“Apartheid in Their Hearts”? How the South African Critique of Individualism is Probably Right

Abstract

Have we made a mistake in validating Western experiences of individualism? This question is inspired by two years of fieldwork focusing on the interpersonal dimensions of Western-inspired development in rural South Africa. Villagers accused Western change agents of having “apartheid in their hearts,” which means that they suffered from a denial of human interconnectedness. Insights from phenomenology are used to argue that the villagers are basically right–that change agents deny the very human interdependence they depend on to feel self-complete. This article shows what ethnography can add to understandings of individualistic experiences, for it seems that these experiences are not one cultural way of being among others but ones that are profoundly misshaped.

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