Chapter 3 Individualism and its Institutional Consequences

Abstract

As world society develops and nations become embedded in it, cultural patterns that began as properties of Western modernity diffuse to other areas. Individualism has long been noted as a unique feature of American nationalism (Arieli, 1964; Greene, 1993; Lipset, 1963, 1996). But both the spread of democracy and the declining legitimacy of dictatorship and racism after WW II opened the gates for forms of egalitarianism and individualism to spread transnationally (see Elliott & Lemert, 2006; Gaddis, 2005, p. 164ff). This chapter considers the consequences of this transformation.

Citation

Kamens, D.H. (2012), "Chapter 3 Individualism and its Institutional Consequences", Kamens, D.H. (Ed.) Beyond the Nation-State (Research in the Sociology of Education, Vol. 18), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 55-87. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1479-3539(2012)0000018007