ABSTRACT
Individualization has become a key term in accounting for social and cultural transformations in the contemporary world. It is clearly closely related to terms such as individualism (the belief in the central importance of the individual in political, economic, social and moral life), and individuation (the process of becoming a fully fledged individual in society), but has different connotations. It is, according to two of its main theorists (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 2002), a social and historical process, leading to institutionalized individualism. Individualization means ‘First, the disembedding and, second, the re-embedding of industrial society ways of life by new ones, in which the individual must produce, stage and cobble together their biographies themselves’ (Beck 1994: 13). It is a concept that is closely linked with detraditionalization, Globalization and Neoliberalism.
