E
chapter 6
The Individualization of Everyday Life
Consumption, Domestic Culture,
and Family Structures
Christopher Neumaier and Andreas Ludwig
T
he last thirty years of the twentieth century were marked by a phase
of individualization. While class identities, milieus, and mostly univer-
sally valid norms had determined how people lived their lives prior to this
point, all of the sudden there were more choices to be made when it came
to individual lifestyles. Sociologists and the media in the Western world
spoke of the “‘me’ decade” during the 1970s.^1 In West Germany, more-
over, they claimed that “self-realization” had become the goal of life in an
“ego society.”^2 Such interpretations are certainly problematic, not only be-
cause of their pessimistic cultural outlooks, but also because they did not
refl ect mainstream opinion. At the same time, however, they point to the
strong resonance of self-descriptions of Western societies bandied about
in the 1970s and 1980s, such as in Daniel Bell’s The Coming of Post-Indus-
trial Society, Ronald Ingelhart’s The Silent Revolution, or in the theory of
individualization put forth by Ulrich Beck and Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim.^3
These studies had a decisive infl uence on debates among scholars, poli-
ticians, and the public, but they also indicated that a broad sociocultural
shift had occurred in a relatively short period of about ten to fi fteen years
in West Germany as in other Western countries. Although the GDR and
other countries in East and Central Europe were not included in these
contemporary analyses, the question remains as to whether they also ex-
perienced shifts in self-description and social practices. The emergence of
a debate about the “socialist lifestyle” in the 1970s, for example, seems to
indicate that East German society was also seeking to diff erentiate itself.^4
This chapter looks at the fundamental changes in lifestyles that took
place in West Germany, but it also brings East Germany into the picture.
