Culture Matters How Values Shape Human Progress

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How Values Shape

Human Progress
LAWRENCE E. HARRISON
SAMUEL P. H U N T I N G T O N
Editors
A Member of the Perseus Books Group
Copyright 0 2000 by Lawrence E. Harrison and Samuel P. Huntington

Published by Basic Books,
A Member of the Perseus BooksGroup
All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. ,For information, address Basic Books, 10 East
53rd Street, New York, NY10022-5299.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Culture matters : how values shape human progress / Lawrence E. Harrison and
Samuel P. Huntington, editors.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-465-03175-7 (cloth)
ISBN 0-465-03176-5 (paper)
1. Socialvalues.2.Culture.I.Harrison,Lawrence
E. 11. Huntington, Samuel P.
HM68 1.C85 2000
306-dc2 1
00-022951
Designed by Jeff Williams
MV02
03 04 05 1312
11 10 9 8 765"4
In memory of Edward Banfield,

who illuminated the pathfor so m a n y of us
CONTENTS
Table and Illustrations

Acknowledgments
Foreword, SAMUEL P. HUNTINGTON -Cultures Count
xiii
Introduction, LAWRENCE E. HARRISON- Why CultureMatters
I
I
3
4
5
6
xi
xvii
Cultureand Economic Development
LANDES-CUltUre Makes Almost All the Difference, 2

MICHAEL E. PORTER-Attitudes, Values, Beliefs, and the
Microeconomics of Prosperity, 14
JEFFREY SACHS-Notes on a New sociology of Economic
Development, 29
MARIANO GRONDONA-A CulturalTypology of Economic
Development, 44
CARLOS ALBERT0 MONTANER-culture and the Behavior of
Elites in Latin America, 5 6
DANIEL ETOUNGA-MANGUELLE-DOeS Africa Need a Cultural
Adjustment Program?, 65
DAVID
11
CultureandPoliticalDevelopment
7 RONALD INGLEHART-culture and Democracy, 80

8 FRANCIS FUKUYAMASOCia1 Capital, 9 8
9 SEYMOUR MARTIN LIPSET and GABRIEL SALMAN LENZ-
Corruption, Culture, and Markets, 1 1 2

111
ro
ix
TheAnthropologicalDebate
EDGERTON-TraditionalBeliefs
Are Some Better than Others?, 1 2 6
ROBERT B.
and practices-
...
Contents
vm
r r THOMAS S.WEISNER-culture,
Sub-Saharan Africa, 141
12
Childhood, and Progress in
SHWEDER-Moral Maps, First World Conceits,

and the NewEvangelists, 158
RICHARD A.
Culture and Gender
IV
13 BARBARA CROSSETTE-culture, Gender, and Human Rights, 178

14 MALA HTUN-culture, Institutions, and Gender Inequality in
Latin America, 189
Culture andAmerican Minorities
15 ORLANDO PATTERSON-Taking
Culture Seriously:
A Framework and an Afro-American Illustration,
r 6 NATHAN GLAZER-Disaggregating Culture, 219
VI
202
The Asian Crisis
17 DWIGHT H. PERKINS-Law,
Family Ties, and

the East Asian Way of Business, 2 3 2
18 LUCIAN w.PYE-Asian
Values: From Dynamos to
Dominoes? 244
19 TU WEI-MING-Multiple Modernities: A Preliminary Inquiry into
the Implications of East Asian Modernity, 256
VII
20
2I
22
Promoting Change
FAIRBANKS-changing the Mind of a Nation:

Elements in a Process for Creating Prosperity, 268
STACE LINDSAY-culture, Mental Models,
and National Prosperity, 282
LAWRENCE E. HARRISON-promoting Progressive
Cultural Change, 296
MICHAEL
Notes
Biographical Sketches of Contributors
Index
3 09
3 29
333
TABLE AND
ILLUSTRATIONS
Table
9.1
Corruptionperceptionsindex 1998
113
Illustrations
Locations of sixty-five societieson two dimensions of
cross-cultural variation
7.2 Economic level of sixty-five societies superimposedon
two dimensions of cross-cultural variation
7.3 Interpersonal trust by cultural tradition and level of
economic development and religious tradition
7.4 Self-expression valuesand democratic institutions
7.1
8.1 A continuum of norms

8.2 The universe of norms I
8.3 The universe of norms I1

15.1 Interactions among culturalmodels, the structural
environment, and behavioral outcomes
85
88
90
93
103
104
106
210
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book appears under the sponsorship

of Harvard Universitys Academyfor
International and Area Studies, which organized the symposiumon which it is
based. The project has also benefited from the supportof Harvards Weatherhead Center for International Affairsand its director, Jorge Dominguez.
We wish to express our gratitude to the Monitor Company, the Carthage
Foundation, the JohnTempleton Foundation, the SidneyA. Swensrud Foundation, John Tanton of the U.S., Inc., Foundation, Richard Wittrup, and
Max Thelen for the financial support that made the project
possible.
We are particularly indebted to Michael Fairbanks of the Monitor Companys Country Competitiveness Practice, with whom we worked from the
outset on thedesign of the symposium that led to this book. That the symposium ran so smoothly was largely the result of Beth Hasties dedication, energy, and efficiency. We are also grateful to Patrick McVay for his help with
the financial management aspects of the symposium, and to Carol Edwards
and Thomas Murphy for their administrative
assistance.
We wish to thank the moderators of the symposiums eight panels: Jorge
Dominguez, Christopher DeMuth, Harriet Babbitt, Howard Gardner, Roderick MacFarquhar, Phyliss Pomerantz, Richard Lamm, and Robert Klitgaard,
all of whom not only added to the richness of the symposium but also succeeded in keeping iton schedule. We also wish to thank Stephen Thernstrom
for his participation on the shortest possible notice.
We are particularly indebtedto oureditor at Basic Books, Tim Bartlett,for
his unflagging interest and support, and his wise counsel.The book hasbeen
the beneficiary of the skillful and sure hand of copy editors Donald Halstead
and Chrisona Schmidt.
Finally, Lawrence Harrison wishes to acknowledge the encouragement and
help he receivedat the outset from William Ratliff
of the Hoover Institution.
Lawrence E. Harrison
Samuel l? Huntington
foreword
CULTURES COUNT
SAMUEL P. H U N T I N G T O N
In the early 1990s, I happened to come across economic data on Ghana and
to how similar their
South Korea in the early1960s, and I was astonished see
economies were then. These two countries had roughly comparablelevels of
per capita GNP; similar divisions of their economy among primary products,
manufacturing, and services; and overwhelmingly primary product exports,
with South Korea producing a few manufactured goods. Also, they werereceiving comparable levels of economic aid. Thirty years later, South Korea
had become an industrial giant with the fourteenth largest economy in the
world, multinational corporations, major exports of automobiles, electronic
equipment, and other sophisticated manufactures, and a per capita income
approximating that of Greece. Moreover, it was on its way to the consolidation of democratic institutions. No such changes had occurred in Ghana,
whose per capita GNP was now about one-fifteenth that of South Koreas.
How could this extraordinary difference in development be explained? Undoubtedly, many factors played a role, but it seemed to me that culture had
to be a large part of the explanation. South Koreans valued thrift, investment, hard work, education, organization, and discipline. Ghanaians had
different values. Inshort, cultures count.
Other scholars were arriving at the same conclusions in the early 1990s.
This development was part of a major renewal of interest in culture among
social scientists. In the 1940s and 1950s, much attention was paidto culture
xiu
Foreword
as a crucial element in understanding societies, analyzing differences among

them, and explaining their economic and political development. Among the
scholars involved were Margaret Mead, Ruth Benedict, David McClelland,
Edward Banfield, Alex Inkeles, Gabriel Almond, Sidney Verba, Lucian Pye,
and Seymour Martin Lipset. In the wake of the rich literature these scholars
produced, work on culturein the academic community declined dramatically
in the 1960s and 1970s. Then, in the1980s, interest in culture asan explanatory variable began to revive. The most prominent and most controversial
early contribution to this revival was written by a former USAID official,
Lawrence Harrison, and was published by the Harvard Center for International Affairs in 1985. Entitled Underdevelopment Is a State of Mind-The
Latin American Case, Harrisons book used parallel case studies to demonstrate that in most Latin American countries, culture had been a primary obstacle to development. Harrisons analysis generated a storm of protest from
economists, experts on Latin America, and intellectuals in Latin America. In
the following years, however, people in
all these groups began to see elements
of validity in his argument.
Increasingly social scientists turned to cultural factors to explain modernization, political democratization, military strategy, the behavior
of ethnic
groups, and the alignments and antagonisms among countries. Most of the
scholars represented in this book played major roles the
in renaissance of culture. Their successwas signaled by the emergence of a countermovement that
pooh-poohed cultural interpretations, symbolically and visibly manifested in
a highly skeptical December 1996 critique in the Economist of recent works
by Francis Fukuyama, Lawrence Harrison, Robert Kaplan, Seymour Martin
Lipset, Robert Putnam, Thomas Sowell, and myself. In the scholarly world,
the battle has thus been joined by those who see culture as a major, but not
the only, influence on social, political, and economic behavior and those who
adhere to universal explanations, such as devotees of material self-interest
among economists, of rational choice among political scientists, and of
neorealism among scholars of international relations. Indeed, the reader will
find some of these views expressed in this book, which
by design includes
dissent from the thesis captured in thetitle.
Perhaps the wisest wordson theplace of culture in humanaffairs are those
of Daniel Patrick Moynihan: The central conservative truthis that it is culture, not politics, that determines the success of a society. The central liberal
truth is that politics can change a culture and save it fromitself. To explore
the truth of Moynihans two truths, the Harvard Academy for International
and Area Studies organized, under the direction of Lawrence Harrison, the
project of which this book is the principal but not the only product. To what
extent do cultural factors shape economic and political development?If they
Foreword
do, how can culturalobstacles to economic and political development be removed or changed so as to facilitate progress?
To wrestle with these questionseffectively, it is first necessary to define our
terms. By the term human progress in the subtitle of this book we mean
movement toward economic development and material well-being, socialeconomic equity, and political democracy. The term culture, of course, has
had multiple meanings in different disciplines and different contexts. It is often used to refer to the intellectual, musical, artistic, and literary products of
a society, its high culture. Anthropologists, perhaps most notably Clifford
Geertz, have emphasized culture as thick descriptionand used it to refer to
the entire way of life of a society: its values, practices, symbols, institutions,
and human relationships. In this book, however, we are interested in how
culture affects societal development;if culture includes everything, it explains
nothing. Hence we define culturein purely subjective terms asthe values, attitudes, beliefs, orientations, and underlying assumptions prevalent among
people in a society.
This book explores how culture in this subjective sense affects the extent
to which and the ways in which societies achieveor fail to achieve progress
in economic development and political democratization. Mostof the papers
thus focus on culture as an independent or explanatory variable. If cultural
factors do affect human progress and at times obstruct it, however, we are
also interested in culture as a dependent variable, that is, Moynihans second truth: How can political or other action change or remove cultural obstacles to progress? Economic development, we know, changes cultures, but
that truth does nothelp us if our goal is to remove cultural obstaclesto economic development. Societies also may change their culture in response
to
major trauma. Their disastrous experiences in World War I1 changed Germany and Japan from the two most militaristic countries
in the world to
two of the most pacifist. Similarly, Mariano Grondona has suggested that
Argentina was making progress toward economic reform, economic stability, and political democracy in the mid-1990s in part as a resultof its disastrous experiences with a brutal military dictatorship, military defeat, and
super-hyperinflation.
The key issuethus is whether political leadershipcan substitute for disaster
in stimulating cultural change. That political leadership can accomplish this
in some circumstances is exemplified in Singapore. As the chapter bySeymour Martin Lipset and Gabriel Salman Lenz in this book emphasizes,
levels
of corruption among countries tend tovary along cultural lines. Among the
most corrupt are Indonesia, Russia, and several Latin American and African
societies. Corruption is lowest in the Protestant societies of northern Europe
and of British settlement. Confucian countries fall mostly in the middle. Yet
xu
xvi
Foreword
one Confucian society-Singapore-ranks

with Denmark, Sweden, Finland,
and New Zealand as oneof the least corrupt countries in the world. The explanation of this anomaly is clearly Lee Kwan Yew, who was determined to
make Singapore as uncorrupt as possible and succeeded. Here politics did
change a culture and save it from itself. The issue, however, is how uncorrupt Singapore will remain after Lee Kwan Yew is no longer there. Can politics save a society fromitself permanently? How political and social action
can make cultures more favorableto progress is the central question thatwe
hope to explorein follow-up studies.
The Cultural Values and Human Progress project and this book are overwhelmingly the product of the ideas, energy, and commitment of Lawrence
Harrison. He conceived the project, identified the topics to be covered, recruited the panelists, edited their products, and raised the funds that made it
all possible. The Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies was
delighted to join in and sponsor this effort because it relates directly to the
interests of the Academy. Since its start in 1986, the Academy has provided
substantial two-year fellowships to young social scientists who combine excellence in their discipline with expertise in the language, culture, sociology,
institutions, and politics of a major non-Western country or region. Alumni
of the Academy now teachin leading universitiesand colleges throughout the
country. The work of the Academy is supervised by a committee of senior
Harvard scholars who are first-rank experts in particular foreign areas.
Three years ago, the Academy undertook to build upon the this foreign area
expertise and to expand its work from the study of individual societies and
cultures to include the study of the similarities, the differences,and the interaction among theworlds principal cultures and civilizations. A conference in
1997 explored the perspectives of the elites of the major countries and regions on trends in worldpolitics and the characteristics of a desirable world
order. This book is a second, comparable study of how different cultures affect economic and political development.
In a 1992 study of the relationship between culture and development,
Robert Klitgaard posed the question: If culture
is important and people
have studied culture for a century or more, why dont we have well-developed theories, practical guidelines, close professional links between those
who study culture and those who make and manage development policy?
The central purposeof this book and the further work we hopeto undertake
is to develop the theories, elaborate the guidelines, and foster the links between scholars and practitioners that will foster the cultural conditions that
enhance human progress.
ilztroduction
W H Y CULTURE
MATTERS
L A W R E N C EE .H A R R I S O N
It is now almost half a century since the world turned its attention from rebuilding the countries devastated by World War I1 to ending the poverty, ignorance, and injustice in which mostof the people of Africa, Asia, and Latin
America lived. Optimism abounded in the wake of the stunning success of
the Marshall Plan in Western Europe and Japans ascent from the ofashes
defeat. Development was viewed as inevitable, particularly as the colonial yoke
disappeared. Walt Rostows highly influential
1960 book, The Stages of Economic Growth, suggested that human progress was driven by a dialectic that
could be accelerated.
And indeed the colonial yoke did substantially disappear. The Philippines
became independent in 1946, India and Pakistan in 1947. The British and
French post-Ottoman mandates in the Middle East vanished soon after the
war. The decolonization process in Southeast Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean
was substantially completedby the end of the 1960s.
The Alliance for Progress, John E Kennedys answer to the Cuban Revolution, captured the prevailing optimism. It would duplicate the Marshall
Plans success. Latin America would be well on its way to irreversible prosperity and democracy within ten years.
But as we enter a new century, optimism has been displacedby frustration
and pessimism. A few countries-Spain, Portugal, South Korea, Taiwan, and
xviii
Introduction
Singapore, as well as former British colonyHong Kong-have followed Rostows trajectory into the First World. But the vast majority of countries still
lag far behind, and conditions for many people in these countries are not materially improved over what they were a half century ago. Of the roughly 6
billion people who inhabit the world today, fewer than1 billion are found in
the advanced democracies. More than 4 billion live in what the World Bank
classifies as low income or lowermiddle income countries.
The quality of life in those countries is dismaying, particularly after ahalf
century of development assistance:l
Half or more of the adult population of twenty-three countries,
mostly in Africa, are illiterate. Non-African countries include
Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, and even one in the
Western Hemisphere-Haiti.
Half or more of women are illiterate in thirty-five countries,
including those just listed and Algeria, Egypt, Guatemala, India,
Laos, Morocco, Nigeria, and Saudi Arabia.
Life expectancy is below sixty years in forty-five countries, most in
Africa but also Afghanistan, Cambodia, Haiti, Laos,and Papua New
Guinea. Life expectancy is less than fifty years in eighteen countries,
all in Africa. Andlife expectancy in Sierra Leoneis just thirty-seven
years.
Children under five die at rates in excess of 100 per 1,000 in at least
thirty-five countries, most again in Africa. Non-African countries
include Bangladesh, Bolivia, Haiti, Laos, Nepal, Pakistan, and
Yemen.
The population growth ratein the poorest countriesis 2.1 percent
annually, three times therate in the high-income countries.The
population growth rate in some Islamic countries
is astonishingly
high: 5 percent in Oman, 4.9 percent in the United Arab Emirates,
4.8 percent in Jordan, 3.4 percent in Saudi Arabia and Turkmenistan.
The most inequitable income distribution patterns among countries supplying such data to the World Bank (not all countries do) are found in the
poorer countries, particularly in Latin America and Africa. The most affluent
10 percent of Brazils population accounts for almost 48 percent of income;
Kenya, South Africa, and Zimbabwe are only a fraction of a point behind.
Introduction
xix
The top 10 percent in Chile, Colombia, Guatemala, and Paraguay claims

about 46 percent of income; in Guinea-Bissau, Senegal, and Sierra Leone
about 43 percent. For purposes of comparison, the top 10 percent in the
United States, where income distribution is among the most inequitable of
the advanced democracies, accounts for28.5 percent of the total.
Democratic institutions are commonly weak or nonexistent in Africa and
the Islamic countriesof the Middle East and therest of Asia. Democracy has
prospered in Latin America in the past fifteen years, but the democratic experiments are fragile, as recent events in Peru, Paraguay, Ecuador,
Venezuela,
Colombia, and Mexico underscore. And there remains a weighty question:
Why after more than 150 years of independence has Latin America, an extension of the West, failed to consolidate democratic institutions?
In sum, the world at the end of the twentieth century is far poorer, far
more unjust, and far more authoritarian than most people
at mid-century expected it wouldbe.
Poverty also lingers in the United States, decades after the heady years of
the Great Society and the War on Poverty. Hispanics, with 30 percent below
the poverty line, have displaced blacks as the poorest large minority, and on
some Indian reservations the unemployment rate is above 70 percent. Impressiveprogresshasbeenrecordedforblacks,
andparticularlyblack
women, but 27 percent of blacks still live below the poverty line-at a time
when the U.S. economy has experienced almost a decade
of sustained growth
and low unemployment.
The optimism of those who fought the war on poverty at home and
abroad has been replaced by fatigue andeven pessimism.
EXPLAINING THE FAILURE:
COLONIALISM, DEPENDENCY, RACISM
As it became apparent that the problemsof underdevelopment were more intractable than the development experts had predicted,
two explanations with
Marxist-Leninist roots came to dominate the universities and politics of the
poor countries and the universities
of the rich countries: colonialism and dependency. Lenin had identified imperialism as a late and inevitable stage of
capitalism that reflected what he viewed as the inability of increasingly monopolistic capitalist countries to find domestic markets for their products
and capital.
For those former colonies, possessions, or mandate countries that had recently gained independence from Britain and France,by far the most prominent colonial powers, but also from the Netherlands, Portugal, the United
States, and Japan, imperialism was a reality that left a profound imprint on
xx
Introduction
the national psyche and presented a ready explanation for underdevelopment. This was aboveall true in Africa, where national boundaries had often
been arbitrarily drawn withoutreference to homogeneity of culture or tribal
coherence.
For those countries in what would come to be called the Third World
that had been independent for a centuryor more, as in Latin America, imperialism took the shape of dependency-the theory that the poor countries
of the periphery were bilked by the rich capitalist countries of the center, who depressed world market prices of basic commodities and inflated
the prices of manufactured goods, and whose multinational corporations
earned excessive profitsat theexpense of the poor countries.
Neither colonialism nor dependency has much credibility today. Formany,
including some Africans, the statute of limitations on colonialism as an explanation for underdevelopment lapsed long ago. Moreover, four former
colonies, two British (Hong Kong and Singapore) and two Japanese (South
Korea and Taiwan), have vaulted into the First World. Dependencyis rarely
mentioned today, not even in American universities where it was, not many
years ago, a conventional wisdom that brooked no dissent. There are several
reasons, among others, the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe; the
transformation of communism in China into conventional,increasingly freemarket authoritarianism; the collapse of the Cuban economy after Russia
halted massive Soviet subventions; the success
of the East Asian dragons in
theworldmarket;the
decisive defeat of theSandinistasinthe
1990
Nicaraguan elections; Mexicos initiative t o join Canada and the United
States in NAFTA. (For an apt discussion of dependency theory, see David
Landess chapter in this volume.)
And so an explanatory vacuum hasemerged in the last decade of the century. Over the years, the development assistance institutions have promoted
an assortment of solutions, including land reform, community development,
planning, focus on the poorest, basic human needs, appropriate technology,
women in development, privatization, decentralization, and now sustainable development. One 1970s innovation, by the way, introduced anthropologists in development institutions to adapt projects to existing cultural
realities. All of these initiatives, not to mention the emphasis on free market
economics and political pluralism, have been useful, in varying degrees. But
individually and cumulatively, they have failed to produce widespread rapid
growth, democracy, and social justice in theThird World.
At mid-century, underachievement by black Americans was easy to understand. It wasan obvious consequence of the denial of opportunity-in education, in the workplace, in the polling booth-to the minority that had never
been invited into the melting pot, the minority for whom the Bill of Rights
xxi
Introduction
really didnt apply. In many respects, a racial revolution has occurred in the
past fifty years, not only in terms of breaking down barriers to opportunity
but also in sweeping changes in attitudes about race on the part of whites.
The revolution has brought mass
a
movementof blacks into themiddle class,
the substantial closingof the black-white education gap, major blackinroads
in politics, and increasingly frequent intermarriage. But a racial gap remains
in advanced education, income, and wealth, and, with 27 percent of blacks
below the poverty line and a majority of black children being born to single
mothers, the problemsof the ghetto arestill very much with us.
The racisddiscrimination explanation of black underachievement is no
longer viable fifty years later, although some racism and discrimination continue to exist. This conclusionis underscored by Hispanic underachievement,
which is now a greater problem. Thirty percent of Hispanics are below the
poverty line, and the Hispanic high school dropout rateis also about 30 percent, more than twice the blackdropout rate. Hispanic immigrants
have been
discriminated against, but surely less than blacks and probably no more so
than Chinese and Japanese immigrants, whose education, income, and
wealth substantially exceed national averages.We note in passing thesignificantly higher poverty rate-almost
50 percent-and high school dropout
rate-about 70 percent-in Latin America.2
THE CULTURAL PARADIGM:
THE HARVARD ACADEMY SYMPOSIUM
If colonialism and dependency are unsatisfactory explanations for poverty

