Social Change, Individualization, and Individualism

Social change, individualisation, and individualism Individualisation and individualism ● Individualism: a social process of social differentiation into individual units - ‘a structural sociological transformation of social institutions and the relationship of the individual to society’ (Beck, 2002 p202) ● Individualism: an ideology celebrating the individual and individual autonomy ● Individualism: a psychological process referring to sense of self and autonomy ● The 2002 reference comes from the first page of he published version of Ulrich Beck’s interview with Jonathan Rutherford on Zombie Categores -published as Beck, U. (2002). Zombie categories: interview with Ulrich Beck. U. Beck and E. Beck-Gernsheim, Individualization: institutionalized individualism and its social and political consequences, 202-212. ● Where I take issue with Beck is when individualisation is used as an active force that gathers momentum over time rather than a description of a social processes that are less unitary and have multiple causes. ● For example, Beck says ‘Individualization liberates people from traditional roles and constraints’ 2002, ● Question grand narratives of social change ● Stories of the past cast shadows over analyses of the present ● Elements of mythical history in a story of the shift from the extended to the nuclear family as a moment of ‘individualisation’ and ‘individualism’ ● And in the story of the ‘modern family’ fostering individualism. Selfhood and individualism ● Notions of selfhood are historically and culturally specific ● Longstanding cultural emphasis on ‘the individual’ in and social differentiation of ‘-isation’ in UK ● Macpherson, C.B. 1962 The Political Philosophy of Possessive Individualism. Hobbes to Locke ● Macfarlane, Alan. 1978. The origins of English Individualism: The Family Property and Social Transition Shift from learning to be loyal to your family to learning to be loyal to yourself? ● Talcott Parsons (1962,167-9) talked of a shift from loyalty to the extended family to the social and geographical mobility of the relatively isolated nuclear family providing children with a ‘training in independence’, relying on a largely mythical history. ● The sociologist Eli Zaretsky (1976) describes the family as 'the realm of individual freedom' and Christopher Lasch (1977) and Jacque Donzelot (1979) talked about new acceptability of state intervention in the family in the name of the individual, and particularly in the name of the child. ● The historian Philip Aries, for example, talked of a shift in the history of childhood when the family helps children to rise in the world 'individually and without collective ambition' (1973, 390), that is without regard to the future of the family as a whole. ● The historian Lawerence Stone (1979) and sociologist William Goode (1970) talked of the family's accommodation of increased expectations and demands for individual autonomy, privacy and self expression ● Alan Macfarlane: England in middle ages ● Used extensive evidence of work patterns, mobility, inheritance, land and property transactions ● The modern ‘individualistic’ system, with its stress on the nuclear family, is spread throughout England and North America, but it's generally held to be both peculiar and of recent origin, a reflex reaction to the dislocation caused by the growth of capitalism, industrialization and urbanisation … roughly the same family system as they had in about 1250 (p270) ● ‘In fact, within the recorded period covered by our documents, it is not possible to find a time when an Englishman did not stand alone. Symbolized and shaped by his egocentred kinship system, he stood in the centre of his world.’ ● many strands of political, religious, ethical, economic and other types of individualism were already present. ● He goes onto note ‘This means that it is no longer possible to "explain" the origins of English individualism in terms of either Protestantism, population change, the development of a market economy at the end of the middle ages’ ● England was as "capitalist" in 1250 as it was in 1550 or 1750. That is to say, there was already a developed market, mobility of labour, land was treated as a commodity and full private ownership was established, there was very considerable geographical and social mobility, a complete distinction between farm and family existed, and rational accounting and the profit motive were widespread. P268 ● Individualism ● Long history documenting an emphasis on the individual in English culture as ‘sole proprietor of his own person and capacities’ (Macpherson 1962) and as ‘more important, ultimately, than any larger constituent group’ (Macfarlane, 1978,59) ● Family life may play a part in this history but the emphasis on the individual is not tied to the child-centred nuclear family and ‘intensive mothering’ or the demise of traditional parental authority Networked Individualism echoing mythical narrative ● ‘The individual - and not the household, kinship group, or work group - is the primary unit of connectivity … people must actively network to thrive or even to survive comfortably. ● ● ● ● More passive or unskilled people may lose out, as the group (village, neighbourhood, household) is no longer taking care of things for them’ (Wellman et al 2006, 164-165) Rainie and Wellman talk of three revolutions – a social network revolution ‘has provided the opportunities – and stresses – for people to reach beyond the world of tight groups.’ (p11), an Internet Revolution and a Mobile Revolution. The shift they are suggesting is towards meeting social emotional and economic needs through ‘sparsely knit networks of diverse associates’ and the past that this is claimed to replace is one where the dominant form was ‘tight connections to a relatively small number of core associates’ Personalised communication systems and ‘individualisation’ – from the TV as ‘the hearth of the family’ and the family phone to the personal screen and mobile phone But at the same time this ‘individualising’ device, the mobile phone, is much used to keep family and friends ‘constantly connected’ and able to sustain intimacy over distance + micro-coordination of different timetables ● Jyothsna Belliappa: contemporary India ● Middle class professionals and their parents complain that … Western influences have strengthened individualism and materialism (Upadhya and Vasavi, 2006). People speak nostalgically about the days when siblings and cousins visited regularly and when family members celebrated holidays, festivals and feasts together. There is widespread belief that the young are no longer concerned about their parents and that the traditional Indian joint family is disintegrating. Individualism in social theory ● Has often been argued that an ethos of individualism has been a key aspect of the dynamic of social change e.g. a common reading of Max Weber Protestand Ethic and Spirit of Capitalism ● Moral individualism - respect for the rights of the individual - becomes the common social glue of complex modern societies in Emile Durkheim’s Divisions of Labour De-transitional and ‘free choice’ individualism and individualisation ● Arranged marriages versus love marriage ● Earnings for the household versus personal spending money ● Study to get a good job to help the family versus personal ambition Giddens’ account of de-traditionalisation ● Giddens, Anthony. 1990. The Consequences of Modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press. ● ● ● ● Giddens, Anthony. 1991. Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age. Cambridge: Polity Press. Giddens, Anthony. 1992. The Transformation of Intimacy Cambridge: Polity Press. ‘Late modernity’ globalisation, disembeddedness, enhanced sense of risk, dependency on ‘experts’ and ‘expert systems’ Reflexive biography, making and narrating the self ● ● ● Relationships are the key site in which men and women find ‘forms of exploration and moral construction’ (1992:144) The ‘pure relationship’, confluent love, plastic sexuality Women and gays, therefore particularly lesbians in the vanguard of democratisation ‘Pure relationship’ - needed yet fragile ● A pure relationship is one in which external criteria have become dissolved: the relationship exists solely for whatever rewards that relationship can deliver. In the context of the pure relationship, trust can be mobilised only by a process of mutual disclosure (Giddens 1991:6) ● It refers to a situation where a social relation is entered into for its own sake, for what can be derived by each person from a sustained association with another and which is continued only in so far as it is thought by both parties to deliver enough satisfaction for each individual to stay within it ● Giddens 1992:58 ● Everyone must be independent, free for the demands of the market … the market subject is ultimately the single individual …. The ultimate market society is a childless society’ (Beck & Beck-Gernsheim 1995: 116) ‘Many forms of individualism?’ ● Zygmunt Bauman (2201,2003,2005) suggests that capitalism’s promotion of selfexpression through hyper-consumption has created an emphasis on fluidity, mobility, and disposability, which undermine the human capacity to sustain durable and meaningful relationships. ● Anthony Elliott and Charles Lemert (2009) suggest the modern consumer’s sense of freedom to choose expresses ‘manipulated individualism’ Selfish individualism? ● Prioritising the self and personal fulfilment over commitment to and care for others ● ‘Selfish feminism’ (Bellah et al 1985), ‘cultural cooling’ (Hochschild 1994), ‘Cold Intimacy’ (Illouz 2007) ● Bellah, R.N., R. Madsen, W.M. Sullivan, A. Swidler and S.M Tipton. 1985. Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life. Berkeley: University of California Press. ● Hochschild, Arlie. 1994. "Cultural Cooling: Signs from Women's Advice Books." Theory Culture and Society. ● Illouz, Eva. 2007. Cold Intimacies: The Making of Emotional Capitalism. Cambridge: Polity. ● Loss of tradition and ontological security ● ‘Suffering emerges from a lack of ontological security brought about by the transference of the moral organization of love and romance from a community to the individual. Choice has, therefore, become an individualized process where a decision is reached based on a complex cognitive and emotional evaluation (Illouz, 2012). This process has led to a cooling of intimacy where romantic decisions are now based on rational and economic forms of bargaining and reasoning.’ (Carter and Duncan 2018, 2-3) Problematising ‘choice’ ● Structured by socio-economic circumstances e.g. leaving full-time education and starting work ● And normative obligations e.g. contributions to the household were class based and gendered but time-limited ● the social and perhaps the emotional focus of children and young peoples' lives was not the family ● ● In many working class and middle class households, parental authority was a traditional right and parents were not to be legitimately challenged until at least the late teenage years. At the same time, parents recognised that children had ultimately a right 'to make their own lives'. The cultural values of individualism may be deeply rooted, but their postulated interference with parental authority is not. ● Young women’s self-sacrifice already seen as ‘choice’ in the early 1900s ● Children should help their parents, and particularly daughters should help their mothers ([if] housework is women’s work then daughters do more than sons); help should no ultimately interfere with ‘making your own life’; once you are able to have ‘your own life’ help should be withdrawn unless there is a sense of personal choice and reward attached to the fiving (Jamieson 1987) ‘Choosing’ tradition ● Choices about ‘family’ continue to support heteronormative gendered life-worlds, despite the increased availability of ‘choices’ in ‘late modern’ British society (Carter 2018:2) ● We can understand how choices are made by using bricolage to mean ‘the piecing together, assembling and combining of multifarious resources and types of information to reduce cognitive effort in creating something new as a response to change’ (carter and Duncan 2018:211) ● ‘Rather than accurate reflections of social reality, interview accounts will have been reworked and reinterpreted by the participant and researcher. It is also worth recognizing that a sensitive interview over an hour or so can access habitual behaviour that might otherwise escape comment.’ (Carter 2018, 6) Ethnocentrism ● Carol Smart and Shipman’s Visions in Monochrome ● ‘The multidimensionality of the process of individualization must liberate itself from the constraints of a national, European outlook’ (Beck 2010) ● Individualisation without individualism (Chang writing about South Korea, Yan writing about China. Contradictory trends of compressed modernity ● Korea’s history of colonial occupation and war, followed by extremely rapid industrialisation, urbanisation and ‘westernisation’ of South korea. ● Accidental pluralism of mutually disagreeing ideologies valorising family life: Confucian familism, instrumental familism, affectionate familism, individualistic familism Chang: South Korea ● ‘Familial egotists’ (gajokihijuuija) ‘deal with one another through market competition in housing, education, marriage, etc. and the communitarian interaction is scarce … weak and vulnerable social groups … perceived as ‘unrelated’ by familial relationship categories, automatically become a nuisance to the comfort of the individual family, and this they are avoided by all measures. (2010, 142) ● ‘Familial egotists’ - one type of response among many Yan: Chinese path to Individualization ● Institutional aspect of individualization that contrasts sharply with the neoliberal theory of the individual-society relationship (e.g. Maoist collectivisation disembedded individuals from traditional networks) ● Post 1970 state encouragement of mobility, individual enterprise market capitalism and privatization as part of the greater good ● Popular emphasis on individual rights and ‘desiring self’ ‘Western’ feminist response to individualisation and individualism ● Historically women were never afforded the same possibilities of being ‘proprietor of their own person’ ● Recognition that there is always a mythical element to the ‘autonomous individual’ ● Noting the ethnocentrism of some claims ● Alternatively arguing for a more collective and less individualistic way of life Barrett and Mcintosh ● Affection, security, intimacy, sexual love, parenthood … we see these as human needs … the form in which they are currently met, however, we regard as both unsatisfying and anti-social’. (1982, 133) ● Argued for alternatives to ‘existing favoured patterns of family life’; collectivism rather than individualism in income maintenance, domestic chores and care for others. ● Advised: encouraged variety, avoid oppressive relationships beware domesticity As Katherine Twamley and others note ● ‘Most individuals struggle with reconciling personal goals with their commitments to others … this is the reality of human existence that is lived within ‘ affective relational realities’ (Twamley 2018 conclusion) ● In support she references the work of Mary Holmes on distance relationship (see reading list), and work on care. ● Ball, Stephen J, Carol Vincent, Sophie Kemp and Soile Pietikainen. 2004. "Middle Class Fractions, Childcare and the ‘Relational’ and ‘Normative’ aspects of Class Practices." The Sociological Review 52(4):478-502. ● Lynch, Kathleen. 2007. "Love Labour as a Distinct and Non-Commodifiable Form of Care Labour." The Sociological Review 55(3):550-70. AUDIO I'm using the British spelling, but of course it would be spelt with a Zed in some parts of the world. And just to start with the definitions, so individually individualization process of social differentiation into more individual units is one way we might think of it. You can think of different examples of that as a social process. And that those social processes have often been distinguished from the kind of ideology the idea of emphasising the individual, and particularly individual autonomy. So, Beck makes this distinction. And this is a definition, he uses individualised sation with a Zed in his case, he's Chairman, but using American English. So structural sociological transformation of social institutions, and then relationships and fit individuals and society, but the social transformation is talking about involves