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Paper short abstract:

Individuals participating in relationships that provide them, or hold them to, specified places worry little about their identity. When such arrangements falter, authenticity then comes to the fore so that free-floating individuals gain some measure of security.

Paper long abstract:

Hierarchical arrangements motivate exchange relations among unlike parties, to the supposed benefit of all. Individuals participating in relationships that provide them, or hold them to, specified places worry little about their identity. When such arrangements falter, individuals are freed from, and deprived of, such ties, a disorienting as much as an exciting development. Authenticity then comes to the fore so that free-floating individuals gain some sense of stability, even though the net of relations that had held them in place no longer does that job as effectively.

The frequently-cited contrast between socio-centric societies and those emphasizing individualism is better understood as a contrast between people who favor hierarchical relations and those who look upon such relations with suspicion. People of either persuasion are found in any given society, although the proportion varies, such that highly educated people familiar with egalitarian discourse tend to favor individual rights, whereas those committed to hierarchical values favor conservative arrangements. Conservatives understand authenticity, if they consider it at all, as keeping things as they have been. Progressives, more committed to the concept, understand it to mean that one can conduct oneself according to one’s own lights, favoring elements of one’s identity one chooses and ignoring those (such as gender, ethnicity, or whatever else) one wishes to discount. Being authentic then means remaining true to some consistent, unbending identity, taken on at will—altogether at odds with the flexible person alert to power and status differentials that hierarchical arrangements emphasize.