Individualisation and Rationalisation of Modern Society as a Factor of Erosion of Security Function of a Family This text was supported by ESF grant (CZ.1.07/2.3.00/20.0209) Development and Support of a Multidisciplinary Scientific Research Team for the Study of Contemporary Family at UHK (RODINA-UHK).
Modern society is characterized by a decline of the so-called lifeworld, i.e., a shift away from the traditional institutions that constitute it (the term "lifeworld" can be understood as the everyday experience of people in their natural relationships such as friendship, neighbourhood, but mainly family) (Habermas, 2000; Laan, 1998; and also in the context of Slovakia with a focus on the field of social work Levická, 2009; Levická, Hanzalíková, Bánovčinová, 2013). First and foremost, the decline of manifestations of the lifeworld involves the erosion of the family, but also the erosion of interpersonal relationships, friendship or neighbourhood (the term erosion here means the gradual attenuation of the original functions of a given social institution over time, whereby some functions may be replaced by the action of other institutions, e.g., state social security erodes the security function of intergenerational cohabitation in the family, while other functions may disappear "without replacement"). These relationships are replaced by systemic relationships. That is, there is a turn towards the institutions of the state, the market and the civil sector, which through their functions replace the existing functions of the family (but also, for example, replace the functions of social networks in the real world – not in cyberspace, or the aforementioned institution of neighbourhood).
This represents two sides of the same coin, i.e., the process of replacing the roles and functions of some institutions (family) with other institutions (services for families). Modern (here meaning industrial) society carries with it an 'inherent' characteristic of 'rationalism'. This is further operationalized in the text as a turn towards a systemic conception of institutions in society (possibly including the systemic conception of the institution called the family). The consequence may be the so-called "colonization" of the lifeworld by the system (Habermas, 2000; Laan, 1998).
1. Individualisation as a Basic Feature of the Modern Age
This is an accompanying feature of modern society. The word individualisation is understood here in the sense of atomisation of society – society as a sum of individuals, where each one "plays in their own sandbox". Security mechanisms built on mutual assistance are being removed, and risks and the security of individuals are being individualised. Individualisation can have many positive connotations. For example, for educators it is positive in terms of approach to children in education, taking into account strengths and weaknesses, individual talents and disabilities. Likewise, one can consider the gradual disappearance of roles and "bonds" associated with traditional institutions. This results in greater freedom in the choice of an individual's life path.
In the context of the security function of the family, however, we understand individualisation as the disintegration of society into individuals, where each person takes care of themselves. The result is a society of individuals rather than wholes that would mutually secure each other. There is an individualisation of risks – each of us insures ourselves, saves on our own to cover possible life (but mainly predictable) events. The theme of individualisation is thus related to the disintegration of institutions of sociability – that is, the mechanisms of adaptation to life in society based on our human capacity to associate. In pre-modern times, sociability was built on primary institutions (institutions of primary sociability – family, neighbourhood, friendship).
It could be said that with the arrival of the modern age, with its feature of individualisation, the institutions of primary sociability begin to erode (disappear). The neighbourhood erodes – a neighbour is a tolerated matter, not a network of relationships and a resource that can be used as a prevention of risks and enables the fulfilment of the security function. The exchange of services between neighbours is not common (as a model of behaviour, although exceptions still exist, of course). The apartment building of our housing estates, its inhabitants, should be a modern form of primary sociability, but it has none of its features. Similarly, friendship is eroding and this is facilitated by the virtualisation of relationships on cyber-social networks. People have a thousand friends, but only virtually, and this does not replace real relationships that allow the provision of mutual services when exposed to difficult life situations.
Above all, however, the erosion of the family is key. The pre-modern era was built on primary institutions, where the family was a concept expressing congruence of form and content. The erosion of the family goes so far that today multigenerational cohabitation is rare, the nuclear family emerged during the 20th century as the standard model, and even that is further changing into the form of the late-modern family, which in general perception today consists only of one adult (thereby "ridding ourselves" of the need to define forms of cohabitation of two adults) and a child, without a closer definition of their mutual relationship (the child does not have to be biological).
