Individualism is a doctrine concerning both the composition of human society and the constitution of sociocultural actors. The term was invented in the 1820s, apparently, in France (Swart 1962). Its first appearance in English dates from the 1835 translation of Alexis de Tocqueville's study of the United States (Tocqueville [1850] 1969, p. 506). The basic notion conveyed by the newly coined word, that the individual is sovereign vis-à-vis society, was intensely controversial, for it stood on the grave of one established order, proclaiming the rise of another. As an early French critic saw it, individualism "destroys the very idea of obedience and of duty, thereby destroying both power and law," leaving nothing "but a terrifying confusion of interests, passions and diverse opinions" (cited in Lukes 1973, p. 6).

Individualism should be distinguished from historically specific constitutions of the individuality of human beings. The word "individual," used to discriminate a particular human being from collectivities...