What Individualism Is and Is Not : Or the ideals of Pippi Longstocking and Lisa Simpson

Abstract

It is often suggested that the distinguishing characteristic of public opinion in contemporary Western societies is a lack of shared moral guidelines in life: everything goes. The only ideal left is what is often called individualism, namely that of not accepting any given roles, values or ideals in life but instead striving towards being as free as possible to behave as one pleases. In this paper, I shall question this understanding of individualism. I shall argue that, both conceptually and empirically, individualism is also a set of specific ideals, as opposed to the lack thereof. In this paper, I back up my argument both by theorizing and presenting two new empirical studies, one on Dutch and the other on Swedish survey data. These indicate there are no reasons to assume that just because one is an individualist in the sense that one values individual freedom, one would also condone egoism, freeriding and hedonism. Neither do individualists need to be alienated and lacking a larger goal in life than the pursuit of self-interest. Finally, one of the studies also suggests there are two types of individualistic ideals: one external and oriented towards freedom of action (exemplified by Pippi Longstocking) and another more internal and focused on freedom of thought (exemplified by Lisa Simpson). ; Workshop paper to be presented at the NOPSA Conference 2008, Tromsö, Norway.