Privatization-Individuation-Pluralization

When looking into the concept of privatization and how it relates to individuation and pluralization, I want to start with clarifying the concept of privatization by describing what it means. Then I will relate it to the concepts of individuation and pluralization. Last I will give examples of these concepts when talking about migration.
First, Privatization is, according to Mc Guire “the process where certain institutional spheres (religion, family, leisure, art) are segregated from the dominant institutions of the public sphere (economic, political, legal)” (Mc Guire, 289) which means that those issues that help creating, maintaining or changing one’s identity are in the modern society located in the private sphere. People living in this kind of society have a greater personal freedom to choose the sources from where you get “a sense of order, an interpretation of reality, a system of meaning” (Mc Guire, 289) and belonging in a community. In other words, people will have greater personal autonomy, with no restraints in their search of identity. The freedom in creating your own identity is of course a great thing, but there can also be problems with privatisation. Individuals may find it hard to shape their identity on their quest through the smorgasbord of alternative worldviews. How is one supposed to know what is true? Or what the right way to think and act is? It can be very difficult to find meaning and belonging and to become integrated in the community and to legitimate your self, when so many different sources are trumpeting out packages with “ultimate meanings”.
This process, where the individual is searching for meaning and belonging and ways to express your self, is a process of individuation. The process of privatization in the society is linked to the concept of individuation because the individual living in a privatized society has been forced to an individuation process that lies within the private sphere. Like mentioned above, during the individuation process there is a search for meaning and belonging and ways to express your self. On the whole, there is a search for identity. And this can be problematic in a society where values and directions are not provided by the institutions. Due to the process of privatisation in the society the relationship between the individual and society has changed. During the individuation process, people will have to find forms of expressing themselves voluntarily, without any restraints from society, which leads to a development of new and alternative worldviews.
Then how does this relate to pluralization? When a society consists of different groups with competing worldviews, or competing versions of truth, it is a pluralistic society. If privatization deals with the location of religion (for example), and individuation deals with the form of religion, then pluralism deals with the situation of religion. In a pluralistic situation the competing worldviews are put in relation to one another and not taken for granted. Every version of truth that exists is competing with the other to legitimate its norms, values and goals. And in order to protect your own belief, isolation from other worldviews might be necessary, or you could increase your personal ambiguity.
In a pluralistic society like USA, where immigrants since the beginning of time have built the country, the government might find it difficult to present a legal system, since the different ethno religious groups have separate moral answers when it comes to dealing with legal issues. The courts have no foundation of moral unity to build their legal system on, which creates problem. Printing “In God We Trust” on every dollar bill might be a strange thing to do in a pluralistic society where no single version of truth should have more legitimacy than the other. It seems like the government legitimates the orthodox Protestantism over the competing other worldviews, which could be seen as a bit hypocritical. Also, the president of the USA has put himself in a position where he chooses to legitimate a certain version of truth. He is signing laws to prohibit homosexual marriage even if the individuals have been pushed into the private sphere while undergoing an individuation process in the pluralistic society where motives and options are not controlled by institutions. So the belonging and meaning that you strive to find through the process of individuation in a privatised society without any external restraints, is later judged before laws that prohibits you to practice your worldview in society. You have a freedom to choose, but you will suffer if you make the wrong choice. Mc Guire describes it very well when saying that “[w]ithout agreement on the way to live together, claims of moral authority make no sense” (Mc Guire, 283).
The relationship between the individual and the state and the history of the state lies behind these issues of privatization, individuation and pluralism. The modernisation process in France for example is important. France is another country that is based on equality but has a great oppression of minorities. In order to be a full citizen in France today you have to be part of the secularization. Convert and loose ethnicity/’race’/’culture’ is racism that cannot be targeted, neo-racism. And the message it sends is “You are not allowed to choose freedom!”, “When it comes to religion you are not free to express yourself!” . The clothing are signs that works as an expression for us. And the French wants to protect their worldview from other competing ones. It should be a pluralistic society, but it still has legislations towards minorities. The immigrants should be emancipated, and made French. But maybe by prohibiting religious symbols in school (in the public sphere) the “veil starts to become an even stronger symbol for you and it can start to backfire” (Marjane Satrapi). A resistance will build up, as a response and this is something that is critical in our multicultural pluralistic societies of today.
The tolerance that should exist between the competing versions of truth in a pluralistic society seems to be slowly fading all over the world. The integration into this type of modern society for an immigrant might be really hard since the public institutions doesn’t provide any sources of meaning nor belonging. Of course a refugee from Iran will find it hard to receive a “Swedish identity” or feel integrated into society when she/he has no Swedish private network what so ever. Since institutions are pushing the individuals into the private sphere for a sense of belonging, people living in a pluralistic society might get more and more segregated. And since we all attempt to protect our own worldviews from the other competing ones in order to legitimate ourselves we risk to loose the societal shared conception of order where we are suppose to be “thinking and feeling together” (Mc Guire, 283).

Works Cited
Mc Guire, Meredith, B. Religion: The Social Context. 4th Ed.Wadsworth publishing company, 1997.
Satrapi, Marjane. Notes from class