originally published 5/1/2007

Professor Christopher Shannon discusses how early twentieth-century social scientists encouraged the American idea that individual identity works against communal membership. Newcomers to America sought the best of old and new worlds by not giving up culture and tradition, but seeking economic success. In the end, however, their traditions were abandoned for a sense of individual fulfillment. As Shannon puts it, “the official acceptance of diversity is a first step toward a more insidious assimilation.” Detachment becomes a way of life as the individual asserts power over his traditional culture in order to recreate himself. Shannon is the author of Conspicuous Criticism: Tradition, the Individual, and Culture in Modern American Social Thought.

17 minutes

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