This is for my exam - and im wondering if they mean that they have a common challenge or something. Thanks.
Answers (1)
Individualization is often seen as referring to both the falling-apart of extant social structures (such as class, status, gender roles or family units); and the ever increasing demands, controls and constraints being placed on us as individuals (Beck, U and Beck-Gernsheim, E, 'Institutionalized Individualism and its Social and Political Consequences (trans), 2001)
Yet this growth of individualism, by both definitions, takes place in a world which is simultaneously subject to huge globalization pressures including the maturity of global information systems making making knowledge a global commodity (e.g. Google, Wikipedia and the rise of MOOCs) and minimal-cost production and product homogenisation leading to a commonality of consumer experience (my clothes, medicines or televisions will be effectively the same product, produced wherever it is cheapest but marketed and sold globally).
The tensions between these two opposing trends are probably the "twin challenges" to which your question refers.