Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
prominent role, not just with the development of auto-ethnography and biographical approaches,
but also through refl exivity, where we can see that in many circumstances the researcher is as
much part of the phenomenon being studied as the informants are (Scarles, 2010).
However, contemporary society is characterised by fl ux and movement: both physical and
conceptual borders are more permeable than they have been in the past (see Mullen and
Munson, 2010). Within the European Union, for example, citizens of the Member States
have freedom of movement and the right to work and reside in other Member States, while
the Euro provides a unifi ed cross-border currency for some States. Of course, such develop-
ments are neither trouble-free nor without their critics, many of whom view such develop-
ments with alarm as evidence of a nascent super-state and a consequent diminution of national
sovereignty. Whichever way we take it there can be no doubt that such developments are
indicative of a fundamental shift in how the control of borders and territories is conceptual-
ised and realised, how the old order of separate and sovereign nation states has been chal-
lenged by the political economy of globalisation and as a result new forms of space are being
generated (Castells, 2004).
From modernity to institutionalised individualism
At the same time, the dominant institutions of modernity have also undergone some notable
changes. While not entirely disappearing, social class is no longer simply determined by
occupational type or place of residence ( Joyce, 1995; McDowell, 2006; Oesch, 2006), the
number of women in the labour market has shown a steady increase (Grunow
et al.
, 2006),
and marriages have declined in number, matched by a proliferation of family types and living
arrangements that will surely tax the brains of any future genealogists (Crompton, 2006).
Increased physical mobility, driven partly by de-industrialisation and the need to fi nd employ-
ment, has resulted in the decline of some place-based identities, but interestingly it has also
seen the rise of other forms of mainly ethnic identities (Begum, 2008; Delanty and He, 2008;
Plüss, 2005).
What this signifi es is that the contemporary condition is one of increasing individualisa-
tion or individuation (Adams, 2006; Bauman, 2002; Beck, 2000; Beck and Beck-Gernsheim,
2002; Boli and Elliott, 2008), which I regard as a central feature of contemporary post-
industrial and democratic societies such as those in Europe, North America and Australasia
(but see also Delanty and He, 2008).
The contemporary situation has been described by Beck (2000) and Beck and Beck-
Gernsheim (2002) as one that signals a transition from one form of modernity to another,
termed late or second modernity. What this particular formulation draws our attention to is
the changing nature of the institutional context in developed societies, and in particular the
notion of 'detraditionalisation', a long-term historical process in which the individual has
become distanced if not removed from what we might regard as 'traditional' supports and
commitments such as class, the family and even the workplace due to the changing nature of
work and the broader political economy (see also Marzower, 1999).
This process of change is most apparent in the mode of industr ial production that prevailed
from the nineteenth century into the latter decades of the twentieth. Under this form of
capitalism (leaving aside peaks and troughs) there was little mobility between occupational
classes, which were also often linked to specifi c places. An individual identity would be partly
determined by social class, partly by gender and partly by place of residence, among other
factors. The contemporary situation today is more fl uid and dynamic: social class has not
gone, rather like many other aspects of our lives it has become more fragmented; the old
