Based on my own bi-cultural experience I'd argue that the US is in some respects more individualistic and in other less individualistic than "old Europe." Take, for example, conflict resolution. On the ideological level, US-ers tend to be more individualistic than old Euros i.e. vocally asserting their own power and prowess rather than mediation and compromise in resolving conflicts. In reality, the opposite is true - the US-ers are more likely to engage in communal means of conflict resolution (from forming interest groups to filing law suits and less likely to go physical) than old Euros (who are more likely to go physical or engage in one-on-one informal engagement to solve a conflict.)
Stated differently, USers ar emore likely to express individualist ethos than old Euros, but at the same time they are more likely to purse collective/communal action (at least in certain areas of life) than old Euros.
Wojtek
On Sat, Aug 22, 2009 at 11:16 PM, shag carpet bomb <shag at cleandraws.com>wrote:
> was just going through my file of books/article to read, and happened
> across something i saved in 2004, an essay by anthropologist Claude Fisher,
> Was There a Moment (When Americans Became Individualists)?*
>
> http://ucdata.berkeley.edu/rsfcensus/papers/Individualists.pdf
>
> Fisher is actually providing an overview of a debate that animates
> historians, and not actually answering the question from a sociological
> perspective. thought folks might find it interesting.
>
>
>
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