Introduction
Late modernity, as described by Anthony Giddens, presents a world radically different from traditional structures. Its foundation is disembedding – the detachment of social relations from their local context. Mechanisms such as money and expert systems facilitate this. However, this new freedom, combined with the globalization of time and space, gives rise to a risk society where uncertainty becomes the norm. This article explains how these processes shape our identity and daily lives.
Disembedding: Mechanisms of Late Modernity
Key to understanding contemporary society is the process of disembedding, which involves extracting social relations from their local, traditional moorings. Two pillars drive this: symbolic tokens, like money, enabling anonymous exchange, and expert systems (e.g., medicine, law), which guarantee order in interactions with strangers. Thanks to these, interactions can occur across vast, global distances.
Modernity also redefines time and space. Time, emptied of local meanings and standardized by the clock, becomes a universal frame of reference. This allows for the coordination of actions on a global scale, detaching interactions from the requirement of physical presence and shared location.
Risk Society and Threatened Security
Unlike traditional threats (e.g., natural disasters), modern risks are a byproduct of our development – such as financial crises or ecological catastrophes. Ulrich Beck termed this state a risk society. Giddens views risk as an existential condition, linked to the necessity of continuous choice in an individual's life. Beck, on the other hand, focuses on global, systemic threats that the individual cannot control.
This permanent uncertainty impacts ontological security – the fundamental sense of continuity and predictability of the world, which tradition formerly provided. In modernity, it becomes a resource that must be constantly striven for.
The Individual as Manager of Fate: Trust and Reflexivity
In late modernity, the individual becomes the manager of their own destiny. Their biography is no longer "given" but becomes a project requiring constant reflexivity – monitoring and revising choices in light of new information. As tradition loses authority, we must place trust in abstract systems, such as finance or science, which we do not fully understand.
Our experience becomes mediated – filtered through media and technology, a process intensified by digitalization. Even intimacy and community undergo transformation, drawing patterns from public representations rather than direct bonds. Individual responsibility for life increases, and its price is constant existential anxiety.
Conclusion
In a world where certainty is a scarce commodity and identity an ongoing project, we face a fundamental question. Are we condemned to permanent anxiety, or does this necessity of choice hold the potential to create a more conscious life? Late modernity leaves us with the task of finding a new definition of community and security, rooted not in tradition, but in conscious co-creation.
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