Types Of Collectivism

I recently came across this piece on Substack which I found intriguing and provocative.  From Tibor Rutar of the University of Maribor in Slovenia it is on the differences between Americans and Chinese on collectivism and individualism.  I've linked to it here and it's also worth reading the comments as they add layers of 

Isn’t it the case that Americans (and Westerners more generally) are selfish, asocial individualists while the Chinese (and Easterners or people from the Global South) are altruistic, prosocial collectivists?

Rutar points out that most discussions of this subject confuse two things.  The first is "warm fuzzy collectivism" which he describes as having four elements:

Feeling warm emotions about other people

Expressing positive emotions and identifying with other people

Rejecting self-interest, competition and negative feelings about other people

Extending this positivity to everyone, without sharply distinguishing between close and distant relationships 

He then posits that "the described warm and fuzzy collectivism strongly clashes with another cultural dimension that many thought would go together with it. That one is called “responsibilism,” and it’s also one form of collectivism. It has to do with how much a culture emphasizes the responsibilities people have to those close to them . . . responsibilism simply refers to how strongly people feel that they have non-shirkable duties and responsibilities for those they’re in close relationship with, like their parents or the extended family."

Rutar goes on to assert:

In Asia (including East Asia!) and Africa, responsibilism tends to be very high. In the West, it tends to be low or very low.

What's this all mean?

The key thing you need to wrap your head around is that “individualist” Western countries exhibit higher levels of prosociality or generalized cooperation. In non-Western, “collectivist” societies, the reverse is true. This sounds weird and paradoxical at first, because individualism is stereotypically associated with selfishness, competitiveness, and asociality, while collectivism seems to represent altruism, helping behavior, and cooperation with the whole of society. 

The professor goes on to use several examples to illustrate his proposition.  What caught my attention is that his observations generally reflect my experiences with both societies.  I'm going to spend more time with the comments and thinking this through.