differentiation into individual units. And neither of those are the same as the psychological processes that many psychologists we talk about. So Freud in psychology, a lot of discussion around how you learn boundaries between yourself and others, particularly the infant distinguishing breastfeeding the press, from their own, not being part of their own body. That process of knowing your boundaries and learning your self to be a bounded sacred each unit is sometimes called individuation. So, in sociology, I think individual, both individualization and individualism tend to get woven into a grand narrative that, you know, in its simplistic form, is suggesting that historically what's happened as we've become more and more individualised, and maybe more and more individualistic kind of society in the West. So there was a definite fashion for writing like that. And about the 70s and 80s, which has persisted right into this century. It's got a strong mythical element. And I suppose I'm suggesting to you that you need to be really about this and not treat individualism and individualization as concepts are in themselves, explanatory and suggesting trajectory and historical trajectory. So we'll also kind of talk a lot to talk about whether they're air centric and weather. Now, obviously, you know, there's, there's historically specific and culturally specific understanding so for an individual is, and therefore, maybe not surprisingly, all sorts of these social processes, but there is a generalisation of a story. And it includes the story of the family, the Modern Family, idea that a particular family form a marriage, this fostering individualism and in itself was a product of individualization and individualism. So that story will pack and we'll also unpack a little bit some of the cultural and historical specificity of the notions of self individualism. Using these, these two texts, which are both as you can see, go back to the period in which this term was being first be overused, overgeneralize generalised already was being critiqued. So in family sociology is a story about a shift from being loyal to your family to being loyal to yourself, that still has equals in the present. And so in the present, we still get stories about my age, and couple relationships or no, maybe more than hell because people are more interested in being loyal to themselves into a couple as a unit as a continuation of the story of the family. So in the 60s, back in the 60s, talcott Parsons, very famous American sociologist of the family was talking about a shift from loyalty to the extended family, to the nuclear family becoming the focus of people's personal lives. The nuclear family founded by a couple, parenting couple and their children are one household. And that unit, distancing itself from wider kin, becoming more separated or more inward looking, was a story he was telling. And he made a whole narrative about how this he didn't use the term capitalism, we talked about industrial society. But he was basically suggesting that historically, as societies become industrial capitalist, the need for geographic mobility and social mobility was such that you didn't want people anchored in place, and in social groupings by their kin, you wanted them to be both geographically and socially mobile and nuclear family household as the dominant focus of personal life was, therefore appropriate to that context. But the problem with that argument is that a nuclear family household has been around for a very long time, at least in England. And the pattern of geographical mobility isn't new either. And an emphasis on the individual as a sort of unit isn't, historically units not massively predates industrial capitalism. So here it is. Alan McFarland talking about England in the Middle Ages. So now we're talking about the 13th century 1215. an individualistic system of nuclear family being spread throughout England. Although it's, as he was commenting, the timing shoting thought to be of recent origin, but the way that some people write about it, but actually, it wasn't. And he says, The documents circle back to the Middle Ages not impossible to find a time when an Englishman did not stand alone. So there's a long history documenting this idea that you are the sole proprietor of your own person. And that you're first set of responsibilities is as proprietor of your own personal capacities, and family life. Maybe played a part in that, but it wasn't the motoring family of emotionally intense parenting that we know think of us, a nuclear family in North America, European societies where you have a great deal of emphasis parents putting lots of energy into the children, nurturing them into sometimes trying to be friendly to them. So you could have quite patriarchal authoritarian households. But nevertheless, mission individuals are proprietors of passions. So in the present an example of this carrying on this way of thinking about as if we were all embedded in extended kin is the work of Barry well and his co author really clear the truth about network individualism So acknowledging the digital connectedness. Barry Wellman is very interested in and tends to think, in terms of the impact of digital technologies on family life. So he was striking about how individuals know rather than relying on household or kin, or neighbours, I think ref ref referring back to a kind of mythical notion of a time where we lived in communities with kin and neighbours all knowing each other, which you know, in