and authoritarianism overseas (and racism and discrimination are unsatisfactory explanations for minority underachievement at home), and if there are
too many exceptions (e.g., tropical Singapore, Hong Kong, Barbados, and
Costa Rica; see discussion below) to geographicklimatological explanations,
how else can the unsatisfactory progress of humankind toward prosperity
and political pluralism during the pasthalf century be explained?
A growing number of scholars, journalists, politicians, and development
practitioners are focusingon the role of cultural values and attitudes as
facilitators of, or obstacles to, progress. They are the intellectual heirs of Alexis
de Tocqueville,who concluded that what made American
the
political system
work was a culturecongenial to democracy; Max Weber, who explained the
rise of capitalism asessentially a cultural phenomenonrooted inreligion; and
Edward Banfield, who illuminated the cultural rootsof poverty and authoritarianism in southern Italy, a case with universal applications.
Cultural studies and emphasison culture in the social sciences werein the
mainstream in the 1940s and 1950s. Interest then dropped off. But a renais-
xxii
Introduction
sance in cultural studies has taken place during the past fifteen years that is
moving toward the articulationof a new culture-centered paradigm of development, of human progress.
In the summer of 1998, the Harvard Academy for International and Area
Studies decided to explore the link between culture and political, economic,
and social development, chieflywith respect to poorcountries but also mindful of the problems of underachieving minorities in the United States. We
were fortunate enough to interestvery
a large proportionof the scholars who
are responsible for therenaissance in cultural studiesas well as others of contrasting views. The symposium, Cultural Values and Human Progress, took
place at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in Cambridge, Massachusetts, 23-25 April 1999, with the participation of a distinguished audi.ence.
SYMPOSIUM STRUCTURE AND PARTICIPANTS
The symposium was structuredin eight panels, four on each of the first two
days, followed by a half-daywrap-up.
The firstpanel, moderated by Jorge Dominguez of Harvard, addressed the
relationship between political development and culture. Ronald Inglehart,
who coordinates the World Values Survey, argued that there is a powerful
link between cultural values and the political-and economic-performance
of nations. Francis Fukuyama discussed the key role that social capital plays
in promoting democratic institutions. And Seymour Martin Lipset traced the
connection between culture and corruption.
Christopher DeMuth, presidentof the American Enterprise Institute, moderated the first of two panels on culture and economic development. David
Landes elaborated on his conclusion in The Wealth and Poverty of Nations
that culture makes all the differen~e.~
Michael Porter acknowledged that
culture influences economic development and competitiveness but stressed
that globalization includes cultural transmission that will tend to homogenize culture and make it easier for countries to overcome cultural and geographic disadvantages. Jeffrey Sachs argued that culture is an insignificant
factor by comparison with geography and climate.
In the second panel on culture and economic development, moderated by
deputy administratorof the U.S. Agency for International DevelopmentHarriet Babbitt, Mariano Grondona presented his typology of developmentprone and development-resistant cultures, which derives chiefly from his
appreciation of how the resistant factorshave impeded Argentinas progress.
Carlos Alberto Montaner explained how that same Latin American culture
influences the behavior of elite groups to the detriment of the broader soci-
Introduction
xxiii
ety. AndDanielEtounga-Manguellediscussedtheculturalobstacles
to
Africas development and competitiveness.
The last panel on the first day, moderated by Howard Gardner of Harvard, brought together three anthropologists: one (Robert Edgerton) who
believes that some cultures do better for people than others; one (Richard
Shweder) who identifies himself as a cultural pluralist, tolerant and respectful of all cultures; and one (Thomas Weisner) who focuses on the transmission of culture, particularly in childhood.
Harvards Roderick MacFarquahar moderated the panel on theAsian crisis, which included economist Dwight Perkins, political scientist Lucian Pye,
and sinologist Tu Wei-ming. There were some parallels in the presentations
of Perkins and Pye, both emphasizing the needfor change from the traditionally particularistic personal relationships that have dominated the East Asian
economies, and the prominent role of government leadership in the private
sector. Tu contrasted the Western and Confucian approaches
to development.
Barbara Crossette of the New York Times opened the panel on gender and
culture, moderated by the World Banks Phyliss Pomerantz,by addressing the
conflict between cultural relativism and the U.N. Declaration on Human
Rights. Her conclusions were in sharp contrast with those
of Richard
Shweder. Mala Htun discussed changes in gender relationships in Latin
America and the cultural and other obstacles to their effectuation. Rubie
Watson spoke ofthe cultural forces that shape the subordinated condition
of
women in China. In passing, we express regret that she chose tonot
have her
presentation included in this volume.
Former Colorado governor Richard
Lamm moderated the panelon culture
and American minorities. It was opened
by Orlando Patterson, who, in
stressing the link between culture and the problems of minorities, analyzed
the impact of slavery and Jim Crow on the institution of marriage and related those experiences to the high incidence of single black mothers today.
Richard Estrada was unable to attend the symposium because of a lastminute health problem.* Stephen Thernstrom
of Harvard substituted for him
with a presentation on population trends. Nathan Glazer addressed, among
other issues, the political and emotional problems evoked by cultural analyses of the varying performance of ethnic groups.
The final panel, moderated by the RAND Corporations Robert Klitgaard,
was dedicated to a description of some of the initiatives already under wayto
promote positive values and attitudes. I referred to the growing literature
that links underdevelopment to culture, much of it by Third World authors,
We were saddened to learn that Richard Estrada diedon 29 October 1999 at age
forty-nine.
Introduction
xxiv
and also described several homegrown initiatives in Latin America whose

objective is cultural change. Stace Lindsay and Michael Fairbanks described the
approach of the Monitor Company, a consulting company located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to changing the mindof a nation.
Each panel was followedby a lively discussion that culminated in a debate
in the closing session of the pros and consof promoting cultural change. No
consensus was reached, nor was one expected, given the controversial nature
of the culture issue and the diverse orientations
of the participants. But most
of the panelists believe that cultural values and attitudes are an important
and neglected factor in human progress. Moreover, even among the skeptics,
there was recognition of the need for improved understanding of several
questions that arediscussed at the endof this introduction.
MAJOR ISSUES
The presentations anddiscussions gravitated around five major issues, which

I address in this section andon which I offer my own views:
e
0
e
e
the link between values and progress

the universality of values and Western cultural imperialism
geography and culture
the relationship between culture and institutions
cultural change
The Link Between Values and Progress

Skepticism about the link between cultural values and human progress
is
found particularly intwo disciplines: economicsand anthropology. For many
economists, it is axiomatic that appropriate economic policy effectively implemented will produce the same results without reference to culture. The
problem here is the case of multicultural countries in which some ethnic
groups do better than others, although all operate with the same economic
signals. Examples are the Chinese minorities in Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, and the United States; the Japanese minorities in Brazil
and the United States; the Basques in Spainand Latin A m e r i ~ a and
; ~ the Jews
wherever they have migrated.
Federal Reserve Board chairman Alan Greenspan was among the economic traditionalists on thisissue-until he pondered the post-Soviet experience of Russia. He started with the assumption that humans are natural
capitalists and that communisms collapse would automatically establish a
Introduction
xxv
free-market entrepreneurial system. He assumed that capitalism was human nature. But he has concluded, inthe wake of the Russian economic disaster, that it was not nature at
all, but culture.
Greenspans words constitute a powerful endorsement for David Landess
analysis and conclusions in The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, not to mention the long chain of insight into the importance of culture and its link to
progress going back at least to Tocqueville. But the fact remains that most
economists are uncomfortable dealing with culture, particularly since it presents definitional problems, is difficult to quantify, and operates in a highly
complex context with psychological, institutional, political, geographic, and
other factors.
It is with these problems in mindthat Iinvite the readers attention to Mariano Grondonas chapter in this book. It presents a typology
of developmentprone and development-resistant cultures. Although Grondona evolved his
typology with Argentina and Latin America principally in mind, I believe
that itsrelevance is far broader. Carlos Albert0 Montaners chapteris comparably important: it explains how a development-resistant culture shapes the
behavior of elite groups.
The chief problem for many anthropologists, and other social scientists influenced by them, is the tradition of cultural relativism that has dominated
the discipline in this century and rejects the evaluation of another societys
values and practices.
This is one of the factors in play in Nathan
Glazers highly qualified, reluctant approach to therole of culture in explaining the wide rangeof achievement among ethnic groups in the United States (Chapter 16). Among the
most compelling arguments for confronting culture is that of Glazers panel
colleague Orlando Patterson, for whom cultureis a central factor in explaining the problems of Afro-Americans (Chapter 15).
The very title of this book may pose problems for those who are loath to
make value judgments about other cultures. Many believe that culture is, by
definition, harmonious and adaptive and that conflict and suffering are the
consequence of external intrusions.Yet some anthropologists see culture very
differently, prominently among them panelist Robert Edgerton, who says,
with particular relevanceto the symposium
Humans in various societies, whether urban
or folk, are capable of empathy,
kindness, even love, and they can sometimes achieve astounding mastery of the
challenges posed by their environments. But they
are also capableof maintaining
beliefs, values,and social institutionsthat result in senseless cruelty, needless suffering, and monumental folly in their relations among themselves as well
as with
other societies and the physical environment in which they live.6
Introduction
xxvi
T h e U n i v e r s a l i t y of V a l u e s a n d
Western Cultural Imperialism
The idea of progress is suspect for those who are committed to cultural
relativism, for whom each culture defines its own goals and
ethics, which
cannot be evaluated against the goals and ethics
of another culture. Some anthropologists view progress as anidea the West is trying to impose on other
cultures. At the extreme, culturalrelativists and cultural pluralists may argue
that Westerners have no right to criticize institutions such as female genital
mutilation, suttee (the Hindupractice of widows joining their dead husbands
on the funeralpyre, whether they wantto or not), oreven slavery.
But after a half century of the communications revolution, progress in the
Westernsensehasbecomeavirtuallyuniversalaspiration.
The idea of
progress-of a longer, healthier, less burdensome, more fulfilling life-is not
confined to the West; it is also explicit in Confucianismand in the creeds of a
number of non-Western, non-Confucian high-achieving minorities-Indias
Sikhs, for example. I am not speaking of progress as defined by the affluent
consumer society, although an end to poverty is clearly one of the universal
goals, and that inevitably means higher levels of consumption. The universal
aspirational model is much broader and is suggested by several clauses inthe
U.N. Universal Declarationof Human Rights:
Everyone has the right to life, liberty and the securityof person. . . . human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief. . . . All are equal before the law
and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection. . . . Everyone
has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through
freely chosen representatives. . . . Everyone has the right to a standard of living
adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including
food, clothing,housing and medicalcare and necessarysocialservices.
. . . Everyone has the rightto education.
I note in passing that, in 1947, the Executive Board of the American Anthropological Association decided not to endorse the declaration on the
grounds that it was an ethnocentric document. Their position notwithstanding, I believe that the vast majority of the planets people would agree with
the following assertions:
Life is better than death.
Health is better than sickness.
Liberty is better than slavery.
Prosperity is better than poverty.
Introduction
xxvii
Education is better than ignorance.

Justice is better than injustice.
Richard Shweder, who agrees with the American Anthropological Association Executive Boards decision, viewed the symposium (if I may crib from
the title of his chapter) as a First World conceit promoted by the new
evangelists. The presence of three panelists from the Third World, Daniel
Etounga-Manguelle, Mariano Grondona, and Carlos Albert0 Montaner,
who believe that traditional culturalvalues are at the root of the poverty, authoritarianism, and injustice of, respectively, Africa and Latin America, constituted a direct challenge
to his views. Shweder dismisses them in
an endnote
to his chapter as not trulyrepresentative of their societies, as cosmopolitan
intellectuals for whom travel plans now matter more thanancestry, who
look up to the United States for intellectual and moral guidance and material aid.
The responses of Etounga-Manguelle, Grondona, and Montaner to the
Shweder endnote areincluded in a section followingShweders chapter, along
with a further commentby him. The exchange leavesone wondering whether
some anthropologists may not be engaging in a kind of anthropological imperialism that would encase cultures in permafrost. Shweder may recognize
that risk when he says, I would define a genuine culture, a culture deserving of appreciation, as a way of life that is defensible in the face of criticism
from abroad. (Presumably criticism from within should be all the more
compelling.) If there are cultures deserving of appreciation, then presumably there are cultures undeserving of appreciation, suggesting that Shweder
may in fact agree withRobert Edgertons views.
Richard Shweder may thus not be as much of a heretic at a revival meeting as heprofesses.
Geography and Culture

In his chapter, Jeffrey Sachs emphasizes geography
and climate as decisive
factors in explaining economic growth. Hisviews evoke Jared Diamonds recent book, Guns, Germs, and Steel, which concludes that the strikingdifferences between the long-term histories of peoples of the different continents
have been due not to innate
differences in the people themselves
but to differences in their environments.
It is clear that geography, including resource endowment, and climate are
major factors in explaining the wealth and poverty
of nations. Almost all the
advanced democracies are in the temperate zones, and the large majority of
the poor countries are in the tropical zone. But the exceptions are notewor-
xxviii
Introduction
thy: Russia occupies the same latitudes as highly prosperous and democratic
northern Europe and Canada. (We might add that the northern European
countries and Canada account for most of Transparency Internationals ten
least corrupt countries in the world, whereas Russia appears among the ten
most corrupt, remindingus of Alan Greenspans comment.) Singapore,Hong
Kong, and half of Taiwan are in the tropics. Their success, which recapitulates that of Japan, suggests that Confucianism trumps geography, as does
the success of South Korea; the Chinese minorities in tropical Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines; and the Japanese minorities in tropical Peru and Brazil.
Geography cannot adequately explain the striking contrasts between the
north and the south in Italy; comparable contrasts among Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, and Nicaragua on the one hand and Costa Rica on the
other;thedespair
of Haiti,oncetherichestslave-sugarcolonyinthe
Caribbean, and the democratic prosperityof former slave-sugar colony Barbados. And we might note that the three temperate-zone countries in Latin
America-Argentina, Uruguay,
and Chile-still do not enjoy First World
prosperity, and all three experienced military dictatorships in the 1970s and
1980s.
In his concluding chapter, Jared Diamond takes note
of the potential
power of culture:
Cultural factors and influences . . . loom large . . . human cultural traits vary
greatly around the world. Someof that cultural variation is no doubt a product
of environmental variation. . . . but an important question concerns the possible
significance of local cultural factors unrelatedto the environment. A minor cultural factor may arise for trivial, temporary local reasons, become fixed, and
then predispose a society toward more important cultural choices.. . . their significance constitutes an important unanswered question.8
The Relationship Between Culture and Institutions

To repeat, culture is not an independent variable. It is influenced by numerous other factors, for example, geography andclimate, politics, the vagaries
of history. With respect to the relationship between culture and institutions,
Daniel Etounga-Manguelle says, Culture is the mother; institutions are the
children. This is particularly true in the long run. In the short run, institutional modifications, often impelled by politics, can influence culture consistent with Daniel Patrick Moynihans sage observation. Such was to some
extent the case when Italy choseto decentralize public policyand administra-
Introduction
tion in the 1970s, a case that has been chronicled by Robert PutnamM aink ing Democracy Work9Although Putnams central conclusion is that culture
is at the rootof the vast differences between theNorth and South in Italy, he
also notes that decentralization has promoted adegree of trust, moderation,
and compromise in the South, the same area whose social pathology wasso
memorably analyzed as a cultural phenomenon by Edward Banfield in T h e
Moral Basis of a Backward Society.
The relationship between institutions and cultureis touched on repeatedly
in Douglass Norths work in ways suggesting that North, whose focus is on
institutions rather than culture, might agree with Etounga-Manguelles observation. In Institutions, Institutional Change, and Economic Performance,
North identifies informal constraints on institutional evolution as coming
from socially transmitted information [thatis] a part of the heritage we call
culture . . [which is] a language-based conceptual framework for encoding
andinterpretingtheinformationthatthesensesarepresentingtothe
brain.o North subsequently explains the divergent evolution of the former
colonies of Britain and Spain in theNew World in the following terms:
In the former, an institutional framework has evolvedthat permits the complex

impersonal exchange necessaryto political stability andto capture the potential
economic gains of modern technology. In the latter, personalistic relationships
are still key to much of the political and economic exchange. They are a consequence of an evolving institutional framework that produces neither political
stability nor consistent realizationof the potential of modern technology.
In his comments following the panel on culture and political development,
which he moderated, Jorge Dominguez questioned the power
of culture,
since all the countries in Latin America except Cuba have become democracies in the past fifteen years. The relevanceof Douglass Norths observation
is apparent in the fragility of the democratic experiments in Latin America
today. In Colombia, a democratic government faces a grave
threat from an
anachronistic left-wing revolutionary force. Economic chaos threatens to
topple democratic institutions in neighboring Ecuador.Perus president often
behaves as if he were a traditional caudillo. Argentinas recent president,
Carlos Salil Menem, repeatedly dropped hints about his interest in a third
term, in contravention of the countrys constitution. And the recently elected
president of Venezuela, a former military officer who attempted two coups
ditat, has left observers in doubt abouthis respect for democratic norms.
Following a visit I made to Guatemala in December 1999 tolecture on the
relationship between culture and democracy, the Guatemalan sociologist
xxix
Introduction
xxx
Bernard0 ArCvalo made an apt observation: We have the hardware

of
democracy but the softwareof authoritarianism.2
A question I posed earlier is evoked by the North comment: Why did it
take more than 150 years for Latin Americato have come around to democracy, particularly given the fact that Latin America is an offshoot of the
West? A similar question might be posed about Spain and Portugal, at least
until the past few decades.
Cultural Change
A consensus existed among all panelists and members
of the participatory audience that cultural values change, albeit slowly in most cases. (Attitudes
change more rapidly-the shift in Spain from authoritarian to democratic attitudes about governanceis a case in point.) One of the most controversialissues debated at the symposium, anissue that dominated the wrap-upsession,
was the extentto which cultural change shouldbe integrated into the conceptualizing, strategizing, planning, and programmingof political and economic
development. The issue becomes highly controversial when the initiative for
such changes comes from the
West, as was the case with this symposium.
Anthropologists have been working in development institutions like the
World Bank and USAID for more than two decades. But in almost all cases,
their efforts have been aimedat informing decisionmakers about the cultural
realities that would have to be reflected in the design of policies and programs and in their execution. Few interventions were designed to promote
cultural change, and indeed the whole idea
of promoting cultural change has
been taboo.
A similar taboo has existed in the United States with respect to cultural explanations for ethnic group underachievement. The
issue in the domestic setting was joined by Richard Lamm, moderator of the panel on culture and
American minorities, whenhe posed the following question: Approximately
half of the Hispanic high school students in Colorado and mostof the other
states in the west are dropping out.To what extent could or should the state
of Colorado be looking at cultural factors?
Had Richard Estradabeen able to participate in the symposium,he almost
surely would have expressed similar concerns. He was a member
of the U.S.
Commission on Immigration Reform, chaired
by Barbara Jordan, which recommended significant reductions in immigration. Estrada had been particularly concerned that the heavy immigrant flow from Latin America impedes
the working of the melting pot.
Nathan Glazer points out that one of the reasons for the aversion to confronting culture is that it touches the highly sensitive nerves of national, eth-
Introduction
xxxi
nic, and personal self-esteem by communicating the idea that some cultures
are better than others, atleast in the sense that they do more to promote human well-being. Glazer implies that the risks of pursuing cultural explanations, at least in the United States, maybe greater than thegains, particularly
since the melting pot tends to attenuate the initial differences. But Richard
Lamms question must give him pause.
The Lamm-Glazer debate highlights the question of where the symposium
leads-how it should be followed up. If some cultural values are fundamental obstacles to progress-if they help explain the intractability of the problems of poverty and injustice in a good part of the Third World-then there
is no alternative to the promotion of cultural change. It need not, indeed
should not, be viewed as a Western imposition. Daniel Etounga-Manguelle,
Mariano Grondona, and Carlos Albert0 Montaner are not the
only Africans
and Latin Americans who have cometo the conclusion that culture matters.
Indeed, there are many people from different walks of life, at least in Latin
America, who have concluded that cultural change is indispensable and are
taking steps to promote such change-in the schools, in the churches, in the
workplace, in politics. They want to understand better what isit in their culture that stands in the way of their aspirations for a more just, prosperous,
fulfilling, and dignified life-and what they can do topromote change.
Orlando Patterson wrote in The Ordeal of Integration that (culture must
contain the answers as we search for an explanation
of the skill gap, the competence gap, the wage gap, as well as the pathological social sink into which
several million African Americans have
fallen.3 Both in that book andits sequel, Rituals of Blood: Consequences of Slavery in Two American Centuries,
he points to theslavery experience as theroot of the cultural problem:
Slavery, in which Afro-Americans spent two-thirds of their existence in this
country was . . . a viciously exploitative institution that severely handicapped
Afro-Americans, especially in the way it eroded vital social institutions such as
the family and marital relations, in the wayit excluded Afro-Americans fromthe
dominant social organizations and, in the process, denied them the chance
to
learn patterns of behavior fundamental for survival in the emerging industrial
society.
Can the United States afford to ignore culture as it attemptsto find solutions
for black and Hispanic underachievement?
A further issue that arose during the wrap-up session was the extent to
which there are cultural universals-values that work, or dont work, in
whatever geographic, political, or ethnic setting. Several of the participants
argued against a black box or laundry list approach to cultural change,
xxxii
Introduction
preferring what might be termed an ethnographic approach-one that

looks at individual cultures withlimited reference to experience elsewhere. I
believe that there are value patterns that cross geographic boundaries with
comparable consequences in very different settings. An example is the work
ethic/education/merit/frugalityvalues common to Western Europe, North
America, Australia and New Zealand, and EastAsia.
But it was clear that we need to know much more about several major issues if we areto have, in Robert Klitgaards words, well-developed theories,
practical guidelines, and close professional links between those who study
culture and those who make and manage development
policy.
INTEGRATING VALUE AND ATTITUDE CHANGE INTO

