The polite but awkward squad?

All countries are obviously different – but this has not stopped academics from amusing themselves with long,  intense and generally incestuous debates about a particular country’s “exceptionalism”. At one time, it was about the United States (“why has socialism never taken hold?” “Why does religion have such a hold?” – if not “how has the country become so dominant?”); at another, Germany (whose historians had a great debate in the 1980s about the “Sonderweg “ (“how did such a cultured nation land up with the Nazis?”)

Britain (no longer “great”) has long been credited with being the first to experience the Industrial Revolution and, if not to invent “democracy”, at least to bring forward the modern version of “liberal democracy”. In that sense Britain inarguably has a distinctive - if not quite “exceptional” - history.

In European Union circles, it certainly has the reputation of being an “awkward” partner which always had a “semi-detached” attitude to the continent. Although the powerful concessions it won from its partners suggested it should be the last country to leave, most people were not surprised when it embraced Brexit…

But the question I want to explore is the relatively neglected one of what exactly accounts for this “awkwardness” of behaviour – after all, the Brits are equally well known for their politeness. One argument indeed is that it is this very politeness which explains the Perfidious Albion reputation “England” at least (as the Imperial overlord) has.

But first, a personal note. In the mid-1970s I was, by virtue of my position in one of Europe’s largest Regions, exposed for the first time to the dynamics and discourse of international gatherings. And I found myself quickly being among the first to try to puncture the rhetoric of particularly my southern European colleagues. I’ll never forget the subsequent semi-ostracization I suffered at a mountain retreat in Sicily as a result of my brutal assault on what I saw as the empty discourse of the participants.

In the 1980s, by then more experienced, I was lucky enough to be a member of the British delegation in the Council of Europe – the local government section – and learned to cultivate alliances with my Dutch, French, Belgian and German colleagues……But I realised that the impatient readiness to speak one's mind was a well-known British feature – matched only by that of the Dutch.

Since de Hofstede we are all, of course, familiar with the literature on the culture of geography - whose principal exponents are de Hofstede, Trompenaars and Inglehart. Richard Lewis’s When Cultures Clash (1996) is my favourite go-to reference whenever the discussion turns to questions of cultural difference – as is Richard Nisbett’s Geography of Thought (2003) who argues that -

East Asians and Westerners perceive the world and think about it in very different ways. Westerners are inclined to attend to some focal object, analyzing its attributes and categorizing it in an effort to find out what rules govern its behavior. Rules used include formal logic. Causal attributions tend to focus exclusively on the object and are therefore often mistaken. 

East Asians are more likely to attend to a broad perceptual and conceptual field, noticing relationships and changes and grouping objects based on family resemblance rather than category membership. Causal attributions emphasize the context. Social factors are likely to be important in directing attention. East Asians live in complex social networks with prescribed role relations. Attention to context is important to effective functioning.

But it’s more recently that many of us came across this devastating Anglo-EU translation guide which takes some common phrases Brits use; how our European partners generally understand them; and what the Brits really mean by them. 
For example - when we say "very interesting", foreigners think we are impressed. What we are actually thinking is that it's a lot of nonsense!

Similarly, when we say "with the greatest respect", we are actually thinking "the man's an idiot" whereas the non-English speaker assumes that he is being listened to.

"Incidentally, by the way" actually means "this is the primary purpose of the discussion" – but is thought by the unfortunate foreigner to mean that the issue is of no significance.

For those who deal with Brits, the table is essential preparation and, who knows, sharing it with them might open up new friendships.

All this is familiar ground……..good for conversation at parties and even in many business schools. But few people bother to go beyond this and try to explore why it is that the Brits behave this way….
It is to that question I will turn in the next post….

Further reading

https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/12/03/britains-naive-exceptionalism/

https://www.cer.eu/insights/british-and-their-exceptionalism

http://www.unice.fr/crookall-cours/iup_cult/_docs/_RUGM_Chapter-05.pdf

At home in one’s Past (Demos report)

Discourse Analysis of a Michael Gove speech

The British Self and Continental Other

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/why-uk-never-felt-at-home-in-eu/

French, german and British perceptions of the Turkish bid for EU membership

https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/how-i-learnt-to-loathe-england

The geography of thinking

Most of the time we imagine we are unique individuals – very occasionally we have a sense that we are but a grain of sand in an endless desert.

