Tag Archives: individualism

How powerful is the distrust of Facebook among its 900 million plus users?

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A commentator who praises Facebook tries to get at why so many users are suspicious about Facebook and willing to believe rumors like the recent one that Facebook was revealing private messages on walls:

The problem is that when technologists talk about data and privacy, for many of us it is still in the abstract. For technologists and computer scientists, data is a thing that lives somewhere, it has a logic and can be parsed, made sense of, organized into databases. It can be searched and ultimately sold. But as Nathan Jurgenson, a social-media theorist, points out, for most people “data is this weird nebulous concept that somebody knows something about me, but I don’t know what they know.”…

A Democratic candidate for the Maine State Senate was attacked recently by her Republican opponent for her playing of the multiplayer online game “World of Warcraft.” According to her critics, the politician playing a “rogue orc assassin” was unbecoming. This collision of two seemingly different personalities — on the one hand, a social worker and moderate politician, and on the other, a violent assassin (online) who likes stabbing things — is what sociologists have called “role strain.”

“Identities that were cultivated in little tide pools, that were conceived to be separate, come clashing together,” says Marc A. Smith, a sociologist and social-media expert. “The issue now is that all of these other identities, the idea that we can perform them on separate stages and that they had separate audiences, that is collapsing and the sound of its collapse is the sound of people squealing.”

In his 1959 “Presentation of Self In Everyday Life,” the sociologist Erving Goffman wrote about the idea of “front stage” and “back stage.” In Goffman’s theory, when they’re “front stage,” people engage in “impression management,” choosing their clothing, speech, and adapting the way they present themselves to their audience. “Back stage” they can be more themselves, which might mean shedding their societal role. In the era of social media, Smith says that “we live in a culture where the back stage keeps disappearing.” We think the conversations we are having are in private, but, in fact, they are publicly accessible and data has a long half-life. When U.S. presidential candidate Mitt Romney spoke to a select audience about the “47 percent,” he was, in fact, speaking to everyone. What happens in “World of Warcraft” doesn’t always stay in “World of Warcraft.”…

Or perhaps front stage there is a deep sense of unease about Facebook, but back stage we are not half as worried as we seem.

The suggestion here is that the world of audience segregation and impression management, where we can and do craft our actions, words, and behaviors to a particular audience, is slowly fading away. By doing more things online, these different parts of life are coming together in new ways. And I tend to agree with this journalist: there are over 900 million Facebook users, many of whom have calculated that they are willing to at least put a little information out there in return for the benefits that Facebook like keeping in touch with friends, being able to access information about others that was previously unavailable, or even acquiring the status that comes with keeping up with everyone else. A good number of users express complaints or features of Facebook that make them uneasy but relatively few are willing to give it up all together.

Indeed, we might be in the middle of a very important era where slowly individuals are thinking about and practicing new ways to present themselves and see others through mediums like Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg has expressed the goal of Facebook being a more open society where even less information on Facebook would be private, hidden, or restricted to friends. We could also look at this from the other angle: isn’t it remarkable that millions of people around the world in a span of less than 10 years have voluntarily put out information about themselves? One key might be that Facebook doesn’t force them to reveal everything; users can still practice impression management by crafting a profile. However, these are not “fake” or “untrue” profiles; rather the information is an approximation of the user’s true self.

Gerson suggests we can’t solve social problems through individualism; we need to correct dysfuncational institutions

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Michael Gerson argues we can’t address America’s social problems through individualism but rather we need to help strengthen dysfunctional institutions:

While the Romney video was making news, I was reading some recent research by Harvard sociologist Robert Putnam. He recounts an interview with a woman given the fictional name of Mary Sue, who lives in a declining industrial town in Ohio. Mary Sue’s parents divorced when she was young. Her mother became a stripper and left for days at a time. Her stepmother beat her and confined her to a single room. Mary Sue told the interviewer that, for a time, her only friend had been a yellow mouse who shared the apartment.

Mary Sue went in and out of juvenile detention. One boyfriend burned her arms with cigarettes. Her current partner has two children by two other women.

Is such a story really explainable as a failure of personal responsibility? That seems both simplistic and callous. Putnam describes these social conditions as “depressingly typical” in America’s working class. He measures a number of growing gaps between poorer and more affluent Americans — gaps of parental time and investment, of religious and community involvement, of academic achievement — that widen a class divide and predict a “social mobility crash” for millions of Americans.

