Acad. Quest. (2020) 33:134–140 DOI 10.1007/s12129-019-09846-w REVIEWS Burdens of Freedom: Cultural individuals has less to do with the Difference and American Power, degree to which their external Lawrence Mead, Encounter Books, conditions differ than with the extent 2019, 368 pp., $14.28 hardbound. to which they have internalized attitudes that encourage intellectual Does Culture Matter for autonomy and goal setting. The Assimilation? peoples of the non-Western world have “a more passive mind-set.” But Ricardo Duchesne what makes Mead really untypical for Published online: 30 January 2020 # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of an academic (really almost a typical Springer Nature 2020 member of the dissident right) is his straightforward observation that As I was reading this book, I kept the United States is “much less asking myself: can people from any individualist today” because it is cultural background or race assimilate becoming populated by immigrants to Western values? Lawrence Mead, a chiefly “from Asia or Latin America professor at New York University rather than Europe.” He goes beyond who provided much of the many Trump supporters, indeed, in supporting research and rationale for calling for “at least” a fifty percent welfare reform in the 1990s, reductioninlegalimmigrationtothe maintains the popular conservative United States. belief that individuals from all Individualism is the most important cultures can be socialized into attribute of the West, Mead argues, Western culture. But Mead is not and the United States is the typical in his insistence that the most individualist nation. Initially I psychology of Westerners is was unpersuaded by Mead’s fundamentally different from the announcement in the opening psychology of non-Western peoples. pages that his book is different in The primary differences between identifying “individualism” as the most important cultural trait of the West. Since Jacob Burkhardt wrote Ricardo Duchesne was a professor of sociology about the “birth of individualism” in at the University of New Brunswick, Saint his celebrated book, The Civilization John NB Canada, from 1995 to 2019; [email protected]. He is the author of the Renaissance in Italy, published of The Uniqueness of Western Civilization (Brill, in 1860, countless books and articles 2011) and last contributed to AQ in the spring of 2012, “A Civilization of Explorers.” have emphasized this trait. One has to Reviews 135 read a few chapters to get a better freedom of expression (the products sense of the particular twist Mead of individual decision-making) are gives to the word “individualism.” assimilated by Americans from early Essentially, his contention is that childhood, becoming deeply individualism is not some attribute internalized in their psyche. This that can be located in institutions, culture of individualism, moreover, laws, market exchanges, or does not entail doing whatever a educational establishments; it is person identifies with happiness, but something that must be present deep includes the burden of disciplining in the psyche of the person. He often one’s life to achieve economic says that Western individuals live their independence without socialistic lives “from the inside out.” While expectations from others. In one people outside the West “take chapter Mead mentions or cites my their cues largely from without,” book The Uniqueness of Western organizing their lives according to Civilization (2011) in his effort to socially expected norms, without show that this individualism was the questioning established authorities, result of a long historical process, Western individuals are encouraged reaching a high fruition in Protestant to generate from within themselves England and its highest expression in the goals they wish to pursue and the its offspring, the United States. lifestyle they deem most appropriate. Mead adroitly explains how In the West one finds individuals individualism is responsible for the driven by their “inner convictions,” fact that “the mostly white societies akin to what sociologist David of the West are still much richer, more Riesman called in TheLonelyCrowd powerful, and better governed than “inner directedness.” In the rest of the the non-West.” (7) He acknowledges world one finds individuals performing the tremendous economic advances socially expected activities (Riesman’s the “collectivist cultures” of Asia, “outer-directedness”). including China with its rigid Mead does not mean, to be sure, authoritarian state and passive mind that Westerners are born with this set, have made in recent decades, disposition. This individualism while correctly observing that China entails a way of life in which people remains far behind in per capita are socialized to think for themselves income. Japan, notwithstanding its and make their own decisions without parity in per capita income, is facing waiting for state directives. It competitive difficulties matching the presupposes socialization within a United States in “high-end technical civic order in which the rule of law, products and sophisticated services.” open markets, equal rights, and The “rote learning” of East Asian 136 Reviews countries limits innovation and Given Mead’s description of problem solving. Chinese college students, who retain Mead’s argument—probably their “quiet and submissive” state of without intention—seems pertinent mind, “repeating what teachers say on to those pondering global politics their tests and papers, rather than and the emergence of a “Chinese making personal arguments,” it is model” that some suggest poses a hard to imagine application fraud of threat to U.S. global hegemony. this magnitude being mostly student- Mead is direct in identifying the driven. A New York Times article on possibly fatal flaw in that model the Zinch China report places most of stemming from Chinese conformity: the blame on Chinese education low quality Chinese universities, “agents” who assist prospective which exhibit “rampant cheating students with applications. But it among students and fraud and seems unlikely these agents are acting plagiarism among faculty.” (261) without any official Chinese sanction. Low quality Chinese universities Applying Mead’s thesis, it could be might assuage fears of an imminent that Chinese students at American Chinese superpower victory were it universities are passively accepting not for the mad dash of Chinese their role in achieving the goals of the students to American universities state (i.e. exploiting Western education over the last two decades, bringing and technological know-how by any with them some perverse academic means necessary). A lot could and practices. Referencing a widely should be said about the culpability circulated report from the academic of tuition craven U.S. colleges and consulting firm Zinch China, Mead universities in this unscrupulous recites shocking statistics: “90 process. But having taught many percent of Chinese applicants to Chinese students, I can attest to what American universities submit false appears in some to be a strange lack of recommendations, 70 percent do not guilt about cheating on exams and write their own personal essays, 50 purchasing their essays online. If this percent have forged high school sounds harsh, consider what the New transcripts, and 10 percent claim York Times ominously wrote about academic awards and other honors Chinese students at American that they did not receive.”1 (262) colleges in 2011: “American concepts of intellectual property don’ttranslate 1 Cited by Ian Wilhelm, “Falsified Applications Are readily to students from a country Common Among Chinese Students Seeking to Go 2 Abroad, Consultant Says,” Chronicle of Higher where individualism is anathema.” Education, June 14, 2010; Tom Bartlett, Karin Fischernov, “The China Conundrum,” New York Times, November 6, 2011, ED24. 2Bartlett, Fischernov, “The China Conundrum.” Reviews 137 Mead is less persuasive in his embrace American values upon claim that this lack of individualism arrival. He tells us that some also explains why “most minorities Africans bring with them a weak on average have much lower sense of civic identity and individual incomes and suffer more serious initiative, and that their entry into the social problems than the white West “brings higher crime, lower majority.” (7) He is aware that East school performance, non-work, and Asian Americans have a higher dependency on benefits … To avoid median annual income than whites, a these costs, firmer limits on lower crime rate, higher levels of immigration are essential.” (235) In academic success, and lower family fact, the same Mead who questions breakdown. Mead's answer here is Trump's infamous remarks about revealing, and seems to challenge Mexicans, goes on to say without his own claim that anyone can reservation that “even fourth- be socialized into Western generation Mexican Americans fall individualism. He says that “even well short of the national average in successful Asian immigrants … terms of education, career status and are less individualistic than the home ownership,” which he attributes American norm … they tend to to the persistence of their collectivist adjust to the expectations around psyche, passivity, and lack of a “self- them … In school and then college, reliant personality.” (239) they expect to be rewarded for Mead's answer for this lack of repeating what teachers tell them.” socialization seems to be that, “for (233) In America, Mead argues, low obscure reasons,