Ideology Of Individualism Research Articles

Desvelando a relação entre ideologia, valores do indivíduo e estilo de consumo

This article aims to answer the question about the relationship between the values of an individual and their frequency of consumption. It develops a discussion on the theoretical and conceptual term “value”, on the formation of individualistic ideology and consumer society. For empirical verification, it applies three questionnaires validated in the literature to measure cultural values (ideologies), individual values and frequency of consumption in a population of 226 subjects. On the basis of the use of multivariate techniques of data analysis (correlations, regression and structural equations) and theoretical support, it was possible to coin the term “social elected”, meaning individuals who seek, on the basis of consumption, to demonstrate to society power, authority and status, independently of groups, legitimated by the values of freedom and equality, which guarantee that all can pursue the same condition of elected.Key words: values, individualism, consumption, social elected, structural equations.

Escaping the Curse of Economic Self-interest: An Individual-level Analysis of Public Support for the Welfare State in Japan

AbstractDespite the general consensus that individualistic utility-optimising behaviour reduces popular support for the welfare state, we still know little about how and to what extent such negative effects of self-interested calculus are mediated by other attitudinal factors, particularly solidaristic values and principles. Using individual-level data from the Japanese General Social Survey, this study seeks not only to qualify existing findings on welfare preference formation but also to explore the hypothesis that the negative impact of economic self-interest is offset or moderated by solidarity-oriented values and beliefs. The author finds that the oft-made claim that material interest and individualistic ideologies undermine welfare support can be replicated in the context of Japan. The results also provide evidence in support of the liberal nationalist contention that popular discourse on welfare is significantly directed by a sense of national unity. Data from Japan also elucidate the fact that a strong sense of social trust significantly weakens the salience of self-oriented cost–benefit calculations. These findings suggest that solidarity-related variables such as national identity and interpersonal trustworthiness should receive more attention in future research on welfare attitudes.

The White Working-Class and the Foreclosure Crisis: Tracing the Roots of a Failed Movement in Southern California

This article investigates why no major social movement has developed around the foreclosure crisis. Initially, the answer to this question was thought to lie in the individualistic ideological beliefs held by those going through foreclosure. That is, it was hypothesized that self-blame and guilt would account for the lack of activism in the streets. To test this hypothesis, a survey of over 400 residents and over twenty in-depth follow-up interviews were conducted in a working-class suburb of San Diego, California, that had been hard hit by the foreclosure crisis. These data failed to support the hypothesis and, instead, pointed to community individualistic ideology and lack of participation in civic organizations as the determining factors suppressing movement formation.

