Abstract
Individualism is commonly thought to go hand in hand with the practices and institutions of a market economy. This introduction lays out the essential claim of the book that in nineteenth-century America the rise of individualism and the rise of a market economy were interrelated and co-constitutive phenomena, but that neither strictly entails the other. In preparation for the historical and exegetical chapters that argue for this claim, this chapter defines and explores several key concepts: markets, market economies, and market societies as well as the individual, individuality, and individualism.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Anderson, Quentin. 1971. The Imperial Self: An Essay in American Literary and Cultural History. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Arieli, Yehoshua. 1966. Individualism and Nationalism in American Ideology. New York: Penguin Books.
Braunstein, Phillipe. 1988. Toward Intimacy: The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries. In A History of Private Life, Volume II: Revelations of the Medieval World, trans. Arthur Goldhammer, ed. Georges Duby, 535–630. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Breen, T.H. 2004. The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Burckhardt, Jacob. 1860/1945. The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, trans. S.G.C. Middlemore. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Channing, William Ellery. 1838/1969. Self-Culture. New York: Arno Press.
Clark, Christopher. 1996. The Consequences of the Market Revolution in the American North. In The Market Revolution in America: Social, Political, and Religious Expressions, 1800–1880, ed. Melvyn Stokes and Stephen Conway, 23–42. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia.
Dewey, John. 1930/1999. Individualism, Old and New. New York: Prometheus Books.
Duby, Georges. 1988. Solitude: Eleventh to Thirteenth Century. In A History of Private Life, Volume II: Revelations of the Medieval World, trans. Arthur Goldhammer, ed. Georges Duby, 509–33. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo. 1963. Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Volume III: 1826–1832, ed. William H. Gilman and Alfred R. Ferguson. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
———. 1983. Essays and Lectures, ed. Joel Porte. New York: The Library of America.
Engels, Friedrich, and Karl Marx. 1845/1978. The German Ideology. In The Marx-Engels Reader, ed. Robert C. Tucker, trans. S. Ryazanskaya, 147–200. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.
Feller, Daniel. 1995. The Jacksonian Promise: America, 1815–1840. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Friend, Craig T. 1997. Merchants and Markethouses: Reflections on Moral Economy in Early Kentucky. Journal of the Early Republic 17: 553–74.
Fromm, Erich. 1955. The Sane Society. New York: Rinehart & Company.
Hartz, Louis. 1955. The Liberal Tradition in America: An Interpretation of American Political Thought since the Revolution. New York: Harcourt Brace.
von Hayek, Friedrich. 1979. Kinds of Order in Society. In The Politicization of Society, ed. Kenneth S. Templeton, Jr., 501–23. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund.
Henretta, James. 1991. The Origins of American Capitalism. Boston: Northeastern University Press.
———. 1998. The ‘Market’ in the Early Republic. Journal of the Early Republic 18: 289–304.
Herzog, Lisa. 2014. Inventing the Market: Smith, Hegel, and Political Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Howe, Daniel Walker. 1997. Making the American Self: Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Howe, Daniel Walker. 2007. What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815–1848. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Humboldt, Wilhelm von. 1792/1993. The Limits of State Action, ed. J.W. Burrow. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund.
Jefferson, Thomas 1785/1955. Notes on the State of Virginia. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Larkin, Jack. 1988. The Reshaping of Everyday Life, 1790–1840. New York: HarperPerennial.
Lindblom, Charles E. 2001. The Market System: What It Is, How It Works, and What to Make of It. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Lukes, Steven. 1973. Individualism. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
MacPherson, C.B. 1962. The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Mill, John Stuart. 1989. On Liberty and Other Writings, ed. Stefan Collini. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Morris, Colin. 1972. The Discovery of the Individual, 1050–1200. New York: Harper & Row.
Oakeshott, Michael. 1975. On Human Conduct. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
———. 1991. Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays, rev. ed. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund.
Perkins, Elizabeth A. 1991. The Consumer Frontier: Household Consumption in Early Kentucky. The Journal of American History 78: 486–510.
Polanyi, Karl. 1944/2001. The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time. Boston: Beacon Press.
Riesman, David. 1954. Individualism Reconsidered and other essays. New York: The Free Press.
Rothenberg, Winifred Barr. 1992. From Market-Places to a Market Economy: The Transformations of Rural Massachusetts, 1750–1850. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Sandage, Scott A. 2005. Born Losers: A History of Failure in America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Sellers, Charles. 1991. The Market Revolution: Jacksonian America 1815–1846. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Siedentop, Larry. 2014. Inventing the Individual: The Origins of Western Liberalism. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Smith, Adam. 1776/1994. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, ed. Edwin Cannan. New York: The Modern Library.
Stanley, Amy Dru. 1996. Home Life and the Morality of the Market. In The Market Revolution in America: Social, Political, and Religious Expressions, 1800–1880, ed. Melvyn Stokes and Stephen Conway, 74–96. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia.
Stokes, Melvyn. 1996. Introduction. In The Market Revolution in America: Social, Political, and Religious Expressions, 1800–1880, ed. Melvyn Stokes and Stephen Conway, 1–17. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia.
Taylor, Charles. 1989. Sources of the Self: The Making of Modern Identity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Teichgraeber, Richard F., III. 1995. Sublime Thoughts/Penny Wisdom: Situating Emerson and Thoreau in the American Market. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Thoreau, Henry David. 2001. Collected Essays and Poems, ed. Elizabeth Hall Witherell. New York: The Library of America.
Tocqueville, Alexis de. 1835/1969. Democracy in America, trans. George Lawrence, ed. J.P. Mayer. New York: HarperPerennial.
Turner, James. 1985. Without God, Without Creed: The Origins of Unbelief in America. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Weber, Max. 1905/1958. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. Talcott Parsons. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.
Zakaras, Alex. 2009. Individuality and Mass Democracy: Mill, Emerson, and the Burdens of Citizenship. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Plotica, L. (2018). Introduction—A Nation of Individuals and Markets. In: Nineteenth-Century Individualism and the Market Economy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62172-2_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62172-2_1
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-62171-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-62172-2
eBook Packages: Political Science and International StudiesPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)