An archetypal figure in these most modern of modern times is the character who flits between continents, universities, policy institutes, government and business consultancies and on whom it is difficult to pin any label except that of “technocrat”.

I have, these past 2 days, been absorbed by a book whose title The Dawn of Euroasia – on the trail of the new world order (2018) intrigued me sufficiently to persuade me to fork out 10 euros without too rigorously subjecting its content to the tests I recommend for non-fiction books. Its author Bruno Macaes was unknown to me but seems to be one of the slippery new breed of geographical, linguistic and functional commuters.

A self-styled “adventurer”, Maçães was a Professor 2006/07 at the University of Yonsei in the Republic of Korea, where he taught International Political Economy; then worked at the American Enterprise Institute in 2008. From 2008 to 2011, Maçães helped launch a new international university in Europe, the European College of Liberal Arts in Berlin.

Between 2011-2013 he was a policy adviser in the Portuguese PM office whose political connections allowed him, for a couple of years, to be Secretary of State for European Affairs which he left in late 2015. He has held positions at the Carnegie and right-wing Hudson Institutes; and is currently a hedge-fund adviser with Flint Global

I could see that the text covered aspects of China and the Central Asian countries in which I had spent almost a decade of my life - and that acknowledgements were duly made to the geopolitics writer par excellence  Robert Kaplan – although there was no reading list.

I am now on the final chapter and have to say that this is an extremely well-read 45 year old (with the breadth including a range of Russian novels he’s able to build seamlessly into the text)- even if this interview does reveal a certain slickness

Particularly resonant at this time was a section covering the 2015 immigration crisis which was resolved by a formula based on algorithms which weighed for population size, GNP (40% apiece), average number of asylum applicants per million inhabitants in 2010-2014; and the unemployment rate (10% apiece). As he was reading the account of the relevant meeting in his office, he suddenly had the realization that 

“the EU isn’t meant to take political decisions. What it tries to do is develop a system of rules to be applied more or less autonomously to a highly complex political and social reality” (p228)

I am surprised, however, that Macaes does not make more of the cultural insights which occur particularly in his “Chinese Dreams” chapter (pages 137-147). His spell in South Korea will have allowed him to become familiar with the literature on the culture of geography - whose principal exponents are de Hofstede, Trompenaars and Inglehart

Richard Lewis’s When Cultures Clash (1996) is my favourite go-to reference whenever the discussion turns to questions of cultural difference – as is Richard Nisbett’s Geography of Thought (2003) who argues that-

East Asians and Westerners perceive the world and think about it in very different ways. Westerners are inclined to attend to some focal object, analyzing its attributes and categorizing it in an effort to find out what rules govern its behavior. Rules used include formal logic. Causal attributions tend to focus exclusively on the object and are therefore often mistaken.

East Asians are more likely to attend to a broad perceptual and conceptual field, noticing relationships and changes and grouping objects based on family resemblance rather than category membership. Causal attributions emphasize the context. Social factors are likely to be important in directing attention. East Asians live in complex social networks with prescribed role relations. Attention to context is important to effective functioning.
More independent Westerners live in less constraining social worlds and have the luxury of attending to the object and their goals with respect to it. The physical ‘‘affordances’’ of the environment may also influence perception.

Most of the writing on the geography of thought hesitates at this stage and seems unwilling to explore the implications of such a startling discovery. The niceties of cultural behaviour on display at global interactions are a safer topic – forming an integral part of most Business School courses. 

But the reviews of The Geography of Thought clearly suggest that all of us need to be thinking much more about the way we all take decisions – whether as individuals, organisations or countries – in full recognition that there are, legitimately, various styles appropriate to particular contexts….…

Further Reading

This is a more eclectic list than usual not just because Macaes is well-read but also for the thoughts his text gives rise to….