DEVELOPMENT: A THEORETICAL AND
APPLIED RESEARCH PROGRAM
Human progress since World WarI1 has been disappointing, even disheartening, except among East Asians, Iberians, and Afro-Americans. A principal
reason for the shortfall is, I believe, the failure of governments and development institutions to take into account the power
of culture to thwart orfacilitate progress, It is, for example, the cultural contrast between Western
Europe and Latin America that I believe chiefly explains the success of the
Marshall Plan and the failure of the Alliance for Progress.
Culture is difficult to deal with both politically and emotionally. It is also
difficult to deal with intellectually because there are problems
of definition
and measurement andbecause cause-and-effect relationships between culture
and other variables like policies, institutions, and economic development run
in both directions.
A substantial consensus emerged in the symposium that a comprehensive
theoretical and appliedresearch program should be undertaken with the goal
of integrating value and attitude change into development policies, planning,
and programming in Third World countries and in anti-poverty programs in
the United States. The end productof the research would be value- and attitude-change guidelines, including practical initiatives, for the promotion of
progressive values and attitudes.
The research agenda comprises six basic elements:
1. A value/attitude typology: The objectives are(1)to identify the

values and attitudes that promoteprogress, including an assessment
Introduction
of the priority that attaches toeach, and those thatimpede it; and
(2)to establish which valuedattitudes positively and negatively
influence evolution of democratic political institutions, economic
development, and social justice; and to rank them.
2. Relationship between culture and development: The objectives
are (1)to develop an operationally useful understandingof the
forces/actors that can precipitatedevelopment in the faceof values
and attitudes that are notcongenial to development; (2)to trace
the impact on traditional values and attitudes when development
occurs as a consequence of these forces/actors; and (3) to address the
question of whether democratic institutions canbe consolidated and
economic development and social justice sustainedif traditional
values and attitudes do not change
significantly.
3. Relationships among valuedattitudes,policies, and institutions:
The objectives are (1)to assess the extent to which policies and
institutions reflect values and attitudes, as Tocqueville and Daniel
Etounga-Manguelle argue; (2)to understand better what is likely to
happen when values and attitudes are not congenial with policies
and institutions; and (3) to establish to what degree policies and
institutions can change values and attitudes.
4. Cultural transmission: The objective is to gain an understanding of
the chief factors in value/attitude transmission, for example, child
rearing practices, schools, churches, the media, peers,the workplace,
and social remittances from immigrants back to native countries.
We need to know (1)which of these factors are today most powerful
generally as well as in different geographicand cultural areasof the
world; (2) how each can contribute to
progressive value and attitude
change; and (3) what role government might play with respect
to
value and attitude change.
5. Value/attitude measurement: The objective is to expand the reachof
the international system for measuring value and attitude change,
integrating it with the resultsof research task 1 above. This would
include (1)identifying existing instruments for measuring valuesand
attitudes (e.g., the World Values Survey) and (2)tailoring these
instruments to support value- and attitude-change initiatives.
6. Assessing cultural change initiatives already under way: At least in
Latin America, a number of homegrown cultural change initiatives
are already underway, for example, the Human Development
Institute in Peru, which promotes the ten commandmentsof
development in school systems in several Latin American countries.
xxxiii
xxxiv
Introduction
Other initiatives, for example, property-titling programs, may have

important cultural changeconsequences, although that is not their
objective. Such initiatives needto be evaluated and the results
converted into guidelines for governments and development
institutions.
The role of cultural values and attitudes as obstacles to or facilitators of
progress has been largely ignoredby governments and aid agencies. Integrating value and attitude change into development policies, planning, and programming is, I believe, a promising wayto assure that, in the nextfifty years,
the world does notrelive the poverty and injustice that most poor countries,
and underachieving ethnic groups, have been mired in
during the past half
century.
part one
CULTUREAND
ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
1
Culture Makes Almost
All the Difference
D A V I DL A N D E S
Max Weber was right. If we learn anything from the historyof economic development, it is that culturk makes almost all the difference. Witness the enterprise of expatriate minbrities-the Chinese in East
and Southeast Asia,
Indians in East Africa, Lebanese in West Africa, Jews and Calvinists throughout much of Europe, and oh and on. Yet culture, in the senseof the inner values and attitudes that guidk a population, frightens scholars.It has a sulfuric
odor of race and inheritande, an air of immutability. In thoughtful moments,
economists and other social1 scientists recognize that this is not true, and indeed they salute examples bf cultural change for the better while deploring
changes for the worse. But \applauding or deploring implies the passivity of
the viewer-an inability to \use knowledge to shape people and things. The
technician would rather change interest and exchange rates, free up trade,
alter political institutions, manage. Besides, criticisms of culture cut close to
the ego and injure identity and self-esteem. Coming from outsiders, such animadversions, however tactful and indirect, stink of condescension. Benevolent improvers have learnedto steer clear.
But if culture does so much, why does it not work consistently? Economists are not alone inasking why some people-the Chinese, say-have long
been so unproductive at home yet so enterprising away. If culture matters,
why didnt it change China? (We should note that withpolicies that now en-
Differencethe
All
AlmostMakesCulture
courage rather than suppresseconomic development, the imbalance between

Chinese performance at home and abroad is disappearing, as China sustains
the phenomenal growth rates that propelled the Confucian dragons from
the Third World to the First.)
An economist friend, a master of political-economic therapies, solves the
earlier, perhaps now obsolete paradox by denying any connection with culture. Culture, he says, does not permit him to predict outcomes. I disagree.
One could have foreseen the postwar economic success of Japan and Germany by taking account of culture. The same with South Korea versus
Turkey, Indonesia versus Nigeria.
On the other hand, culture does not standalone. Economic analysis cherishes the illusion that one good reason should be enough, but the determinants of complex
processes
areinvariablypluralandinterrelated.
Monocausal explanations will not work. The same values thwarted by bad
government at home can find opportunity elsewhere, as in the case
of
China. Hence the special successof emigrant enterprise. The ancient Greeks,
as usual, had a word for it: These metics, alien residents, were the leaven of
societies that sneered at money and crafts (hence the pejorative sense of the
Greek-rooted word banausic-of an artisan, dull, pedestrian).So strangers
found and sold the goods and made the money.
Because culture and economic performance are linked, changes in one will
work back on the other. In Thailand, all good young men used to spend
years undergoing a religious apprenticeship in Buddhist monasteries. This
period of ripening was good for the spirit and
soul; it also suited the somnolent pace of traditional economic activity and employment. That was then.
Today, Thailand moves faster; commerce thrives; businesscalls. As a result,
young men spiritualize for a fewweeks-time enough to learn some prayers
and rituals and get back to the real, material world. Time, which everyone
knows is money, has changed in relative value. One could not have imposed
this change, short of revolution. The Thais have voluntarily adjusted their
priorities. (It should be noted in passing that the Chinese minority led the
charge.)
The Thai story illustrates cultures response to economic growth and opportunity. The reverse is also possible-culture may shift against enterprise.
We have the Russian case, where seventy-five years
of anti-market, antiprofit schooling and insider privilege have planted and frozen anti-entrepreneurialattitudes.
Even aftertheregimehasfallen,peoplefearthe
uncertainties of the market and yearn for the safe tedium of state employment. Or they yearn for equality in poverty, a common feature
of peasant
cultures around the world. As the Russian joke has it, peasant Ivan is jealous
of neighbor Boris because Boris has a goat. A fairy comes along and offers
MATTERS
CULTURE
Ivan a single wish. What does he wish for? That Boriss goat should drop
dead.
Fortunately, not all Russians think that way. The collapse of Marxist prohibitions and inhibitions has led to a rush of business activity, the best of it
linked to inside deals, some of it criminal, much of it the work of non-Russian minorities (Armenians, Georgians, etc.). The leaven is there, and often
that suffices: the initiative of an enterprising, different few. In the meantime,
old habits remain, corruption and crime are rampant, culture war
rageselections hang on these issues, and the outcomeis not certain.
DEPENDENCY THEORY, ARGENTINA, AND
FERNANDO HENRIQUE CARDOSOS METAMORPHOSIS
Dependency theory was a comforting alternative to cultural explanations of

underdevelopment. Latin American scholars and outside sympathizers explained the failure of Latin American development, all the worse by contrast
with North America, as the consequence of the misdeeds of stronger, richer
nations. Note that thedependency vulnerability implies a state of inferiority
in which one does not controlones fate; one does as others dictate.
Needless
to say, these others exploit their superiority to transfer product from the dependent economies, much as the earlier colonial rulers did.The pumpof empire becomes the pump of capitalist imperialism.
Yet to co-opt independent sovereign nations requires lending and investment; simple pillage is not an option. So with Argentina, which saved little
and drew increasingly on foreign capital. (The chief architect of dependency
theory was Raiil Prebisch,
an Argentine economist.)Some economists contend
that foreign capital hurts growth; others, that ithelps, but less than domestic
investment. Much obviously depends on the uses. In the meantime, no one is
prepared to refuse outside money on grounds of efficiency. The politicians
want it and arewilling to let the dependency theorists wring their hands.
Argentina had some very rich people, yet for reasons
that have never
been clear . . . has always been capital-dependent and thereby beholding[sic]
to loaner [lender] nations, in ways that seriously compromise the countrys
ability to run its own affairs. The British built Argentinas railroads-less
than 1,000 kilometers in 1871, over 12,000 kilometers two decades laterbut built them to British purposes. But how does one build such a network
without fostering internal markets? And if not, whose fault is it? What does
that say about the spirit of native enterprise? Most Argentines were not asking such questions. It is always easy to blame the Other. The result: a xenophobic anti-imperialism and self-defeating sense
of wrong.
Differencethe
All
AlmostMakesCulture
In the nineteenth century, a distinguished Argentine, Juan Bautista Alberdi,

worried about the spirit
of native enterprise. In1852, he wrote, in words that
anticipated what MaxWeber would write fifty years later,
Respect the altarof every belief. Spanish America, limited to Catholicism to the
exclusion of any other religion, resembles a solitary and silent conventof nuns.
. . .To exclude different religions in South America to
is exclude the English, the
Germans, the Swiss, the North Americans, which is to say the very people this
continent most needs. To bring them without their religion is to bring them
without theagent that makes them what they are.z
Some have attributed Argentinas low rate of savings to rapid population
growth and high rates of immigration-to which I would add bad habits of
conspicuous consumption. In any event, foreign capital flows depended as
much on supply conditions abroad as on Argentine opportunities. During
World War I, the British needed money and had to liquidate foreign assets.
Although remaining Argentinas biggest creditor, they no longer played the
growth-promoting role of earlier decades. The United States picked up some
of the slack, but here too politics and the business cycle called the tune, so
that Argentina found itself in intermittent but repeated difficulty both for the
amount and the termsof foreign investment and credit. All of this promoted
conflict with creditors, which led in turn to reactive isolationism-restrictive
measures that only aggravated the economic stringency and dependency.
When Argentine economists and politicians denounced these circumstances
and the misdeeds, real and imagined, of outside interests, they only compounded the problem. To be sure, cocoon economics-the logical prescription of the dependencistus-helped
shelterArgentinaandotherLatin
American economies from the worst effects of the Great Depression. Such is
the nature of cocoons. But it also cut themoff from competition, stimuli, and
opportunities for growth.
Dependencistu arguments flourished in Latin America. They traveled well,
resonating after World War I1 with the economic plight and political awareness of newly liberated colonies. Cynics might saythat dependency doctrines
have been Latin Americas most successful export. But they have been bad
for effort and morale. By fostering a morbid propensity to find fault with
everyone but oneself, they promote economic impotence. Even if they were
true, it would have been better to stow them.
And indeed, that is what Latin America appears to have done. Today, all
countries in the Western Hemisphere, including Cuba, welcome foreign
investment. Argentina has been a leader in the transformation. The statism
that
MATTERS
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dependency theory counseled has been dismantled in a welter of privatizations. Mexico, once the home of some of the most strident dependencistas,
has developed a broad national consensus, symbolized by NAFTA, that its
interests are best served by economic intimacy with the United States and
Canada. The lamb has leapt into the mouthof the lion and appears to have
benefited from the encounter.
For years, Fernando Henrique Cardoso was a leading figure of the Latin
American dependency school. In the 1960s and 1970s, the sociologist Cardoso wrote or edited some twenty books on the subject. Some of them became the standard texts that shaped a generation of students. Perhaps the
best known was Dependency and Development in Latin America. In its English version, it ended with a turgid, less-than-stirring credo:
The effective battle. . . is between technocratic elitism and a vision
of the formative process of a mass industrial society which can offer
what is popular as
specifically national and which succeeds in transforming the demand for a more
developed economy and for a democratic society intoa state that expresses the
vitality of truly popular forces, capable of seeking socialist forms for the social
organization of the f ~ t u r e . ~
Then, in 1993, Cardoso became Brazils minister of finance. He found a
country wallowing in an annual inflation rateof 7,000 percent. The government had become so addicted to this monetary narcotic and Braziliansso ingenious in their personal countermeasures
(taxis used meters that could be
adjusted to the price index, and perhapsto the client) thatserious economists
were ready to makelight of this volatility on the pretext that certaintyof inflation was a formof stability.
This may have been true of those Brazilians able to take precautions; but
inflation played havoc with Brazils international credit, and the country
needed to borrow. It also neededto trade and work with other countries,
especially those rich, capitalist nations that were marked as the enemy. So
Cardoso began to see things differently,to the point where observers praised
him as a pragmatist. Gone now were the anti-colonialist passions; gone the
hostility to foreign links, with their implicit dependency. Brazil has
no
choice, says Cardoso. If it is not prepared to be part of the global economy,
it has no way of competing. . It is not an imposition from outside. Its a
necessity for US."^
To each time its virtues. Two yearslater, Cardoso was elected president, in
large part because he had given Brazil its first strong currency in many years.
..
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the Difference
JAPANS MElJl RESTORATIONCOUNTERPOISE TO DEPENDENCY THEORY
Bernard Lewis once observed that when people realize that things aregoing
wrong, there are two questions they can ask. One
is, What did we do
wrong? and the otheris Who did this to us? The latter leadsto conspiracy
theories and paranoia. The first question leads to another line of thinking:
How dowe put it right?sIn the second half of the twentieth century, Latin
America chose conspiracy theories and paranoia. In the second half of the
nineteenth century, Japanasked itself, How dowe put it right?
Japan had a revolution in 1867-1868. The feudal shogunate was overthrown-really it collapsed-and control of the state returnedto the emperor
in Kyoto. So ended a quarter millennium of Tokugawa rule. But the Japanese
call this overturn a restoration rather than a revolution because they prefer
to
see it as a return to normalcy. Also, revolutions are for China. The Chinese
have dynasties-Japan has one royalfamily, going back to the beginning.
The symbols of national unity were already present; the idealsof national
pride, already defined. This saved a lot
of turmoil. Revolutions, like civil
wars, can be devastating to order and national efficacy. The Meiji Restoration had its dissensions and dissents, often violent. The final years
of the old,
the first of the new, were stained with the bloodof assassinations, of peasant
uprisings, of reactionary rebellion. Even so, the transition in Japan was far
smoother than theFrench and Russian varieties of political overturn, for two
reasons: the new regime held the
moral high ground, and even the disaffected
and affronted fearedto give arms and opportunity to the
enemy outside. Foreign imperialists were lurking to pounce, and internal divisions would have
invited intervention. Consider the story
of imperialism elsewhere: Local
quarrels and intrigue had fairly invited the European powers into India and
would soon subordinate China.
In a societythat hadnever admitted the stranger, the very presence
of westerners invited trouble. More than once, Japanese bullyboys challenged and
assaulted these impudent foreigners, the better to show them who wasboss.
Who was boss? In the faceof Western demands for retribution and indemnities, the Japanese authorities could only temporize and,
by waffling, discredit
themselves in theeyes of foreigner and patriot alike.
The pretensions of the outsiders were the heart of the matter. Honor the
emperor; expel the barbarians! went the pithy slogan. The leaders
of the
move for change, lords of the great fiefs of the Far South and West, once enemies, now united against the shogunate. They won; andthey lost. That was
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another paradox of this revolution-restoration. The leaders thought they

were going back to the days of yore. Instead, they found themselves caught
up in tomorrow, in a waveof modernization, because that was the only way
to defeat the barbarians. You Westerners have the guns. All right, one day
well have them too.
The Japanese went about modernization with characteristic intensity and
system. They were ready for it-by virtue of a tradition (recollection) of effective government,by their high levels of literacy, by their tight family structure, by their work ethic and self-discipline,
by their sense of national
identity and inherent superiority.
That was the heart of it: The Japanese knew they were superior, and because they knew it, they were able to recognize the superiorities of others.
Building on earlier moves under Tokugawa, they hired foreign experts
and
technicians while sending Japanese agents abroad to bring back eyewitness
accounts of European and American ways. This body of intelligence laid the
basis for choices, reflecting careful and supple consideration of comparative
merit. Thus the first military model was the French army; but after the defeat
of France by Prussia in 1870-1871, the Japanese decided that Germany had
more to offer. A similar shift took place from French to German legal codes
and practice.
No opportunity for learning waslost. In October 1871, ahigh-level Japanese delegation that included Okubo Toshimichi traveled to the United States
and Europe, visiting factories and forges, shipyards and armories, railways
and canals. They returned in September 1873, almost two years later, laden
with the spoils of learning and on fire with enthusiasm for reform.6
This direct experience by the Japanese leadership made all the difference.
Riding on an English train, Okubo confided ruefully that, before leaving
Japan, he had thought his work done: the imperial authority restored, feudalism replaced by central government. Now he understood that the big tasks
lay ahead. Japan did not compare with the moreprogressive powers of the
world. England especially offered a lesson in self-development. Once a
small, insular nation-like Japan-England
had systematically pursued a
policy of self-aggrandizement. The Navigation Acts were crucial in raising
the national merchant marine to a positionof international dominance. Not
until Britain had achieved industrial leadership did it abandon protection for
laissez-faire. (Not a bad analysis. Adam Smith would have agreed.)
To be sure, Japan would not have the tariff and commercial autonomy
that seventeenth-century England had enjoyed. Here, however, the German
example made sense. Germany, like Japan, had only recently come through
a difficult unification. Also, Germany, like Japan, had started from a posi-
Differencethe
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tion of economic inferiority, and look how

far it had come. Okubo was
much impressed by the German people he met. He found them thrifty,
hardworking, unpretentious-like Japanese commoners, one imagines.
And he found their leaders to be realists and pragmatists: FOCUS, they said,
on building national power. They were the mercantilists of the nineteenth
century. Okubo came back and gave a German orientation to the Japanese
bureaucracy.
First came those tasks ordinaryto government: a postal service, a new time
standard, public education (for boys and then for
girls as well), universal military service. General schooling diffused knowledge;that is what schools are
for. But it also instilled discipline, obedience, punctuality, and a worshipful
respect for the emperor. This was the key to the development of a we/they
national identity transcending the parochial loyalties nurtured by the feudal
shogunate. The army and navy completed the job. Beneath the sameness of
the uniform and the discipline, universal military service wiped out distinctions of class and place. It nurtured nationalist pride and democratized the
violent virtues of manhood-an end to the samurai monopolyof arms.
Meanwhile, state and society went about the business of business: how to
make things by machine, how to do more without machines, how to move
goods, how to compete with foreign producers. Not easy. European industrial producers had taken a century. Japan was in a hurry.
To begin with, the country built on those branches of industry already familiar-silk and cotton manufacture in particular but also the processing of
food staples immune to foreign imitation: sake, miso, soy sauce. From 1877
to 1900-the first generation of industrialization-food accounted
for 40
percent of growth, textiles 35 percent. In short, the Japanese pursued comparative advantage rather than the will-o-the-wispof heavy industry. Much
of this was small-scale: cotton mills of 2,000 spindles (as against 10,000 and
up in Western Europe); wooden waterwheels that were generations behind
European technology; coal mines whose tortuous seams and hand-drawn
baskets made the infamous British pits of an earlier time look like a promenade.
The economists usual explanation for this inversion of the late-follower
model (late is great and up-to-date) is want of capital: meager personal resources, no investment banks. Infact, some Japanese merchants had accumulated large fortunes, and the state was readyto build and subsidize plants. As
it did. But the long haul to parity needed not so much money as peoplepeople of imagination and initiative, people who understood economies of
scale, who knew not only production methods and machinery but also organization and what we now
call software. The capital would follow and
grow.
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CULTURE
The Japanese determined to go beyond consumer goods. If they were to