Sonny Montes and Mexican American Activism in Oregon by Glenn Anthony May

 OHQ vol. 113, no. 4 reviews Sonny Montes and Mexican American Activism in Oregon by Glenn Anthony May Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 2011. Illustrations, maps, notes, index. 314 pages. $24.00 paper. In a historical biography that resembles a climactic thriller,GlennAnthony May gives voice to the struggles and experiences of Mexican Americans in Oregon, filling a gap in socialmovement history. To readers, the revised images of Chicano resistance and empowerment correct the historical invisibility and recover the historical memory of the Chicano struggle for social justice. Above all, the book powerfullycapturesthehumanity,courage,and conviction of Sonny Montes, a tireless political and community activist for farmworkers and working-class Mexican Americans. It will increase our understanding of Chicanos in Oregon and influence the field of Chicano/a Studies regionally and more broadly. A historian trained at Yale University with a specialization in Chicano history, May tells three related stories: Montes’s activism, the Mexican American community in Oregon, and the development of a Chicano movement. Taking a linear focus, May deftly documents these stories with over thirty-three individual interviews conducted over an eight-year period, along with archival research in private collections and trial records. Using social movement theory, May privileges the experiences of Celedonio Montes, Jr., or “Sonny,” whose gradual ascent into political activism was shaped by his own racialized experiences. By age five, he was working as a migrant farmworker, moving from Weslaco to Fort Worth, Texas, and then to Oregon, with an interim stop in California. He experienced Jim Crow–era segregation in South Texas and institutional racism in schools,where his teachers and counselor told him he was“not college material.”May’s account makes room for feelingswithinsocial -movementtheory,discussing experiences of humiliation, dehumanization, and racial violence. In the chapter“Contexts,”May examines the history of colonization in Oregon, contrasting the land assets of white settlers with the mostly landless economic status of migrant farm laborers, including braceros, who comprised an internal colony a century later. Hypersegregation , intense political repression, and their status as members of internal colonies contributed to the deplorable working conditions of Mexican Americans. The story of the Valley Migrant League (VML), created to assist migrants who wanted to leave the migrant stream and settle in Oregon ,begins during Pres.Lyndon Johnson’sWar on Poverty during the 1960s.Farmworkers used the “Tio Tomás” (“Uncle Tom”) racial epithet to level accusations atVML’s political machination of token representation and control. May alludes to the internal and external colonization that Chicanos struggled with; however, Chicanos’ bicultural identity belies the simple monolithic binary that ignores heterogeneity and the tension of identity politics. Gradually, the VML’s paternalistic and individualistic ideology shifted to community development that examined power relations. Federal regulations and rifts between growers and workers hampered the work and autonomy of theVML. “The Revolution” chapter chronicles John Little’s tenure as director of the VML, relying heavily on organizational minutes and reports. At a study session with farmworker clubs, six resolutions to increase farmworker representation were adopted. The Office of Economic Opportunity’s (OEO) Migrant Division undercut their efforts,however,which prompted the first outreach to politicians. In a  Reviews sequential move,theVML motioned to require “farmworker background” in all key positions and eliminated “educational requirements for VML employment,” thus challenging racial exclusion. Meetings with Little ignited in Montes the fire for racial justice and raised his ethnic consciousness and activist zeal. The “ethnic dimension” was a visible effect of an emerging Chicano movement in Oregon. The VML was portrayed as a collective action group that coalesced with such allies as Los Amigos — what May calls a Mexican American network. That concept, however, ignores the sexist oppression of Chicanas within the male-dominated movement that marginalized them. In the “Activist” chapter, May examines Montes’s personal challenges, in particular his marriage and intrafamily class tensions. May’s analysis conceals Montes’s first wife Librada’s emerging subjectivity and liberation by redefining her own family networks. In the next few chapters, May examines the historical context of Chicano/a Studies in colleges and universities. As the Ethnic Affairs Director for Mount Angel College, Montes recommitted the college to fulfill its mission to the...

Ethics, Individualism, and Class in John Webster's <i>The White Devil</i>

Ethics, Individualism, and Class in John Webster's The White Devil Andrew Strycharski (bio) One of Kathleen McLuskie's more disturbing judgments in her influential feminist account of Shakespearean criticism was that the pleasures afforded by great art might be bad for you.1 That such an ethical problematic remains unsettled was witnessed in recent scuffles over the status of religious violence in Milton's Samson Agonistes. John Carey, in a widely read Times Literary Supplement piece characterizing Stanley Fish's work on the play as an apology for terrorism, insisted that, as a great and subtle work of literature, Milton's closet drama of course humanely criticizes Samson's suicidal violence; Feisal Mohamed, taking issue with this logic in an award-winning PMLA essay, recognized that Samson Agonistes could be both a great work of art and complicit in a history of Western violence.2 I raise this problematic to introduce John Webster's disturbingly violent The White Devil (1612) because few early-modern plays so relentlessly portray moral debasement without providing any effective ethical guideposts. What is the ethical status of the pleasures twenty-first-century readers might take in such a morally bankrupt Jacobean tragedy? How might this play's ethical value, or lack thereof, be understood with reference to a history that has not merely passed, but, as Mohamed might insist, is our past? Without ignoring moral or ethical issues, recent scholarship on The White Devil has tended to focus on acute, local questions, whether historical or performance related, rather than the moral questions that previous critics found imperative.3 Grand moral evaluations in the style of George Bernard Shaw, who condemned the play for having "no ray of noble feeling, no touch of faith, beauty or even common kindness . . . from beginning to end," hardly seem germane to late-modern criticism.4 The main exception to this tendency has been the work of feminist critics, such as Catherine Belsey, who have often presented an ethically based criticism of the play's treatment of its "radically discontinuous" heroine, Vittoria.5 [End Page 291] Perhaps a reason more recent critics have shied away from addressing the ethical morass in which The White Devil is mired, and the resulting imperative to judge Webster's play, is the tendency to assume a universal humanism underwriting such judgments. Even Belsey's powerful reading is underpinned by the commonsensical idea that, however much the individual is an historical construction, access to the unified, coherent "I" of the universal liberal subject was a source of power in practice denied to women.6 The following reading seeks to reengage fundamental ethical questions and to do so from the vantage Belsey has opened of how the play represents subjects. In reopening these ethical questions, I find it useful to approach them not from a standpoint of universal moral principles, but rather from the standpoint of subject formation or, following phenomenology, being. This essay sets ontology in relation to historicism by focusing on intersections of class friction, ethical being, and emergent individualist ideology. In terms of representing the subject, the ethics of Webster's play are inseparable from its representation of the social formation of the early-modern court. The relations between theory and history—complex, imperfect, confusing—must be wrestled with, not as a relation of the universal or abstract to the particular or concrete, but to prevent precisely such slippage, which would begin to make of Theory another in a long line of immanent subjects (History, Science, the Individual). As this language invoking relations and immanent subjects may indicate, lingering in the background of this effort is Jean-Luc Nancy's formulation of a nonessential relationality as the defining characteristic of being in "The Inoperative Community," a formulation that locates ethics at the heart of ontology.7 Although in what follows I will lean heavily on Jean-Paul Sartre's analysis of concrete relations with others from Being and Nothingness (1956), I do so from the critical vantage on Sartrean individualism afforded by Nancy's dissection of individualism's insoluble contradictions—contradictions that leave their mark on Sartre's own distressing account of all interpersonal relations as at heart a form of conflict growing...