This crisis has a number of causes, including the collapse of working-class families, the flight of blue-collar jobs and the decay of working-class neighborhoods, which used to offer stronger networks of mentors outside the home. Perverse incentives in some government programs may have contributed to these changes, but this does not mean that shifting incentives can easily undo the damage. Removing a knife from a patient does not automatically return him to health. Whatever the economic and cultural causes, the current problem is dysfunctional institutions, which routinely betray children and young adults. Restoring a semblance of equal opportunity — promoting family commitment, educational attainment and economic advancement — will take tremendous effort and creative policy.

Gerson goes on to argue for a kind of conservatism that looks to improve civil society rather than retreat into a libertarian world.

A few thoughts:

1. Gerson brings up an important idea: simply removing unhelpful government programs doesn’t necessarily solve the larger social problem. In fact, there may be two issues at stake: a misguided program as well as the social problem. But simply doing nothing doesn’t necessarily rectify the problem either. For example, making certain kinds of discrimination illegal in the 1960s was a big step in the right direction. But, this didn’t immediately equalize the life chances for different groups, particularly those who had endured decades of legal discrimination. There is still work to be done on this front so simply acting like the new law or program has completely solved the problem is false.

2. Note that Gerson is not necessarily calling here for government to tackle all of these issues. Also, he brings up issues that tend to worry conservatives like the decline of the traditional family.

3. Is this what moderate Republicanism looks like?

Sociological study: American individualism limits support for national health care

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A new sociological study argues that the American cultural values of individualism and choice are behind the lack of support for national health care:

American obsession with individual rights and choice are killing any chance of a universal solution on health care, according to an analysis in the authoritative trade publication “Current Sociology” which argues that Europe’s health care is the model the U.S. should follow…

Other “western nations,” he said, are smarter on the issue because they have an all-for-one approach and aren’t obsessed with choice and individualism. “These countries have more communitarian- and solidarity-based value systems, their populations are much more willing to live with what Americans would see as an unfair system, in other words, one that sets limits on medical care for those with coverage,” said Blank…

“The U.S. is the prototype of an individualistic society. Although individual rights are emphasized in all western countries, in the US rights have been elevated to a status of supremacy over collective interests. Moreover, by rights Americans mean negative rights, and, as a result, they are hesitant to sacrifice perceived individual needs for the common good. Thus, there is no guaranteed universal coverage, but also no limits on what healthcare individuals can buy if they can afford it. This cultural tenet goes a long way to explain why the US expends so much more of its GDP on healthcare than other developed countries without providing universal access.”

My translation: who wants to tell individuals that they can’t get certain kinds of health care? Of course, not everyone has these options now but Americans like the idea that people could have these options. I assume opponents of European style health care would not call these traits individualism (which often has negative connotations) but rather people interested in liberty and freedom.

This also reminds me of research from scholars like Barry Schwartz (see The Paradox of Choice) that suggests having more choice can actually have negative consequences. Faced with too many options, some people can be paralyzed and feel worse after they make a choice compared to people choosing among more limited options. I hear tons of radio commercials for hospitals and medical centers for serious and not so serious conditions – do these all really lead to better medical outcomes in the long run?

At this point, it looks like there is some time to still debate the different value systems behind different health care proposals. I wonder, however, if there will be a turning point soon where economics or other factors (Supreme Court decisions?) will force the end of such ideological debates.

Today’s average individual can rely on experts to complete normal tasks

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In today’s world, more and more individuals are willing to offload certain tasks to “experts”:

In other words, there is no job too trivial to warrant not enlisting a professional to do it. The hired help has moved out of the mansion and into more modest homes, too. Across the country, an army of entrepreneurial “experts” have emerged, charging as much or as little as their local market will allow, and promoting their services with old-school flyers, slick websites and persuasive online ads. They are ready and willing to do those tasks we used to do ourselves or with the assistance of a neighbour—be it scooping up dog poop in the backyard or assembling Ikea furniture or changing light bulbs or programming the remote control.

