Self-esteem and Individualism in Britain after 1945

由齐格蒙特·鲍曼（Zygmunt Bauman）、乌尔里希·贝克（Ulrich Beck）和安东尼·吉登斯（Anthony Giddens）等著名社会学家提出的主流个人主义理论，指的是身份问题从“给定”转变为“任务”的方式，通常被认为是西方世界晚期现代性的一个特征，工业化和由此产生的消费社会的结果，看到以前存在的社会形式，包括阶级，社会地位，性别角色，和家庭关系，Ulrich Beck称之为“僵尸类别”的身份：“社会学上活着，但经验上死了”。这个想法很强大，可能会产生戏剧性的后果。例如，吉登斯以乐观的态度看待这一过程，指出单身黑人母亲需要像任何人一样反思和个性化，因此从传统的期望，规范和惯例中“脱离”-像其他人一样自由“制造”自己。另一些人则将个人主义理论化为一种单一的、启示性的形式，其中西方社会的成员被从社区中分离出来，变得“痴迷于孤独的个人恐惧”。这种夸大个人主义的普遍性和包罗万象的性质的倾向在这一过程的历史记载中反复出现。2000年，罗伯特·普特南（Robert Putnam）追踪了20世纪最后三分之一美国的“社会资本”和公民参与的下降趋势，反映了个人主义理论家的主张，他声称美国人已经“被一股危险的激流所取代”。彼此分离，脱离社区。普特南的叙述呈现了一种僵化的、单一的、深刻负面的个人主义形式，这种个人主义影响了美国，大概也影响了整个西方世界。

The dominant theory of individualism, developed by prominent sociologists including Zygmunt Bauman, Ulrich Beck and Anthony Giddens, refers to the way in which the question of identity is transformed from a 'given' into a 'task', and is commonly cited as a characteristic of late modernity in the Western world, a result of industrialisation and the resulting consumer society which saw the disintegration of previously existing social forms including class, social status, gender roles, and family relationships which Ulrich Beck has labelled 'zombie categories' of identification:'sociologically alive but empirically dead'.The idea is powerful and has potentially dramatic consequences. Giddens, for example, views the process in optimistic terms, pointing to the single black mother who is required to be as reflexive and individualised as anyone, so is 'disembedded' from traditional expectations, norms and routines - free as anyone else is to 'make' themselves. Others theorise a monolithic and apocalyptic form of individualism wherein members of Western society are ripped from communities to become 'obsessed with solitary individual fears'.This tendency to overstate the universalistic and all-encompassing nature of individualism has been repeated in historiographical accounts of the process. In 2000 Robert Putnam tracked a downward trend in 'social capital' and civic engagement in the USA in the last third of the twentieth century, mirroring the claims of individualism theorists as he claimed that Americans had been 'overtaken by a treacherous rip current [...] pulled apart from one another and out from communities'. Putnam's account presents a rigid, monolithic and deeply negative form of individualism thataffected the USA, and presumably the Western world in its entirety.