have a modern economy, they had to master the heavy work: to build machines and engines, ships and locomotives, railroads and ports and shipyards. The government played a critical role here, financing reconnaissance
abroad, bringing in foreign experts, building installations, and subsidizing
commercial ventures. But more important were the talent and determination
of Japanese patriots, ready to change careers in the national cause, and the
quality of Japanese workers, especially artisans, with skills honed and attitudes shaped by close teamwork and supervision in craft shops.
Japan moved into the second industrial revolution with an alacrity that
belied its inexperience. The traditional account of Japans successful and rapid
industrialization rings with praise, somewhat mitigated
by distaste for the
somber and intense nationalist accompaniment-the ruthless drive that gave
the development process meaning and urgency. This was the first non-Western country to industrialize, and it remains today an example to other late
bloomers. Other countries sent young people abroad to learn the new ways
and lost them; Japanese expatriates came back home. Other countries imported foreign technicians to teach their own people; the Japanese largely
taught themselves. Other countries imported foreign equipment and did their
best to use it; the Japanese modified it, made it better, made it themselves.
Other countries may, for their own historical reasons, dislike the Japanese
(how many Latin Americans like gringos?), but they do envy and admire
them.
The explanation lay partly in an intense sense of group responsibility: an
indolent, self-indulgent worker would be hurting not only himself but the
rest of the family. And the nation-dont forget the nation. Most Japanese
peasants and workers did notfeel this wayto begin with-under Tokugawa,
they scarcely had a notion of nation. That was a primary task of the new
imperial state: to imbue its subjects with a sense of higher duty to the emperor and country and to link this patriotism to work. A large share
of
schooltime was devoted to the studyof ethics; in a country without regular
religious instruction and ceremony, school was the temple
of virtue and
morality. As a 1930 textbook put it: The easiest way to practice ones patriotism [is to] discipline oneself in daily life, help keep good order in ones
family, and fully dischargeones responsibility on thejob.; Also to save and
not waste.
Here was a Japaneseversion of Webers Protestant ethic. Along with government initiatives and a collective commitment to modernization, this work
ethic made possible the so-called Japanese economic miracle.
Any serious understanding of Japanese performance must build on this phenomenon
of culturally determined human capital.
Differencethe
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I1
ON W E B E R
Max Weber, who began as a historian of the ancient world but grew into a
wonder of diversified social science, published in1904-1905 one of the most
influential and provocative essays ever written: The Protestant Ethic and
the Spirit of Capitalism. His thesis: that Protestantism-more specifically its
Calvinist branches-promoted the rise of modern capitalism; that is, the industrial capitalism he knew from his native Germany. Protestantism didthis,
he said, not by easing or abolishing those aspects of the Roman faith that
had deterred or hindered free economic activity (the prohibition
of usury, for
example) nor by encouraging, let alone inventing, the pursuit of wealth, but
by defining and sanctioning an ethic of everyday behavior that conduced to
economic success.
Calvinistic Protestantism, said Weber, did this initially by affirming the
doctrine of predestination: One could not gain salvation by faith or deeds;
that question hadbeen decided for everyone from the beginning of time, and
nothing could alter ones fate.
Such a belief could easily have encouraged a fatalisticattitude. If behavior
and faith make nodifference, why not live it up? Whybe good? Because, according t o Calvinism, goodness was a plausible sign
of election. Anyone
could be chosen, but it was only reasonable
to suppose that mostof the chosen would show by their character and ways the quality of their souls and
the nature of their destiny. This implicit reassurance was a powerful incentive to proper thoughts and behavior. And while hard belief in predestination did not last more than a generation or two (it
is not the kind of dogma
that has lasting appeal), it was eventually converted into a secular code of
behavior: hard work, honesty, seriousness, the thrifty
use of money and
time.
All of these values help business and capital accumulation, but Weber
stressed that the good Calvinist did not aim at riches. (He might easily believe, however, that honest riches are a sign of divine favor.) Europe did not
have to wait for the Protestant Reformation find
to people who wanted tobe
rich. Webers point is that Protestantism produced a new kind of businessman, one whoaimed to live and work a certainway. It was theway that mattered, and riches were at best a by-product. It was only much later that the
Protestant ethic degenerated into a set of maxims for material success and
smug, smarmy sermons on the virtues
of wealth.
The Weber thesis gaverise to all manner of rebuttal. The samekind of controversy has swirled around the derivative thesis of the sociologist Robert K.
Merton, who argued that there was a direct link between Protestantism and
the rise of modern science. Indeed, it is fair to say that most historians today
I2
MATTERS
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would look upon theWeber thesis as implausible and unacceptable: It had its
moment and it is gone.
I do notagree. Not on the empirical level, where records show thatProtestant merchants and manufacturers played a leading role in trade, banking,
and industry. Nor on the theoretical. The heart of the matter lay indeed in
the making of a new man-rational,
ordered, diligent, productive. These
virtues, while not new, were hardly commonplace. Protestantism generalized
them among its adherents, who judged one another by conformity to these
standards.
Two special characteristicsof the Protestants reflect and confirm thislink.
The first wasstress on instruction and literacy, for girls as well as boys. This
was a by-product of Bible reading. Good Protestants were expected to read
the Holy Scriptures for themselves. (By way of contrast, Catholics were catechized but did not have to read, and they were explicitly discouraged from
reading the Bible.) The result: greater literacy from generation to generation.
Literate mothers matter.
The second was the importance accordedto time. Here we have what the
sociologist would call unobtrusive evidence: the making and buying
of
clocks and watches. Even in Catholic areas such as France and Bavaria, most
clock makers were Protestant; and the useof these instruments of time measurement and theirdiffusion to rural areas was far more advanced Britain
in
and Holland than in Catholic countries. Nothing testifies so much as time
sensibility to the urbanizationof rural society, with all that implies for diffusion of values and tastes.
This is not to say that Webers ideal type of capitalist could be found
only among Calvinists and their later sectarian avatars. People of all faiths
and no faith can grow up tobe rational, diligent, orderly, productive, clean,
and humorless. Nor do they have to be businessmen. One can show and
profit by these qualities in all walks of life. Webers argument, as I see it, is
that in sixteenth-to eighteenth-century northern Europe, religion encouraged
the appearance in numbers of a personality type that had been exceptional
and adventitious before and that this type created a new economy
(a new
mode of production) thatwe know as (industrial)capitalism.
History tells us that the most successful cures for poverty come from
within. Foreign aid can help but, like windfall wealth, can also hurt. It can
discourage effort and plant a crippling sense of incapacity. As the African
saying has it,The hand thatreceives is always under the hand thatgives. No,
what countsis work, thrift, honesty, patience, tenacity. To people haunted
by
misery and hunger, that may add up toselfish indifference. Butat bottom, no
empowerment is so effective as self-empowerment.
Makes
Culture
Almost
Difference
All the
13
Some of this may sound like a collectionof clichb-the sort of lessons one
used to learn at home and in school when parents and teachers thought they
had a mission to rear and elevate their children. Today, we condescend
to
such verities, dismiss them as platitudes. But why should wisdom
be obsolete? To be sure, we are living in a dessert age. We want things to be sweet;
too many of us work to live and live to be happy. Nothing wrong with that;
it just does not promotehigh productivity. You want high productivity? Then
you should live to work andget happiness as a by-product.
Not easy. The people who live to work are asmall and fortunate elite. But
it is an elite open to newcomers, self-selected, the kind of people who accentuate the positive. In this world, the optimists have it, not because they are
always right but because they are positive. Even when wrong, they are positive, and that is the way of achievement, correction, improvement, and success. Educated, eyes-open optimism pays; pessimismcan only offer the empty
consolation of being right.
2
Attitudes, Values, Beliefs,
and the Microeconomics
of Prosperity
M I C H A E L E .P O R T E R
Attitudes, values, and beliefs that are sometimes collectively referred

to as
culture play an unquestioned role in human behavior and progress. This
is
evident to me from working in nations, states, regions, inner
cities, and companies at widely varying stages of development. The question is not whether
culture has a role but how to understand this role in the context
of the
broader determinants of prosperity. A large literature has explored the links
between culture and human progress from various
perspectives. In thischapter, I explore a subset of this broader territory-the role
of what might be
termed economic culture in economic progress. Economic culture
is defined as the beliefs, attitudes, and values thatbear on the economic activities
of individuals, organizations, and other institutions.
Although the role of culture in economic progress is unquestioned, interpreting this role in the contextof other influences and isolating the independent influence of culture is challenging. Treatments of the role of culture in
economic prosperity tend to focus on generic cultural attributes that are
deemed desirable, such as hard work, initiative, belief in the value of education, as well as factors drawn frommacroeconomics, such as a propensity to
Attitudes,
Values,
Beliefs,
Microeconomics
the
and
o f Prosperity
save and invest. These are surely relevant to prosperity, but none of these
generic attributesis unambiguously correlated with economic progress. Hard
work is important, but just as important is what guides and directs the type
of work done. Initiative is important, but notall initiative is productive. Education is crucial, but so is the type of education sought and what the education is used to accomplish. Saving is good, but only if the savings are
deployed in productive ways.
Indeed, the same cultural attribute can have vastly different implications
for economic progress in different societies,
or even in the same society
at different times. Frugality, for example, served Japan well until its recent prolonged recession; now it is an obstacle to recovery. The investigation of a
wide range of successful nations, including the United States, Japan, Italy,
Hong Kong, Singapore, Chile, and Costa Rica, reveals wide and subtle cultural differences associated with improving economic circumstancesthat further belie a simple connection between culture and prosperity.
In this chapter, I will explore the complex links between economic culture
and economic progress. The focus here is on prosperity at the level of geographic units such as nationsor states. Although I will often refer
to nations,
in many cases the relevant economic unit can be smaller. There are striking
differences in economic prosperity among states and regions within virtually
every nation, and someof the reasons maybe related to attitudes, values, and
beliefs. Many of the same influences can also be applied to thinking about
the economic prosperity of groups that cut across geographic units such as,
for example, ethnic Chinese.
I will begin by outlining some of the recent learning about the sources of
economic prosperity in the modern global economy. I will then draw some
tentative links between these sources and the types
of beliefs, values, and attitudes that reinforce prosperity. Doing so confronts an important question:
Why might unproductive cultures arise and persist? I examine this question
in the context of prevailing economic thinking and circumstances over the
last century. The chapter concludes with some reflections on the scope for
cultural differences in the modern economy and on how the influence
of culture may be shifting in light of the economic convergence triggered by the
globalization of markets.
THE SOURCES OF PROSPERITY:
COMPARATIVE VERSUS COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE
A nations prosperity,or standardof living, is determined by the productivity

with which it uses its human, capital, and natural resources. Productivity
sets
the level of sustainable wages and returns to capital, the principal determi-
IS
16
MATTERS
CULTURE
nants of national income per citizen. Productivity, then,is the basis of competitiveness. It depends on the value of products and services produced by
firms in a nation, deriving, for example, from quality and uniqueness, as well
as on the efficiency with which they are produced. The central issue in economic development is how to create the conditions for rapid and sustained
productivity growth.
In the modern global economy, productivity depends less on what industries a nations firms compete in than on how they compete-that is to say,
the nature of their operations and strategies. In
todays global economy, firms
in virtually any industry can become more productive through more sophisticated strategies and investments in modern technologies. Modern technologiesoffermajoropportunitiesforupgradinginfieldsasdisparateas
agriculture, small package delivery, or semiconductor production. Similarly,
there is scope for more advanced strategies in virtually any field, involving
customer segmentation, differentiated products and services, and tailored
value chains to deliver products to customers.
Hence, the concept of industrial targeting, in which government seeks to
favor winning industries, is flawed. There is no good or bad industry in the
new productivity paradigm. Rather, the question is whether firms are able
to employ the best methods, assemble the best
skills, and utilize the best techniques to dowhatever they do at anincreasingly higher level of productivity.
It does not matter if a country has an agricultural economy, a service economy, or a manufacturing economy. What does matteris a countrys abilityto
organize itself effectively around the premise that productivity determines
prosperity for the individuals of that country.
In the productivity paradigm, traditional distinctions between foreign and
domestic firms also lose meaning. Prosperity in a nation
is a reflection of
what both domestic and foreign firms choose to do in that nation. Domestic
firms that produce low-quality productsusing unsophisticated methods hold
back national productivity, whereas foreign firms that bring in new technology and advanced methods will boost productivity and local wages. Traditional distinctions between local and traded industries, and the tendency to
focus policy attention only on the traded industries, also become problematic. Local industries affect the cost
of living for citizens and the costof doing
business for traded industries. Neglecting them, as in the case of Japan, creates serious disadvantages.
The productivity paradigm as the basis for prosperity represents a radical
shift from previous conceptions of the sources of wealth. A hundred or even
fifty years ago, prosperity in a nation was widely seen as resulting from the
possession of nztural resources such as land,minerals, or a pool of labor, giving the country acomparative advantage relative to other countries with less
Attitudes,
Values,
Beliefs,
Microeconomics
and
the
of Prosperity
favorable endowments. In the modern global economy, however, firms can

access resources from any location cheaply and efficiently, making resources
themselves less valuable. The real value of resources is falling, evidenced by
the steadily declining real prices of commodities over the past century. Similarly, cheap labor is ubiquitous, so that possessing a labor pool is not in and
of itself a source of advantage. With rapidly declining transportation and
communication costs, even favorable geographic location relative
to markets
or trade routes is less of a source of advantage today than it wasin the past.
A firm inHong Kong or Chile, despite great distancesfrom markets, canstill
be a major trading partner of the United States or Europe.
Comparative advantage has given way as the basis of wealth to competitive advantage residing in superior productivity in assembling resources to
create valuable products and services. Countries that improve their standard
of living are those in which firms are becoming more productive through the
development of more sophisticated sources of competitive advantage based
on knowledge, investment, insight, and innovation.
Ironically, in todays global economy it is the local things that are increasingly important and decisive in determining why a particular firm
is more
competitive and productive than one based elsewhere. This is because rapid
flows of trade, capital, and information nullify the advantages that a firm
gets from inputs sourced from elsewhere. If a firm in one country buys its
machines from Germany, so can its competitor. If a firm sources capitalfrom
abroad, so can its competitor. If a firm buys raw materials fromAustralia, so
can its competitor. All these approaches may be necessary, but they have essentially been neutralized as competitive advantages in todays global economy. The remaining sources of competitive advantage are increasingly local,
including special supplier or customer relationships, unique insights about
market needs gleaned from local customers or partners, special
access to
technology and knowledge from other local institutions, or production flexibility resulting from the use of a nearby supplier.
THE MICROECONOMIC
FOUNDATIONS OF PROSPERITY
Since many of the external sources of advantage for a nations firms have
been nullified by globalization, potential internal sources of advantage must
be cultivated if a country wishes to upgrade its economy and create prosperity for its citizens. Attentionis frequently focusedon the importanceof building a sound macroeconomic, political, and legal environment. However,
macroeconomic conditions, while necessary, are not sufficient
to ensure a
prosperous economy. Indeed, there is less and less discretion about macro-
I7
18
CULTURE MATTERS
economic policies. Unless they are sound, the nation is punished by international capital markets.
Prosperity ultimately depends on improving the microeconomic foundations of competition. The microeconomic foundationsof productivity rest on
two interrelated areas: the sophisticationof company operations and strategy
and the quality of the microeconomic business environment. Unless companies operating in a nation become more productive, an economy cannot become more productive. Yet the sophistication with which companies compete
is strongly influenced by the quality of the national business environment in
which they operate. The business environment has much
to dowith the types
of strategies that arefeasible and the efficiency with which firmscan operate.
For example, operational efficiency is unattainable if regulatory red tape is
onerous, logistics are unreliable, or firms cannot get timely supplies of components or high-quality service for their production machines.
Capturing the nature of the business environment at the microeconomic
level is challenging, giventhe myriad of locational influences on productivity.
In The Competitive Advantage of Nations, I modeled the effect of location
on competition via four interrelated influences: factor (input) conditions, the
local context for strategy and rivalry, local demand conditions, and the
strength of related and supporting industries. These form the microeconomic
business environment in which a nations firms compete and from which they
draw their sources of competitive advantage. Economic development is the
long-term process of building this array of interdependent microeconomic
capabilities and incentives to support more advanced formsof competition.
Factor conditions refer to the nature and extent of the inputs that firms
can draw upon to produce goods orservices, including such things as labor,
capital, roads, airports and other transportation and communication infrastructure, and natural resources. Factor inputs can be arrayed from basic
(e.g., cheap labor, basic roads) to advanced (e.g., multi-modal systems of
transportation, high-speed data communication infrastructure, specialized
personnel with advanced degrees). The quantityof the inputs is not nearly as
important as their quality and specialization. For example, if a countrys infrastructure is tailored to the field in which that country competes, productivity will increase. Similarly, pools of untrained labor are not as valuable as
a specially trained workforce with the skills to produce differentiated products and to operate production processes that are more advanced and productive. In general, successful economic development requires sustained
improvements in the quality and specializationof a nations inputs.
The quality of local demand is a second critical determinant of a countrys
microeconomic competitiveness. A demanding customer is a powerful tool
for raising productivity. The pressures that the local customer places on a
Attitudes,
Values,
Beliefs,
and Microeconomics
the
of Prosperity
firm, on anindustry, and on the natureof competition within local industries

tend to raise productivityby enhancing the quality and value
of the products,
thereby improving the likelihood that those products will succeed in export
markets. Demanding customers educate local firms about how
to improve
products and services and force themto upgrade these products and services
in a way that will translate directly into higher value for customers and
higher prices. On the other hand, if local demand is unsophisticated and a
firm is simply imitating products developed elsewhere, productivity and international market prices willsuffer.
The shoe industry in Italy is a good illustration of the importance of demanding clients. Italian women try on dozens of pairs of shoes before makingapurchase.Theycarefullyscrutinizethequality
of leatherand
workmanship, the shape and size of the heel, the comfort, the fashion, and
other qualities. Shoe manufacturers able to survive and prosper in such a local laboratory can feel confident that shoes that are successful in Italy are
likely to be successful when exported globally.
The context forfirm strategy and rivalry refers
to therules, incentives, and
norms governing the type and intensity
of localrivalry.Less-developed
economies tend to have little local rivalry. Moving to an advanced economy
requires that vigorous local rivalry develop and shift in character from minimizing costs and imitation to process efficiency and, ultimately, to innovation and differentiation. Healthy rivalry among local firms is fundamental to
rapidly increasing productivity. If a firm cannot compete at home, it cannot
compete abroad. It will never be nimble and improve rapidly enough if it
does not face intense local competition from locally based
rivals, Anti-monopoly legislation and policies that support entrepreneurship and new business development are examples of tools that a nation can
use to foster
healthy local rivalry.
The final determinant of the strength of a countrys microeconomic business environment is the extent and quality of local suppliers and related industries. Mid-level and advanced development depends on the formation of
clusters. A clusteris a geographically concentrated network of industry competitors and their many related and supporting industries and institutions.
Examples of strong clusters are Silicon Valley, Wall Street, and Hollywood.
In fact, there are Hollywoods and SiliconValleys all over the world, in virtually every advanced economyand in virtually every kindof industry. Clusters
are an old phenomenon but one that appears to be increasingly important.
The agglomeration of competitors, suppliers, and related businesses and institutions all in the same location occurs and persists because this form of organization is more productive than one that tries to assemble inputs and
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ideas from disparate locations in different parts of the world; also, it supports faster improvement and innovation.
Governments role inthe productivity paradigmis different and more indirect than in other conceptions of competitiveness. Government responsibilities begin with creating a stable and predictable macroeconomic, political,
and legal environment in which firms can make the long-term strategic
choices required to boost productivity. Beyond this, government must ensure
that high-quality factors (inputs) areavailable to firms (e.g., educated human
resources, efficient physical infrastructure); establish overall rules and incentives governing competition that encourage productivity growth; facilitate
and encourage cluster development; and develop and implement a positive,
distinctive, and long-term economic upgrading program for the nation that
mobilizes government, business, institutions, and citizens. Government and
other institutions such as universities, standards agencies, and industry
groups must work together to ensure that the business environment fosters
rising productivity.
In the productivity paradigm, facilitating cluster development and upgrading is an increasingly important role for both government and the private
sector.This approachcontrastssharplywiththehistoricalapproach
of industrial policy in which desirable industries or sectors were targeted for
development by government. Industrial policy focused on domestic companies and was based on intervention by government in competition through
protectionist policies, industry promotion, and subsidies. Decisions were
highly centralized at the nationallevel, reminiscent of central planning.
The cluster concept is very different. It restson the notions thatall clusters
can contribute to a nations prosperity, that both domestic and foreign companies enhance productivity, and that cross-industry linkages and complementarities are essential sources of competitive advantage that need to be
encouraged. Although industrial targeting aims to distort competition in a
nations favor, cluster-based policiesseek to enhance competition by fostering
externalities and removing constraints to productivity and productivity
growth. The cluster approach is also more decentralized, encouraging initiative at the state andlocal levels.
ECONOMIC POLICY AND THE
PROCESS OF DEVELOPMENT
Economic progress is a process of successive upgrading, in which the elements of a nations business environment evolve to support increasingly sophisticated and productive ways of competing. The imperatives from a
business environment perspective vary as a nation moves from low income
to
Attitudes, Values,
Beliefs,
Microeconomics
the
and
Prosperity
of
middle income to high income. In early-stage development, firms compete

primarily on cheap labor and natural resources. The fundamental challenge
is to escape from that situation. To move beyond poverty, a nation must upgrade its inputs, institutions, and skills to allow more sophisticated forms of
competition, resulting in increased productivity. This requires such things as
upgrading human capital, improving infrastructure, opening to trade and
foreign investment, protecting intellectual property, raising regulatory standards to pressure improvements in product quality and environmental impact, and expanding regional integration.
To achieve the middle level of development, a country must focus increasingly on improving the qualityof its human resources, enhancing the sophistication of homedemand,developingitsscientificbase,ensuringlocal
rivalry, and developing an advanced information and communications infrastructure. Government must work with the private sector, universities, and
other institutions to build strong clusters. To reach the level of an advanced
economy, the country must develop innovative capacity at the world technological frontier, on which firms can draw to create unique goods and
services
that can command high wages for citizens. This involves steps such as increasing investment in basic research, developing a growing pool
of scientific
and technical personnel, and expanding theavailability of venture capital.
BUILDING PROSPERITY:
IMPLICATIONS FOR BELIEFS, ATTITUDES, AND BEHAVIOR
This discussion of the microeconomic foundations of competitiveness reveals

some of the beliefs, attitudes, and values that support and promote prosperity. Prevailing beliefs about the basis for prosperity itself are among the most
central. The attitudes of individuals and organizations and their economic
behavior are strongly affected by what they perceive to be the way to win.
Perhaps the most basicbelief undergirding successful economic development
is acceptance that prosperity depends on productivity, not on control of resources, scale, government favors, or military power, and that the productivity paradigm is good for society. Without such beliefs, rent seeking and
monopoly seeking will be the dominant behavior, a pathology still afflicting
many developing countries.
Another basic belief that supports prosperity is that the potential for
wealth is limitless because itis based on ideas and insights, not fixed because
of scarce resources. Wealth canbe expanded for many by improving productivity. This belief supports productivity-enhancing steps inall parts of society
that will expand the pie. In contrast, theview that wealth is fixed and not related to effort leads various groups to struggle over the distribution of the
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pie, a preoccupation that almost inevitably saps productivity. This zero-sum

