Rugged Individualism and the Misunderstanding of American Inequality

Lawrence M. Eppard is assistant professor of sociology at Shippensburg University.Mark Robert Rank is the Herbert S. Hadley Endowed Professor of Social Welfare at Washington University in St. Louis.Heather E. Bullock is professor of psychology at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Despite this text's range of authors and contributors, including Henry Giroux and Noam Chomsky, the book's main thrust is social psychological. It surveys recent writing and research that outlines and seeks to explain why the US is an outlier among affluent (principally European) nations in its minimalist approach to social programs and policies to mitigate poverty. Though recognizing that racism, i.e., the popular view that “redistribution favors racial minorities,” has always infested policy choices and that the US “political system is geared towards preventing redistribution,” the authors emphasize individualism as the force that explains cross-national differences. This ideology is reinforced by an “underdeveloped non-individualistic vocabulary” and an unpopular sociological counter-narrative. System-justification research is cited to explain why “low-income and working-class people endorse hierarchy-enhancing beliefs that go against their own self-interest,” a concept also explored in Thomas Frank's What’s the Matter with Kansas? (2004). . . its many voices make this a useful text that raises fundamental questions about inequality beliefs. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through graduate students.

• Chapter 1The Problem with American IndividualismPART I: Social Science Perspectives Chapter 2The American Inequality Palette Chapter 3Social Psychological Functions of Inequality BeliefsChapter 4In ConversationPART II: Individualism on the Ground Chapter 5Cleaning the Ivory TowerChapter 6Paved with Good IntentionsPART III: The Big PictureChapter 7Inequality Beliefs and Social JusticeAfterwordReferencesIndexAbout the Authors