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Article: Individualism
- Article from:
- Dictionary of American History
- Author:
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INDIVIDUALISM
INDIVIDUALISM.
One of our most familiar terms of analysis, individualism is also one of the most elusive. It is employed in so many different ways
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approving and disapproving, descriptive and normative, social and psychological, economic and political
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that one never knows quite what is meant when the word is trotted out. It is rarely clear, for example, whether "individualism" is describing a consciously held set of formal philosophical or ideological doctrines or merely an ingrained ethos, or
mentalit
é
,
a set of assumed internalized social norms that is not being articulated. Even more bewildering, the student of American culture is likely to find that ...