How Individualized are the Dutch?

Abstract

Individualization is often considered to be one of the most important social-cultural trends of the last decades. According to authors such as Ulrich Beck, Scott Lash and Anthony Giddens, it is one of the defining characteristics of late or `reflexive' modernity. However, there is not much empirical research on the phenomenon of individualization. This article examines the empirical evidence for a trend of individualization in the Netherlands. Three alleged consequences of the individualization process, namely detraditionalization, emancipation and heterogenization, are analysed using Dutch data. Only the hypothesis of detraditionalization is confirmed by the data. The emancipation hypothesis is, however, unambiguously refuted by the available data, while the data are not conclusive with respect to heterogenization. Hence, the empirical support for the individualization trend is much weaker than is often supposed.