Late-Modernity

• Overall criticisms

  • individualism based on free will, could impact social connections
  • structure of family influences our personal choice, lead to rejection or staying with partners out of fear of judgement
  • modernist traditions remain in some social classes, keep up with appearance or economic security
• Key concepts

  • Individualism = focusing on goals rather than needs of society
  • Increased insecurity e.g relationships, employment
  • Reflexivity = individuals reflect on place in society due to increasing changes
  • Increased interconnectedness
• Late modernity

  People have more choice with family or personal relationships but not as free as post modernist suggest, e.g. people are less likely to get married due to structural changes like gender equality > both partners work and build careers > less time to make a relationship work > decline in marriage and increase in divorce
• Giddens

  Argues in recent decades family and marriage have been transformed by greater choice, more equal relationships

  1. Families free to define relationships themselves rather than acting out roles defined by tradition, e.g. couples can choose to cohabit rather than marriage
  2. Couples stay because of love rather than for children
  3. Relationships become self-discovery to establish who we are on our journey of self-discovery
• Beck's risk society

  Tradition has less influence, people have more choice > developed risk consciousness > spend more time calculating risks and rewards of different actions
• Beck

  Traditional patriarchal family was unequal but it provided stable and predictable basis for family by defining their roles. Patriarchal family undermined by two trends:

  1. Greater gender equality = challenged male domination in all spheres
  2. Greater individualism = people's actions are influenced more by calculations of their own interest

  Leads to negotiated families = don't conform to traditional family norm > vary according to expectations of members who decide what's best
• Pure relationship

  Couple stays together as the are driven by the other persons needs, rather than external factors (tradition, social expectations)
• Plastic sexuality

  Increasing fluidity and freedom in sexual identities and behaviours
• Confluent love


  Relationships built on love of the other partner