Beyond Liberal Democracy – political thinking in an east Asian context; Daniel Bell (2006) is a powerful early apologia for the system of party control in China written by a Canadian political scientist who has chosen since 2000 or so to live in China

The Art of Thinking; Allen Harrison and Robert Bramson (1984) The book which introduced me to the idea that there are, legitimately, different styles of thinking

Decisive – how to make better choices in life and work; C and D Heath (2013). An example of the huge literature now available on decision-making…

Cultures and organization – software of the mind; G de Hofstede (1991) One of the first to explore the cultural aspects of organisations and societies

When Cultures Collide – Richard Lewis (1996) – the full text of the easiest book on the subject

Riding the Waves of Culture; Frans Trompenaars (1996). Another Dutchman rides the waves…

The geography of thought; Richard Nesbitt (2003) – which pushed the ideas further
The Spirit of Russia; Thomas Masyrk (1913 German; 1919 English). An amazing book written before the First World War by the guy who subsequently became President of Czechoslovakia

Are Nations really masters of their fates?

I’ve just been doing an interview for a website about my experience of Romania. I found myself giving this rather severe response to one of the questions – 

Section 14 of my E-book Mapping Romania contains two excerpts from key books – the first from an article by a compatriot of mine (like me, with a Romanian partner) who moved recently from Bucharest to France.

It describes some typical scenes – which are also the focus of Mike Ormsby’s short stories about the country in “Never Mind the Balkans – here’s Romania” (You can read a couple of them here in “Bucharest Tales”). The second, longer excerpt is from a fat book called “When Cultures Clash” which includes good sections on both Bulgaria and Romania…  Section 7 has some further snapshots…… 

The overriding impression which remains with me is of a people who are unable to trust – and cannot therefore even begin to cooperate with - one another in matters of business or civic life….. This fascinating cultural map (which uses 2 different measures of values) puts Romania half way down the left part of the diagram.......The map is explained here…..

This raises fundamental questions about how free we are to shake off cultural values….Authors such as de Hofstede; Ronald Inglehart; FransTrompenaars; and Richard Lewis (in When Cultures Clash tell us how such values affect our everyday behaviour. One Romanian academic, for example, tried, a few years back, to apply the important de Hofstede cultural concepts to Romanian organisations).  
And there is a body of literature called “path dependency” which indicates that such behaviour deeply affects a country's institutions and is rooted in long-distant events and quirks of history. But few authors, it seems, are brave enough to look at conscious efforts to reform such institutional behaviour..

Germany, for example, used to be well-known for its “Sonderweg” ie the distinctive historical and cultural path it had trodden – superbly critiqued by Fritz Stern…..But, somehow, it seems in the last 70 years to have shaken that cultural tradition off...How exactly did that happen? I vividly remember reading Ralf Dahrendorf's sociological analyses of the issue in the 1970s

An obvious reason for the lack of trust in country such as Romania is that it experienced 50 years of totalitarian rule from 1945- but, as Sorin Ionitsa has explained, the Ottoman and Greek Phanariot influences of 1700-1870 seem to have left stronger behavioural influences! 

When I was in Poland very briefly in the early 90s I was struck immediately with the paranoiac level of distrust which separated the various groups (which sadly continues to poison that country’s political development) I don't know to what to attribute that....

The obvious question which follows is what those in authority in those new EU Member States – eg in the universities – have been doing to try to encourage more cooperation eg in the cross-border field? When I was on a Fellowship in the States in the late 80s I had come across a fascinating structure called City Leadership which brought leaders from all sectors of city life (inc Unions, NGOs, churches, culture etc) together once a month to forge bonds of understanding. There is a global version of this here – although I can’t speak of its success.

A booklet on Poor Policy Making in Weak States produced by Sorin Ionitsa in 2006 - is one of the best attempts I’ve seen to face up to the issue.  But, somehow, our current elites are too smug and complacent to bother with such basic questions.......It seems easier to use meaningless technocratic rhetoric than admit to bafflement.

I would like to see elites express more realism, modesty…indeed humility about what is possible…..

Mapping values and world views

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.