worldview is central to the theory of a universal peasant ~ u l t u r e . ~
The productivity paradigm gives rise to a whole series of supportive attitudes and values: Innovation is good, competition is good, accountability is
good, high regulatory standards are good, investment in capabilities and
technology is a necessity, employees are assets, membership in a cluster is a
competitive advantage, collaboration with suppliers and customers is beneficial, connectivity and networks are essential, education and skills are essential to support more productive work, and wages should not rise unless
productivity rises, among others. These can be contrasted with unproductive
attitudes and values: Monopolyis good, power determines rewards, rigid hierarchy is needed to maintain control, and self-contahed family relationships
should determine partnership.
In any nation, there will be differences among groups and individuals in
the beliefs and attitudes they hold. One can alsoview economic development
as partly shaped by the tug-of-war between productivity-enhancing aspects
of economic culture in a nation and productivity-eroding aspects of culture.
Especially heavy weightis attached to thebeliefs and attitudes of government
leaders and the business elites. A strong government may impose a productive economic culture,at least for a time, but acceptance by business interests
must develop or economic progress willbe slow and reversible. Sustained development will requirethat productivebeliefs, attitudes, and values spreadto
workers, institutions such as churches and universities, and ultimately
to civil
society. Otherwise, political support willbe lacking for productivity-enhancing policies that challenge vested interests.
My work hasrevealed that one of the greatest challenges in enhancing national competitiveness in many respects is to modify economic culture. The
policies and behaviors that support competitiveness are becoming better
known-the problem
is getting true acceptance of them. A big part of the
task in economic development, then, is educational because many citizens
and even their leaders lack a framework for understanding the modern economy, seeing their role in it, or perceiving their stake in the behavior of other
groups in society. Lack of understanding often allows special interests to
block changes that will widely benefit the nations prosperity.
WHY DO NATIONS HAVE UNPRODUCTIVE CULTURES?
There is growing consensus about what determines prosperity and about the
beliefs, attitudes, and values that foster
economic progress. Why, then, do we
have unproductive economic cultures? Why do these persist in certain soci-
Attitudes,
Values,
Beliefs,
Microeconomics
the
and
Prosperity
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23
eties? Do individuals and companies knowingly act in ways that are counter
to their economic self-interest?
The answers to these questions are complex and present a fruitful area
both for research and for practice. Clearly, individual and societal interests
can diverge, and short-term horizons can lead to choices and behaviors that
work against long-term interests. Let me suggest a number of broader answers, however. First, economic culture in a nation is strongly influenced by
the prevailing ideasor paradigm about theeconomy. There have been numerous alternative theories of prosperity in this century, ranging from central
planning to import substitution to factor accumulation.These ideas become
deeply rooted in societiesvia the educational system, the influence
of intellectuals and government leaders, and countless other means. At the same time,
there is often ignorance about the international economy and its workings,
even among political leaders. Ignorance creates a vacuum that allows these
beliefs to persist.
What people believe about what it takes tobe prosperous has much to do
with how they behave. And beliefs become reflected in attitudes and values.
Unproductive economic culture, then, often arises
less from deeply embedded
societal traits than ignorance or the misfortune of being guided by flawed
theories. The acceptance of flawed theories is sometimes a matter of pure ideology, but sometimes it is a convenience related to desired modes of political
control. Military regimes often like import substitution and self-sufficiency
policies, for example, because they reinforce their power and control over
citizens. Nations that are able to avoid flawed ideas, for whatever reason,
have benefited in termsof economic prosperity.
Second, economic culture appears to be heavily derived from the past and
present microeconomic context. True, individuals mayact in ways that might
hurt the collective interests of the society or national self-interest. But in my
experience it is rare thatindividuals knowingly act in unproductive ways that
are counter to their individual or company self-interest. The role of cultural
attributes, then, is difficult to decouple from the influence of the overall business environment and asocietys institutions. The way people behave in soa
ciety has much to do with the signals and the incentives that are created in
the economic system in which they live.
For example, one often hears complaints about workers in developing
countries as having a poor work ethic. But what if there is no reward for
hard work? What if there is no advancement even if one works hard?A nations work ethic cannot be understood independently of the overall system
of incentives in the economy. Similarly, companies in developing countries often behave opportunistically anddo not planbased on longtime horizons. In
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fact, this short-term behavior often can

be rational in an environment in
which government policies are unstable and unpredictable. Rent seeking by
companies, similarly, is usually associated with a political system that rewards it.
National characteristics ascribed to culture, then, often have economic
roots. Good examples are Japans lifetime employment system and its high
savings rate. Lifetime employment was far from the norm in
pre-World
War I1 Japan and was originally instituted to control labor strife in the
early post-World War I1 period. High savingsis widely recognized as owing
much to the memory of wartime deprivation and its aftermath, coupled
with relatively early retirement, a poorly developed pension system, and exorbitant costs of home ownership requiring substantial capital accumulation.
Thus it is difficult to disentangle culturally derived behaviors from behaviors that have been enhanced or encouraged by the economic system. History, in this sense, places a strong imprint on economic culture, both from
experiences during good times and those during badtimes. This dependence of culture on circumstance is supported by the success of people from
poor countries who have moved to a different economic system. The case of
some El Salvadorans in the United States who have achieved remarkable success is one of many examples.
Third, social policy choices can have a strong influence on economic Culture because they influence the economic context.A good example is policies
toward the social safety net. These directly affect attitudes
toward work, personal savings behavior, and willingness to invest in self-education while they
indirectly influence many other aspects of a nations economic policies. Indeed, economic and social policies are inextricably intertwined.
Much economic culture, then, is learned directly or indirectly from the
economy. Exceptions include those beliefs, attitudes, and values derived not
from self-interest or economic interest at all but from purely social or moral
choices. Societal attitudes toward older citizens, norms for personal interaction, and religious teachings are examples of social/moral attitudes and Values that can shapeeconomic culture independently. Such attitudes and values
also have a large role in establishing a nations social policy priorities. Even
social and moral choices, however, can bear the imprintof past economic circumstances and learning. Religion and philosophy may well reinforce productive-or unproductive-economic culture.
These arguments, taken together, suggest great caution in dismissing the
economic prospects of any society becauseof culture: Country X is not successful because workers are lazyand companies are corrupt. Whatif the society learned different economic beliefs and instituted a different economic
Attitudes,
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Beliefs,
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25
system? Similarly, it is dangerous today, in a global economy with access to

advanced technology and knowledge, to rely solelyon sweeping explanations
for prosperity such as geography, climate,
or religion.
All this suggests that economic culture is sticky and hard to change, but
perhaps not as sticky asis sometimes supposed. Especially those beliefs, attitudes, and values that are unproductive canbe changed if they are no longer
reinforced by prevailing beliefs or by the contextual reality faced by citizens
and companies. To be sure, there will be ignorance, suspicion, and inertia before giving up what has been learned. However, the experience of the recent
decade suggests that nations can modify economic culture rapidly under the
right circumstance^.^ There are reasons to suspect, which I will discuss, that
the pace of potential change maybe increasing.
GLOBAL CONVERGENCE AROUND
THE CULTURE OF PRODUCTIVITY
Historically, world political and economic circumstances offered scope for

wide variations in economic culture.As noted, there have been widelydiffering economic models that have, in some cases, been pursued in nations for
many decades. The persistence of these disparate models, with their resulting
imprint on economic actors, reflected the then prevailing circumstances.The
international economy was farless globalized over the past seventyto eighty
years, so that national economies were less exposed to international competition. Protectionist policies in many countries created an even more self-contained world. Economies could continue unproductive policies and behaviors
for decades, even if productivity was not improving. Military force and
geopolitics distorted trade patterns, sending more false messages about economic prosperity. The protectionism of the developing world, inturn, taught
poorer nations thatthey had to sell natural resources and cheap labor to Europe and the United States, stunting the upgrading
of their economies.
Global politics, shaped by the Cold War, further insulated nations from the
need for economic change. Large amounts of foreign aid went into developing countries, propping up ineffective leaders and obscuring disastrous economic policies.
The persistence of unproductive economic cultures was reinforcedby limits of knowledge and limits on theability of poorer countries to improve. Citizens were often isolatedand not exposed to alternate
behaviors. The pace of
technological change was slow enough that the costs of technological backwardness or late adoption were not as dramatic as they today,
are
which furtherperpetuatedbadpolicies.Therewasrelativelyslowdiffusion
of
economic and managerial knowledge and much less foreign investment. In-
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ternational dissemination of business knowledge was far more costly

and less
effective than today. Performance measurement and benchmarking across
countries was rare. Old, flawed ideas aboutprosperity, economic policy, and
management survived and in some cases were actively promoted. With many
different economic models being implemented, cultural factors could play a
large role in the approaches chosen and in the degree
of a nations success.
Today, however, weconfront a radically different economic context. Complacency and tolerance for slow-paced development have given way to an
overwhelming sense of urgency to meet the imperatives of the global economy. Theories of development at odds with the productivity paradigm have
been discredited, unable to cope with open competition or to contend with
the rapid pace of technological and managerial improvement. Differences of
opinion about the bases of economic prosperity and the appropriate policy
choices are narrowing. Knowledge about the elements
of productive economic culture is being rapidly disseminated. Citizens are more exposed to
successful behaviors elsewhere. There is, then, an increasing convergence of
opinion around theglobe about what it takes to
be prosperous.
This growing convergence around the productivity paradigm is creating
strong pressures on countries that fail to internalize it. Economic policies and
behaviors are being increasingly measured and compared across countries.
Financial markets penalize countries without sound policies; foreign investment dries up if nations do not provide a productive business environment;
workers lose their jobsif they lack a goodwork ethic. Political leadersare increasingly accountableto wider economic forces, evenif not tolocal citizens.
The rapid advancement of technology is also raising the cost of being isolated from, or not embracing, international practices, thus amplifying these
pressures.
The result is that many nations are striving, with differing degrees of success, to embrace the productivity culture. Take Central America. Centuries
of
nationalistic, inward-looking policies in most
of the countries have given
way to a process of opening and economic integration through coordinating
transportation infrastructure, harmonizing customs practices, and many
other steps. All the Central American countries are movingto embrace competition and productivity. The forces of globalization have, led these small
countries to puttheir nationalistic interests aside andto make large strides in
changing long-standing practices.
At the same time that globalizationprovides a powerful discipline on unproductive behaviors; it is rewarding productive aspects of economic culture
with unprecedented flows of capital, investment, technology, and economic
opportunity. The same global economy is also enabling stunning rates of
progress in those nations willing to embrace it. Knowledge and technology
Attitudes,
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Beliefs,
Microeconomics
and
the
Prosperity
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27
have become accessibleand available as never before. Modern technology allows goods to be transported efficiently for long distances and commerce to
be carried on efficiently in disparate climates. When caught in the comparative advantage mind-set, countries are limited
by their endowment. In a
world in which productivity, initiative, and learning are the determinants of
prosperity, developing countries have unprecedented opportunities
to enhance wealth.
Indeed, the forces inthe new economy areso strong that itis no overstatement to suggest that economic culture is no longer a matter of choice. The
question is, Will a country voluntarily embrace a productive economic culture by changing the oldbeliefs, attitudes, and values that are
impeding prosperity, or will the change eventually be forced upon it? It has become a
question of when and how fast a countrys economic culture will change,
rather than whether itwill change. Although older citizenswho grew up under past economic approaches often
resist change, the generations of younger
managers in their twenties and thirties have often been trained in the new
economic culture, not infrequently at international business schools. Thus
there are also forces for change from within the business
elite in many developing countries.
In the modern economy, which exerts great pressure on societies to adopt
beliefs, attitudes, and values consistent with the productivity paradigm, does
culture today have the same influence in the economic sphere that it had under a different economicorder? Historical accounts ofteninclude rich discussions of the impact of cultural attributes on societies and their development
paths because historically these attributes were persistentand exerted considerable influence on the economic configuration of societies. Yet the convergence of economicideasandthepressures
of theglobalmarkethave
arguably reduced the scope for cultural variables to influence the economic
paths societies choose.
What we are witnessing, in many ways, is the emergence of the core of an
international economic culture that cuts across traditional cultural divides
and will increasingly be shared. A set
of beliefs, attitudes, and values that
hear on the economy will be common, and the clearly unproductive aspects
of culture will fall away under the pressure, and the opportunity,
of the
global economy. An important role for culture in economic prosperity will
remain, but it may well be a more positive one. Those unique aspectsof a society that give rise to unusual needs, skills, values, and modes of work will
become the distinctive aspects of economic culture. These productive aspects
of culture, such as Costa Ricas passion for ecology, Americas convenience
obsession, and Japans passion for games and cartoons, will become critical
sources of hard-to-imitate competitive advantage, resulting in new patterns
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of international specialization, as nations increasingly produce those goods

and services in which their culturegives them a unique advantage.
Thus, although global convergence around the productivity paradigm is
increasing, cultural differences will certainly remain. Globalization will
not
eradicate culture, as some have feared. However, instead
of isolating some
peoples in their economic disadvantage, these cultural differences
can contribute the specialized advantages so important to improving the prosperity
of nations in the global economy. In a global economy in which
so many
things can be easily sourced from anywhere, cultural differences give
that rise
to distinctive products and services should become more celebrated.
3
Notes on a New Sociology of
Economic Development
JEFFREY SACHS
INTRODUCTION: THE GROWTH PUZZLE
The greatest puzzle in economic development is why sustained economic

growth is so hard to achieve. Before 1820, there was essentially no such thing
as sustained economic growth. Angus Maddison (1995) estimates that world
growth of GDP per capita averaged around 0.04 percent per annum from
1500 to 1820. Whereas Western Europe and its colonies in North America
and Oceania had pulled ahead of other regions by 1820, the gap between
Western Europe and the worlds poorest region (sub-Saharan Africa) was
only three to one, according to Maddisons estimates.
All regions of the world experienced arise in per capita income after1820,
with world growth rising to 1.21 percent per year between 1820 and 1992,
but the growth has been very uneven. The two groups of nations already
ahead in 1820, Western Europe and what Maddison terms the Western offshoots (the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand) pulled
ahead still further, and today they constitute most of the developed world.
Among the richest thirty countries in the world as of 1990, twenty-one were
in Western Europeor were Western offshoots.Five were inAsia: Hong Kong,
Japan, Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan. The other four countries include two
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small oil states (Kuwait and United Arab Emirates), Israel, and Chile. These
thirty countries account for about 16 percent of the worlds population. By
the 1990s, the gapbetween the richest region(the Western offshoots) and the
poorest (sub-Saharan Africa) roseto around twenty toone.
Three broad explanations may helpto account for the growth puzzle.
Geography: Certain parts of the world are geographically favored.
Geographical advantages might include access
to key natural
resources, access to the coastline andsea-navigable rivers,
proximity to other successful economies, advantageous conditions for
agriculture, advantageous conditions for human health.
Social Systems: Certain social systems have supported modern
economic growth, whereas others have not. Precapitalist systems
based on serfdom, slavery, inalienable landholdings, and so forth,
tended to frustrate modern economic growth.In this century,
socialism proved to be a disaster for economic well-being and growth
wherever it was attempted. Similarly, colonial rule in the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries wasgenerally adverse to high rates of
economic growth.
Positive Feedback: Positive feedback processes amplified the
advantages of early industrialization, thereby widening the gap
between rich and poor. First, the early European industrializers
exploited the laggard regions through military conquest and colonial
rule. Many of the laggard societies collapsed when they were
challenged militarily or economically by the richer nations. Second,
the technological gap between the advanced and lagging countries
has tended to widen rather than narrow
over time. Technological
innovation operates like a chain reaction in which current
innovations provide the fuel for future breakthroughs.
Neoclassical economic theory does not answer the growthpuzzle because
it neglects the roles of geography, social institutions, and positive feedback
mechanisms. Even the dynamics of innovation have been under-studied until
recently. In neoclassical economics, development is really not much of a
challenge. Market institutions are a given. Countries are assumed to save
and accumulate capital, whereas technology and capitalis assumed to flow
readily across national borders. Since the marginal product of capital is
higher in capital-scarce countries than in capital-rich countries, and since
the technologically lagging countries can import the technologies of the
richer countries, the poorer countries are expected to grow faster than the
rich countries.
on
Notes
a N e w Sociology of Economic
Development
Neoclassical economics therefore has an ingrained optimism about the

prospects for economic convergence-the tendency for the poor country to
grow faster than therich country and to narrow the gap inincome levels. Of
course, classical and neoclassical economists since Adam Smith have recognized that flawed economic institutions may hinder growth, but the optimism of neoclassicaleconomics is sustained by the view thatflawed
economic institutions will be swept away by institutional competition or
through public choice.
Neoclassical economics certainly helps explain variousimportant episodes
of rapid economic growth in the modern period. The rise of the East Asian
economies in recent decades owes muchto the rapid accumulation of capital
and technology in a market-based, capital-scarce region. Similarly, the narrowing of the gap between northern Europe and southern Europe in the
postwar period is clearly related to the convergence mechanisms stressed by
neoclassical economics, again because the assumptions of the neoclassical
framework have applied well in the Western European circumstances. The
main problem is that these convergence mechanisms apply only in specific
circumstances, not as general processes.
This chapter sketches a more extended sociological framework for understanding the uneven nature of world economic growth. I stress that an adequate theory must address physical geography and the evolution of social
institutions, both through internal social change and through the interaction
of societies across national borders.
THE ROLE OF GEOGRAPHY
If social scientists were to spend more time looking at maps, they would be
reminded of the powerful geographical patterns in economic development.
Two basic patterns stand out. First, the temperate regions of the world are
vastly more developed than the tropics. (In the list of the thirty richest countries, only two, Hong Kong and Singapore-accounting for less than 1 percent of the combined population of the richest thirty countries-are in a
tropical zone.) Second, geographically remoteregions-either those far from
the coasts and navigable rivers or mountainous states withhigh internal and
international transport costs-are considerably less developed than societies
on coastal plains or navigable rivers. Landlocked states in general face the
worst problems. They are both distant from the coast and must cross
at least
one political border on the way
to international trade. Although Europe
boasts some rich landlocked economies (especially Austria, Luxembourg,
and Switzerland), those countries have the advantage
of being surrounded by
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rich coastal economies. In other regions of the world, landlocked countries

are almost uniformly poor.
The reasons for the widespread impoverishment in the tropics are complex, but the phenomenon is general, occurring in all parts of the world. We
dont really have a North-South division in the world; instead, we have a
temperate-tropical division.
There are probably three major explanations for the persisting impoverishment of the tropics: agricultural factors, health factors, and factors relating
to the mobilization of scientific resources. Tropical agriculture faces several
problems that lead to reduced productivity of perennial crops in general and
of staple food crops in particular: weak soils and high soil erosion and exhaustion under tropical rain forest conditions; difficulties of water control
and risks of drought in the wet-dry tropics; very high incidence of agricultural and veterinary pests; high rateof food spoilage in storage; and reduced
rates of net photosynthetic potential in regions with warm nighttime temperatures. The result seems to be an intrinsic limit on food productivity in large
regions of the tropics. Exceptions include the alluvial and volcanic
soil regions, such as the Nile Delta and Java, and intermontane
valleys, where
nighttime temperatures are lower. Highly populated tropical highland regions include Central America, the Andes, the Great Lakes
and Rift Valley
regions of East Africa, and the Himalayan foothills.
The burden of infectious disease is similarly higher in the tropics than in
the temperate zones. Most infectious diseases in temperate zones are transmitted directly between humans (e.g., tuberculosis, influenza, pneumonia,
sexually transmitted diseases). In the tropics, there are also major
vectorborne diseases (malaria, yellow
fever,schistosomiasis,trypanosomiasis,
ochocerciasis, Chagas disease, filariasis, among others), in which animals
that flourish in the warm climate, such as flies, mosquitoes, and mollusks,
play the critical role of intermediate hosts.
The combination of poor agricultural productivity and high incidence of
infectious disease has had manifold adverse effects: a high proportion of the
population in agriculture because of the absence of an agricultural surplus;
low degree of urbanization; a high concentration in remote high-altitude regions (e.g., the Andean altiplano and the Great Lakes region of Africa) seeking to escape the problems of the hotter, tropical plains; lowerlife expectancy
and a smaller accumulation of human capital.
A third disability may be associated with the tropics. Temperate regions
have been more populated than tropical regions for at least 2,000 years. On
(1978), the
very rough calculation, using the data in McEvedy and Jones
tropics have had about one-third of the worlds population during the past
two millennia. If productivity growth is related to the size of population and
Notes on a N e w Sociology of Economic Development
33
if productivity advances in one ecological zone do not easily cross into another zone, then the temperate zone might be advantaged by having a higher
share of world population. Both of these assumptions seemrealistic. Productivity growth is spurred by larger demand, and it is facilitated by a larger
supply of potential innovators. Similarly, productivity advances in the temperate zone in areas such as agriculture, health, and construction are unlikely
to be directly applicable to the very different ecological conditions of the
tropics. Thus the higher rate of productivity advance in the temperate zone
might not easily diffuseto the tropics.
From this perspective, commenting on Hong Kong and Singapore, two
small economies in the geographical tropics (though only Singapore is in the
ecological tropics), is worthwhile. These are, indeed, exceptions that help
prove the rule. Both island city-statesare concentrated in manufacturing and
services. They dont have to grapple with low agricultural productivity or
disease-carrying vectors.
Another major dimension of geography is the endowment of mineral resources, especially energy resources and precious minerals (e.g., gold, diamonds). In the nineteenthcentury, when transport costs were still very high
in comparison to today, coal was a sine qua non of heavy industrialization.
The Nordic countries, southern Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East
were disadvantaged in heavy industry relative
to the countriesof the coal belt
that stretches from Britain across the North Sea to Belgium, France, Germany, and Poland and intoRussia. Of course,other regions could developon
the basis of agriculture and light industry, but they could not develop metallurgy, transport, and chemical industries. In the twentieth
century, falling
transport costs and the useof oil, gas, and hydroelectric power for the generation of energy have relaxed this constraint.
Geography is, no doubt, just one part of the puzzle. Several temperatezone regions havenot done well, as leastnot as well as Western Europe, East
Asia (Japan, South Korea, Taiwan), and the Western offshoots. The lagging
temperate-zone regions include North Africa and the Middle East, parts
of
the Southern Hemisphere (Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, and South Africa), and
large parts of Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union that
until recently were under communist rule. To understand these cases, we
need to turn tosocial theory.
SOCIAL SYSTEMS AND ECONOMIC GROWTH
As an empirical matter, economic growth has been related to political, cultural, and economic factors and has been intimately connected with capitalist
social institutions characterizedby a state subjectto the rule of law, a culture
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that supports ahigh degree of social mobility, and economic institutions that
are market based and support an extensive and complex division of labor.
Few societies have displayed this combination of political, cultural, and economic institutions. Moreover, history suggests that there
is no strong tendency for societies to develop such institutions through internal evolution.
Indeed, so powerful are the barriersto evolutionary social change that fundamental institutional change typically results from external shocks rather
than internal evolution. Most important in the past two hundred years have
been the tumultuous interactions between economically advanced and economically lagging societies. These interactions causeprofound social turmoil
in the lagging societies that break the internal social equilibrium. The resulting turmoil may produce a reorientation of social institutions in a way that
supports economic growth. Often, though, the result has been economic collapse and even the loss of sovereignty.
Max Webers monumental sociology was the first to lay out an adequate
description of the social institutions of modern capitalism. Weber drew
ideal type distinctions between precapitalist and capitalist societies. In precapitalist societies, political authority is traditional and arbitrary, unbound
by legal restraints. Social norms support hierarchical distinctions. Major
markets do notexist, and thelesser markets that do are constrained
by social
or legal barriers. In capitalist societies, the stateis bound by the rule of law.
Social mobility is high. And economic exchange is heavily mediated through
market institutions.
Webers sociology was written at the start of the twentieth century. His
field of inquiry was the emergence of capitalism in Western Europe and the
reasons for its absence in other partsof the Old World. It is timely to update
Webers sociology at the beginning of the twenty-first century, asking a somewhat different question: Why did capitalism spread unevenly to other parts
of the world?
Webers comparative institutional analysis provides partof the framework
for such an inquiry. Weber did not, however, deal adequately with three issues. First, he presented relatively static portraits of capitalist and non-capitalist societies, not the principles that govern their social evolution. Second,
he did not deal adequately with intersocietal interactions, including institutional imitation or rejection, colonial rule, and military conflict. Third, he focused on precapitalist and capitalist societies. His sociological maps would
have to be extended to atleast three other broad types of social organization:
colonial rule, socialist society, and collapsed societies. me
Letoffer a brief description of each.
In colonial societies, the essence of politics is exclusionary rule with the
state apparatus controlled by the colonial power, the principal objective be-
Notes on a N e w Sociology of Economic Development
35
ing maintenance of order. Traditional cultural institutions are systematically

