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Crossing the Great Divide: Anthropological Theories of the Western Self

Recent theorists have noted that the discovery of differences in self concepts has led to an overly dichotomized view of Eastern sociocentric selves "versus" Western individualistic selves. While most anthropologists agree on the need for a richer theoretical understanding of the self beyond the bipolar ego/sociocentric model, few theorists have suggested ways in which this model could be improved upon, especially on the Western side of the dichotomy. Although many anthropologists are beginning to break down the homogenous constructs of the sociocentric self in Eastern societies they study, this has not yet been rigorously attempted in the West. In this article, I focus on some of the problems with the dichotomy, with particular emphasis on problems on the Western "side"--namely, the assumption that individualism precludes sociocentrism, the tendency to equate the West with America, the misrepresentation of the Western philosophical tradition, the homogenization of Western individualism, and the re-creation of the ego/sociocentric dichotomy within the West along gender and class lines. Finally, questions posed by social psychologists engaged in the individualism/collectivism debate, as well as examples from my own research on child rearing in Manhattan and Queens (Kusserow 1999), suggest ways in which conceptions of the Western self must be complexified.