If we consider the concept of individualization, the world has undergone a radical anthropological transformation over the last fifty years . The development of globalization, the expansion of the space-time boundaries that once divided us, the strong technological impetus, the perception of being part of a global civil society, global struggles for the expansion of individual rights, the politicization of the private sphere, the enormous importance acquired by the media industry, the widespread circulation of information and images that occurs constantly and at an extremely rapid rate.

But not only that, the relational paradigms between us human beings have also changed, with the loss of a common social environment to which we can adhere, and the fragmentation of the social fabric. So-called postmodernity brings with it all the innovation, progress, and well-being that the technological and economic surge of the last fifty years has been able to guarantee, but it also brings with it all the gaps, risks, fears, and uncertainties to which Western society is inevitably exposed today.

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Individualization and the globalized world

For years now, we have been hearing about the "globalized world" in both scientific and non-scientific contexts, but it is difficult to find a precise definition for the word "globalization," just as it is problematic to identify the origins of this process . Some authors consider the analysis of the globalization process primarily from an economic perspective , identifying the economy as the main driving force, but there are many dimensions of globality that are intrinsically interconnected:

  • the overestimation of the financial structure over the economic one which implies the dematerialization of the economy and the formation of a global financial market;
  • the growth of transnational industrial enterprises;
  • the strong impetus of technological development;
  • the hyper-competition of companies given by the processes of de-regulation, privatization and de-localization of these;
  • the perception of belonging to a global civil society due to the pervasiveness of the apparatuses
  • communication and media technologies that connect populations globally;
  • the circulation of global cultural images and flows;
  • the increasingly unregulated and unequal access of states to the world's global resources;
  • issues related to the environmental crisis and global warming, conflicts
  • global transcultural, socio-economic inequalities.

Furthermore, in contemporary times, nation states have also been subjected to processes of deinstitutionalization and desocialization, processes that have led to a progressive loss of power of the state regulatory system, guaranteed by legal mechanisms, and to a profound transformation of the social world and the values ​​through which reality was once organized, of which the state was the primary director. These dynamics have caused a profound split in the balance once present between economics, politics, and religion, with the consequent distancing of people from community life and the sharing of a common political project. Thus, the great ideologies of the past have come to a crisis. In concrete terms, in contemporary times, the social bond that allowed citizens of the same state to feel part of what Benedict Anderson called "imagined communities" is disappearing.

The privatization of politics

Furthermore, in the contemporary world, the system of citizen control typical of the modern era, known as the panopticon, has been progressively replaced by what Z. Bauman called the "synopticon" : a mode of social organization that coincides with the emergence of the private within the public sphere. According to this logic, public space has been filled and colonized by the private, by private goals and claims of rights. In this regard, sociologist Christopher Lasch , already in the late 1970s, identified a shift in the relational paradigm in contemporary society. He analyzes how, as early as the 1970s, a loss of the sense of historical time was developing, which in turn led to a true withdrawal from collective political life by contemporary society, as well as a loss of relevance of the historical past and collective historical memory.

Christopher
Lasch

Based on what scholars have stated, it can be deduced that we were gradually approaching today's relational paradigm, where the list of public issues is nothing more than the sum of the items on private issues, which aim to obtain rights related to one's individual freedom. In the era of the panopticon, the very concept of freedom was traced back to acting in ways that were better suited to community social life, which was organized, hierarchical, and cohesive. Today, the price to pay for enjoying new personal rights and freedoms is a social context characterized by a lack of certainty and security.

Social individualization

Indeed, the sectors of social life that have become globalized today are multiple, fragmented, and difficult to define, which has led to, and continues to lead to, great unease and the consequent individualization of society . The formation and strengthening of a bond, in fact, stems from a collective constitution of meaning, or from the attribution of a specific meaning to reality, which moves in a single direction and becomes collectively shared.

The birth of the ability to build community bonds stems precisely from this process: from sharing the meanings of the social world with a specific group, which means feeling part of a community with which similar interpretations of reality are processed and with which similar behavioral models, interpretative schemes, and attributions of meaning are shared. In other words, culture serves precisely to maintain individuals' adherence to socially recognized behavioral models. It is precisely thanks to the process of giving meaning to reality that each person is able to give meaning to the world around them, and from that mechanism of sharing and attributing the same meaning to the world,
In reality, the concept of “culture” was born, capable of uniting individuals in a community.

The individualism we desperately need today (individualization)
The individual in contact with social reality: cognitive dissonance

This social mechanism has been progressively eroded since the 1970s: the worldview in the globalized era has become increasingly fragmented, and the individualization of people has rendered them incapable of engaging in the construction of a shared sense of community, something that once came naturally and automatically, because it was organized through mechanisms of control by the nation state. The communities that form in the contemporary world are never stable or permanent, and, as soon as they emerge, their lifespan is very short. For this reason, it is up to each individual to attribute a specific meaning to the reality around them, according to their individualized experience of the world. Thus, social meanings can no longer be reliably attributed over time. In other words, they cannot become permanently and permanently imprinted in the collective unconscious of society.