American multi-national corporations in the UK oil industry: sectoral differentiation in diffusion and adaptation

There is a significant literature around the idea that American multi-national corporations (MNCs) diffuse a ‘country of origin’ effect which claims the export from America of an individualistic ideology comprising distinctive employment practices based on the national business system. This literature usually conflates the sector of the firms, but recently several critiques have emerged which limit the discussion to discrete sectors (generically in the engineering industries) and which digress from the previous literature's dichotomous nature, where home versus host country influences are evaluated. This article adds to that recent literature by offering evidence of structural factors within the MNCs, as well as of institutional norms and societal influences. This evidence is taken from extensive longitudinal data on American MNCs in two sectors of the UK oil industry. These comprise the exploration and production activities on the UK continental shelf (part of the North Sea), known as the ‘upstream’ sector, and the related activities of refining of oil and manufacturing chemicals, known as the ‘downstream’ sector. The findings provide a theoretical addendum to the literature: in this study we are able, unlike other studies, to explain the adaptation of the industry to local institutional, cultural and labor market contexts through the different structures of the industry's two sectors. Even within the same MNC, the divisions prove to be differentially adapted to the UK context. Such evidence casts doubt on the broad conclusions drawn from a large part of the existing literature. We therefore show that structure and sector are far stronger forces explaining MNC actions than the diffusion of a country of origin effect.

Positioning Urban Teachers as Effective

This article focuses on the accounts by teachers who are positioned and who position themselves as “effective.” It draws on the relational aspects of positioning theory with respect to a determination of how the “effective teacher” position necessarily positions students. Findings suggest that students are positioned as (a) individuals within a sociocultural context, (b) fully capable of academic achievement, and (c) responsible for their school success. The third position of students suggests the presence of a seemingly disjointed belief and understanding of students. This work moves beyond simplistic explanations of how this belief may reinforce a competitive and individualistic ideology, suggesting that the presence of seemingly disjointed beliefs and understandings are important to consider in relation to who holds those views, the purpose of such views, and the social context in which those views are advanced.

FROM MORAL AUTONOMY TO RELATIONAL RESPONSIBILITY

Abstract. Given that the conception of the person as an autonomous agent is a cultural construction, inquiry is directed to its potentials and shortcomings for cultural life. While such a conception contributes to sustaining the moral order, it also supports an individualist ideology and social divisiveness. As an alternative to the conception of moral autonomy, I explore the potentials of relational being, an orientation that views relational process (as opposed to individual agents) as the wellspring of all meaning. Such an orientation sees all moral concepts and action as issuing from coordinated action. However, at the same time that relational process generates moral orders, so does it establish the grounds for “immorality” and social conflict, which undermines the relational process of creating moral order. Thus, a concept of “second‐order morality” is advanced, which seeks to reestablish a more inclusive first‐order morality. Responsibility for productive processes of relationship is invited. Recent innovations in dialogic practices lend themselves to relational responsibility.

Understanding Libertarian Morality: The Psychological Roots of an Individualist Ideology

Libertarians are an increasingly vocal ideological group in U.S. politics, yet they are understudied compared to liberals and conservatives. Much of what is known about libertarians is based on the writing of libertarian intellectuals and political leaders, rather than surveying libertarians in the general population. Across three studies, 15 measures, and a large web-based sample (N = 152,239), we sought to understand the morality of selfdescribed libertarians. Based on an intuitionist view of moral judgment, we focused on the underlying affective and cognitive dispositions that accompany this unique worldview. We found that, compared to liberals and conservatives, libertarians show 1) stronger endorsement of individual liberty as their foremost guiding principle and correspondingly weaker endorsement of other moral principles, 2) a relatively cerebral as opposed to emotional intellectual style, and 3) lower interdependence and social relatedness. Our findings add to a growing recognition of the role of psychological predispositions in the organization of political attitudes.

