Beyond possessive individualism (1981)

Fred Dallmayr ◽  
2017 ◽  
pp. 26-50
Keyword(s):  
Possessive Individualism

What being an owner can also mean: A socio-anthropological study on the development of a forgotten relationship to objects

2021 ◽  
pp. 205157072110144
Author(s):  
Isabelle Dabadie ◽  
Philippe Robert-Demontrond
Keyword(s):  
Economic Models ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Ecological Crisis ◽  
Anthropological Study ◽  
Possessive Individualism ◽  
The One

In a context of ecological crisis, new economic models have developed based on the replacement of ownership by access. While they have been studied at length, the very idea of ownership, which is supposed to be abandoned in this process, has rarely been questioned. This is the aim of our research, which investigates the meanings of the concept of ownership for consumers. A socio-anthropological investigation and an ethnographic study on various sharing systems (for houses, boats and clothes) reveals the development of a relationship to ownership, which differs from the one that prevails in the society. In this paradigm, which questions possessive individualism, the owner appears as the ‘custodian’ of his possessions. The identification of his expectations opens managerial and societal perspectives to build the offers that will enable him to fulfil this role.

The One and the Manor

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel M. Stout
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Social Organization ◽  
Edmund Burke ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Mansfield Park ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Possessive Individualism ◽  
The One ◽  
Jane West

Chapter two reassesses the conservatism of Jane Austen’s 1814 novel, Mansfield Park. It argues that we have misunderstood the novel by reading it in relation to the late eighteenth-century philosophy of Edmund Burke and socially conservative novelists like Jane West when, in fact, Mansfield Park is governed by a much older of social organization—the manor—not based on the liberal assumption of possessive individualism. Seeing the novel through the lens of the manor, the chapter argues, helps explain many of its most perplexing and difficult features: among them, the meekness of Fanny Price; the dissatisfactions of its ending; and the often distant or impersonal strategies of narration.

Recovering Personhood

2019 ◽  
pp. 259-272
Author(s):  
Daniel W. Bromley
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Social Spaces ◽  
Mutual Dependence ◽  
Labor Power ◽  
Capitalist Firm ◽  
Possessive Individualism ◽  
Civic Duties ◽  
Sense Of Obligation

Possessive individualism undermines the realization of full personhood, and it enables the capitalist firm to shed any sense of obligation to those who must rent or sell their labor power in order that they might eat. The fundamental crisis of capitalism is that the self-absorbed individual and the self-dealing capitalist firm are locked in a perverse contest in which their mutual dependence is both acknowledged and resented. Re-creating historic ideas of obligations—civic duties—seems impossible to imagine. A more plausible transition is to be found in the idea of loyalty: loyalty to others with whom we work, with whom we share social spaces, and with the community at large. Loyalty from the capitalist firm toward its workers would be a start. Loyalty from the acquisitive selfish individual would be helpful in restoring a shared and necessary sense of personhood.

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