many parts of the world. And historically, many people didn't even in the so called West, or unit, European American societies. But now he's saying that you must be an active networker is thinking about digital network, you must actively network to thrive or survive comfortably. Otherwise, you're going to lose out. And writing about India. Failure actually is talking here about how in India now, in the popular discussions about social change, there's reminiscing and nostalgia for a past that as if there is a loss of kin, and integration into traditional kinship systems, and people are losing any sense of that. In the present, and there's a great fear by Western influences of individualism and materialism. So some of the fear of the individualism might again be ironically defending history that amis thought to be very recent, but actually is, is much more complicated and longer and didn't Wipeout people's loyalties to kin, or, perhaps the article authority, necessarily, often being thought of in social theory that it's talked about by people like Warren back and to maybe to some extent, other authors, as if individualism has a driving force in its own right, or individualization, a social process of individualization and individualism are sometimes treated as if they are driving forces of social change. But there may be descriptions of change that's happening because of multiple reasons, rather than universally, driving forces and the change may have been much more messy and complicated. And in the failure, I was writing about it with reference to India, individualism was assumed to be negative, it's assumed to be something that is causing the breakup of something that was rather good and positive. And so the idea of selfish like we're becoming more and more broken into individual social units that are also obsessed with ourselves and selfish is a common caricature of this theme. That does appear in some writing. But actually, in the classic work of Emile Durkheim, individualism was written about quite positively, quite differently. So in the classics of sociology and maxspeed, but the spirit of capitalism the ideology of Protestantism, sometimes is seen as also a bit like individualism, you know, the emphasis on Protestants having to prove themselves through their own endeavours was in order to feel that they are one of God's chosen was part of for Mike's paper arcade trophy. Capitalism. Well, dark Cain was writing about a moral individualism as being the part of the glue that keeps societies together once you get complex industrial societies with very different differentiated, if you like individualised divisions of labour. I mean he wasn't using that language. But you get complex divisions of labour that mean that lots of people are doing different things. There's not a collective common consciousness anymore. But people start to respect each other as individuals, and it's that respect for the rights of the individual, that is the glue. So it can be positive or it can be seen as positively as well as negative. And that might be a good place to stop. The second part with this slide, it's showing you some examples of what sometimes gets called the traditional diarization. And that idea that individualization and individualism sweeps away tradition is one that Audrey Beck used, and also is a theme that turns up in a number of authors. But as I was trying to suggest, perhaps, using it as an explanatory concept, and that way is maybe not entirely helpful. But you can see these, these particular examples, how you might think of them as processes of social differentiation that put more emphasis on the individual unit. And you might also think about them as about I idea, ideas about individual autonomy, and that the two might well be difficult to separate actually, even if we can conceptually distinguish them. So, arranged marriage is clearly an institutionalised arrangement that gets maybe pulled apart. Queer individuals make decisions about managed not kin groups, not family, not peanuts. The idea that individual airlines are our individual that they're for your own pocket rather than earnings for a household. The importance of education and studying and getting on in the world as an individual thing, rather than a kin thing, or a family, a family strategy could be both of those can be either of those, there's a suggestion of shift over historical time from one to the other. So, one of the authors associated with talking about D traditional diarization is Anthony Giddens done this sequence of books in the 90s, Giddens talked about transformation to what he called lead to modernity. So, some other authors will be calling it Mater, who is calling it late stage of development of industrial capitalism cuir it is no longer industrial, in some parts of the world industries have been largely exported as discussion in some other authors and I'm recording Definitely in. Labour is of a certain sort no longer happens in the minority rich world is going on in the majority food world and all the dirty work is exported. But what Giddens was talking about was a kind of speed up of loss of tradition as we get more and more global interconnectedness, the electronic revolution digital communication, the value of goods and people Ideas all contribute towards dissipating tradition and an enhanced sense Of course for can go on in other places but you're Risk of things that you can control so they can complexity of the world becomes more visible. Your dependence on