What is Culture?

Culture is a confusing term – covering both artistic pursuits and a set of societal values. A culture is what we grow up in – it’s our parents’ values and the class they inhabited. It’s the generation into which we were born - which will always reject some parental values. So nothing is static; we can move into a different class and many have; although it has become increasingly difficult to do - as Fiona Hill’s memoir superbly recounts 

I started this series of posts with a list of texts which, I now realise. were essentially academic if not technocratic. Howard Wiarda’s Political Culture, political science and identity politics – an uneasy alliance made me appreciate the insights from books which appeal to the general reader of whom academics are far too dismissive.

So the new list of some 30 books covers all genres – cultural historians like Peter Gay, intellectual historians such as Daniel T Rodgers, popularisers such as Richard Lewis and Erin Meyer as well as the more technocratic political scientists, social psychologists and anthropologists

The early works mentioned in the last post were intuitive and impressionistic. Survey work was one of the strengths of the Frankfurt School which showed the face of Nazism after the war – Almond and Verba‘s “The Civic Culture” (1963) paved the path for systematic comparative work. Big data has transformed the field in the last 3 decades. Wiarda gives us a nice conclusion - 

I have been thinking about this matter of culture, really political culture, for some time. Here are my conclusions—so far!

1. Culture is one of the three great explanations in the social sciences, the others being structuralism (by which is usually meant class analysis) and institutionalism in its several forms.

2. Some analysts (Weber and Landes interpretively; Inglehart empirically) see culture as the most important explanatory factor. That may yet prove to be correct, though it is still not proven.

3. Social structure and class analysis are especially important in the Middle East or Latin America; structuralism, in its broader sense, meaning trade preferences and favored access to US markets, was especially important in explaining Japan’s, Taiwan’s, and South Korea’s economic take-offs in the last half of the twentieth century.

4. I see culture, along with geography and resources, as a key variable initially in explaining why some countries and areas forged ahead (Northwest Europe, North America, and eventually East Asia) while others (Latin America, Southeast Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and the Middle East) lagged behind.

5. At this early stage, institutions are less important. Remember Bolivia: beautiful laws and constitutions but very little democracy. As countries develop, getting their institutions and policies right becomes more important.

6. But even as institutions acquire greater importance, culture remains an important variable. Witness the ongoing differences between Southern Europe (clientelistic, patronage dominated, and high corruption) and more efficient, rationalized Northern Europe.

7. Political-cultural explanations often have a number of weaknesses: vagueness, imprecision, stereotyping, and lack of clear definition or methodology. They also tend to ignore both class/structural factors and outside, international, or globalization factors.

8. But political culture also has its strengths. It gets you at first causes, the essence of things, the basics. And in Almond and Verba’s or Inglehart’s work, it gets you closer to an empirical, scientific explanation.

9. Studying political culture is both hard work and fun to do. It enables you to travel, go abroad, and learn about other countries and cultures.

10. While political culture is important, it is not, in my view, the only explanation. Other factors, as above, are also important. So political culture should not be reified or elevated into an exclusive or single-causal explanation. Political culture explains a lot but not everything. My own preference is for a more complex, multi-causal explanation. Culture should thus be used in combination with other explanations: geography, social structure, resources, and institutions. These factors can now best be weighed and evaluated through correlations and multi-variate analysis. Such analysis can give us the explanatory weight of each factor or variable.

11. At the same time, we must recognize that cultures do change. They are not deterministic or fixed for all time. They adjust, adapt, get altered, even undergo at times revolutionary transformations. Societies change; modernization and globalization go forward; and culture change both drives and is a product of these other changes. After all, culture is mainly a human and a societal construct; it has not yet been proven that it is genetic, inherited, and organic. As cultures change, so also will societies and political systems.

12. These are my views on political culture from a macro level. That is, from the point of view of the overall importance of political culture as an independent variable and its relations to other variables.

Wiarda 

My list of 30 books has been chronological - and this next one covers the decade from 1995 

Book Title	Takeaway
Value Change in Global Perspective P Abramson and R Inglehart (1995)	One of Inglehart’s early books – after the marker he put down in his 1988 article The renaissance of political culture
When Cultures Collide – leading across cultures; Richard D Lewis (1996) The diagram is from his book	Lewis is a linguist who has made cross-cultural management his field. The book which introduced most of us to the subject – and gave us marvellous if somewhat superficial/untheorized vignettes of the strange habits of almost all countries of the world
Culture matters – essays in honour of Aaron Wildavsky (1997)	“Grid-Group” theory was developed by another anthropologist, Mary Douglas and basically suggests that we all identify with one of 4-5 “worldviews” or collection of values which are almost ideological The approach is best summarised here
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 teams up with a Brit – it’s pretty good introduction to the field which lays a lot of emphasis on how different cultures deal with dilemmas.
Culture Matters – how culture shapes social progress; ed L Harrison and S Huntington (2000)	For my money, this is one of the most interesting books – although some of the authors are no longer considered to be politically correct. But at least the authors feel free to express what they think!
Schnitzler’s Century – the making of middle class culture 1815-1914 Peter Gay 2002	Political culture is an analysis of social values  This is the remarkable biography of a class.
The Geography of Thought – how westerners and Asians think differently and why; Richard Nesbitt (2003)	An American social psychologist offers a thought-provoking book which seems a bit excessive in its argument that different continents have a different thought process
Developing Cultures - Essays on Cultural Change Lawrence Harrison and Jerome Kagan (2006)	A collection of essays by various authors which explores the role and influence of parenting and educational practices in various parts of the world – but pretty schematic
The Central Liberal Truth – how politics can change a culture and save it from itself; Lawrence Harrison (2006)	A book which both supports the idea that political cultures are distinctive but argues that they are capable of change
Adventures in Research vol 2 Howard Wiarda 2006	A delightful-looking text which has elements of a travelogue as Wiarda recounts his stays in so many countries