ABSTRACT
I n his celebrated analysis of American society, David Riesman (1950) argued that individualism (emphasized as a distinctive American trait by a long line of observers going back to Alexis de Tocqueville) was disappearing. A n "inner-directed" personality type was gradually being replaced by "other-directed" people. Another landmark study of the 1950s, Wil l iam Whyte's (1956) The Organization Man, reached similar conclusions: the Protestant ethic of hard work , thrif t , and competition as the route to individual salvation was giving way to a belief i n "belongingness" as the ultimate goal. Both Riesman and Whyte had grave misgivings about what they saw as the decline of individualism i n America.