Individualization between hyperconsumption and self-reference

Faced with these life dynamics, the disintegration of community and local bonds has taken hold, triggering a problem of mistrust in others. Specifically, the dense web of frequent and lasting interactions, essential for developing stable trust in others, has dissolved. The result is that feelings of impotence and inadequacy have become the common hallmark of individuals' identities in postmodern society , because everyone today perceives a great sense of individual responsibility in addressing their own life challenges.

Autonomy, independence, and therefore also solitude, are the key words for building the contemporary social pact, in the absence of sufficiently stable social community bonds. Furthermore, the concept of work has taken on a decentralized role in people's lives compared to the postmodern era, and the work paradigm has been replaced by goals such as building one's self-esteem and personal happiness, one's freedom of choice, enjoyment and recreation, and individual autonomy.

sociology of body consumption Photo by Hanna Postova on Unsplash
Sociology of body consumption – learn more here

All these objectives converge today, especially in the freedom of action directed towards consumption, which has completely replaced the work ethic. We can conceive of the hyper-consumption of the postmodern era as the direct consequence of the deconstruction of the great state ideologies of the modern era, which have been replaced by marketing narratives, which direct the individual's perception of the world's values ​​and influence the construction of their mental and behavioral models. For today's consumerist system, a consumer willing to spend is a genuine necessity, which is why, through advertising, companies ensure that people internalize the practice of consumption as a duty, a fundamental means of adhering to the dominant social pact and avoiding exclusion.

Repercussions on individualization

But what are the repercussions of these socio-cultural changes just described on society? According to political scientist Stefano Bartolini, individuals who tend to adopt consumerist values ​​tend to prioritize goals such as success, wealth, or the acquisition of material goods and products, instead subordinating values ​​related to the sphere of affection , relationships, and behaviors linked to the creation of social bonds.

A study of American society conducted by Stefano Bartolini, Ennio Bilancini, and Maurizio Pugno, which covers the thirty-year period 1975-2004 and drawn from data from the General Social Survey, shows that the trend of declining happiness among Americans can be directly correlated to the increase in relational poverty, understood as an increase in loneliness , communication difficulties, fear, a sense of isolation, mistrust, civic engagement, and a worsening of the quality of people's social life.

Other studies

Other studies in social psychology, which examine population samples and quantify their well-being (measured as the quality of interpersonal relationships and the quality of relationships with oneself) in correlation with the consumer culture in which they are immersed, demonstrate that those who have fully undergone the process of individualization are the ones most deeply connected to the cult of consumption. Furthermore, they are always the ones who experience lower psychological well-being.

In short, they are less happy, as they experience emotions like joy and contentment less frequently, giving way to stress. Therefore, they are more at risk of developing psychopathologies like depression and symptoms like anxiety. They also experience negative emotions like anger, sadness, and fear more frequently. Based on these studies, people living in cultural contexts strongly tied to consumerism are more likely to individualize and develop poorer quality relationships with friends and partners, as they tend to view their relationships as predominantly instrumental.

Individualization today: what to do, then?

We should all, therefore, pay particular attention to the role that the social structures around us play in influencing and determining each person's perception of the surrounding reality, in shaping collective imaginations and our social actions. Mass media, social media, and advertising are all crucial means through which we construct our perception of the world we live in, through which we internalize values, meanings, and visions, which in the long run can become an integral part of our habits and personality. We do not become self-centered individuals because we choose to become so overnight , nor does our dominant social pact suddenly shift out of nowhere. Social change is built piece by piece, step by step, through ongoing dialogue and a constant synergy between the individual and their existence in society.

Individualism (individualization) is made up of people who seek autonomy and independence

Gaining awareness of this means being able to maintain a critical and independent line of thought regarding the overwhelming amount of messages, both advertising and otherwise, we receive from the social environment in which we live. A society that thrives on materialistic and individualistic goals such as economic well-being or personal success will be a society characterized by equally materialistic values ​​and individualistic and narcissistic relational paradigms. The market system drives people toward intense individualization, through the cult of hedonism and the care of their image and self, but focusing on the consequences of these mechanisms means becoming aware of the fact that, in the long term, they cause intense anxiety and a strong sense of responsibility in individuals, driven to flaunt their appearance in society, to constantly compare themselves to their peers, and to compulsively achieve some kind of success at the expense of social relationships.

Starting from the relational sphere

We are social animals, and if we were to become aware of our true needs as such, we would realize that by extolling the myth of individual independence, while we have achieved enormous advantages and technical and economic progress, we have progressively atrophied our skills in equally important areas such as relational spheres and psychosocial well-being. Ultimately, what we should try to do is reformulate our social paradigm, starting right here. Not from our "being," but from our "being in the world with others and for others."

Mayla Bottaro

References

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