If nothing is too minute to contract out, then no job is too important or personal either. In her new book, The Outsourced Self: Intimate Life in Market Times, famed American sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild explores the implications of hiring strangers to carry out what has historically been considered sacred labour done solo or with the support of loved ones: finding a mate, planning a wedding, scattering ashes, assembling a photo album, having a baby, naming a baby, raising children, visiting elderly parents…

Adding to the allure of outsourcing is our growing fixation with specialization. While we pursue our career paths with zeal, other people are refining the art and science of baby-proofing a home or choosing the right clothes or teaching dogs not to bark. The thinking goes that it’s wisest to let the pros do what they do best—lest we mess up. “If you’re buying a car you want to do it efficiently, you want a pleasant experience, and you want the best price. That logic is creeping into our personal life,” says Hochschild. In her book, she tells the story of a father who insists on planning his child’s birthday party. “It backfired,” recalls Hochschild. “He tried to be a clown and nobody laughed. And a neighbour says, ‘Leave it to the experts. They know what five-year-olds think is funny.’ ”…

Outsourcing might not be an ideal answer, but many people would say it’s better than the alternative, which is to do nothing except continue to run ourselves ragged. So while we hire retirement home consultants and dog walkers, we might contemplate the future and how it could be better. Duxbury has given it some thought, and she suspects that her own daughter will have learned more than a thing or two about the pursuit of balance from watching her mother all these years. Chances are, Duxbury predicts, the next generation will actually pay for help more often than their parents—but not because of gruelling jobs and domestic duties. Rather, they will work less inside and outside the home in lieu of other, more fulfilling, ways to live life.

This sounds like a combination of two famous ideas from early sociologists. Emile Durkheim argued that modern society was marked by an increased division of labor and specialization. In this setting, individualism would grow even as individuals were more dependent on other specialists to do things like produce food, clothing, and other necessities. He contrasted this to village or small-town society where individuals could perform multiple tasks and there was less specialization. Also analyzing modern society, Max Weber argued that history would eventually lead to an iron cage of bureaucracy where it would be difficult for individuals and social organizations to change course.

If you put these two ideas together, the division of labor and the iron cage, you have what Hochschild is describing: a system where people with means feel like they have to outsource certain tasks so they can be true individuals and do what they want to do but this locks them into certain actions and an increased reliance on other people. In a quest to get more choices, adults have to constrain themselves by outsourcing some of their tasks.

How much of this outsourcing is done by free choice or is there a lot of pressure to outsource? Perhaps there is peer pressure from friends or people at work subtly or explicitly suggest that people need to focus there more.

It would also be interesting to trace the rising status of “experts,” not just traditional experts like scientists or clergy or technocrats, but service industry experts. For example, just how much status does an organizing expert have today?

We need better data on loneliness and its effects

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In response to the recent Atlantic cover story “Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?” by Stephen Marche, sociologist Eric Klinenberg suggests the data is much less clear than the cover story suggests.

This debate suggests two things:

1. We need better data on loneliness and how it affects people. There are multiple ways that this could be done but perhaps we need a methodological breakthrough. I’ve been thinking lately that we need better ways to know what people do when they are alone. Now, we rely on after-the-fact questions rather than observational data. If we ask the same questions over time (such as the famous one about how many confidants respondents have), we can track changes over time but this also requires interpretation. How much loneliness is acceptable and “normal” before there are adverse effects? Does the importance or effects of loneliness change over the lifecourse? Is loneliness mitigated by other social forces?

2. Without this more conclusive data, I think we end up having a proxy battle over two warring American schools of thought: communitarianism versus individualism. This dates back to the early days of the American experiment. Who is more virtuous, the cosmopolitan city dweller or the self-reliant farmer or frontiersman? Should we all live in urban areas or preserve small town life? Should the government help people get an equal shot at success or help defend people from each other? Should religion be expressed in the public sphere or should it be comparmentalized? Several well-known social science works in recent decades have tackled these divides including the 1985 classic Habits of the Heart.  Both Klinenberg and Marche seem to bring these ideological approaches to their arguments and then look for the data that supports their points. For example, Klinenberg admits that loneliness will be felt by those who live alone but this is desirable because living alone allows for other good things to happen.

Elderly co-housing in France an alternative to Going Solo in the United States?

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While Americans may be increasingly living alone, Le Monde reports on another trend: co-housing among the elderly.