experts becomes more visible with with mass media with mass communication from transport and your sense Risk is heightened kind of idea of ontological security as security and your sense of self being primarily Kurt Not just personal relationships but good Things that are stable like social class or caste or Click Corporate things All of these start to feel less secure. People have Much stronger emphasis on making their own biographies rather than forming p given paths and established trajectories through tradition. So Getting stopped being the author of your own biography and being very real And therefore constantly asking yourself are you doing the right thing are you doing In a way, but without without fairly clear moral rulings from tradition and in that context, people wanted to anchor themselves more than ever in relationships of their own choosing. So, the couple's relationship becomes even more important, the self chosen partner and in the book the transformation of intimacy, Giddens talks about this search for a partner being more kind of acute than ever before is looking for what he called a pure relationship, a relationship that is just for yourself. And because tradition is a barrier to this more Self expressive form of relationship. He thought that in the forefront of this transformation were women. particularly women in same sex relationships. Because they weren't the least constrained, the least invested in the traditional family patriarchal ways of doing things. So a pure relationship Being forever, only existing without any overarching structure, keeping it together only existing because of the rewards certain things. To actually cohabiting relationships have got more chance and Gibbons's way of thinking about this of being pure relationships than money. relationships because of sidestepped the legal structures and public recognition as forms of keeping you together and they're only there because of mutual satisfaction arguably. And he also suggests that some forms of relationship fill these forms of relationships from Probably almost always be a bit fragile. Because if there's not mutual satisfaction in your basically that's the end of it. So both both have particular value and more fragile so these themes overlap with the work segment but they're more optimistic in their tone so India's more pessimistic word. This is the enemy of our current Same time as getting straight back top. fair market forces, market capital prism prism In the antagonistic relationships Bam because everybody is in Producing we just hope for themselves. And then Also pitching men I'm going against each Other and They can have often trajectory of it And somewhat hyperbolically he dictated would be everybody being single and childless. Now he didn't really I don't think Having believed that he was being dramatic and seeing this as the donation of two Travel All these later Writing is was much more optimistic too. bioman all sorts Talk about how the commercial There's the marketization of the capitalism even more subtly than before, reduce Is everything to sort of beauty is kind of consumption choice. Other authors have come into john. Whoa, this is a isn't a chain feedom to choose it's can Simmer an idea of Choosing between consumer products which, earlier on the market called manipulated individualism But Bowman was once described as a car Just through sociologists because you seem to be so Don't beat about the Good evening. pneus of possibility meaningful relief. friendships in kindest capitalism that we reach. We are, everything starts to seem like it's fluid. It's mobile. It's disposable. But Both of those accounts and jG geek interns are floated off really above and beyond. The research evidence the deed Hail Damage and support people are doing in the refugee lives. There's a narrative Have people prioritise pacing themselves. self-fulfillment Hello Ever caring for other people Committed commitments and That's a theme that is Constantly rejected really In the empirical literature or as As media At least one meal although also keeps recurring and recurring, so it's there and ever loses work around capitalism. She uses this oxymoron called the intimacy bringing together called an intimacy as a sort of contradicting conjunction arlie. Hochschild talked about Cultural cooling and his co authors talks about selfish feminism. So this book by on The cameras on The overhead by a margin. co authors Cole's marriage alone together. That's it. People come together. Manage relationship to Follow to Brother central lives But they decide that they'll be Good to hear that And I think that isn't quite up. pessimistic vision One that's, as I said, much more defined by the actual empirical literature, which we'll be going through in the subsequent lectures. But this is Carter and Duncan, who are one of the key readings for this week, summarising his view about how, in the current state of capitalism, the idea of love. And falling in love is always one that brings pain and suffering. Because we can never be secured in the choice that we've made for a partner, because we are become the kind of consumer that thinks choices always provisional, like we're never satisfied. We're used to buying things, as if they'll make us happy and finding that they don't. And then, instead of learning a lesson from that, and thinking there's something fundamentally wrong about this way of thinking about things and living, we buy something else. So that's her sort of cynical, it's not well, yes, she