Abstract

The individualization thesis that was developed by Ulrich Beck in the 1980s has inspired quite a lot of research in the social sciences, which, however, has not led to conclusive results. This article focusses on the so called decoupling thesis, a core theorem in this discussion. It maintains that despite unchainging objective structures of social inequality, their relevance for social action, social identity and social perception has declined since the 1970s. In this paper an alternative method of testing the decoupling thesis was used in an explorative fashion. In an experiment respondents were asked to classify wedding portraits from the 1950s, 1970s, and 1990s by social class. The results of this experiment do not support the decoupling thesis since there is no linear decrease over time in the correct classifications of the persons depicted.