Individualization and the Self

Individualization is one of the significant characteristics of modernization. She greatly influenced the formation of the modern self. This chapter discusses the structuring of individualization in the modern age, the separation of the individual from the group in the processes of accelerated economic integration of society and the advancement of the free market economy. The connection of individualization, identity and self in the time of modernization is analyzed through the views of authors such as Georg Simmel, Emile Durkheim and Max Weber. The chapter concludes with an analysis of the relationship between possessive individualism and the self on the one hand and methodological individualism and the self on the other.