National Traits??

If you really want to upset the “politically correct” mob, bring up the subject of political culture and show that you actually believe that each nation has distinctive cultural traits. It’s become a forbidden subject in such company - which is strange given how far back the concept goes. Because I’ve lived and worked these past 30 years in ten different countries (with 8 years in different parts of Central Asia) I’ve become fascinated by two fundamental questions –

·       Do people in different countries have distinctive and predictable patterns of behaviour?

·       Are the “path-dependent” theorists correct in suggesting that history makes it very difficult for such patterns of behaviour to change? 

We live in a globalised age in which social values have been shifting and becoming more homogeneous and yet the past couple of decades have seen the resurgence of nationalism. Indeed each nation now seems to be divided into two tribes – the “somewheres” and the “anywheres” – depending on the freedom people felt they had to select the professions and locations of their choice.

Last year I did a series of posts on the variety of confusing terms which have cropped up in recent decades which suggest that most of us can be classified into a small number of ways of understanding the world. Some of these are descriptive – simply statements of fact. Others are prescriptive and ideological – ways in which we both understand and act. I’ve selected 5 terms – political culture, national culture, world values and cultural theory. I hope readers find the table useful…. 

Term used	Meaning	Trajectory	Typical referents
“Political Culture”	A term used by political scientists which can be traced to de Tocqueville but whose modern origin is generally attributed to the 1950s and “The Civic Culture” by Gabriel Almond The best intellectual history of the whole debate is Political Culture, political science and identity politics – an uneasy alliance; Howard Wiarda (2014) which looks back over a century of interdisciplinary argument	In the 1940s and 1950s “culture” figured in the work of many American scholars as they tried to understand the challenge of modernisation faced by many societies but was then supplanted by the “rationality” of the economists   with  Culture Matters – how culture shapes social progress (2000) being a seminal work, criticised for really meaning “Western Culture matters”	Margaret Mead, Ruth Benedict, Edward Banfield, Gabriel Almond, SM Lipset  Lawrence Harrison Samuel Huntington  Howard Wiala  Brendan McSweeney is th arch critic of the school
“National Culture”	An indeterminate term	social psychologist Geert Hofstede started work in the 1960s with IBM on cultural differences – taken up by Frans Trompenaars It also figured in the discussions about “transitology” in the 1990s	Geert Hofstede   Frans Trompenaars
“World values”	Clusters of VALUES eg “traditional”, “modern” and “postmodern” used by technocrats to classify societies   Cultural Evolution – people’s motivations are changing, and reshaping the world ; Ronald Inglehart (2018) this article summarise that work.	This stream of work began in 1981 and resurrected the debate on political culture eg The renaissance of political culture Ronald Inglehart (1988) A World of Three Cultures – honour, achievement and joy; M Basanez (2016) a beautifully-written book by a Mexican academic which seems to have exactly the outsider’s take on the subject I need. And one of the early chapters is a literature review – which has no mention of Wiarda !	political scientists and psychologists particularly Ronald Inglehart
“World views”	collection of quasi- philosophical/religious BELIEFS which seem to give us our respective identities	Series of notes on the subject a very useful overview in 12 pages an excerpt from “World Views – from fragmentation to integration” book. the full book here	Kant Wittgenstein   Jeremy Lent
“Cultural theory”	Otherwise known as “grid-group” theory which suggests that mots of us can be classified into 4-5 worldviews	Anthropologist Mary Douglas first developed the “grid-group” approach in the 1970s which was then taken up by policy analyst Wildavsky and political scientist Thompson	Mary Douglas Aaron Wildavsky Michael Thompson