Self-esteem and Individualism in Britain after 1945

由齐格蒙特·鲍曼、乌尔里希·贝克和安东尼·吉登斯等著名社会学家提出的占主导地位的个人主义理论，指的是身份问题从一种“给定的”问题转变为一种“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，是工业化和随之而来的消费社会的结果，消费社会见证了先前存在的社会形态的解体，包括阶级、社会地位、性别角色和家庭关系，乌尔里希·贝克将这些身份认同称为“僵尸类别”：“社会学上是活的，但经验上是死的”。这一想法很强大，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，他指出，单身黑人母亲被要求像其他人一样反身和个性化，从而从传统的期望、规范和例行公事中“脱离”出来--就像其他任何人‘创造’自己一样。其他人则认为个人主义是一种铁板一块的世界末日式的个人主义，西方社会的成员被从社区中剥离出来，变得“痴迷于个人的孤独恐惧”。这种夸大个人主义的普遍性和包罗万象的本质的倾向在对这一过程的历史学描述中反复出现。2000年，罗伯特·普特南追踪了20世纪最后三分之一的美国社会资本和公民参与度的下降趋势，这反映了个人主义理论家的说法，他声称美国人已经被一股危险的激流[……]从彼此分离和社区中拉了出来。普特南的叙述呈现了一种僵化的、铁板一块的、非常负面的个人主义形式，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.