undermined in the interests of economic exploitation. Economic institutions
are designed to ensure the terms of trade of the colonizer. Colonial rule was
not a very good school for moderncapitalism.
In socialist societies, politics is dominated by a repressive single-party organization. Traditional culture, especially religion, is suppressed, as are all
private market activity and accumulationof private wealth. With the benefit
of hindsight, we can nowsee clearly that socialism was economically destructive almost everywhere, with the possible exception of a few heavily subsidized remote areas within the Soviet empire.
There is another frequently occurring social condition, which we might
call social collapse, in which social institutions cease functioningand society is thrust into a Hobbesian war of all against all. Recreating any form of
social order is typically very difficult after suchan internal collapse. Since so
much of the developing world has passed through such a state of social collapse, it is worth specifying its main features.
With respect to politics, state authority does notexist or is extremely limited, a condition often accompaniedby violence. Cultural mechanisms of social trust break down, as do the market mechanisms of the economy. Black
markets appear and monetary transactions maybe replaced by barter.
One major goalof a revised sociology wouldbe to explain the movements
of society among these states (precapitalist, capitalist, colonial,socialist, and
collapsed society). Why did some parts
of the world make a relatively
smooth transition to capitalism while others were colonized and still others
collapsed? In which ways did the colonial experience prepare societies for
capitalism, and in which ways did it frustrate the transition even beyond the
colonial period itself? We are not yet in a position to answer these questions.
The next section merely sketches some hypotheses.
PATTERNS IN THE DIFFUSION OF CAPITALISM
Marx and Engels were prescient in understanding the dynamism of the new
capitalist system in Western Europe. They surmised, correctly, that capitalism
would eventually spread to the entire world, based on the superiority of its
economic productivity.
The bourgeoisie,by the rapid improvementof the instruments of production
and the immensely expanded means of communication, draws all nations into
civilization. The cheap pricesof capitalisms commodities are the heavy
artillery
with which it batters down all walls and forces the barbariansto capitulate.
It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of
36
MATTERS
CULTURE
production. It compels them

to introduce civilization into their midst,
that is,
to become bourgeoisthemselves. It creates a world afterits own image.
Yet the process was anything but rapid and smooth. We need a better sociological theory of institutional change if we are to understand this long, frequently bitter, and oftenviolent process. Since we dont have a general theory
of social evolution, or even a mapping of how capitalism did or did notdiffuse from Western Europe to therest of the world, I think itis most useful to
offer some hypotheses,or atleast informed speculation.
Capitalist institutions are generally resisted
by elites of non-capitalist
societies because of the implications of capitalism for increased
social, political, and economic competition. Thus, in virtually every
type of society (precapitalist,socialist, colonial), elite actors try to
frustrate orlimit the institutionalization of the rule of law, the norms
of social mobility, and the introduction of market institutions.
Capitalist reforms are least likely
to progress in highly stratified
societies (e.g., Russia or the OttomanEmpire in the nineteenth
century), since socialelites are better positionedto resist change.
Capitalist reforms tendto be resisted especially fiercelyby political
elites that have a weak claim on their ownlegitimacy. For example,
the fact that nineteenth-century China was ruledby a foreign dynasty
with dubious legitimacy (the Manchus) no doubtraised barriers to
internal institutional change.
Internal reforms in many regions were cut short
by colonial rule. In
general, colonial powers did not carry out market reforms
in the
colonized society, since this would have empowered local
inhabitants
and undermined foreign rule. Thus, the spread of capitalism was
short-circuited by the European capitalist powers themselves, often
for a century or more.
Threatened societies often experienced internal collapse rather than
reform, mainly because the outside threat leads to a financial
crisis
and hence a collapse of political power or because the outside threat
delegitimized the internal rulers,or both.
Internal collapse can be followed by a bewildering array of outcomes,
including chronic chaos ( A la Haiti). Social collapse is often the
occasion of revolutionary change. In the wakeof the financial and
political collapse of the tsarist regime in1917, Lenin was able to
seize and consolidate power despite the absence
of any broad-based
political support. The Soviet system was then spreadthrough military
power into Eastern and Central Europe.
The adoption of capitalist institutions is strongly favored by certain
geographical conditions:
Notes on a New Sociology of Economic Development
37
coastal states rather than hinterland states,

states proximate to other capitalistsocieties,
states on major international trade routes,
regions with fertile agriculture, which in turn supports a highlevel
of urbanization,
Capitalist institutions are favored in societies linkedto world markets
through cultural connections (e.g., a dominant religion or a minority
diaspora with linksto other countries).
Modern capitalism began in the North Atlantic societies, especially England and Holland, after centuries of active trade and development in the
Mediterranean. It was carried naturally to the lands of new settlement in
North America and to Australia and New Zealand. These regions were distinguished by several factors, the most important of which were that they
shared the same temperate zone ecological conditions as Britain and that native populations were sparse, even more
so after decimation by European disease. Within Western Europe, capitalist institutions spread from west
to east,
carried by Napoleons armies, by the Revolution of 1848, and by the example of British industrialization. By 1850, modern capitalism existed in Western Europe and the Western offshoots.
The remainder of the Americas deserves a special word. The Caribbean
was settled as slave societies, mostly for sugar production. It remained colonized, with the important exceptions of Hispaniola (Haiti and the Dominican Republic) until the endof the nineteenth century (in the case
of Cuba) or
the middle of the twentieth century (in the Lesser Antilles and Jamaica).
Most of the region was long characterized by white rule over an impoverished population of former slaves, and environmental degradation dueto exhaustion of the tropical soils.
TheSpanishcoloniesvariedconsiderably.Argentina,Chile,and
Uruguay, in the Southern Hemisphere temperate zone, are most similar to
the lands of new settlement in North America and Oceania. Native populations were sparse. The climate was similarto that of Spain. Although these
countries were politically unstable in the first decades
of independence
(from around 1820 to 1870), by 1870 they had become more or less capitalist societies with formal democratic structures, albeit with extremely unequallanddistribution.IntropicalCentralAmericaandtheAndean
countries, the situation was very different. Most
of these societies had
much larger indigenous Amerindian populations. Societies therefore developedwithinequalitiesandsocialstratificationbetweenEuropean-descended whites and native inhabitants plus imported slaves. These societies
resisted capitalist institutions for much longer, due
no doubt to their extreme inequalities.
38
MATTERS
CULTURE
The fiercest nineteenth-century battles over economic reform were fought

in the Old World, in the great empires of China, Japan, Russia, and the Ottomans. Here the general principles observed earlier seem to be helpful. In
three of the four cases (all but Japan), societies proved to be strongly resistant to capitalist reform, even when fundamentally threatened by Western
European encroachments. Japan alone
experienced a swift capitalist revolution after a coup in 1868. This transformation was favoredby Japans preexisting commercial society; its cultural homogeneity; its coastal orientation,
which allowed export-led growth; and even its coal deposits, which permitted early industrialization. In the other societies, a combination of political
and cultural obstacles frustrated attempts at reform. Politics and culture
worked in the same direction: Social elites resisted reforms that threatened
their favored positions within long-standing social orders.
Almost all of the rest of the world-essentially the Old Worldtropics-fell
under colonial rule. This wasuniformly true in Africa after the spread of quinine opened the way for European settlement and conquest in malarial subSaharan Africa. North Africa, the Indian subcontinent, and Southeast Asia
similarly fell under European rule. Japan colonized Korea and Taiwan, and
Central Asia was absorbed within theRussian empire.
By 1900, there was a discernible if crude tally. Capitalism was prevalent
in Western Europe, the Western offshoots, and, with some qualifications,
the Southern Cone (Argentina,Chile, and Uruguay), and Japan. These countries accounted for approximately one-fifth of the worlds population. The
New World tropics (the Caribbean, Central America, and South America)
were generally highly stratified, white-ruled societies in which much of the
population lacked freedom, education, and social mobility. The Old World
tropics and the Indian subcontinent were colonized by European powers.
The three great empires-the Ottomans, tsarist Russia, and Ching Chinawere all collapsing under the weight of European encroachments, declining
legitimacy at home, and growing fiscal burdens from the external challenges.
Let me jump ahead sixty-five years-past the Bolshevik revolution, two
world wars, and the Great Depression. Socialism had spreadto much of the
world. Decolonization was under way in Africa and was completed in the Indian subcontinent and much of Southeast Asia. I wantto stress that little of
the world, as late as 1965, was capitalist in orientation. Indeed, we could
make the following rough
tally:
capitalist world: Western Europe, Western offshoots, Japan, Korea,
Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore (21 percent of world population);
Notes on a New Sociology of Economic Development
socialist world: Soviet Union, Central and Eastern Europe, North

Korea, China, Cuba (32 perceni of world population);
highly statist and insome cases one-party socialist rule: Argentina,
Chile, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Iran, Mexico, Turkey(23 percent of
world population);
mixed capitalisdnon-capitalist societies with extreme internal
inequalities: tropical Americas, South Africa, Rhodesia(6 percent of
world population);
others: still colonized, traditional, and so on (18 percent of world
population).
The general lesson, in summary, is that most of the world in modern history has been governed by non-capitalist institutions. The process of social
reform was stymied in four ways: by the resistance of traditional Old World
societies (mainly the majorempires-the Ottomans, Russia, and China), by a
period of colonial domination, by the adoption of socialism, and by social
collapse. As late as 1965, only aboutone-fifth of the world could be counted
as operating accordingto capitalist social institutions.
INCREASING RETURNS TO SCALEAS

ANOTHER SOURCE OF WIDENING INEQUALITY
Another likely reason for the growing gap between rich and poor
is that a
major part of the economic development process-technological innovation-is characterized by increasing returns to scale. In theories of endogenousgrowth,newinnovationsareproduced
by thestock of existing
technological blueprints in society. Ideas beget ideas. The dynamics of innovation may be characterized by increasing returns to scale, in which a kind
of chain reaction takes place in response
to an initial stock of ideas. Societies
that have a critical mass of technological ideas may experience a takeoffinto
self-sustaining growth, whereas societies that fall short of that critical mass
may experience continuing stagnation. The rich get richer because existing
ideas are the sourceof new ideas.
There is surely some merit in this view. World science is even more unequally distributed than world income. The high-income regions (Western
Europe, North America, Japan and the NICs, and Oceania) contain around
16 percent of world population and 58 percent of world GDP but account
for around 87 percent of scientific publications andan astounding 99 percent
of all European and U.S. patents.
39
40
CULTURE MATTERS
SOME ECONOMETRIC EVIDENCE ON THE
SOURCES OF ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
There are sixty-one countries in the world with half or more of the population in temperate plus snow climatic zones. Of these, twenty-four countries
were socialist during much of the post-World War I1 period. That leaves
thirty-seven non-socialist temperatehow zone countries. Of those, six are
landlocked outside of Western Europe (Lesotho, Malawi, Nepal, Paraguay,
Zambia, and Zimbabwe). Thus we have thirty-one temperatehow zone
economies that were neither landlocked norsocialist.
Of these thirty-one, all but seven are developed, if we use the threshold of
$10,000 per capita in 1995 purchasing power parity (PPP) adjusted prices.
The seven include four countries in North
Africa and the Middle East
(Lebanon, Morocco, Tunisia, and Turkey), and three Southern Hemisphere
countries (Argentina, South Africa, and Uruguay). These seven countries are
anomalous from a geographical viewpoint. Why have they not achieved economic development? Among culture, politics, economic institutions, which
have been the major culprits?
The tantalizing possibility from a cultural pointof view is that the lagging
development of North Africa and the MiddleEast demonstrates a strong cultural component. Is there evidence here that, controlling for climate and geography, these Islamic countries face deeper internal obstacles
to economic
growth? Note that the cultural
obstacles could be internal (e.g., opposition to
market-based institutions emanating from within society) or they could be
externally imposed (e.g., European discrimination against the region in trade
policies). It is not possible at a macroeconomic level to disentangle such interpretations, assuming that eitheror both is actually correct.
The case for cultural factors in the other three countries is more dubious.
Argentina and Uruguay are largely immigrant countries, sharing the cultural
norms mainly of southern Europe. However, since these countries lagfar behind southern Europe, we should suspect that geography and
politics rather
than culture per se is the predominant explanation of the lagging performance. Indeed, this is made more clear by the fact that Argentina was well
above the incomelevel of Italy as of 1929 ($4,367compared with $3,026 in
1990 PPP adjusted dollars, according to the Maddison data). The shortfall
in Argentinas performance occurred during the past half century
and is
clearly related to changes in domestic politics and economic strategy during
and after the Per6n regime. Uruguays economic development followed
closely upon that of its much larger neighbor. South Africa, finally, must be
viewed mainly through the prism of colonial and racial policies rather than
culture.
Notes on aSociology
New
of Economic
Development
41
What about success stories among the tropical countries? Sadly, there are
precious few. Only one tropical coulltry (Singapore) plus one former colony
now part of China (Hong Kong) rank among the top thirty countries. Suppose we focus our attention on the relative success stories: tropical countries
that have a 1995 per capita income level at $6,000 or above. There are, in
addition to Singapore and Hong Kong, eight such cases (out of a total of
forty-six tropical countries), listed in order of income per capita: Malaysia,
Mauritius, Gabon, Panama, Colombia, Costa Rica, Thailand, and Trinidad
and Tobago. Two of these countries make the list mainly because of oil resources (Gabon and Trinidad and Tobago). Panama
no doubt benefits
mainly from its geographical distinctiveness rather than good government or
culturaladvantages.Themoreinterestinganomaliesthereforeinclude
Malaysia, Mauritius, Colombia, Costa Rica, and Thailand. Again, we should
ask whether culture rather than politics has been decisive in the relatively
strong performance of these countries.
Thailand and Malaysia have benefited strongly from export-led growth in
the past thirty years, disproportionately concentrated among the overseas
Chinese communities in those countries, and the links that the overseas Chinese communities have made with foreign investors from the United States,
Japan, and Europe. More generally, the trade and financial linkages in Asia
among the Chinese diaspora communities (especially Indonesia, Malaysia,
Singapore, and Thailand) and Greater China (Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the
Mainland) may well constitute a case in which cultural factors have contributed to successful development. (As always, there is an important ambiguity about the role that culture may play here. It may involve intrinsic
factors within thebelief systems of the community or it may rather provide a
network of trusted economic connections).It is ironic, of course, that Weberian sociology pointed to China as a case of culturally arrested development
set in contrast to growth under Protestant cultural norms. The evidence of .
the past half century, including Chinas own opening to market forces after
1978, strongly suggests that political factors and poor economic institutions,
rather than culture per se, lie behind the many centuries of Chinas lagging
economic development.
To summarize these points, the great divisions between rich and poor
countries involve geography and politics (especially whether or not the country was socialist in the postwar era). If culture is in fact an important determinant of cross-country experience, it seems
to play a subsidiary roleto these
broader geographical and political/economic dimensions. Nonetheless, there
are indeed some hints of culturally mediated phenomena. Two are most apparent: the under-performance of Islamic societies in North Africa and the
Middle East and the strong performance of tropical countries in East Asia
42
CULTURE MATTERS
that have an important overseas Chinese community. In each case, thereis a

deeper ambiguity of interpretation. Is the cultural signal related to beliefs
within the community or rather to the international relations (and therefore
trade prospects) of the countries in question?
Space limitations preclude a detailed treatment hereof a regression analysis undertaken in 1999 to test these hypotheses. The conclusions: The basic
variables
are
as
expected-economic
policy
affects
growth
rates,
temperatehow zone economies grow faster than tropical countries,regions
with falciparum malaria grow less rapidly than regions without the disease,
and landlocked countries grow moreslowly than countries with a coastline.
The coefficients on Hindu and Muslimsocieties are smalland statistically insignificant. There is, in short, noevidence that Hindu or Muslim populations
achieved lower growth rates, controlling for economic policy variables geor
ography variables.
The same methodology can be used to show that former colonies do not
demonstrate any sign of residual adverse effects of the colonial period in the
sense that growth during 1965-1990 is not strongly affected by colonial status before 1965. Thus, although the colonial period was probably adverse
for economic growth, there is no evidence of a longer-term adverse legacy.
Clearly, though, more careful work should be carried out on that important
question.
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS
This chapter has discussed an approach to thesociology of economic development, including the possible role of cultural institutions in economic performance.Ithasarguedthatmoderneconomicgrowth
is intimately
connected with capitalist institutions and favorable geography. Thereis only
slight evidence that religious categories add explanatory power above those
two broad classes of explanation of economic growth. There is some evidence that the Muslim countries of North Africa and the Middle East have
under-performed over the long term relative
to their favorable geography
(temperate zone, specifically Mediterranean climate, and coastal orientation). However, there is no evidence that such under-performance has continued after 1965, and, at least in the past ten years, several Muslim countries
have sharply outperformed the world average.
The cultural explanations of economic performance may be helpful in
some circumstances, especially in accounting for resistance to capitalist reforms in the nineteenth century, but such explanations should also be tested
against a framework that allowsfor other dimensions of society (geography,
politics, economics) to play their role. Controlling for such variables sharply
on
Notes
aSociology
New
of Economic
Development
reduces the scope for an important independent role

of culture. More
broadly, there is considerable historical work remaining to develop a sound
framework for measuring and studying the evolution of social institutions
and the interactionsof politics, culture, andeconomics in the course of social
change. Equally important, we must better understand therole of cross-border factors in social evolution. The weight of international factors in social
change has been extremely high forat least two centuries, and it is bound to
increase in the future under thepressures of increasing globalization of society, politics, and economics.
REFERENCES
Kornai, Janos. 1992.The Socialist System. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Landes, David. 1998. The Wealthand Poverty of Nations. New York: Norton.
Maddison, Angus. 1995.Monitoring the World Economy,1820-1 992. Paris: Organization for Economic Cooperationand Development.
McEvedy, Colin, and Richard Jones. 1978. Atlas of World Population History. New
York: Penguin.
Weber, Max. 1979. Economy and Society. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Young, Crawford. 1995. The African Colonial State in Comparative Perspective.
New Haven: Yale University Press.
43
4
A Cultural Typology of
M A R I A N 0G R O N D O N A
The process of economic development reaches a crisis when a nation passes

from one stage to the next. It is at that moment when temptations arise. If
the nation manages to resist these temptations, it will achieve development;
otherwise, it will only enjoy ashort period of enrichment.
When the cycle starting with labor and endingin reinvestment has yielded
some fruit and people feel richer, they may be inclined to work less. On the
other hand, consumption may rise at a pace that reduces the surplus, so that
development turns into enrichment. Furthermore, even if the surplus is increased, a nation may decidenot to return it to productive
investment. It may
instead spend it on those priorities to which nations have often surrendered,
such as works that are monuments to
leaders, wars of prestige, utopian plans
of welfare, or outright corruption. Nationsmay also be tempted to preserve
their stage of development through protectionist strategies or policies that
discourage entrepreneurship and investment.
Every time a crucial temptation appears, a countrymay either overcome it
or fall into it. Thus we may also define the processof economic development
as an unending sequence of decisions favorable to investment, competition,
and innovation that are made whenever the temptationto diverge arises.
A nation must transit the momentsof temptation in ways favorableto economic development. It will do so if certain values prevail. Talcott Parsons
A Czdtuml Typology of Economic Development
45
writes that value may be considered an element within a conventional

