Late Modernity, Individualization and Socialism: An Associational Critique of Neoliberalism.

• Author: Dursun, Nurbanu
• Position: Book review

Late Modernity, Individualization and Socialism: An Associational Critique of Neoliberalism

By Matt Dawson

UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, 232 pages, $86.15, ISBN: 9781137003416.

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Late Modernity, Individualization and Socialism brings together three much discussed and seemingly incompatible concepts in its title. According to Dawson, this seeming incompatibility among late modernity, individualization, and socialism stems from a limited understanding of these concepts. Therefore, the book aims to reconcile these concepts through a theoretical analysis that is based on an associational critique of neoliberalism. The retreat of the leftist politics in recent political history and a search for an alternative political model can be said to be the framework of this book. For Dawson, that alternative is libertarian socialism.

When explaining what late modernity is, Dawson makes use of three important sociological theorists that study late modernity. These names are Anthony Giddens, Ulrich Beck, and Zygmunt Bauman. Analyzing these theorists' work regarding late modernity, Dawson emphasizes the need to view late modernity as an unfolding process that extends the quantitative effects of modernity while providing qualitative criticism of it. Dawson situates late modernity at the second half of the twentieth century. Its emergence can be dated back to the foundation of the welfare state system in the 1950s and 1960s; however, it became most visible in the 1980s in Western societies. Therefore, late modernity remains as a concept attributed to the West.

Individualization is viewed as a social organization and treated as late modernity's most visible effect. Dawson starts his analysis by arguing how the link between modernity and individualization is almost nonquestioned. Individualization's centrality in late modernity is crucial for individuals to be able to choose their own identities and take responsibilities for forming their own identities. Neoliberalism argues that individualization goes hand in hand with the characteristics of a neoliberal economy, such as the privatization of the economy and the systematic promotion of "rational" entrepreneurship. However, Dawson does not agree with this claim. Instead, he argues how late modern individualization does not necessarily need to be neoliberal individualism. Explaining individualization in terms of a neoliberal model is an example of neoliberalism's domination over political...