Collectivism

Note - Nicanor Rodrigues, July 2026. Reference definition for research and writing.

Definition

Collectivism is the cultural orientation in which the group, typically the family, community, or another close in-group, is the primary unit of social and moral life. In Hofstede’s formulation, collectivist societies integrate people from birth into strong, cohesive in-groups that protect them throughout life in exchange for loyalty. Psychologically, it corresponds to what Markus and Kitayama call the interdependent self: a self experienced as constituted by relationships, roles, and mutual obligations.

Core features

• Group goals and duties take priority over personal preference when the two conflict.
• Behaviour is regulated more by in-group norms and obligations than by personal attitudes.
• Identity is relational: defined by family, community, and role rather than by individual attributes alone.
• A meaningful boundary separates the in-group, where obligation and trust are strong, from the out-group.

Triandis further distinguishes horizontal collectivism (equality within the group) from vertical collectivism (hierarchy and deference within the group).

Two senses of the word

Cultural. A value orientation measured in cross-cultural psychology. The collective in question is almost always family and community, not the state, and the orientation describes populations statistically, never individuals.

Political and economic. Doctrines of collective ownership of land and the means of production. In anarchist history specifically, collectivism names Bakunin’s position: common ownership of the means of production with remuneration proportional to labour contributed. Kropotkin’s anarchist communism later rejected this in favour of distribution according to need. In twentieth-century polemic, the word also served as a pejorative for state socialism, a usage that has little to do with either of the senses above.

What it is not

Collectivism is not state control, and it is not the erasure of the individual. In the cultural sense, obligation is owed to people you know rather than to an abstraction, and collectivist cultures include openly expressive and self-assertive forms.

Sources

• Hofstede, G. (2001). Culture’s Consequences (2nd ed.). Sage. Overview: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hofstede%27s_cultural_dimensions_theory
• Triandis, H. (1995). Individualism and Collectivism. Westview Press.
• Triandis, H., & Gelfand, M. (1998). Converging measurement of horizontal and vertical individualism and collectivism. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74(1), 118–128. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.74.1.118
• Markus, H., & Kitayama, S. (1991). Culture and the self. Psychological Review, 98(2), 224–253. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.98.2.224
• Oyserman, D., Coon, H., & Kemmelmeier, M. (2002). Rethinking individualism and collectivism. Psychological Bulletin, 128(1), 3–72. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.128.1.3
• Collectivist anarchism, overview: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collectivist_anarchism

See also: What is Individualism