. Because of this, the question of whether or not ‘individuals’ are still socially shaped, produced and controlled is too general and non-sociological and hence needs to be replaced by the more feasible question of whether, why and how modes of social control are undergoing a process of transformation. We have, however, major doubts about whether a theory based on the notion that individualization is an inherently non-cultural process, as Elchardus and De Beer proclaim, can provide much of an answer to this question.
