Revisiting Individualization in Chile. an Empirical Approach to the Life Course of Women

The theory of individualization emerges in the mid 1980s to account for the transformation of the structures of the industrial society in Western Europe and North America. In Chile, the theory of individualization has been widely used by social sciences since the late 1990s to comprehend the transformation of the identities and lives of individuals due to the structural and institutional reconfiguration of society in the past decades. Nevertheless, in spite of its intensive use, too little has been discussed on the limitations and advantages of this theoretical approach to account for the particularity of recent cultural and social transformations of individuals in Chile. This paper aims to revisit individualization in Chile by empirically analysing the transformation of the life course of Chilean women in education, work and family, and discussing the pertinence of the theory of individualization to interpret these changes. By doing this, this papers aims to contribute not only to a more accurate development of the theory of individualization in Chile, but also to a global discussion on the adequacy of the theory of individualization to interpret cultural and social transformations in local contexts outside the Western developed world.