Culture Vs Individualism

It is interesting how texts can be – indeed often are – reinterpreted when read later on. The longer the timespan between writing and reading, the higher the likelihood that such reinterpretation will take place. New cultural contexts, new geopolitical situations, revised value systems, changes in social organizations, and dissolution of the importance of kinship – these are but a few of the causes for such reinterpretation.

This may not be such a critical issue. Those that reread text are themselves products of the time in which they were born and grew up, and it is only natural that past ideas are reassessed and reinterepreted. It is the prerogative of any generation to reinterpret and reassess the advances and outputs of previous generations.

However, while being engaged in such reintepretation and reassessment, we will do well to make efforts to understand past texts within the context of the time and period in which they were written. This is necessary in order to avoid making incorrect interpretations and assumptions, for example, when the goal is to understand the person who wrote the text, or the period in which the text was written.

A Case Study

For a case in point, consider the following text which is ascribed to the American social anthropologist Margaret Mead (Quote Investigator 2014):

"Always remember that you are absolutely unique. Just like everyone else."

The first and very important thing to note with the quote is that it represents, fundamentally, a contradiction in terms. If you are unique you are different from everybody else.  Conversely, if everybody is unique you cannot be unique. Something tells me that it is not likely that Margaret Mead would have written or said this. And if she did, the logical way in which she would have done so would be as an irony or a joke. And as a source for the quote is not available we will never know the context. From my vantage point, as a fellow social anthropologist who grew up on Margaret Mead, my reading of this quote is that her implied context was not the individual but culture, writ large. This statement, accordingly, while emphasizing uniqueness, does so by placing the individual person within the circumscribed context of her/his culture (cf. Wikipedia n.d.b).

Since several decades there is a gradually shifting emphasis on the role of the individual in relation to the culture she/he is part and parcel of. This is specifically the case in countries in the so-called West, as well as in urbanized and/or westernized parts of countries elsewhere in the world. The individual is increasingly becoming separated from culture, including kinship, social organizational obligations and rights, and values. As a result, the individual increasingly comes to view herself/himself as separate from culture, as having new degrees of freedom, that is, as being individualized. This individualism is fast becoming a very important part of – as well as expression of – Western society, and Westernized societies elsewhere.

It should, accordingly, not be surprising that the above quote today oftentime is interpreted more or less differently from how it was originally meant. We intuitively tend to interpret past authors and their texts from the standpoint of our own time, culture, and generation. It takes effort – including time and knowledge – to interpret a statement within the context of the time and place in which it was written. Thus, one – perhaps common – way of interpreting the above statement today is to equate "individual" with the more recent term "individualism", especially in its more recent interpretation which sets a person apart from the culture she/he grew up in.

The Case Assessed

There is actually scholarship available on the origin of this quote. The website Quote Investigator (2014) has done a seemingly thorough examination of its apparent origins, and the conclusion is unequivocal: Margaret Mead never said this (apart from the observation above that she never could have said it). According to Quote Investigator the ascription of this quote to Margaret Mead likely came about following a misreading of the following quote in a text from 1971: "How can I be unique just like everybody else?" In the late 1970s this quote was reproduced verbatim in a book, ascribed to one "Meade", but without further citation provided as to who this person Meade might be. Later on, a slightly different version of the quote was ascribed to Margaret Mead. Finally, a volume ascribed the quote to "Margaret Meade".  Essentially, Quote Investigator concludes that the family name "Meade" over time was changed to "Mead", as it was assumed that it was a reference to Margaret Mead.

Broadening the Argument

Briefly, the above argument is part and parcel of a broader inquiry into the interpretation of texts, including older texts. This is the domain of deconstruction and hermeneutics (Wikipedia n.d.a). Some of the avenues along which such inquieries take place include the role of intentions, whether texts determine or constrain their interpretation, and the amount of contextual information necessary to facilitate understanding of texts (Ball 2004, Kulkani 2012, Wikipedia n.d.b). Somewhat parallel with these evolving inquieries, a growing call is being made for cross-disciplinary collaboration and exchange. It follows that traditional boundaries between the involved scientific disciplines – specifically as available in the humanities and the social sciences – increasingly are viewed as being permeable.

Lars T Soeftestad

Notes
^1/  This article is based on a shorter piece that I contributed to a discussion on Facebook, on 1 August 2017.
^2/  Image credit: Margaret Mead, Internet (source unknown). 
^3/  Relevant Devblog articles: "Anthropology and Development Cooperation" at: https://devblog.no/en/article/anthropology-and-development-cooperation
^4/  Permalink. URL: https://devblog.no/en/article/culture-vs-individualism
^5/  This article was published 1 August 2017.

Sources
Ball, Terence. 2004. History and the Interpretation of Texts. In: Gerald F. Gaus and Chandran Kukathas, eds. Handbook of Political Theory, pp. 18-30. London: Sage Publications.
Kulkarni, Mangesh. 2012. Text and context: Methodological debates in the study of political thought. CAS Occasional Paper Series no. 5. Centre for Advanced Studies, Dept. of Politics and Public Admin., University of Pune.
Quote Investigator. 2014. "Always remember that you are absolutely unique. Just like everyone else." URL: http://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/11/10/you-unique/. (accessed 7 August 2017).
Wikipedia. n.d.a. "Hermeneutics." URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermeneutics. (accessed 7 August 2017.)
Wikipedia. n.d.b. "Individualism." URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Individualism. (accessed 7 August 2017.)