1) The term "Individualization" is used in number of different areas, urban planning, architecture etc. but most frequently in political theory and sociology. Sociologists such as Ulrich Beck and Anthony Giddens view individualization as an unavoidable and necessary intermediate phase on the way to new forms of social life. They speak of a First Modernity that was linked to the effects of the Industrial Revolution, and a Second Modernity that is linked to such events as the emergence of the computer, post-Fordist production methods, biotechnology and world-wide communication and transport networks. While in classical industrial society there were direct interconnections between class, family, marriage, sexual roles, the division of labor between men and women, today many more people have the opportunity or are forced to live biographies that deviate from this pattern: "do-it-yourself biographies" (Roland Hitzler) or "reflexive biographies" (Giddens). In this case, the reflexive element consists above all in the confrontation with the other. According to Beck, individualization also means first, the disembedding and second, the re-embedding of industrial society's ways of life by new ones in which the individuals must produce, stage, and cobble together their biographies themselves. The Parthenon on top of the Acropolis, Athens, Greece Table of architecture, Cyclopaedia, 1728 The following article focuses on built environment, the architecture of spaces designed for human habitation. ... Niccolò Machiavelli, ca 1500, became the key figure in realistic political theory, crucial to political science Political Science is the systematic study of the allocation and transfer of power in decision making. ... Social interactions of people and their consequences are the subject of sociology studies. ... Ulrich Beck Dr. Ulrich Beck (b. ... The Right Honourable Anthony Giddens, Baron Giddens (b. ... Modernity is a term used to describe the condition of being Modern. Since the term Modern is used to describe a wide range of periods, modernity must be taken in context. ... The Industrial Revolution (more correctly, the First Industrial Revolution) was one of the major technological, socioeconomic and cultural changes in the late 18th and early 19th century resulting from the replacement of an economy based on manual labour to one dominated by industry and machine manufacture. ... Fordism is a form of production or production paradigm that prevailed in post-war decades (and perhaps even before second world war) in western industrial countries. ... Sir Thomas Malory wrote the most famous fictional biography of the Middle Ages with Le Morte dArthur about the life of King Arthur. ... Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ... In sociology, industrial society refers to a society with a modern societal structure. ...

Books

• Bauman, Zygmunt (2000): "The Individualized Society", Polity Press.
• Beck, Ulrich/Beck-Gernsheim, Elisabeth (1992): "Risk society: towards a new modernity", Sage.
• Beck, Ulrich/Beck-Gernsheim, Elisabeth (2001): "Individualization: Institutionalized Individualism and its Social and Political Consequences", Sage.
• Beck, Ulrich/Giddens, Anthony and Lash, Scott (1994): "Reflexive Modernization", Stanford.
• Heinz, Walter R./Marshall, Victor W. (eds.) (2003): "Social dynamics of the life course: transitions, institutions, and interrelations", Aldine de Gruyter.
• Giddens, Anthony (1991): "Modernity and self-identity", Polity press.

2) In forensic science, individualization refers to the discrimination of an individual from a group through examining unique characteristics of a piece of evidence. Individualization will be successful when these characteristics can be attributed to a common source with an extremely high degree of certainty^[1]. Forensic science (often shortened to forensics) is the application of a broad spectrum of sciences to answer questions of interest to the legal system. ... This article or section should be merged with Forensic science Forensic evidence consists of anything that can be used in a court of law to convict a person of a crime. ...

3) Individualization in an online management context might occurs when a shopping website recognizes a user (through means of e.g. a cookie or a user log-in), remembers what that user has previously bought and reacts to it by showing her/him a website with suggested products related to the previous purchases.