would say that is how it is, I would say that was over cynical. But that kind of take on love. So love is supposed to be for ever. And the idea of romantic love is still there, that you will fall in love with the one and it will be a long a lifelong relationship. At the same time, there is this sense that maybe this next one's going to be better than never, and also this fear that this other person will let you down, that they're, they're going to move on to the next one. So it's always a painful process is however, is toxic. That makes people become rational and bargaining in their approach to it. Okay, so one of the ways that a quarter or so multiple pieces of evidence that complexify this and show that people are still very interested in commitments and sometimes prepared to work very hard to try to make relationships work of all sorts, not just romantic relationships, and still prepared to make sacrifices for other people and so on. But so just to start his talk, even historically, this is quite a complicated picture. So we, these authors are talking about this as something that's happened with a kind of speed up of capitalism, that intensifies much more, once we've got the Internet, and I guess, rapid transport through aeroplanes. They're all the things that you talk about in globalisation, you know, the, the ways that trade, and money for some people can be much faster. All of those things, that stage of capitalism is what they're talking about. But actually a sense of choice. And individuals and yourself as an individual, as I said, in the previous class, has got long historical roots in this culture, and others like it. And it's quite possible for ideas about definite rules and commitments to people choice to coexist in complicated ways. As a Duncan Carter talk about as well, and they talk about how people put together elements of tradition, and elements of a niche, or maybe that we have making a mixture of traditional applications always been strategies that people work with. But here's an example from my own work right beginning of my career, where I did oral histories with elderly people. So I interviewed elderly people about their childhood years. And as you can see, these are all people who have been with us for some time and in working class, Scotland in the early 1900s, people left school at 14 and started to work. So they went into jobs. And you know, that kind of pattern of having to contribute to the family household is still the norm in many parts of the world. It was absolutely taken for granted to me that last fall, you handed all your money over to the household, it wasn't for your individual pocket. But that's not to see that young people remain at the beck and call of their parents indefinitely. Because there was also an idea that once you got to, towards certainly 21, maybe 1819. But certainly by 21, that you had a right to, to lead your own life. And that actually, he could go off and do what he wanted. And here's a quote fear. There's a young woman saying, basically, that she when she got to the age of 19, although she was still handing over her money, her wages to her mother, she wasn't going to take any more orders written in Scots, she was speaking in Scots, I wasn't literally an English is I wasn't taking any more orders. I was bringing in a wage to her. So at that time, for one daughter to not may stay home and look after ageing parents was absolutely normal, but that still sometimes happens. But it was normal alongside an idea that it was a choice. So you had the right to make your own life could have withdrawn and gone off and done something else but people chose to do it. And they talk to me in the language of choice because they could see how much they felt deeply for their appearance and they I felt that their mother had struggled to look after them and bring them up and in very difficult circumstances and certainly wanted to give back. But at the same time, it was mainly women that did this not songs. And so that gendering of it just shows you how choices socially structured. It was seen as much more women's work, housework and looking after and care. And it wasn't seen as means work. So it was Young women that made the choice mainly. So, choice is always constrained. It's always in social conditions. It's never completely open. So writing about the press And you can read this for yourself. If you do this KEANEY don't can and can't Reflecting on wind, people still make choices that seem to support a conventional the norms that rose Neil and our co authors were talking about in the reading for last week. The norm of a couple of dumb the norm of heterosexuality such as changing your name on marriage is one of the things that we discuss ch They're suggesting both actually choices do some mean constraint people Draw on tradition because it's easy because it's there because they can You don't have time and energy to do things differently or As part of what they're trying to suggest, and there's a certain in air inertia that carries on So switching to The framing of this is ethnocentric. Check. So the idea of the individual as I said at the beginning, I think is Historically specific sort have both very very long standing but it takes one different meanings at different times. Different cultures and is much more emphasised, perhaps in some cultures and others. And Carl smart. Shipman wrote an article efficients in monochrome, talking about how even within Britain has been always cultural diversity and very