Individualism and equality

The relationship between individualism and equality is a large subject which social anthropologists have only recently begun to explore systematically. It has, however, been discussed in a variety of contexts for a century and a half by scholars in different intellectual disciplines: philosophers, political theorists, lawyers, historians, economists, and others. Many of the social theorists of the nineteenth century were struck by the simultaneous emergence of the desire for equality and the appreciation of the individual, and they sought to establish a relationship between the two. Alexis de Tocqueville was one of the first to argue that individualism and equality were both new values and that they were inseparably linked in their origin and development. The intimate connection between the two was also stressed, though in other ways, by the jurist Henry Maine and the historian Jacob Burckhardt.