Major paradigms in sociology and social sciences usually embrace either individualism or anti‐individualism as fundamental worldview. This paper explores a third way between individualism and ...anti‐individualism developed by German sociologist Niklas Luhmann in his systems theory. Luhmann treats actors or individuals as psychic systems and he distinguishes them from social systems. In a nutshell, social systems produce communication, whereas psychic systems produce consciousness. In line with anti‐individualism, Luhmann therefore argues that social systems are irreducible to psychic systems and their actions. On the other hand, Luhmann joins ranks with individualism to assert that psychic systems are not rigorously constrained by social systems. Ultimately, Luhmann explains that social systems and psychic systems are part of each other's environment and that each type of systems provides the ecological conditions that the other type depends on to emerge and grow. To discuss this third way between individualism and anti‐individualism, the paper examines more specifically two central points in Luhmann's theory: (1) how social systems and psychic systems are separated from each other, and (2) how social systems and psychic systems are coevolving.
Compared with the large body of literature on coping, coping flexibility has received relatively scant research attention, although more such studies have begun to emerge recently. Researchers have ...conceptualized coping flexibility in diverse ways: as a broad coping repertoire, a well-balanced coping profile, cross-situational variability in strategy deployment, a good strategy-situation fit, or the perceived ability to cope with environmental changes. This meta-analysis is the first to provide a summary estimate of the overall effect size and investigate cross-study sources of variation in the beneficial role of coping flexibility. The analysis covers all available studies conducted between 1978 and 2013 that empirically tested the relationship between coping flexibility and psychological adjustment. The results of a random-effects model revealed a small to moderate overall mean effect size (r = .23, 95% CI .19, .28, 80% CRI -.02, .49, k = 329, N = 58,946). More important, the magnitude of the positive link between coping flexibility and psychological adjustment varied with the conceptualization of such flexibility. Studies adopting the perceived ability or strategy-situation fit conceptualization yielded moderate effect sizes, whereas those adopting the broad repertoire, balanced profile, or cross-situational variability conceptualization yielded small effect sizes. In addition, the positive link between coping flexibility and psychological adjustment was stronger in samples from countries lower (vs. higher) in individualism and samples with higher (vs. lower) average ages. Individualism and age explained 10% and 13% of the variance, respectively. We discuss the conceptual problems and implications and propose a synthesized conceptualization of coping flexibility.
A central tenet of moral individualism is that only an entity's intrinsic (non-relational) properties can ground moral status because only intrinsic properties give rise to agent-neutral reasons. ...However, I show that the two main approaches to making the agent-neutral/agent-relative distinction fail to exclude morally salient relational (extrinsic) properties from giving rise to agent-neutral reasons. As such, moral individualism accounts of moral status are false. Further, arguments that depend on moral individualism's central tenet-like the argument from "marginal" cases-are unable to defend their thesis by merely claiming that special relations cannot ground moral status.
Research on sustainability behaviors has been based on the assumption that increasing personal concerns about the environment will increase proenvironmental action. We tested whether this assumption ...is more applicable to individualistic cultures than to collectivistic cultures. In Study 1, we compared 47 countries (N = 57,268) and found that they varied considerably in the degree to which environmental concern predicted support for proenvironmental action. National-level individualism explained the between-nation variability above and beyond the effects of other cultural values and independently of person-level individualism. In Study 2, we compared individualistic and collectivistic nations (United States vs. Japan; N = 251) and found culture-specific predictors of proenvironmental behavior. Environmental concern predicted environmentally friendly consumer choice among European Americans but not Japanese. For Japanese participants, perceived norms about environmental behavior predicted proenvironmental decision making. Facilitating sustainability across nations requires an understanding of how culture determines which psychological factors drive human action.
The (potential) demise of HRM? Dundon, Tony; Rafferty, Anthony
Human resource management journal,
July 2018, Volume:
28, Issue:
3
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
This article seeks to provoke that human resource management (HRM), both as an academic field of study and as a form of professional practice, is at risk of impoverishment. The main reasoning for ...this is because of ideological individualism and marketisation with an attendant neglect on wider organisational, employee, and societal concerns. Following a review of the context of financialised capitalism, three contemporary developments in HRM are used to illustrate the argument: reward strategies, talent management, and high performance work systems. Implications for the practice of HRM and the way the subject area is taught in mainstream business schools are considered.
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The BBC Loneliness Experiment provided a unique opportunity to examine differences in the experience of lonelines across cultures, age, and gender, and the interaction between these factors. Using ...those data, we analysed the frequency of loneliness reported by 46,054 participants aged 16–99 years, living across 237 countries, islands, and territories, representing the full range of individualism-collectivism cultures, as defined by Hofstede (1997). Findings showed that loneliness increased with individualism, decreased with age, and was greater in men than in women. We also found that age, gender, and culture interacted to predict loneliness, although those interactions did not qualify the main effects, and simply accentuated them. We found the most vulnerable to loneliness were younger men living in individualistic cultures.
•Younger people reported more loneliness than the middle-aged.•The middle-aged reported more loneliness than older people.•Men reported more loneliness than women.•People in individualistic (vs. collectivist) countries reported more loneliness.•Age, gender, and culture interacted to predict loneliness.
Over the last three decades, fruitful new lines of research and theorizing have revealed the inadequacy of secularization and rational choice explanations of religion. This article argues that ...sociological understandings of religion can best advance now by building on the empirical findings that have emerged under the banner of “lived religion,” but grounding that work in theories of social practice. Going beyond the Western, individualist focus of recent research, the approach explicated in this article details a multidimensional lens for the study of the practices themselves and an outline of the types of historical and legal cultural repertoires that shape practice around the world. Together these frameworks can facilitate sociological research on religion both inside and beyond religious institutions and across cultural contexts.
Old Religion, New Spirituality: Implications of Secularisation and Individualisation in Estonia, edited by Riho Altnurme, discusses the link between the secularity of Estonia and the image of ...individualised religiosity in this country today.
In response to the Ebola scare in 2014, many people evinced strong fear and xenophobia. The present study, informed by the pathogen-prevalence hypothesis, tested the influence of individualism and ...collectivism on xenophobic response to the threat of Ebola. A nationally representative sample of 1,000 Americans completed a survey, indicating their perceptions of their vulnerability to Ebola, ability to protect themselves from Ebola (protection efficacy), and xenophobic tendencies. Overall, the more vulnerable people felt, the more they exhibited xenophobic responses, but this relationship was moderated by individualism and collectivism. The increase in xenophobia associated with increased vulnerability was especially pronounced among people with high individualism scores and those with low collectivism scores. These relationships were mediated by protection efficacy. State-level collectivism had the same moderating effect on the association between perceived vulnerability and xenophobia that individual-level value orientation did. Collectivism—and the set of practices and rituals associated with collectivistic cultures—may serve as psychological protection against the threat of disease.
A participação cidada sob a lente do Individualismo metodológico de Hayek demonstra que sao os individuos quem tem a capacidade de agir e interagir, sendo estes agentes de mudançã no contexto social. ...Nesse sentido, os tipos de motivaçöes dos mesmos em se envolverem ñas questóes públicas da sua comunidade impactam os diferentes niveis de participação. Ademáis, a premissa que norteia este ensaio é a ideia de que maiores niveis de participação estimulam a democracia para o exercício de urna cidadania ativa, e esta cidadania oportuniza mais participação, gerando assim o que chamamos de efeito bumerangue.
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