different understandings of what a family household should be like what relationships should be like and what individual choices in terms of how you plan your future relationships. And backhaul respect and ease later Dr. Chen was recognising this. And trying to de blinkered himself in terms of ethnocentric understandings of individualism. And one of the pieces of writing is forwarding a book about Asia. In pitch boss there's both Work about China and work about South Korea. And so in the South Korean concept context there's been very, very rapid social Change with They pressed went Matys happening massives social change since the Second World War as Of course it has been Then in Japan, and a number of other parts of Asia. And of course we could talk about the rapid social change to China. But it was ticularly Big Data bye westernising In his research on family life in South Korea in the present is actually a multitude of different forms of family ways of being family and understandings about what family means and ideologies and family, so he talks about families and kind of ideological violence around the family the ideas that people are operating with in their family life, and projecting outwards. Having these different forums, which in some contexts is very instrumental, and maybe even he also talks about an egotistic forum, queer people really do prioritise themselves as individuals, more than anything else, but an individualistic, but they're also still Confucian families with strong queer Confucianism is still a strong overarching theme. So, the ego tests are dealing with each other as if they're their market relationships, and don't want to hear for people who are seen as burdens, wanting to distance themselves as actively as possible from parts of the family that are seen as burdens, but that's just one of many responses to the difficult conditions that have been created by very rapid social change. And you're writing about China also talks a bit about the separation of individualization and individualism. That changes in Israel. You can see how many of the changes brought about by the state have in fact been individualise individualising. You know the breakup of collective enterprises, and traditional networks and encouragement of private property and forms of capitalism, social processes that are individualising. And they have maybe also allowed a popular emphasis on individual rights and self that desire something better for the self to flourish in contemporary China, but at the same time the state. Still upholds. Some of the collective foams of Confucianism, and appeals to them, too. And so there's, there's a tension going on as talked about in that literature. So, at the same time as this critique of discussion about what extent these ideas that seem to be maybe branded as Western are applicable in other contexts. I want you to just remember that in the context where I inhabit the context that I inhabit. Feminists have always critiqued these ideas and have always been critical accounts with these ideas. And so, historically, women were never afforded the same possibilities as men as being pointed out very early on by feminists, so this idea that you're the individual proprietor of your own person that I talked about in the first lecture is of course about it was about individual men, it wasn't about women. And of course it was originally made of property. So the, the rights of citizenship, were originally only afforded to men of property. So alongside noting the ethnocentrism of some claims just remember that within the so called West. They're also always been under attack. And, arguably, Actually, the idea of the autonomous individual has always been somewhat mythical. We all always rely on other people. No matter what culture, you know we're not for without relationships, we are born of someone. And we are, we cannot survive without being cared for in a hands on ways, and we do not thrive if we are not loved in those relationships, and we don't thrive as adults. If we do not have people in our support networks. And so at that very basic level. We are always embedded in relationships but of course it's much more profound than that. And when you think about it sociologically, because of course we're also, You know we're speaking. We are a culture YouTube we have a culture we have a language, and we have maybe multiple cultures, you might have multiple languages. All of that is an enormous hinterland of social construction. Everything we do is relying on some kind of social products. Almost, almost everything. But to see things only in individualistic sometimes be negative and damaging. And there's always been arguments for more collective and less individualistic ways of life. So, the feminists spirit Mackintosh back in the 80s were very cynical about nuclear families, and couple relationships, as you know monogamous couples relationships and wanted us to be more relaxed about those kinds of relationships because we wanted us to put our energies into the social fabric and making more collective friendly for all ways of living rather than being individualistic so those kinds of critiques have always been around. And as Katelyn tomley sums up her work on Asian families. All of us probably struggle with reconciling personal goals and commitments to other people. And maybe that is an aspect, she suggests of human existence and understanding and thinking through the relationality that people are working with how we should approach this.