Understanding personal lives: After individualisation

Duncan, Simon; Carter, Julia

Abstract

This chapter will centrally address the second aim of the collection – to explore innovative theoretical approaches to understanding personal life. It will also seek to disrupt ‘normative’ idealisations - those made by individualisation theorists.

We start with a story about Christina, a working-class wife, mother and part-time employee living in what was a coal-mining village near Barnsley. She felt conflicting desires for self-improvement through developing a career, and for emotional fulfilment as a good mother. Christina’s responses were sometimes reflexive, sometimes habitual, sometimes taking tradition for granted. She rarely took decisions just thinking about herself, rather, her choices were set within emotional relationships with her husband, her dead mother, and above all her children. She also faced imbalances of power with employers, while her own resources were limited. Her agency was both constrained and ‘bonded’, formed through ties with others.

• Online Publication Date: Jan 10, 2022
• Publication Date: Jan 10, 2022
• Deposit Date: Sep 14, 2022
• Publicly Available Date: Jul 11, 2023
• Publisher: Routledge
• Book Title: Negotiating families and personal lives in the 21st Century: Exploring diversity, social change and inequalities
• Chapter Number: 4
• ISBN: 9780367483401
• Keywords: Individualisation, families, personal lives, diversity, social change, inequalities, equality
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/9981942
• Publisher URL: https://www.routledge.com/Negotiating-Families-and-Personal-Lives-in-the-21st-Century-Exploring-Diversity/Quaid-Hugman-Wilcock/p/book/9780367483401