This unconventional but pragmatic solution is happening all over France – dozens of house-shares have already been created, and they are giving food for thought to many in their 60s, 70s and 80s…

According to Yankel Fijalkow, urban sociologist and author of “Sociologie du Logement” [Sociology of Housing], “House-sharing for the elderly is a sort of group response to the ambient individualism.” Fijalkow says. “It is part of the same phenomenon as co-housing – houses with shared facilities – in Northern Europe and the United States or housing cooperatives. Faced by the fragility of the family unit, a desire emerges to recreate a quasi-family.”

But Fijalkow adds: “Let’s not be idealistic. Accommodation is expensive, and this is mostly a commercial transaction. With the current changes in family models, we go from being part of a couple to living on our own or in a house-share. People are flexible and adapt when the housing market is prohibitively expensive.”…

This system is being adopted all over Europe. Colocation Seniors, an organization in the western French city of Nantes was inspired by a similar project in Belgium, and has already helped dozens of seniors set up house-shares in the last three years, offering continuing support even after the house-share has been organized.

It is hard to know from this article how big of a trend this really is.

It is interesting to hear Fijalkow talk about these two motivating factors: a desire to have a “quasi-family” and economic realities. Which of these are more important? Does this suggest that people with more economic resources would not choose co-housing? It is already a foregone conclusion in many places that most families are fragile and/or past the breaking point?

This also reminds of the end of Kate Bolick’s article “All the Single Ladies” from November 2011. Here is where Bolick ends her thoughts on current relationships between women and men – a tour of a sort of dormitory for single women in Amsterdam:

The Begijnhof is big—106 apartments in all—but even so, I nearly pedaled right past it on my rented bicycle, hidden as it is in plain sight: a walled enclosure in the middle of the city, set a meter lower than its surroundings. Throngs of tourists sped past toward the adjacent shopping district. In the wall is a heavy, rounded wood door. I pulled it open and walked through.

Inside was an enchanted garden: a modest courtyard surrounded by classic Dutch houses of all different widths and heights. Roses and hydrangea lined walkways and peeked through gates. The sounds of the city were indiscernible. As I climbed the narrow, twisting stairs to Ellen’s sun-filled garret, she leaned over the railing in welcome—white hair cut in a bob, smiling red-painted lips. A writer and producer of avant-garde radio programs, Ellen, 60, has a chic, minimal style that carries over into her little two-floor apartment, which can’t be more than 300 square feet. Neat and efficient in the way of a ship, the place has large windows overlooking the courtyard and rooftops below. To be there is like being held in a nest.

We drank tea and talked, and Ellen rolled her own cigarettes and smoked thoughtfully. She talked about how the Dutch don’t regard being single as peculiar in any way—people are as they are. She feels blessed to live at the Begijnhof and doesn’t ever want to leave. Save for one or two friends on the premises, socially she holds herself aloof; she has no interest in being ensnared by the gossip on which a few of the residents thrive—but she loves knowing that they’re there. Ellen has a partner, but since he’s not allowed to spend the night, they split time between her place and his nearby home. “If you want to live here, you have to adjust, and you have to be creative,” Ellen said. (When I asked her if starting a relationship was a difficult decision after so many years of pleasurable solitude, she looked at me meaningfully and said, “It wasn’t a choice—it was a certainty.”)

When an American woman gives you a tour of her house, she leads you through all the rooms. Instead, this expat showed me her favorite window views: from her desk, from her (single) bed, from her reading chair. As I perched for a moment in each spot, trying her life on for size, I thought about the years I’d spent struggling against the four walls of my apartment, and I wondered what my mother’s life would have been like had she lived and divorced my father. A room of one’s own, for each of us. A place where single women can live and thrive as themselves.

How modern societies reconcile aging and individualism will be very interesting to watch.

The beginnings of the word “individualism” in de Toqueville’s Democracy in America

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Americans are often described as individualists. Where exactly did this term come from? It can be partly attributed to a famous work by French observer Alexis de Toqueville.

It is interesting to note that the word “individualist” wasn’t part of the vocabulary of the first colonists or even the revolutionaries. It is a 19th Century word, likely first used out of necessity by the translators of Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America — an almost sociological work based on the author’s visit to America during the 1830s.