symbolic systemthat serves as a criterionfor selecting among thealternatives
available in a given situation. Only those nations with a value system favorable to temptation-resisting decisions are capable of sustained, rapid development.
There are two categories of values: intrinsic and instrumental. Intrinsic
values are those we uphold regardlessof the benefits or costs. Patriotism, as a
value, demands sacrifices andis sometimes disadvantageous as far as individual well-being is concerned. Nevertheless, hundreds of millions of people
have died to defend their country throughout the courseof history.
In contrast, a value is instrumental when we support it because it
is directly beneficial to us. Let us assume that a countryis dedicated to economic
growth and to this end emphasizes work, productivity, and investment. If decisions favorable to development only answer toan instrumental value of an
economic nature, such as increased wealth, the countrys effort will decline as
soon as thedegree of wealth is attained.
Why should a nation go on acting as if it were poor once it is rich? The
revolution of economic development occurs when people go on working,
competing, investing, and innovating even when they no longer need
to doso
to be rich. This is only possible when the values pursued, which promote
prosperity, do not vanish as prosperity arrives. Thus the values prevailing at
the crucial moments of decisions leading to economic development must be
intrinsic and not instrumental, since instrumental values are by definition
temporary: Only intrinsic values are inexhaustible. No instrument survives
its utility, but an intrinsic value always calls to us from an ever distant summit.
All economic values are instrumental.We want to have money as a means
to some non-monetary end such as well-being, happiness, freedom, security,
religion, or philanthropy. To make development unending, therefore, the accumulation process must not be suffocated by its own success. This means
that thevalues driving constant investmentcannot be of an economic nature;
otherwise, they would vanish with economic success. When a nationis rich,
something other than the pursuit of wealth must be present in its value system so that the wealth generated never suffices. This non-economic something may be salvation, survival, safety, excellence, prestige,
or even empire:
any value that will always be wanting.
However, the intrinsic values indispensable for sustained development, although non-economic, must not be anti-economic. They must be non-economic and pro-economic at the same time. Being non-economic, they will
not be exhausted by economic success; being pro-economic, they will unceasingly push forward the process of accumulation.
46
MATTERS
CULTURE
The paradox of economic development is that economic values are not

enough to ensure it. Economic development is too important to be entrusted
solely to economic values. The values accepted or neglected by a nation fall
within the cultural field. We may thus say that economic development is a
cultural process.
Values fall within that province of culture we call ethics. The behavior
of someone who acts out of respect for an intrinsic value formerly accepted
at will and later incorporated asan inner imperative is called moral. A person is moral when answering to intrinsic values. If a country achieves economicdevelopmentwhenresponding
to non-economic values that are
nevertheless pro-economic, we can conclude that economicdevelopment is a
moral phenomenon. Without the presence of values favorable to economic
development, temptations will prevail. Temptations are the bearers of shortterm expectations, but economic development is a long-term process. In the
struggle between short and long term, the formerwill win unless a value intervenes in the decisionmaking process. This
is the function of values: to
serve as a bridge between short-term and long-term expectations, decisively
reinforcing distant goals in their otherwise hopeless struggle against instant
gratification.
In Underdevelopment Is a State of Mind,2 Lawrence E. Harrison focuses
on economic development from a cultural pointof view. To illustrate his thesis, Harrison offers bilateral comparisons: Costa Rica and Nicaragua, the
Dominican Republic and Haiti, Barbados and Haiti, Australia and Argentina, the United States and Latin America. The development gap between
each pair is explained by cultural factors, whereas a chapter on Spain and
Spanish America focuseson the cultural similarities and their consequences.
After reading Harrisons book, I felt inclined to venture beyond bilateral
comparisons in orderto produce a cultural typology in which two ideal types
of value systems confront each other: one totally favoring economic
development and the other totally resisting it. Under the theoretical umbrella
of
those two ideal types, Harrisons analysis would provide case studies.
Values can be grouped in a consistent pattern that we may
call a value
system. Real value systems are mixed; pure value systems exist only in the
mind, as ideal types. It is possible to construct two ideal value systems: one
including only valuesthat favor economic development and the other including only values that resist it. A nation is modern as far as it approaches the
former system; it is deemed traditional as far as it approaches the
latter. Neither of these value systems exists in reality, and no nation falls completely
within either of those two value systems. However, some countriesapproach
the extreme favorable to economic development, whereas others approach
the opposite extreme.
A Cultural Typology of Economic Development
47
Real value systemsare moving as well as mixed.If they are moving toward
the favorable value-system pole, they improve a nations chances
of developing. If they move in the opposite direction, they diminish a nations chances
of developing.
This typology embraces twenty factors that are viewed very differently in
cultures that are favorable and those that are resistant
to development. These
differences are intimately linked to the economic performance of the contrasting cultures. In choosing a systemof values closer to either the favorable
or resistant ideal systems, people actually prefer the kind
of economy that
flows from those systems, and that is what they will have. This leads to a
controversial conclusion: In the last analysis, developmentor underdevelopment are not imposed on a society from outside; rather, it is the society itself
that has chosen development or underdevelopment.
TWENTY CONTRASTING CULTURAL FACTORS
Religion
Throughout history, religion has been the richest source of values. It was of
course Max Weber who identified Protestantism, above all its Calvinist
branch, as the root of capitalism. In other words, what initiated economic
development was a religious revolution, one in which the treatment of lifes
winners (the rich) and losers (the poor) was centrally relevant. Weber labeled
the religious (essentially Roman Catholic) current that showed a preference
for the poor over the rich publican, whereas he termed the current that
preferred the rich and successful (essentiallyProtestant) pharisaic.
Where a publican religionis dominant, economic development will be difficult because the poor will feel justified in their poverty, and the rich will be
uncomfortable because theysee themselves as sinners.By contrast, therich in
pharisaic religions celebrate their success as evidence of Gods blessing, and
the poor see their condition as Gods condemnation. Both the rich and the
poor have a strong incentive to improve their condition through accumulation and investment.
In the context of this typology, publican religions promote values that are
resistant to economic development, whereas pharisaic religions promote values that are favorable.
Trust in the Individual

The principal engine of economic development is the work and creativity of
individuals. What induces them to strive and invent is a climate of liberty
48
MATTERS
CULTURE
that leaves them incontrol of their own destiny. If individuals feel that others
are responsible for them, the effort of individuals will ebb.If others tell them
what to think and believe, the consequence is either a lossof motivation and
creativity or a choice between submissionor rebellion. However, neither submission nor rebellion generates development. Submission leaves a society
without innovators, and rebellion diverts energies away from constructive
effort toward resistance, throwing up obstacles and destruction.
To trust the individual, to have faith in the individual, is one of the elements of a value systemthat favors development. In contrast, mistrust of the
individual, reflected in oversight and control,
is typical of societies that resist
development. Implicit in the trusting society is the willingness to accept the
risk that the individual will make choices contrary to the desires of government. If this risk is not accepted and the individual is subjected to a network
of controls, the society loses the essential engine of economic development,
namely, the aspiration of each of us to live and think as we wish, to be who
we are, to transform ourselves into unique beings. Where there are no individuals, only peoples and masses, development does not occur. What
takes place instead is either obedience or uprising.
The Moral Imperative

There are three basic levels of morality. The highest is altruistic and selfdenying-the morality of saints and martyrs. The lowest is criminal-disregard for the rights of others and the law. The intermediate morality is what
Raymond Aron calls a reasonable egoism-the individual engages in neither saintly nor criminal behavior, reasonably seeking his or her own well-being within the limitsof social responsibility and the law.
The highest morality is illustrated by Marxs slogan from each according
to his ability, to each according to his needs and by the Roman Catholic
Churchs insistence on clerical chastity. Neither is consistent with human nature.
In development-favorable cultures, there is widespread compliance with
laws and norms that are not totally exigent and are therefore realizable.
Moral law and social reality virtually coincide. In development-resistant cultures, on the other hand, there are two worlds that are out
of touch with
each other. One is the exalted world of the highest standards and the otheris
the real world of furtive immorality and generalized hypocrisy. The lawis a
remote, utopian ideal that doeslittle more than express what people might in
theory prefer, whereas the real world, effectively out of touch with all law,
operates under the lawof the jungle, thelaw of the cleverest or the strongest,
a world of foxes and lions disguised as lambs.
ATypology
Cultural
of
49
Two Conceptsof Wealth

In societies resistantto development, wealth above all consists of what exists;
in favorable societies, wealth above
all consists of what does not yet exist.In
the underdeveloped world, the principal wealth resides in land and what derives from it. In the developed world, the principal wealth resides in the
promising processes of i n n ~ v a t i o nIn
. ~ the resistant society, real value resides,
for example, in todays computer, whereas the favorable society focuses on
the generation of computers to come.
In the British colonies inNorth America, uninhabited lands were available
to those who would work them. In the Spanish and Portuguese colonies to
the south, all lands were claimed by the Crown. From the outset, wealth belonged to those who held power. Wealth thus did not derive from work but
from the ability to earn and retain the favor
of the king.
Two Viewsof Competition

The necessity of competing to achieve wealth and excellence characterizesthe
societies favorable to development, not only in the economybut elsewhere in
the society. Competition is central to the success of the enterprise, the politician, the intellectual, the professional. In resistant societies, competition
is
condemned as a form of aggression. What is supposed to substitute for it is
solidarity, loyalty, and cooperation. Competition among enterprises
is replaced by corporativism. Politics revolve around the
caudillo, and intellectual
life has to adjust itself to the established dogma. Only in sports is competition accepted.
In resistant societies, negative viewsof competition reflect the legitimation
of envy and utopian equality. Although such societies criticize competition
and praise cooperation, the latter is often less common in them than in
competitive societies. Infact, it canbe argued that competition
is a form of
cooperation in which both competitors benefit from being forcedto dotheir
best, as in sports. Competition nurtures democracy, capitalism, and dissent.
Two Notionsof Justice

In resistant societies, distributive justice is concerned with those who are
alive now-an emphasis on the present that is also reflected in a propensity
to consume rather than tosave. The favorable society is likely to define distributive justice as that which also involves the interests of future generations. In such societies, the propensity to consume is often smaller and the
propensity to save is often greater.
50
MATTERS
CULTURE
The Value of Work

Work is not highly valued in progress-resistant societies, reflecting a philosophical current that goes back to the Greeks. The entrepreneur is suspect
but the manual laborer somewhat less so, since he must work to survive. At
the top of the prestige ladder are the intellectual, the artist, the politician, the
religious leader, the military leader. A similar prestige scale characterized
Christendom until the Reformation. However, as Max Weber observed, the
Reformation, and particularly the Calvinist interpretation of it, inverted the
prestige scale, enshrining thiswork ethic. It is this same inverted value system
that importantly explains the prosperity
of Western Europe and NorthAmerica-and East Asia-and the relative poverty of Latin America and other
Third World areas.
The Role of Heresy

With his thesisof free interpretation of the Bible, Martin Luther was thereligious pioneer of intellectual pluralism at a time when dogmatism dominated
Christendom. The unpardonable crimeat the time was notsin but heresy. Yet
the questioning mindis the one thatcreates innovation, and innovationis the
engine of economic development. Orthodox societies, including the former
Soviet Union, suppress innovation. The collapse of the Soviet Union had
more than a little to do withits insistence on Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy.
To Educate Is Not to Brainwash

We have seen that value systems favorable to development nurture the formation of individuals who are innovators, heretics. Educationis the principal
instrument of this nurturing. However, this must be a form
of education that
helps the individual discover his or her own truths, not one that dictates
what the truth is. In value systems resistant to development, education is a
process that transmits dogma, producing conformists and
followers.
The Importance of Utility

The developed world eschews unverifiable theory and prefers to pursue that
which is practically verifiable and useful. The intellectual traditions in Latin
America focus more on grand cosmovisions, which put it at adevelopmental
disadvantage. Ariel, the phenomenally popular book by the Uruguayan JosC
Enrique Rod6 that appeared in 1900, draws the distinction by using two
characters from Shakespeares The Tempest: the comely, spiritual Ariel, rep-
ATypology
Cultural
of Economic
Development
resenting Latin America, and the ugly, calculating Caliban, representing the
United States. However, it was the North Americans, not the Latin Americans, who opened the path to economicdevelopment. At the same time, we
must note that utilitarianismsuffers from a troubling lacuna, symbolized by
the horrors of Nazi Germany andSoviet Russia.
The Lesser Virtues

Advanced societies esteem a series of lesser virtues that are virtually irrelevant in traditional cultures: a job well done, tidiness, courtesy, punctuality.
These contribute to both efficiency and harmoniousness in human relations.
They are unimportant in a resistant culture, partly because they impinge on
the assertion of the individuals wishes and partly because they are overwhelmed by the great traditional virtues
of love, justice, courage, and magnanimity. Nevertheless, the lesser virtuesare characteristic of societies in which
people are more respectful of the needs of others.
Time Focus
There are four categoriesof time: the past, the present,the immediate future,
and a distant future that merges into the afterlife. The time focus of the advanced societies is the future that is within reach; it is the only time frame
that can be controlled or planned for. The characteristic of traditional cultures is the exaltation of the past. To the extent that the traditional culture
does focus on the future, itis on the distant, eschatological future.
Rationality
The modern world is characterized by its emphasis on rationality. The rational person derives satisfaction at the end of the day from achievement, and
progress is the consequence of a vast sum of small achievements. The premodern culture, by contrast, emphasizes grandiose projects-pyramids,
the
Aswan Dam, revolutions. Progress-resistant countries are littered with unfinished monuments, roads, industries, and hotels. But its not important. Tomorrow a new dream willarise.
Authority
In rational societies, power resides in the law. When the supremacy of the
law has been established, the society functions according to the rationality
attributed to the cosmos-natural law-by the philosophers of modernity
51
MATTERS
52
CULTURE
(e.g., Locke, Hume, Kant). In resistant societies, the authority of the prince,
the caudillo, or the stateis similar to that of an irascible, unpredictable God.
People are not expected to adapt themselves to the known, logical, and permanent dictates of the law; rather, they must attempt to divine the arbitrary
will of those with power; thus the inherent instability
of such societies.
Worldview
In a culture favorable to development, the world is seen as a setting for action. The world awaits the person who wants to do something to changeit.
In a culture resistant to development, the world is perceived as a vast entity
in which irresistible forces manifest themselves. These forces bear various
names: God, the devil, a powerful international conspiracy, capitalism, imperialism, Marxism, Zionism. The principal preoccupation of those in a resistant culture is to save themselves, often through utopian crusades. The
individual in the resistant society thus tends to oscillate between fanaticism
and cynicism.
Life View
In the progressive culture, life is something that I will make happen-I am
the protagonist. In the resistant culture, life is something that happens to
me-I must be resigned to it.
Salvation from or in the World

In the resistant conception, the goal is to save oneself from the world. According to traditional Catholicism, the world is a vale of tears. To save
oneself from it is to resist temptations in a quest for the other world, the
world after death. But for the puritan Protestants, salvation in the other
world depends on the success of the individuals efforts to transform this
world. The symbol of the Catholic vision is the monk; that of the Protestant
vision, the entrepreneur.
Two Utopias
Both progress-prone and progress-resistant cultures embrace a certain kind
of utopianism. In the progressive culture, the world progresses slowly toward
a distant utopia through thecreativity and effort of individuals. In the resistant culture, the individual seeks an early utopia that is beyond reach. The
consequence is again a kind of fanaticism-or cynicism. The latter utopi-
ATypology
Cultural
of Economic Development
53
anism is suggested by the visit of Pope John Paul I1 to India, where he insisted
that all Indians have a rightto a dignified life free of poverty and at thesame
time rejected birth control.
The Nature of Optimism

In the resistant culture, the optimist is the person who expects that luck, the
gods, or the powerful will favor himor her. In the culture favorableto development, the optimist is the person who is resolved to do whatever is necessary to assure a satisfactory destiny, convinced that what heor she does will
make the difference.
Two Visionsof Democracy

The resistant culture is the heir of the tradition of absolutism, even when it
takes the form of Rousseauistic popular democracy, which admits no legal
limits or institutional controls. In this vision, the absolute powerof the king
accrues to the people. The liberal, constitutional democracy of John Locke,
Baron de Montesquieu, James Madison, and the Argentine Juan Bautista
Alberdi characterizes the vision of democracy in the progressive culture. Political power is dispersed among different sectors and the law is supreme.
CONCLUDING THOUGHTS
This list of twenty cultural factors, which contrasts a value system favorable
to economic development and one that is resistant, is not definitive. It could
be amplified by additional contrasts or it could be reduced, seeking only the
most important differences. My criterion has been practicality, and these
twenty factors are sufficient to obtain some idea of the contrasting visions
from which the two value systems flow.
It is important to be mindful that neither the favorable nor the resistant exists in the real world. Rather, as Weber would
say, they are ideal
types, or mental constrztcts, that facilitate analysis because they offer two
poles of reference that help us locate and evaluate a givensociety. The closer
a society is to the favorable ideal, the more likely it is to achieve sustained
economic development. Conversely, a society that
is close to the resistant
pole will be less likely to achieve sustained economic development.
An imaginary line runs between the resistant and favorable poles on which
the real societies can be located. That location is not permanent, however,
because no value system is static. There is continuous, albeit slow, movement
on the line away from one pole and toward the other. Like two illuminated
54
MATTERS
CULTURE
ports that call to the navigator from different directions, the ideal types permit a diagnosis of the course and speed of a given nation toward or away
from economic development. Should it come close
to thereefs of the resistant
pole, it is time to consider what needs to be done to change the course and
speed of the cultures value systemto enhance the prospects of arriving
at the
opposite pole. Similarly, it should be possible to identify those values that,
even if not wholly favorableto development, must be conserved because they
preserve the identity of the society-so long as they do not block access to
development.
Whether in the West or the East, development did not really exist before
the seventeenth century. This was equally true for Europe and China, for preColumbian America and India. Productivity levels were low around the
world because the societies wereall agrarian. There were good years and bad
years, mostly the result of climatic factors, above all rainfall, but there was
no sustained economic development. The reason was cultural. Values that
encouraged capital accumulation with a view to increased production and
productivity did not exist. The value systems were anti-economic, emphasizing, for example, the salvation of the soul of the Egyptian pharaohs, art and
philosophy in ancient Greece, the legal and military organization of the Roman Empire, mastery of traditional philosophy and literature in China, and
the renunciation of the world and the quest for eternal salvation-often
through war-of the Middle Ages in Europe.
It was the Protestant Reformation that first produced economic development in northern Europe and North America. Until the Reformation, the
leaders of Europe were France, Spain (allied with Catholic Austria), the
north of Italy (the cradleof the Renaissance), and the Vatican. The Protestant
cultural revolution changedall that as heretofore second-ranknations-Holland, Switzerland, Great Britain, the Scandinavian countries, Prussia, and the
former British colonies inNorth America-took over the reins of leadership.
Economic development, in the form of the industrial revolution, brought
wealth, prestige, and military power to the new leaders. Furthermore, the
non-Protestant nations had to face the reality that their failure to pursue economic development would lead to their domination by the Protestant countries. They had to choose between Protestant hegemony and their traditional
resistant values-their identity.
The responses varied across a spectrum from one non-Protestant country
to another. At one extreme was Puerto Rico, which sold its Latin soul for the
mess of pottage of economic development. At theother extreme is the Islamic
fundamentalism of Iran, which ardently rejects Western-style developmentas
a threat to an ancestral identity whose preservation
is the chief goal of those
in power.
A
Typology
Cultural
of Development
Economic
55
Other nations pursued courses between these two extremes. Imperial