The Decalogue and practical wisdom: rereading a seminal text

PurposeActing in complex and paradoxical situations cannot be taught through recipes. This article rereads a seminal Biblical text, the Decalogue, and seeks to place it in the actual context for people confronted with difficult decisions and actions. If foundational texts are not actualised, they lose their meaning. This is the base of the Judaic exegetic tradition. Practical wisdom can use the Decalogue to act in a relevant way in uncharted territory.Design/methodology/approachA method combining the reading of an old text with a dialoguing commentary in a group is how this actualisation has been elaborated. Oral and written traditions jointly are essential in making the seminal texts of practical wisdom relevant for our times. This commentary has been elaborated as a result of a dialogue with three different groups of more than ten members. This is the way the author uses the term “validation”.FindingsIn the Judaic language verbs are the most important grammatical components. The First Testament texts have their origin in the wisdom to act in a social context. The Decalogue is the central tenet of this practical wisdom. The author has been introduced to this wisdom through the research of communities to create an art of living away from the mainstream individualistic ideology. Currently in management discourse, the use of the words, social networks, stakeholder focus, community development and the attention to systemic and ecological relationships is increasing and this experience can provide an alternative discourse helping them in their endeavours.Originality/valueActualising an ancient tradition, the article makes it relevant for issues with which decision makers are struggling today.

Writing childhoods under construction: Re-visioning ‘copying’ in early childhood

This article problematizes a hegemonic vision of children and writing, one undergirded by an individualistic ideology; this ideology informs a curricular emphasis both on mastering ‘basic’ skills and on crafting for self expression. To this end, the article focuses on the slippery phenomenon of ‘copying.’ It begins with a consideration of two previous studies of ‘copying,’ illustrating how visions of children, of composing, and of copying itself change with theoretical tools, methodological decisions, and responses to changing educational discourse. It then turns to the current study, which draws on data collected in two classrooms in low-income urban neighborhoods, a kindergarten and a first grade. Data analysis revealed how copying mediated relationships. Collegiality, textual choreography, complementary authorial roles, and co-constructed dramas were all on display. The article thus illustrates, not the composing of individual selves, but the complex participatory dynamics by which writing becomes relevant to small children.

Due dogmi dell’individualismo

The present article examines radical methodological individualism as defended by Berlin, Popper and Hayek. We stress two dogmas: social nominalism (according to which individuals are the only admissible denizens of social ontology), and the invisible hand. We claim that the two dogmas do not logically coincide, contrary to what usually held by individualistic ideology.

The great crash of 2008 and the reform of economics

The 2008 economic crash led to remarkable shifts of opinion among world leaders. Does this crisis create favourable conditions for the reform and revitalisation of economics itself—from a subject dominated by mathematical techniques to a discipline more oriented to understanding real-world institutions and actors? And why were warnings of financial collapse not heeded? Recent shortcomings are partly related to the global triumph of market individualist ideology and partly to the exaggerated roles of modelling and quantification. These failures of economics are partly peculiar to the discipline and also a result of other wider institutional and cultural forces.

An Empirical Assessment of Whiteness Theory: Hidden from How Many?

This paper employs data from a recent national survey to offer an empirical assessment of core theoretical tenets of whiteness studies. Using survey items developed explicitly for this purpose, we analyze three specific propositions relating to whites' awareness and conception of their own racial status: the invisibility of white identity; the understanding (or lack thereof) of racial privileges; and adherence to individualistic, color-blind ideals. Consistent with whiteness theories, we find that white Americans are less aware of privilege than individuals from racial minority groups and consistently adopt color-blind, individualist ideologies. However, we also find that whites are both more connected to white identity and culture as well as more aware of the advantages of their race than many theoretical discussions suggest. We then combine these results to estimate that 15 percent of white Americans exhibit what we call categorical whiteness, a consistent and uniform adherence to the theoretical tenets that are the focus of this body of theory. We conclude by suggesting that these findings provide the basis for a more nuanced, contextualized understanding of whiteness as a social phenomenon.

