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A central issue in individualisation is that the individual has the opportunities of choosing. In late modern societies choice in many ways can be seen as the constitutive aspect of becoming an individual. Values and ideology do not govern people, they are expected to choose the values and ideologies, which they prefer.
In a consumer society, however, more and more areas of everyday life are submitted a consumer-choice logic. Obvious consume takes more and more time and energy. The world is formed as a big consumer marked. Also political parties do not any longer represent specific classes or categories of people in society. As other consumer goods they advertise and appeal to the individual to choose their specific brand or ideology. In such a world, more and more individual choices also are formed by consumer logic. And consumer logic means that the choice has changed from a more or less value-formed and reflective choice to a selection among a lot of opportunities or commodities. Therefore the individual process of making choices more and more looks as a process of selection in a supermarket. Democratisation processes therefore are constituted by choices and individuals become individuals by participation in democratic decisions.
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| Last Updated ( Friday, 23 June 2006 ) |