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 |
|
|
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 |
|
|
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 |
|
|
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 |
|
|
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 |
|
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 |
