In his research, Johnson deals a lot with the issue of diversity. He describes briefly how diversity enhances productivity but serves as the basis for internal division amongst work groups. "People tend to think of things only in terms of individuals, as if a society or a company or a university were nothing more than a collection of people living in a particular time and place", he says. Many of today's problems and topics are seen as originating from personal flaws or attributes, personal thoughts or abilities, as certain societies (especially in the West, especially in the United States) apply an individualistic outlook to the world. This outlook itself is problematic, as it hinders our sociological imagination.
As far as social issues are concerned, Johnson says this:
If ordinary people in capitalist societies feel deprived and insecure, the individualistic answer is that the people who run corporations are "greedy" or the politicians are corrupt and incompetent and otherwise lacking in personal character. The same perspective argues that poverty exists because of the habits, attitudes, and skills of the individual poor people, who are blamed for what they supposedly lack as people and are told to change if they want anything better for themselves.Indeed, what's important is not so much the individual people but the relationships between them. It's this point in particular that resonates with me; societies are not just collections of people, but collections of relationships between them as well. It is this distinction that discriminates psychology from sociology, individualism from collectivism.
Like Mills, Johnson argues that sociologists should study not just social systems and not just individuals, but both. And this isn't just for sake of argument, but Johnson goes so far as to claim that "the individualistic perspective that dominates current thinking about social life doesn't work... An individualistic model is misleading because it encourages us to explain human behavior and experience from a perspective that's so narrow it misses most of what's going on."
It's startling to read his examples of individualistic thinking and realize that, even after studying sociology for two and a half years and trying to see things objectively, I still approach my interpretations individualistically. This is one area where my thinking is flawed and could stand some revision.
Relevance: 4/5 (relevant)
Salience: 4/5 (salient)
References:
- Bible - as an example: "Like travelers in a strange land..."
- William James - cited as a cause. "The roots of individualistic thinking in the United States trace in part to the work of William James who helped pioneer the field of psychology".
- Sigmund Freud - cited as a cause. "Later, [individualism] was deepened in Europe and the United States by Sigmund Freud's revolutionary insights into the existence of the subconscious and the inner world of individual existence."
- Emile Durkheim - unnamed, but implied through use of suicide as an example of sociological thinking.
I'm interested to hear some of Johnson's examples of individualistic thinking. Also, does Johnson propose ideas for how to make the switch from thinking in terms of individuals to thinking in terms of the relationships between them?
ReplyDeleteA few more examples from the excerpt:
ReplyDelete"If we think everything begins and ends with individuals--their personalities, biographies, feelings, and behavior--then it's easy to think that social problems must come down to flaws in individual character. If we have a drug problem, it must be because individuals just can't or won't 'say no.' If there is racism, sexism, heterosexism, classism, and other forms of oppression, it must be because of people who for some reason have the personal 'need' to behave in racist, sexist, and other oppressive ways."
"When women, for example, talk about how sexism affects them, individualistic thinking encourages men to hear this as a personal accusation: 'If women are oppressed then I'm an evil oppressor who wants to oppress them.' Since no man wants to see himself as a bad person, and since most men probably don't feel oppressive toward women, men may feel unfairly attacked."
"To make a better world, we think we have to put the 'right people' in charge or make better people by liberating human consciousness in a New Age or by changing how children are socialized or by locking up or tossing out or killing people who won't or can't be better than they are."
"Psychotherapy is increasingly offered as a model for changing not only the inner life of individuals, but also the world they live in. If enough people heal themselves through therapy, then the world will 'heal' itself as well."
These examples illustrate the pervasiveness of individualism in our everyday thinking, which proves how much of a hindrance it is to collectivistic, sociological thinking. The point of this excerpt is not to explain how to overcome it, although I am sure that the full text from which this excerpt is lifted does accomplish this.
Seems my first comment was deleted...
ReplyDeleteThe editors of the anthology selected only a few pages from Johnson's book for inclusion. In this excerpt he only states that individualism is a hindrance to sociological thinking and briefly illustrates why; I'm sure that in Johnson's book he elaborates much more and does propose a solution. It may even be a simple as knowing your biases and catching yourself when you invoke them. Good question, Megan.