On the matter of American individualism de Tocqueville wrote: “There are more and more people who… have gained enough wealth and understanding to look after their own needs. Such folk owe no man anything and hardly expect anything from anybody. They form the habit of thinking of themselves in isolation and imagine that their destiny is in their hands. … Each man is forever thrown back on himself alone and there is danger that he might be shut up in the solitude of his own heart.”

Importantly, de Tocqueville saw several social forces that worked against the isolation of individualism and the danger of being locked in solitary: the family, the church and a set of civic virtues fostered, he believed, by American mothers. Whether or not we agree with this particular formulation, we might agree on a more general point. In discussions of American individualism, it is important to treat it as part of a balanced pair — often, yoked in a tense arrangement with one side headed for individual isolation and the other toward full immersion in a community. As long as the forces are fairly equal, the arrangement stays centered…

Three hundred years later, Herbert Hoover coined the now famous phrase “rugged individualist.” But he, too, saw a natural constraining partner for his American creation — the right of others to exercise opportunities arising from their own individuality.

The Oxford English Dictionary lists a translation of de Toqueville’s work, Democracy in America, as the second use of the term “individualism.” I wonder if this is an accurate translation of de Toqueville – what exactly did he intend to say?

Just because the word came along in the 1830s doesn’t mean that Americans were not individualists prior to this use. At the same time, could we argue that Americans have increasingly adopted this label and tried to live up to it? As labeling theory might suggest, Americans have acted in accordance with expectations and perhaps this has even become easier because of the country’s burgeoning wealth and power after World War II.

But as this commentator suggests, the individualism is often limited by ever-present ties to the larger community. We complain about taxes but don’t want the services paid for by taxes to disappear. De Toqueville’s work is partly famous because he also talks about the propensity of Americans to volunteer for organizations, a zeal that surprises him. But then we have more recent works like Bowling Alone that suggest Americans have largely lost this zeal, withdrawing into more personal networks and generally retreating from public life. Are we at the individualistic end of the pendulum swing now and will we soon swing back to a middle ground?

Sociology: helping us move beyond common sense (and individualistic) understandings of the world

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This overview of the recent book Everything is Obvious Once You Know the Answer: How Common Sense Fails Us does a decent job in explaining why sociology helps us move beyond common sense understandings of the world:

This thought-provoking book challenges the universal belief that management decisions based on common sense – rooted in best practices, hunches and experiences – often lead to the best outcomes.  According to the book, the reality ends up being quite different.  Relying too much on common sense often leads well-intentioned and intelligent people to make poor strategic and tactical decisions in areas such as capital investments, product introductions, new market entry and advertising decisions.

Watt’s supposition is that people give too much credence to their prior and accumulated experiences, history in general and what they perceive as best practices when making decisions.  According to the research, a person’s common sense is faulty for a number of reasons:  it contains intrinsic bias; it is based on unproven or wrong assumptions and; it is too difficult to deduce clear-cut conclusions and action steps from an environment that is overly complex or unclear…

Relying on common sense for decisions or to make predictions has dangerous implications.  For one thing, reality is usually very different from what was first imagined.  The future is quite complex and rarely reflects the same conditions that earlier decisions were based on.  As a result, it is highly unlikely positive outcomes will repeat themselves if the individual relies solely on history.  In my consulting experience,  the higher degree of uncertainty around a decision or potential outcome, the more likely senior executives will rely on subjective criteria like common sense or best practices as a basis for decision making.

I’ve made a similar argument to students: we tend to operate on a day-to-day basis by seeing things in terms of how we have seen or experienced them before. We make patterns out of things (we are pattern-making creatures) that have happened to us regardless of the amount of information to back up our conclusions. New information is then filtered through these older constructs. When confronted with new information that doesn’t “fit,” we have to ignore it, fit it into our old constructs, or develop new constructs.

Thinking sociologically means that we move beyond this individualistic level in a couple of ways:

1. We try to take a broad overview, recognizing that the world is complicated and many things are related. Instead of just thinking about how something affects us, we look at how systems are connected and social processes take place. The question is more “how does the whole affect the individual” rather than “how does the individual fit within the whole.”

2. Conclusions should be based on data that is collected and analyzed in ways that minimize individual level bias. Though we often are unable to create perfect models or understanding, we can make good estimates.

