[9급 지방직 영어 2012년 12번]

Americans have ambivalent feelings about neighbors. This ambivalence reflects the tension we feel over our loyalties to group and to self and which of the two takes precedence. In other cultures, the group clearly takes precedence. __________, in the United States, we draw boundaries around individuals and circumscribe their “space”. We conceptualize this space as privacy which protects the individual from the outside and from others. It is a concept that many foreigners find odd, even offensive. But again, it is the individual that is valued over the group, whether that group is a family, corporation, or community.