Problems of Individualization in the Everyday Culture of Eastern Europe 1

• Published in: Acta Universitatis Sapientiae. Social Analysis 2014-01, Vol.4 (1/2), p.55
• Main Authors: Kapitány, Ágnes, Kapitány, Gábor
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Adaptation; Cultural anthropology; Modernization; Socialism; Society; Values
• ISSN: 2069-7449; 2248-0854

While the individualization of recent decades has proceeded in the eclectic world view of a society with an eclectic system of values, the system change often requires of individuals a total change in their system of values and world view: indeed, we can say it requires a change of culture in the sense used by cultural anthropology The authors chose life situations in which the change of cultures or the relation of cultures to each other is striking from the point of view of individualization Interviews were made with a group of intellectuals who had spent at least one year in the United States, and subsequently returned, so they twice confronted the differences of cultures, and a group of intellectuals who moved to Hungary from Transylvania and who have lived here for at least one year. Both meetings with an other culture having a higher degree of individualization produce similar reactions The emergence of more individualistic attitudes is accompanied by ambivalent feelings, different adaptation forms and changes in the value system.