 The blog has, of course, had regular posts about cultural values – discussing the work of people such as de Hofstede; Ronald Inglehart; FransTrompenaars; Richard Lewis (of When Cultures Collide fame) and Richard Nesbitt – a body of writing which emphasises the distinctiveness of national values most graphically illustrated in the Inglehart cultural map of the world and best explained in this brochure. It was, of course, multinational companies who funded a lot of this work as they tried to understand how they could weld different nationalities into coherent and effective teams. Those were the days when a body of literature called “path dependency” was raising important questions about how “sticky” cultural values were…viz how difficult national behavioural traits are to change

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) a detailed picture of the british people and their values these days

-       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) how worldviews develop and can change history

-       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   

WORLDVIEWS

To make sense of the world, we all create patterns of meaning.In my youth it was a tripartite division – conservatives, socialists and liberals. Not for me the Manichean approach of left/right or insider/outsider - there was always a third way. 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 thanks to public admin theorist Chris Hood’s “The Art of the State” (2000)

Another approach was that of cultural values – the work of people such as de Hofstede; Ronald Inglehart; Frans Trompenaars; Richard Lewis (of When Cultures Collide fame) and Richard Nesbitt a body of writing which emphasises the distinctiveness of national values most graphically illustrated in the Inglehart cultural map of the world and best explained in this brochure. Multinational companies were funding a lot of this work as they tried to understand how they could weld different nationalities into coherent and effective teams. Other companies had also been funding a lot of this work to try to get into the minds of their consumers - but 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

Those were the days when a body of literature called “path dependency ” was raising important questions about how “sticky” cultural values were…viz how difficult national behavioural traits are to change. And, just the other day, I discovered Betti’s argument that there were actually twelve ways of seeing the world (see list below)

Psychologists, sociologists, political scientists and anthropologists have approached this question of perceptions and 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 - and made the connection with the developing literature on world views

Recommended Reading

BOOKS

- Management development through cultural diversity Ronnie Lessem (1995) 
Lessem is a south african who uses the four lens of the compass to show how the 

environment governs our ways of thinking.
- 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

- Spiral Dynamics – mastering values, leadership, change; Don Beck and Chris Cowan

 (1996)  with crucial explorations of the very different levels of explanation needed 

for discussions of behaviour and the values which underpin it.

- 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
 “The Art of the State” Chris Hood (2000)  uses Mary Douglas’ grid-group typology 

brilliantly to help us understand the strengths, weaknesses and risks of these 

various world views.
- The Geography of Thought – how westerners and asians think differently and why; 

Richard Nesbitt (2003) An American social psychologist gives a thought-provoking book
- “Way of life theory – the underlying structure of world views, social relations and lifestyles” 

– a rather disjointed and abstract dissertation by Michael Edward Pepperday (2009) an 

introduction to which is here

- Consumer Shift - how changing values are reshaping the consumer landscape (2011) 

actually much more about values and world views than it is about consumers….
-The Patterning Instinct; Jeremy Lent (2017) how worldviews develop and can change 

history 

- Cultural Evolution – people’s motivations are changing, and reshaping the world ;

 Ronald Inglehart (2018)  a political scientist who has been at the heart of discussion 

about cultural values for the past 50 years – and the book and this article summarised 

that work.
- Twelve Ways of Seeing the World  M Betti (2019 Eng – original German 2001) a 

curious book based on the work of Rudolf Steiner
- The Web of Meaning ; Jeremy Lent (2021) an important follow up to his 2017 book
- Theories of International Relations ed R Devetak and J True (6th ed 2022)
- Foundations of International Relations ed S McGlinchey et al 2022
- The Battle for Britain – crises, conflicts and the conjunctures  John Clarke 2023


ARTICLES
- Wicked Problems and Clumsy Solutions ; Keith Grint (2008) a short very useful article 

by an academic
- 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
- A Cultural Theory of Politics ” (2011) a short article which shows how the 

grid-group approach has been used in a range of disciplines
- 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

- Britain’s Choice – common ground and divisions in 2020s Britain (More in Common

 2020) a detailed picture of the british people and their values these days