Language, Globalization, and the Triumph of Popular Demand: The Discourse of Populism in American Prestige Press Coverage of the Global Hegemony of English

This article zeroes in on “the American situation” with respect to the global hegemony of English. It does so by way of textual analysis of a number of articles taken from a pool of 275 American prestige press accounts of the global spread of English. Drawing parallels between prestige press and some academic accounts of culture and globalization, the article critically engages instances of a pervasive populist individualist ideology expressed via what the author calls the discourse of populism.

Listen to the young employees

The purpose of this paper is to adopt cultural perspective while exploring the management practices of young employees in China's IT industry. The paper aims to present the expectation of young Chinese generation employees (post '80s) that emerged from Confucianism shaped by an increasing individualistic ideology in China. The design/methodology/approach of this paper is multiple case studies followed by face to face interviews. The result of this paper profiles an expected Chinese manager who natured by Confucianism principles and practiced by Western scientific approach, which will be the most accepted by current young Chinese employees. The generalisation of the findings may be limited by the small size samples from one occupational sector and region. The paper fills up the gap of existing Chinese management theories. It also offers practice-based operational guidance for managers facilitating their personalities and daily managing behaviour. The value of this paper is to present the Chinese young employees' expectations of their managers and the relations between them and managers, in turn to advise the managers adjust their managing behaviour in the daily management.

Searching for the Right Organization

The article examines four centre—right parties in East-Central Europe in order to assess the impact of ideology on party organization and revisit the thesis of organizational weakness in the region. The data collected indicate that, together with electoral success, inherited resources and national context, ideology does indeed shape the style of organization. Centre—right parties, as opposed to leftist parties, tend to be less bureaucratized, have fewer staff members, a simpler structure, more individualized leadership and the `party-in-public-office' tends also to have a more elevated role. Parties that have more individualistic ideologies tends also to have `lighter' organization and weaker embeddedness, while parties subscribing to a more collectivist and corporatist type of conservatism have developed more complex party organization and rely more heavily on affiliate organizations. Analysis of temporal changes uncovers a degree of organizational vitality that is surprising given that the literature on both centre—right and on post-communist politics points towards organizational weakness.

American Individualism and Structural Injustice: Tocqueville, Gender, and Race

American individualist ideology facilitates structural injustice. Through an analysis of Alexis de Tocqueville on individualism, gender domination, and white supremacy in the United States, this essay explains why. The peculiar social cognition of the American individualist desensitizes him to structural injustice. To preserve his faith that his fate lies entirely in his own hands, he blinds himself to the ways social structure constrains personal freedom and independence; the individualist also construes the unjust benefits of social privilege (like those accompanying whiteness and maleness in Jacksonian America) as products of personal ingenuity and character. Democracy in America (1835/40) thus illuminates the elective affinity between American individualism and structural injustice.

The social construction of gay oppression as a determinant of gay men's health: ‘homophobia is killing us’

Where once the health sciences concentrated much of their efforts on curing homosexuality, contemporary health science is concerned largely with the mental and physical effects of oppression, which are now taken as the legitimate focus of health research and intervention. However, gay men's health has imported into its practice a fairly individualistic ideology, one that undermines efforts to address the social determinants of health and to achieve social justice goals. In this article, I explore the social construction of gay men's health in the health literature. My analysis focuses specifically on constructions of gay oppression as a determinant of health. Through an analysis of the gay men's health literature, I identify three recurring themes: (i) gay oppression is conceived as a psychological phenomenon, (ii) gay men's damaged psychologies are a determinant of gay men's health, and (iii) individual therapies are proposed as the solution to gay oppression. Like mainstream health research and practice, gay men's health focuses attention on the mental and physical functioning of the individual, ignores the social and structural determinants of health, and directs health intervention squarely on the individual. I propose an alternative (anti-oppression) research agenda; one that shifts our conceptualisation of the ‘the problem’ from the oppressed to the oppressor.

Winning and losing respect: narratives of identity in sport films

This essay examines sport films in terms of respect, identity and individualism. It suggests that a common narrative structure in films featuring sport based stories involves the winning, or sometimes losing, of respect. Success in narrative terms is not so much associated with sporting victory as in winning the respect of others. Through these narrative structures, issues of identity are explored. In particular, the narratives trace the ways in which characters respond to challenges by changing. In this sense these films are rooted in an ideology of competitive individualism which is a distinct product of capitalism as it developed in the United States of America. So while women, Jews, Afro-Americans and British Asian girls all find fulfilment through the narrative journey of these films, it tends to be within the terms of the competitive individualist ideology. Only where the concept of respect and its association with sport performance is challenged or questioned do sport films tend to raise more profound questions about the individual in society.