We need to pay more attention to our mind - and to the different patterns of meaning we create in our efforts to make sense of the world.
In
my youth, I was aware of a tripartite
division – conservatives, socialists and liberals. Not for me the Manichean
approach of insider/outsider or left/right. There was always a third way – be it green or ecological.
It was only in 2000, however, that I became aware of the four dimensions of grid-group theory which anthropologist Mary Douglas introduced - consisting of four very different “world views” (what she calls hierarchist, egalitarian, individualist and fatalist) which came to be known as “Cultural Theory”. I came across Mary Douglas’ theory only in 2000, thanks to public admin theorist Chris Hood’s “The Art of the State” which uses her typology brilliantly to help us understand the strengths, weaknesses and risks of these various world views.
It’s
interesting that many people now assume that this exhausts the number of world
views. One book-length study compares and contrasts these various models “Way of life theory – the underlying
structure of world views, social relations and lifestyles” – a rather
disjointed dissertation by Michael Edward Pepperday (2009) an introduction to
which is here.
But I’m just learning that I’ve been missing some important perspectives. A Futurist called Andy Hines has just sent me a copy of what is (despite the title) a quite fascinating book he wrote in 2011 - Consumer Shift - how changing values are reshaping the consumer landscape which is actually much more about values and world views than it is about consumers….
This
reflects a lot of work which companies had been funding to try to get into the
minds of their consumers - but which international charities suddenly realised
a decade or so ago could also be used to prise money out of all of us for their
(more altruistic) purposes (see below) – a politicisation of which Adam Curtis' documentaries have made us much more aware.
Hines’ book in turn took me to Spiral Dynamics – mastering values, leadership, change; produced by Don Beck and Chris Cowan in 1996 which the link explains was inspired by the work of their teacher - an American psychologist, Clare Graves. Both books have crucial explorations of the very different levels of explanation needed for discussions of behaviour and the values which underpin it.
And lead into recent books by Jeremy Lent - the earliest of which is “The Patterning Instinct – a cultural history of man’s search for meaning” which
is filled
with details about how the brain works, how patterns of thought arise, how
these shared symbols (language, art, religion, science) give rise to cultural
metaphors such as “Nature as Machine” and “Conquering Nature,” and how these
worldviews in turn lead to historical change. However, different cultures have
different metaphors, and it is our culture, according to Lent, western (now
global) culture, which is largely to blame for the damaging ways in which our
root metaphors have manifested themselves on the planet.
I get the sense that psychologists, sociologists, political scientists and anthropologists have approached the question of cultural values completely separately and at different times - making few attempts to engage one another in discussion? It's such a critical issue that it's time they reached out to one another.....
Further Reading
-
The
Web of Meaning; Jeremy Lent (2021) an important follow up to his 2017 book
-
Britain’s Choice – common ground and divisions
in 2020s Britain (More in Common 2020)
-
Cultural Evolution – people’s
motivations are changing, and reshaping the world ; Ronald Inglehart (2018)
Inglehart, a political scientist, has been at the heart of discussion about
cultural values for the past 50 years – and the book and this
article summarise that work.
-
The
Patterning Instinct; Jeremy Lent (2017)
-
Grid, group and grade –
challenges in operationalising cultural theory for cross-national research (2014) is
a very academic article although its comparative diagrams are instructive
-
“A Cultural Theory of Politics” (2011) a
short article which shows how the grid-group approach has been used in a range
of disciplines
-
Common Cause – the case
for working with our cultural values (2010) a
useful little manual for charities
-
Finding Frames – new ways
to engage the UK public (2010) ditto
-
Wicked Problems and Clumsy
Solutions; Keith Grint (2008) a short very useful article
by an academic
-
The Geography of
Thought – how westerners and asians think differently and why; Ricard
Nesbitt (2003) An American social psychologist gives a thought-provoking book
-
Riding
the Waves of Culture – understanding cultural diversity in business; Frans
Trompenaars and Charles Hampden-Turner (1997) the Dutchman who took on de Hofstede’s
mantle
- When Cultures Collide – leading across cultures; Richard Lewis (1996) The book which introduced us to the field – and gave us marvellous vignettes of the strange habits of almost all countries of the world
Hi Ron, the thing about my system and spiral dynamics is the both suggest a developmental pathway. I personally am a believer in a developmental social change, but I recognize there are other views on that! Andy Hines
ReplyDeletemany thanks Andy for sending me your book which I will read this coming week. I particularly enjoyed your annotated bibliography - which few authors bother with but is one of the tests I use to consider whether a book is worth reading
ReplyDeleteYou will see that the next post suggests a confusion in the variety of terms used and the schools they have spawned