2. Family as a "Risk" Institution
The traditional (pre-modern) family was considered a security institution. With the arrival of the modern age (industrial age), the traditional roles of the family began to weaken. How far has this erosion gone? From the perspective of the security role of the family, in modern society we have not only reached a limitation of the security functions of the family (care for the elderly in old age, care for the sick), but we have perhaps reached the opposite – the risk family (see e.g., Beck, 2004; Giddens, 1999). In pre-modern times, the family was a security element. A child was a blessing, in the sense considered here, it was a security element for the future. The late-modern family of today does not meet the features that the pre-modern family had. Over time, in the 20th century, the family turned from a security-providing institution into even a risk institution. The family today is a risk institution also in the sense that we must actually calculate the risk of its very existence (calculation when having a child, deciding on the number of children). The risk family thus not only fails to secure its members mutually, but deliberately calculates in advance the risk of the very formation of the family (Smutek, Smutková, 2011; Smutková, Smutek, 2012). We can therefore increasingly encounter topics in the media (mainly in newspapers or social magazines) such as: "How much will it cost us to have a child?"
Massively widespread contraception since the 1960s has become insurance. It fits well into the modern age and its inherent feature - individualisation. "Having a child" is increasingly becoming an economic calculation - how much "I" must "deprive myself" to pay expenses and raise a child (here the term upbringing is not used in the sense of parental upbringing, but rather pejoratively in the sense of a purely economically conceived rearing of offspring until adulthood). The financial amount needed for this "rearing" is not a relevant figure for us here; what is important is that the phenomenon of economic calculation is occurring more and more. This changes the nature of the family towards its individualised essence.
According to Beck (2004), individualisation is an inherent feature of the modern age and we are only seeing it through to its conclusion day by day. It may happen that individualisation is taken so far that no solidarity will be expected or observed among people. A time will come when the imperative "every man for himself" - what I have saved, what I have insured myself against - will become the only value criterion of the age. Insurance, however, is a distribution of risk requiring redistribution of resources. The very institution of insurance thus also begins to erode under the influence of individualisation, and we are beginning to build rather a "savings type of society". The institutions of primary sociability are thus being replaced in the long term by institutions of secondary sociability (state-organized and guaranteed social security - the emergence of insurance against illness, accident, old age - pension policy) (see e.g., Keller, 2001). From this perspective, the family even becomes a dispensable institution, not an indispensable one (Smutek, 2012).
3. The "Shell" Nature of the Modern Family and the Demise of the Concept of Family
A shell institution (Giddens, 2000) means that nothing remains of the original content "filling" except the original husk (shell). In the shell, either nothing of the original meaning remains, or there is something completely different. The concept of a shell institution means that the original meaning and the original roles and functions that the given institution had have "fizzled out", yet we tend to continue giving the same name to that institution. The family has become a shell institution, with which a linguistic problem is also associated. In today's society, the word family mostly evokes the pre-modern type of family (larger, with a fulfilled security function). This brings communication difficulties. We use one word (family) in communication, but in all likelihood the communicator and the recipient have very different ideas about the institution being discussed (it has different semantic connotations for each communication actor, determined by their own childhood and adulthood and their view of the family). The concept of family is thus itself actually a pre-modern concept, used by inertia even in modern times (and today we are already in a late-modern era, with advanced features of individualisation, rationalisation, generalisation of relationships or functional differentiation). However, using pre-modern concepts in modern times fundamentally hinders communication. Concepts evoke more connotations than the actual meaning of the word (denotation). Freeing oneself from semantic connotations could be achieved by creating a neologism. The solution would thus be to invent a completely new word for today's concept of the word family - instead of the term family, for example, the term cohabitation. Or we can draw inspiration from the English language, where the acronym LAT stands for "living apart together" – we live together separately, in the sense of protecting one's own privacy even in a couple relationship, living separately despite the external declaration of being a couple). We protect our personal individual economic "investment" through prenuptial agreements...
