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INTRODUCTION
How do people in today's society produce certainty regarding their life course? How does one orient oneself in a world where many things are changing, for example, normative concepts of gender roles, the institution of the family or the idea how one should shape the life course in general? How can one maintain stable orientations regarding the life course when the probability of unexpected events as well as the experience of undesired events increase?
The article draws on the thesis that people manage the uncertainties of everyday life (for example, unemployment or divorce) as well as biographical decisions with regard to general logics that they use in order to produce more or less certain expectations regarding an in principle uncertain future. The production of such expectations concerning the future is embedded in a historical context. Whereas the transition from pre-modern societies to modern societies is predominantly undisputed the thesis of a fundamental change in modernity (Beck et al., 2003) is comparatively controversial.
In the following, it is assumed that the basic principles of the simple or first modernity, as the autonomous concept of the subject with its significant features autonomy, teleology and identity, is under pressure. Besides the normative concepts of the right way of living, which successfully served in first modernity to orient individual decision-making in uncertain historical contexts, are eroding during the processes of modernization. Consequently, it cannot be assumed that there is an unscrutinized valid and generally shared bundle of norms or a specific worldview.
Another central thesis of this article is that it becomes more and more significant to be aware of the selectivity of the individual's perspective and the question of its adequacy - no matter whether as researcher, politician or doctor. The still common allegation of an autonomous subject might be scrutinized. When we shift our perspective from autonomy, control and certainty to the contrasts autonomous/heteronomous, controlled/uncontrolled, certain/uncertain, it comes into view that there are different ways of how these differences could be worked out and valued regarding normal expectations as well as unexpected biographical events. Not all the issues that will come up in this context are originally developed in reflexive modernity, but many were ignored, reinterpreted, assessed and/or excluded before.
The article is based on...