Drawing on social-criticism, self-help manuals, and the social scientific analysis of American character, In Conflict No Longer examines American thinking about individualism, conformity, and community from 1920 through 1995. Taviss-Thomson's analysis reveals a basic shift in American culture: from a belief that the individual is necessarily in conflict with society and that the self chafes against the constraints imposed by society, to a belief that the self is expressed in the groups, relationships, and subcultures that help shape it. Taviss Thomson contends that this new model of a relational or "embedded" self arose because a weakening of traditional identities based on occupation, social class, gender and age permitted individuals more freedom to construct their own identities. As Americans increasingly abandon the traditional mythology of an individual struggling against social constraints, In Conflict No Longer forecasts a picture of American culture for the new millennium.
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Editorial Reviews
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At once a history of ideas, a history of American mores, and an essay in sociological theory, this book tackles head-on the most fundamental issues about the relation between self and society. Irene Taviss Thomson chronicles the highlights of eight decades of (most American) theories about individualism, conformity, and community. She counterpoises the theories with practical advice contemporaneously proffered via best-selling self-help books and, to some degree, with social survey data. Her comprehensive, meticulous review of the literature makes this book required reading for anyone who wants to do serious research on changing self and society relationships in America. (Madsen, Richard Contemprary Sociology )
This is an invaluable work and worthy of [the] broadest deliberation. Irene Taviss Thomson does nothing less than document and illuminate the 20th century erosion of a lynchpin concept in Western culture: the individual self. Further, she heralds the forthcoming of what may well become its 21st century replacement: relational being. (Gergen, Kenneth J. )
This is an invaluable work and worthy of [the] broadest deliberation. Irene Taviss Thomson does nothing less than document and illuminate the 20th century erosion of a lynchpin concept in Western culture: the individual self. Further, she heralds the forthcoming of what may well become its 21st century replacement: relational being. (Gergen, Kenneth J. )
About the Author
Irene Taviss Thomson is professor of sociology at Fairleigh Dickinson University.
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