Today's form of the family has almost nothing in common with the pre-modern family. The question is whether any institutions of primary sociability remain at all. It seems that at the core, they do not. Our sociability is built for the future on the individual ethos of the age. This is a society-wide circumstance that pushes us towards individualisation and taking care of ourselves, but it may not be related to an internal value system or concepts such as egoism and self-centeredness. An individualised society does not have to mean a society of egoists, where everyone cares only for themselves at the expense of others. It is always important to ask what the nature of man as a biological species is – a philosophical and ideological question. The left claims that order is given from above and the right that order creates itself. What is the nature of man as a biological species? Is man a cooperative creature or one that competes with everyone else? It is a fundamentally unanswerable question
4. The Position of the Child in an Individualised and Rationalist Society
The gradual transformations of the institutions of the modern age (market, state and civil sector) have very deep interconnections. The transformations of the family are part of the transformations of the entire modern Western civilisation and of the main features of modern society, such as first and foremost individualisation, depersonalisation of relationships, rationalisation and division of labour (see e.g., Keller, 2007). And what about the child in such a family? Modern society is beginning to view the child as a subject responsible for itself (Žižek, 2007). As a subject that should have (within the liberal principles of Western civilisation) the opportunity to decide about its own future development (e.g., during parental divorce). Through the lens of modern civilisation, the child becomes a "little adult". However, the issue has different, or even opposing, views on the child's ability to decide for itself in different thematic areas.
5. Rationalism of the West
The modern age is permeated with rationalism. Reason - ratio, the rational grasp of the world and its reshaping and formation - is placed on a pedestal. This broke down floodgates that cannot be closed again – we lost a higher power (abstract, any kind) onto which we could shift blame and explain why society looks the way it does. Society is thus a product that we ourselves have made; it is in our hands. Rationalisation is an irreversible process; we are enclosed in rationalism and in the necessity of constantly seeking solutions and influencing the future. But every answer brings "ten more questions" and every solution brings new problems. In pre-modern times, people dealt mainly with problems caused by external influences (rain, drought), but the late-modern age deals mainly with problems that it has brought upon itself through its own existence. Today's people are more or less indifferent to whether winter is warmer or harsh, whether summer is dry and hot or not. Within the division of labour, everything will be provided for us, and the key problems are problems arising from rationalism that we have brought upon ourselves. For example, reforms of our artificial systems - economic reforms, pension reforms - these are the topics that the advanced modern age addresses. We created these systems ourselves as a superstructure above the "lifeworld" (angl. life world, něm. lebenswelt), which, however, over time ceased to allow the lifeworld to manifest itself too much.
Conclusion
Removing the basic features of modern society would only be possible through an apocalypse; only people (children) who would not carry forward any previous experience with rationalism ("tabula rasa") would have to survive. Nothing from the pre-modern institutions will apparently return. We are condemned to constant and ongoing modernisation, in the sense of a permanent deepening of the features of the modern age. We ourselves rationally cause modernisation also by modernising systems. Modernisation means "seeing through to the end" these features of the modern age. Every reform means a deepening of individualisation, rationalisation, depersonalisation... No one has yet found a way to "get rid of" these features of the modern age in a way that would not mean the aforementioned apocalypse for mass society and would allow the current population numbers to survive (one can assume that radical ecological proposals for changes in social organisation would require up to a 90% reduction of the current population). Modern society, with these features and their irremovability, has become a "golden cage". There is prosperity in the cage, but there is no escape from it, and we do not even want out, so we keep building it further and further.
Authors: PhDr. Martin Smutek, Ph.D. Mgr. Lucia Smutková, Ph.D. Information about the authors: PhDr. Martin Smutek, Ph.D. (1977) serves as the head of the Department of Social Work at the Institute of Social Work of the University of Hradec Králové in the Czech Republic. He studied Social Policy and Social Work at the Faculty of Social Studies of Masaryk University in Brno (master's and doctoral studies). He has long been engaged in the theory of the welfare state and its modernisation, and issues of epistemology in the social sciences. Mgr. Lucie Smutková, Ph.D. (1977) currently serves as an assistant professor at the Institute of Social Work of the University of Hradec Králové in the Czech Republic. She studied social work at the University of Hradec Králové and later also at the Faculty of Social Studies of Masaryk University in Brno. She completed her doctoral studies at the Faculty of Health and Social Sciences of the University of Ostrava. In practice, she previously worked as a probation officer at the Probation and Mediation Service of the Czech Republic and served as a regional school coordinator for the prevention of socio-pathological phenomena in children and youth within the Regional Authority of the Hradec Králové Region. She also worked as a consultant for victims of domestic violence at the Intervention Centre for Victims of Domestic Violence in Hradec Králové. List of sources:
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