3 - Theories of Social Individuation and a Way Forward

Summary

The problem is posed in a classical fashion by Louis Dumont:

In rough and ready terms, the problem of the origins of individualism is very much how, starting from the common type of holistic societies, a new type has evolved that basically contradicts the common conception. How has the transition been possible, how can we conceive a transition between these two antithetic universes of thought, these two mutually irreconcilable ideologies?

Usual explanations of the origins of individualistic societies tend to alternate between two extremes: a determinism of modernization theory (whereby individualism is seen as inevitable by-product of universal social change), and a full historical particularization of the phenomenon (whereby it is seen as a unique product of unrepeatable circumstances). In place of both, I propose a framework that is abstract enough to incorporate all the known cases of the phenomenon and yet historically sensitive enough to link it (if not deterministically) with a single recognizable cultural tradition: that of the Judeo-Christian West. This kind of inquiry begins with a recognition that individualism can, and did, emerge more than once—but that it is an exceptional occurrence all the same, a product of a rare concatenation of circumstances.

Individuation: Unstoppable or Unrepeatable?

One dominant way of explaining individualism's origins comes from modernization theory, which was invented a century and a half ago by sociology's founding fathers. Despite countless challenges to its validity, this approach keeps returning in new forms and sociological guises. Modernization theorists view social individuation as a predictable accompaniment to the universal processes of technological and socioeconomic change that typically consist of industrialization, urbanization, occupational specialization, communications revolutions, and/or all of the above. Three assumptions guiding the framework are that (1) technology, economy, and other material conditions of existence drive changes in cultures and in human subjective orientations; (2) the process of individuation is universal; and (3) the process is irreversible and unstoppable. In a representative statement, Ronald Inglehart argues that “economic, cultural and political change go together in coherent patterns that are changing the world in predictable ways… . [O]ne can meaningfully speak of a model of ‘modern’ or ‘industrial’ society toward which all societies tend to move if they commit themselves to industrialization.”