Individual Autonomy And Social Structure Summary

In the article Individual Autonomy and Social Structure by Dorothy Lee, she evaluates the separation of individual autonomy and social structure, and how each aspect relies on one another. She uses different cultures and their different practices such as child rearing, leadership, language, and work, as a way to understand the problems in western societies conflicts. In this essay, I will be using an example to explain, how the respect of an individual's freedom is shown through child rearing. As as a result explaining how other cultures perspectives can help ours and showing the relationship between individual autonomy and social structure and how an individual is sustained by their cultural framework. In the article, Dorothy Lee argues that in today’s fast pacing era the principle of human dignity and respect for individuals are not incorporated. She is worried about societies that don't give freedom to individual and don't allow spontaneous functioning. Therefore she decides to explore different cultures such as the Wintu Indians, Chinese, Burmese, Navaho …show more content…
This example shows us that being permissive to all ages and gender would not cause an unbalanced society but a more respected society that acknowledges everyone's request, judgment, and consent. It helps us learn that we don't have the power to give freedom or deny freedom from anyone because it's not and will never be ours to give. She uses this example to show that social structure -laws and limits can coexist with personal autonomy. When we hear the word freedom or autonomy we think of living without social structure or acting without regards to others. When in fact individual autonomy is the only sustained by social structure and acts with regard to peoples respected opinions. As individuals, we need rules and structure in our