Some Asians are critical of American individualism which they equate with selfishness and other anti-social behaviors, whereas to them conformity means cooperation and social harmony. Americans tend to believe the opposite and might conclude that Asians would benefit from a more individualistic approach to life if only to prevent another Great Leap Forward or Cultural Revolution.
These are extreme examples of conformity but the West has its own, such as Stalin’s purges and the Holocaust. Even in America such incidents as the Salem witch hunt, McCarthyism, and the Day Care Sex Abuse Hysteria of the late 1980s indicate a tendency toward mindless conformity. Using the study “Deviance or Uniqueness, Harmony or Conformity? A Cultural Analysis” by Heejung Kim and Hazel Rose Markus, and Hanna Rosin’s “The Case Against Breast-Feeding,” it will be argued that, apart from some superficial differences, East and West are both essentially conformist cultures.
Kim and Markus began their project by asking themselves whether East Asians are more conformist than Americans. East Asians, they claim, are raised to value tradition and social mores and to see the individual expression as childish and showing a lack of concern for the community. In Korea, for example, the term conformity means “maturity and inner strength.” Children are taught to respect their elders and to learn from them so that these values are handed down from one generation to the next and thus are thoroughly internalized. In such societies conformity is not brought about by social pressure but because conformity brings a pleasurable sense of belonging to a group and a culture (Kim and Markus 786).
American culture, media, and even social psychological research reflect the ideals of uniqueness, say, Kim and Markus. Americans are told they “should go their own way, chart their own course, and march to the beat of a different drummer. Consequently, people follow the norm not to follow norms” (787). They concede that people’s perception of their ordinariness or individuality may be illusionary, more the product of their environment than anything natural, but their studies were designed to test just how deep these qualities run.
They conclude that in American culture, “where people are taught to respect individual rights before the collective and the basic units of society are individuals, we see the glorification of individual freedom to reject norms and an aversion to conformity” (795). To Kim and Markus, cultural values determine the individual’s choices so that Americans actually have no choice but to make their own choices and East Asians have no choice but to choose what everyone else chooses.
These are simplistic ideas and the authors more or less acknowledge that by disclaimers inserted in their summary. One of these states that “cultural phenomena are complex, subtle, and replete with inconsistencies and contradictions among ideologies, institutions, practices, and a wide spectrum of ideas about what is right and what is wrong in any given situation” (Kim and Markus 798). In other words, there are so many pressures brought to bear on individuals to confirm that it is impossible to point to anyone dominant factor.
This is similar to the point made in Rosin’s investigation of the breastfeeding controversy: most people may think they are making individual choices but actually there is immense pressure on them to conform to what various groups think is best for them. It is only the rare individual (like Rosin) who takes the trouble to find out what is behind various social trends before making up her mind.
Mothers in favor of breastfeeding, Rosin argues, have turned in “fascist” in their belief in the rightness of their cause. A media barrage complete with “lactation consultants” and “parenting gurus” (Rosin 2) has persuaded the majority of American mothers that formula is evil and mothers who bottle-feed their babies are just as bad as those who smoke during pregnancy (Rosin 7). This is part of a system in which the mother must do everything for the baby’s benefit, not her own.
This system was promoted by women on the Christian right as well as radical feminists, says Rosin. The La Leche League, a Catholic women’s organization claims that breastfeeding is “God’s plan for mothers and babies” (qtd. in Rosin 4). The Boston Women’s Health Books Collective states that “breasts were not things for men to whistle and wink at; they were made for women to feed their babies in a way that was ‘sensual and fulfilling’” (qtd. in Rosin 4). Whichever way a woman turned for guidance, therefore, she was told that “breast is best” (Rosin 2).
Rosin, a mother of three, was liberated by a medical journal article that admitted the evidence for the superiority of breastfeeding was “inconsistent” (3). Her research showed that the only real difference breastfeeding makes to a baby’s health “adds up to about four out of 100 babies having one less incident of diarrhea or vomiting” (6). To achieve that, women have to give up everything, including their relationship with their husband, social contacts and sleep and become a slave to their children. In other words, the breastfeeding syndrome has turned into a mass mania even though it is not in the best interest of mother or babies, even though science opposes taking a fixed position on breast or bottle, and even though no one can tell the difference between children raised by either method.
Then why are American women so adamant about breastfeeding? No one is absolutely sure how best to raise babies, just as no one is sure how he or she should live. We adopt norms of behavior that have proved workable in the past and hope they will work for us. Every sociological study, if it goes far enough, must encounter what Kim and Markus found, that cultures are “constantly changing … through diverse means of participation and engagement” (798).
They agree with Rosin that we all operate in an uncertain world where even scientific objectivity must be questioned. Different cultures have different ways of dealing with that uncertainty but none of us can afford to be unique in the sense that we ignore what others have to teach us. In small matters such as choosing one color pen over another, one culture may be more individualistic than another; but in critical matters or times, we tend to conform.
Rosin says at the end of her article that she will miss the “intimate and elemental” experience of breastfeeding in the future (9), even if by then she will once more be able to exercise her freedom of choice. Her ambivalence is what most of us feel when we decide to conform for the pleasure of social approval or to assert our individuality for the pleasure of feeling unique. That mixed feeling may be the strongest factor common to all cultures, East Asian, American, or any other.
Works Cited
Rosin, Hanna. “The Case Against Breast-Feeding.” The Atlantic Monthly, 2009.
Kim, Heejung and Markus, Hazel Rose. “Deviance or Uniqueness, Harmony or Conformity? A Cultural Analysis.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1999.