I may have to try out this description with my students to see what they think.

A mostly middle-class world by 2022

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In recent decades, hundreds of millions of people in the developing world have moved from poverty to the middle class. These numbers are only expected to grow in the coming years:

The world will, for the first time in history, move from being mostly poor to mostly middle-class by 2022, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development projects. Asians, by some predictions, could constitute as much as two-thirds of the global middle class, shifting the balance of economic power from West to East. Already, some analyses of International Monetary Fund data suggest that the size of the Chinese economy could eclipse that of the United States in just five years…

But today’s middle-class boom is unlike the Industrial Revolution, in which rising prosperity became a catalyst for increased individual and political freedom. Those in the emerging global middle classes – from an Indian acquiring a flush toilet at home to a Brazilian who can now afford private school to a Chinese lawyer with a new car in the driveway – are likely to redefine their traditional roles, and in doing so, redefine the world itself.

“I would expect that as the global middle class gets transformed by the entrance of hundreds of millions of Indian, Brazilian, and Chinese families, the concept of what we see as the middle-class values may change,” says Sonalde Desai, a sociologist with the National Council of Applied Economic Research in Delhi (NCAER). “Historically, sociologists have defined ‘middle class’ as those with salaries…. I think ‘middle class’ is very much a state of mind.”

As the article suggests, it will be fascinating to see what this majority global middle class will act like: will they follow the individualistic and consumeristic American model or chart a new course? And might the American middle class also change in response to or in conjunction with these global changes?

It is interesting that this article contains very little discussion of why the global middle class is surging. Is it because of capitalism? Globalization? Specific policies from groups like the United Nations or the International Monetary Fund?

In an editorial on the same topic, the Christian Science Monitor argues there is a need to maintain social values and avoid a “moral vacuum”:

A moral vacuum can strike any rising middle class. Battles for status erupt in a competition for consumption. (In China, it’s Louis Vuitton that defines prestige.) Material goods are seen as a ladder to upward mobility.

A consumer culture can also leave young people with a lack of purpose, as China knows well. And youth often have bicultural identities: one in tradition and one in the global market of high-tech communications and Western media. They may feel no kinship to either and can easily become alienated.

So cheers for the newly well-off. But they need a spiritual foundation before they build those McMansions.

It is revealing that the McMansion is the exemplar here of a soulless middle class.

Highlighting the isolation and independence of McMansions

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A feature of McMansions that sometimes draws criticism is the possible isolation they offer their inhabitants. Neighborhoods of these homes are sometimes envisioned as wastelands where neighbors don’t know each other and really don’t want to have any interaction. Here is an illustration of this idea within an article about the “peer-to-peer economy”:

The mentality peaked during the ’90s and first half of the last decade. Heaven was a safe job, a McMansion, a Target (TGT) in your city, a Starbucks (SBUX) down the road, a credit card with no limit, and a seven-figure bank account. No need to ever interact with strangers! The perfect bliss of isolation, err, “financial independence.”

The general idea here is that the goal of life during this time period was to have so much money that people don’t have to interact with others that they don’t want to interact with. While this may be in the name of being “financially independent,” it is really about becoming self-sufficient and not having to depend on anybody.

Several thoughts about this:

1. Even with this so-called “financial independence,” it is hard to escape the need for other people. I’m reminded of Durkheim’s idea of organic solidarity where people are more interdependent on others than ever due to the division of labor but also feel more independent. This seems related to American cultural ideas of individualism: the goal is to become a self-made man/woman who can do it all on their own. Can we then interpret advice from people like Dave Ramsey as promulgating American individualism more than fighting debt?

1a. This fear of strangers is an interesting idea. It is often invoked when talking about the formation of American suburbs (white flight out of cities) or gated communities (trying to keep certain people out). I wonder if there is survey data that would suggests Americans are more afraid of strangers than citizens of other countries.

2. Is a single-family house more of a place to avoid people or to build up the individual and the family unit?

3. I understand the idea of a McMansion and a large bank account fitting the theme of isolation but what do a safe job, Target, and Starbucks have to do with it? In all three of these settings, people interact with others, particularly on the job. With money, one can purchase a customizable experience at Target and Starbucks but this would be true in a lot of commercial settings.