China disdained the power of the West until it was subjugated by it. The
Maoist communist revolution can be interpreted as Chinas first real accommodation to the West, albeit in the form of the Western heresy of Marxism.
Deng took a further step in the direction
of the West by opening the doorsto
capitalism, albeit within an authoritarianpolitical system.
Following the visit of the U.S. naval squadron to Tokyo
Bay in 1853, when
it became apparent to the Japanese that they could not defend themselves
against the West, Japans new Meiji leadership staked out a different course:
They would accept Western technology but not Western culture. Japan then
built a formidable war machine that defeated China and Russia but itself
was
destroyed in World War11. That trauma wasfollowed by an imposed democratization that has since taken root and a refocusing of Japanese priorities
away from warfare toward industry and commerce-with astonishing results. A similar path has been followed by South Korea and Taiwan, both
former Japanese colonies.
The Catholic countries of Europe have accepted the logicof economic development, particularly since World War 11. As the rate of growth in the
Protestant countries has declined, in part because
of the waning of the earlier
religious energy, France, Belgium, Italy, Ireland, and Spain have crossed the
frontier that separatesdevelopment from underdevelopment.
Is Catholic Latin America following the same path? In the 1980s-the
lost decade-Latin America experienced
an economic crisis precipitated
by its resistant values. It remains to be seen whether Latin America will in
fact achievethe lofty heights of economic development, democratization, and
modernization.
5
Culture and the Behavior of
Elites in Latin America
C A R L O SA L B E R T 0M O N T A N E R
Latin America has long sufferedfrom manic-depressive cycles with respect to

its political perceptions. Thereare times when, in a stateof euphoria, the media announces that the continent has
finally reached adulthood. We hear that
Colombia is a new Asian tiger, that Costa Rica is a surprising SiliconValley in the heart of Latin America, or that Brazil is going to challenge the
hemispheric hegemony of the United States. Then come the institutional catastrophes: coup attempts, hyperinflation, the failure of stabilization programs, and capital flight. We lapse into a state of gloomy depression, and
foreign capital starts to flee. Depression then turns to despair, and we give
up, concluding, Theres no way out! Perhaps we should
begin to talk
about a cyclothymic culture.
As the twentieth century ends, we are in the depressive phaseof the cycle.
It is true that for the first time in history, all Latin American governments,
with the exception of that in Cuba, have been elected freely. But there is a
justified fear that our democracy is more fragile than we have appreciated.
The same authoritarian Venezuelan lieutenant colonel, Hugo Chavez, who
tried to take powerby force in 1992, leaving four hundred dead in his wake,
governs the country today with strong popular support.
Ecuador, whose parliament had to get rid of a president, Abdala Bucaram, accused of going
mad, is now in the middle of an economic crisis that no one knows how to
Behavior
the
Culture
and
of Elites in America
Latin
57
solve. The Brazilian currency losthalf of its purchasing power in three weeks
and, with this devaluation, the popularity of President Fernando Henrique
Cardoso also plummeted. Mexico at times appears to be moving toward
modern democracy, at times away from it. Colombia has been transformed
into a series of urban islands precariously connected by airplanes. At least
three armies impose their law: the central government army, the communist
guerrilla army, and the paramilitary groups army. At the same time but in
varying degrees, these three armiesare penetrated by a fourth power, the narcotraffickers, who buy consciences and weapons and control the actions of
hundreds of hired killers. In Paraguay, the vice president, Luis Maria Argaiia,
an enemy of the president, R a d Cubas, is murdered by his opponents; the
president is then dismissed and escapes together with the putschist General
Oviedo. But why belabor thepoint? We are simply in a depressivecycle.
THE ENDLESS DISCUSSION
The debate over the causesof Latin Americas failures relative to the success
of Canada and the United States has been a recurrent focus of Latin American intellectuals, and there are enough explanations to suit anyone. At the
beginning of the nineteenth century, they put the blame
on the Iberian inheritance with its intolerant Catholicism. Around the middleof that century, the
shortcomings were attributedto the demographic weightof an apparentlyindolent native population opposedto progress. At the beginning of the twentieth century, and particularly with the Mexican Revolution in
1910, it was
said that poverty and underdevelopment were caused by an unfair distribution of wealth, above all by the peasants lack of access to land. Starting in
the twenties and accelerating thereafter, exploitative imperialism, mainly
Yankee imperialism, was blamed. During the thirties and forties, the view
was espoused that Latin Americas weakness was a consequence of the weakness of its governments, a condition that could only be corrected by turning
them into engines of the economy, converting public officials into businessmen.
All these diagnoses and proposals reached the crisis point in the eightiesthe lost decade-when experience demonstrated that all of the arguments
were false, although each may have contained a grainof truth. The rapid development of countries that were poorer than theLatin American average in
the 1950s-South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan-proved
that Latin America
had fundamentally misunderstood the keys to prosperity. This inevitably led
us back to the eternal question, Who
is responsible?
One possible, although partial, answer is the elites: the groups thatlead
and manage the principal sectors of a society; those who act in the name of
58
MATTERS
CULTURE
certain values, attitudes, and ideologies which, in the Latin American case,
do not favor collective progress. There is no single individual whois responsible; rather, a largenumber-a majority-of
those who occupy leading positions in public and private organizations and institutions are the ones chiefly
responsible for perpetuating poverty.
The idea that traditional culturalvalues and attitudes are a major obstacle
to progress has gradually been gaining momentum. But howdo these values
and attitudes reflect themselves in the way people behave? In this chapter, I
will suggest how they express themselves in the behaviorof six elite groups:
the politicians, the military, businessmen, clergy, intellectuals, and leftist
groups. I want to
stress at the outset that isitnot fair toblame only theelites,
who are, in largemeasure, a reflection of the broader society. If their behavior strayed radically from the norms
of the broader society, they wouldbe rejected. Moreover, within the elites, there are exceptions-people who are
striving to change the traditional patterns of behavior that have brought us
to where we are.
THE POLITICIANS
Let us begin with the politicians, since they are the most visible. Politicians
are so discredited in Latin America today that to be elected, they have to
demonstrate thatthey are not politicians at all but something quite different:
military officers, beauty queens, technocrats-anything
at all except politicians. Why is this so? Largely because public sectorcorruption with impunity
is the norm throughout theregion. It expresses itself in three forms:
The classical form, in which government officials receive
commissions and bribes for each project thatis won or each
regulation that is violated to benefit someone.
The indirect form, in which the corruption
benefits someone with
whom you areallied, although you yourself may remain clean.
Examples are Joaquin Balaguer in the Dominican Republicand Josi
Maria Velasco Ibarra in Ecuador.
The clientelism form-the most costly-in which public funds are
used to buy large groups of voters.
It is as if politicians were not public servants elected to obey the laws but
rather autocrats who measure theirprestige by the laws they are ableto violate. That is where the definition of true power resides in LatinAmerica-in
the ability to operate above thelaw.
Behavior
the
Culture
and
Latin
59
The truth is that a large percentage of Latin Americans either nurture or

tolerate relationships in which personal loyaltyis rewarded and merit is substantially ignored. In Latin American culture loyalty rarely extends beyond
the circle of friends and family. Thus the public sector is profoundly mistrusted and the notion of the common good is very weak. Consequently it is
inevitable that the most successful politicians are those who payoff their allies and sympathizers.
To be sure, these noxious practices are not exclusive to Latin America.
What is alarming, however, is the frequency and intensity with which they occur in the region and, above all, the peoples indifference to these practices
and the impunity with which wrongdoers engage in them. It is as if Latin
Americans did not realize that they themselves are ultimately paying for the
corruption and inefficiency that contribute so powerfully to the regions
poverty.
THE MILITARY
The military is comparably culpable for LatinAmericas problems. In the advanced democracies, the roleof the military is to protect the nation from foreign threats. In Latin America, the military has often assigneditself the task
of saving the nation from thefailures of the politicians, either imposing military visions of social justice by force or simply taking over the government
and maintaining public order. In both cases, it has behaved like
an occupying
force in its own country.
It has been said that the behavior of the Latin American military reflects
the influence of la madre patria, Spain. But the historical truth is that when
the Latin American republics were established between 1810 and 1821, the
putsches in Spain were exceptional and had little success. The time of the insurrections on the Iberian Peninsula coincided with similar phenomena in
Latin America but did not precede them. Rather, the Latin American military
caudillos, who provoked innumerable civil wars during the nineteenth century and prolonged dictatorships during the twentieth, seemed
to be basically
a Latin American historical phenomenon linked to an authoritarian mentality that had norespect for either the lawor democratic values.
Although Latin America has known military dictatorships since the first
days of independence early in the nineteenth century, in the thirties and forties the military, led by Getulio Vargas in Brazil and Juan Doming0 Per6n in
Argentina, concluded that it was designated by Providence to undertake a
new mission: to promote state-driven economic development, including the
assignment of senior military officers as managers of state enterprises. The
60
MATTERS
CULTURE
basic idea, which never really worked in practice, was that in nations with
weak and chaotic institutions, as in Latin America, only the armed forces
had the size, tradition, and discipline necessary to create large-scale modern
industries capable of competing in the complex industrial worldof the twentieth century.
This military involvement in state enterprises has cost Latin America
dearly. Like politicians, military officers werecorrupt. Their protected enterprises distorted the market, were often excessive in scale, and were vastly
overstaffed. The result was inefficiency and obsolescence.
Although there have been a few civilian caudillos-for example, Hip6lito
Yrigoyen in Argentinaand Arnulfo Arias in Panama-the caudillo tradition in
Latin America has been dominated by the military. Rafael Leonidas Trujillo,
Juan Per6n, Anastasio Somoza, Alfred0 Stroessner, Manuel Antonio Noriega,
and Fidel Castro are good examples. The caudillo
is more than a simple dictator who exercises power by force. He is a leader to whom many citizens, and
practically the entire power structure, delegatefull power of decision and control of the instruments of repression. The result is not only antithetical to democratic development but is also extremely costly in an economic sense and
inevitably causes confusionof public and private property.
THE BUSINESSMEN
One of the greatest political ironies in Latin Americais the frequent accusation that savage capitalismis to blame for the povertyof the 50 percent of
all Latin Americans who are distressingly poor and survive in shacks with
dirt floors and tin
roofs. The real tragedyin Latin Americais that capitalis in
limited supply, and a large part of what there is, is not in the hands of real
entrepreneurs committed to risk and innovation but in those
of cautious
speculators who prefer to invest their money in real estate and expect that
the vegetative growth of their nations will cause their properties to appreciate in value. These are not modern capitalists but rather landowners in the
feudal tradition.
But even worse is the mercantilist businessman who seeks his fortune
through political influence rather than marketCompetition. The mercantilist
shares his profits with corrupt politicians in a vicious circle that produces
both increasing profits and corruption. He often buys tariff protection,
which results in higher prices and lower quality for the consumer. He may
buy a monopoly position under the pretext
of the national interest or
economies of scale. O r he may also buy tax privileges, subsidies, preferential
interest rates, loans that
dont have to be repaid, and preferential ratesfor the
purchase of foreign exchange.
Behavior
the
Culture
and
America
Latin
of in
Elites
61
These kinds of cozy relationships between mercantilist, businessmen and

corrupt politicians have been particularly shocking with respectto the sale of
foreign currency at prime rates to import capital goods for local industries,
In countries in which a dollar may have three different exchange rates, those
with the appropriate relations canbuy dollars at a prime rate, sell a portion
of them secretly at a highly favorable rate, pay for the imported goodsat yet
another rate, and see their profits double as if by magic. And the richer they
get, the more corrupt they become.
These harmful practices are not exclusive to Latin America, but the frequency and intensity with which this kind
of corruption occurs in Latin
America is very troubling, as is the indifference and impunity that accompanies it. The people dont seem to realize that the money acquired by mercantilist businessmen through the sale and purchase of influence comes either
directly or indirectly from the pockets of taxpayers. Nor do they appreciate
that this type of illicit activity increases the overall cost of transactions, substantially raising the cost of goods and services, further impoverishing the
poor.
The fact is, with few exceptions, Latin America has never experienced the
modern capitalism combined with political democracythat has produced the
high levels of human well-being that are found in the prosperous nations of
the West and increasingly in East Asia.
THE CLERGY
It is painful to have to include the clergy among the elites who are responsible for the misery of the masses. It is painful because those responsible are
not all the clergy, only those who preach against market economics and justify anti-democratic actions. It is also painful because those clergy who behave this way do so out of altruism. But it is a quest for social justice that
condemns the poorto permanent poverty-a true case of the road tohell being paved with good intentions.
In broad outline, since the second
half of the nineteenth century the
Catholic Church has lost most of its property, other than schools, hospitals,
and a few mass media operations. Once the greatest landlord of the Western
world, the Church long ago lost
its major property role in the economic area.
This does not mean that its influence has diminished, however, especially in
moral terms. The Church can still legitimate or discredit given valuesand attitudes with profound impact on the prospects
of the people.
But when the Latin American bishops conference or the theologians of
liberation or the Jesuits condemn savage neoliberalism, they are propagating an absurdity. Neoliberalism is nothing more than an array of ad-
62
MATTERS
CULTURE
justment measures designed to alleviate the economic crisis in the region: reductions in government spending, reductions in the public sector payroll, privatization of state enterprises, a balanced budget, and a careful control
of
monetary emission-pure common sense in the wake of an interventionist
model that failed to produce widespread progress for the peoples of Latin
America during more than half a century. These measures, so strongly criticized by the clergy, are no different from the ones the rich European countries demand of each other to qualify for the Euro. It is simply a matter of
implementing a sensible economicpolicy.
The bishops, and particularly the liberation theologyclergy, are even more
destructivewhentheyattacktheprofitmotive,competition,andconsumerism. They lament the poverty of the poor, but at the same time promote the idea that owning property
is sinful, as is the conduct of people who
succeed in the economy by dint of hard work, saving, and creativity. They
preach attitudes that are contraryto the psychology of success.
For some liberation theology priests, poverty is inevitable, if for no other
reason than the alleged imperialism
of the rich countries, above all the
United States. And the only way out of poverty is armed violence, which has
been urged-and never publicly renounced-by
liberation theology leader
Gustavo G~tiCrrez.~
THE INTELLECTUALS
There are few cultures in which intellectuals have as much visibility as in

Latin America. This may come from the strong French influence on Latin
American intellectuals; in France the same thing happens. Once a writer or
an artist has achieved fame, he or she becomes an expert on all subjects, including war in theBalkans, the virtues of in vitro fertilization, and the disaster that is caused by privatizing state enterprises.
This characteristic of our culture wouldhave no major significance, except
for its destructive consequences. This todo1ogy-the faculty to talk about
everything without modesty or knowledge-practiced by
our intellectuals
with great enthusiasm has a price: Everything they state and repeat turns into
a key element in the creation of a Latin American cosmovision. This characteristic of our culture has seriousconsequences, since a significant numberof
Latin American intellectuals are anti-West, anti-Yankee, and anti-market.
Moreover, no matter that their views are contrary to the experience of the
twenty nations that are the most developed and prosperous on our planet,
they nonetheless profoundly influence the Latin American cosmovision. The
effect of their pronouncements is to weaken democracy and impede the development of a reasonable confidence in the future. If the intellectuals pro-
Behavior
the
Culture
and
Latin
63
mote the vision of a frightening revolutionary dawn, we should not be surprised by the flight of capital nor the senseof impermanence that attaches to
our political and economic systems.
Furthermore, what many intellectuals announce in newspapers, books and
magazines, radio and television is repeated in the majorityof Latin American
universities. Most public Latin American universitiesand many private ones,
with some exceptions, are archaic deposits of old Marxist ideas about economy and society. They continue to stress the danger of multinational investments, the damages caused by globalization, and the intrinsic wickedness of
an economic model that leaves the allotment of resources to market forces.
This message explains the close relationship between the lessons young
scholars receive in the university and their link with subversive groups such
asSender0LuminosoinPeru,TupamarosinUruguay,Movimientode
Izquierda Revolucionaria in Venezuela, the "19 in Colombia, or Sub-ComandanteMarcos'spicturesquelyhoodedZapatistasinMexico.The
weapons these young men carried with them into the jungle, mountains, and
city streets were loaded in the lecture rooms
of the universities.
The Latin American university-with few and honorable exceptions-has
failed as an independent creative center and has been a source
of tireless repetition of worn-out and dustyideas. But even more startling is the absence of
a close relationship between what the students are taught and the real needs
of society. It is as if the university were resentfully rebelling against a social
model that it detests without any concern for the preparation
of qualified
professionals who could contribute to real progress. The failure of our universities is particularly appalling when we recognize that the majority
of universities in Latin America are financed by the national budget-from the
contribution of all taxpayers-in spite of the fact that80 or 90 percent of the
students belong to the middle and upper classes. This means that resources
are transferred from those who haveless to those who have more. This sacrifice then helps sustain absurd ideas that contribute to perpetuating the misery of the poorest.
THE
LEFT
The final elite group consists of both labor unions that oppose market economics and private property and that peculiar Latin American category, the
revolutionaries.
To be sure, there is a responsible labor movement dedicated to the legitimate interests and rights of workers. Sadly, this is often not the one that is
dominant. The unions that burden Latin American societies are those that
oppose privatization of state enterprises that have been losing money for
64
MATTERS
CULTURE
decades while providing defective or nonexistent goods and services; the

teacher unions that strikebecause they are opposed to their members taking
standard competence tests; and the corrupt union aristocrats who lootretirement funds and health programs for their personal benefit.
Some unions fail to appreciate that the modern,competitive enterprise has
t o be flexible, capable of adapting to changing circumstances. When the
unions make it difficultor costly to change staffing levels or when they establish rigid contracts, enterprises lose competitiveness and unemployment increasesbecausebusinessesarereluctant
to hirepeopleunderthese
conditions.
The revolutionaries are radicals who are convinced that they possess letters of marque that permit them toviolate laws in the name of social justice.
Some limit themselvesto preaching revolution without taking any additional
action to further the revolutionary cause. Others, for whom Che Guevara is
often the patron saint, think that it is legitimate to engage in political violence without considering the consequences of their acts. For them, the state
is illegitimate and must be attacked at all costs. Their vehicles are student
strikes, street riots, sabotage, kidnapping, bombs, and guerrilla attacks.
What have the actions of this indomitable tribe of revolutionaries cost the
Latin American nations? The amount is incalculable, but the revolutionary
left has to be one of the principal causes of the regions underdevelopment,
not just because of its destruction of existing wealth but because it has also
interrupted that long and fragile cycle of savings, investment, profit, and
reinvestment that produces the wealthof nations.
In conclusion, itis obvious thatthese elite groups do not exhaust the
list of
those who have kept Latin America in a state of poverty and injustice. But
they figure very prominently. My hope is that by describing the behavioral
expression of the traditional cultural values that have shaped them, by spotlighting that behavior, and by refuting their arguments, I may contribute to a
process of change in Latin America in which these elites become forces for
human progress, above all for those most in need: a Latin America where the
dispossessed can reasonably hope for a life of freedom, dignity, justice, and
prosperity.
6
Does Africa Needa Cultural
Adjustment Program?
D A N I E LE T O U N G A - M A N G U E L L E
The indicators of Africas plight are staggering:

Life expectancy is below sixty years in twenty-eight countries.Life
expectancy is below fifty years in eighteen countries.Life expectancy
in Sierra Leoneis just thirty-seven years.
About half of the more than 600 million people south of the Sahara
live in poverty.
Half or more of the adult populations of at least thirteen countries
are illiterate.
Half or more of women are illiterate in at least eighteen countries.
Children under five die at rates in excessof 100 per 1,000 in at least
twenty-eight countries. In Sierra Leone, the rateis 335 per 1,000.
The population growth rateis 2.7 percent annually, almost four times
the rate in the high-income countries.
Among countries supplying such datato rhe World Bank (not all do),
some of the most inequitable income distribution patterns are found
in Africa. The most affluent 10 percent account for about 47 percent
of income in Kenya, South Africa,and Zimbabwe, and about43
percent in Guinea-Bissau, Senegal,and Sierra Leone.
66
MATTERS
CULTURE
And, obviously, democratic institutions are commonly weak or

nonexistent throughout Africa.
Even in the face of all this human suffering, I cannot resist citing the story
of an African government minister carried away in his remarks: When we
gained power, the country was at theedge of the abyss; since, we havetaken
a great step forward!
I cite this anecdote in partbecause we can no longer reasonably blame the
colonial powers for our condition. Several decades have passed during which
we have been in substantial control of our own destiny. Yet today Africa is
more dependent thanever on rich countries, more vulnerable than any other
continent to maneuvers aimed at giving with one hand and takingback with
the other. The World Bank, usually a great source of funds and advice, is itself short of ideas. Other than structural adjustment programs (whose efficiency has not yet been proven), there is silence.
The need to question our culture, theAfrican culture, is evident. But what
characterizes the African culture? Is this culture compatible with the demands faced by individuals and nations at the beginning of the twenty-first
century? If not, what cultural reorientationis necessary so that in the concert
of nations we are no longer playing outof tune? Does Africa need a cultural
adjustment program?
WHAT WE ARE
It is never easy to speak of ones self, to reveal ones soul, especially when, as
is the case with the African soul, many different facets present themselves.
There are at least three dangers in this. The first is idealizing and embellishing in order to appear tobe more than we are. Thesecond is to say nothing
that exposes the mysterious halo that people from all cultures wear. Finally,
who has the qualities and qualifications to speak in the name of us all? An
African proverb is correct in saying thathe who looks from the bottomof a
well sees only aportion of the sky.
As legitimate as these concerns are, they should not prevent us from looking in the mirror. Do we dare to look ourselves in the face, even if it is difficult to recognize ourselves?
Fifty Africas, a Single Culture?

We long ago got into the habit of referring to Africa as a diverse entity,
and no one is surprised, in light of the balkanization of the continent, to
see works with titles like Les 45 Afriques? or Les 50 Afriques3 because, as
Need
Africa
Does
a Cultural
Adjustment
Program?
J. Ki-Zerbo noted in the introduction to the latter, Africa is palpable. It is

also profitable.
The descriptions of African diversity are enoughto make an Olympic skating champion dizzy. First, to better oppose them, we like to emphasize white
Africa and black Africa: one north of the Sahara and the other south of it.
But how do we then classify the Republic of South Africa and Zimbabwe,
each with a powerful white minority? Behind the racial screen, one quickly
discovers a far more important source of diversity-language. There is an
Arabophone Africa, an Anglophone Africa, a Francophone Africa, a Lusophone Africa, aHispanophone Africa, not tomention the scoresof languages
that have no relation to thelanguages of the European colonizers.
What can be said if we then dare to transcend frontiers resulting from
colonial dismembering of real nationalities such as the Yorubas, Hausas,
Peuls, Malinkes, to mention only a few, that straddle several states? To continue the census of African diversity based on the color of the epidermis or
on language could lead to several thousand Africas! Next, we must confront
the anthropologists. Are there as many cultures in Africa as there are tribes?
Does their number coincide with the states as outlined by the colonial powers? Does generalizing about African culture as a whole make any sense at
all?
I believe that it does. The diversity-the vast number of subcultures-is
undeniable. But there is a foundation of shared values, attitudes, and institutions that binds together the nations south of the Sahara, and in many respects those to the north as well. The situation is analogous to that of Great
Britain: Despite its Scottish, Welsh, and Northern Irish subcultures, no one
would question the existenceof a British culture.
The existence of this common base is so real that some anthropologists
question whether imported religions-Christianity and
Islam-have really
affected African ancestral beliefs or given Africans different ways of understanding the contemporary societies in which they live. Modern political
power has often assumed the characteristics of traditional religious ritual
powers; divination and witchcraft have even made their way into courthouses. Everywhere on the continent, the bond between religion and society
remains strong. As Felix Houphouet-Boigny, the late president of the Ivory
Coast, told us (and he, as a Roman Catholic, knew what he was talking
about): From African archbishops to the most insignificant Catholic, from
the great witch doctor to the most insignificant Moslem, from the pastor to
the most insignificant Protestant, we haveall had an animist past.4
African culture is not easily grasped. It refuses to be packaged and resists
attempts at systemization. The followingtypology is not wholly satisfactory,
but it gives some sense of what the African cultural realityis.
67
68
MATTERS
CULTURE
Hierarchical Distance
In the view of D. Bollinger and G. Hofstede, hierarchical distance-the degree of verticality-is generally substantial in tropical and Mediterranean
climates, where the survival of the group and its growth dependless on human
intervention than it does in cold and temperate countrie~.~
In countries with
substantial hierarchical distances, the society tendsto be static andpolitically
centralized. What little national wealth exists is concentrated in the hands of
an elite. The generations pass without significant change in mind-set.is It
the
reverse in countries with short hierarchical distances. Technological changes
happen because the group needs technical progress; the political systemis decentralized and based on a representativesystem; the national wealth, which
is substantial, is widely distributed; and children learn things that their parents never knew.
In the more horizontal cultures, subordinates believe that their superiors
are people just like themselves,that all people have equal rights,and that law
takes precedence over strength. This leads to the belief that the best way to
change a social systemis to redistribute power. In the more vertical societies,
Africa among them, subordinates consider their superiors to be differenthaving a right to privilege. Since strength prevails over law, the best way to
change a social systemis to overthrow those whohold power.
To the extent that it covers many aspects of a society (e.g., political systems, religious practices, organization of enterprises), hierarchical distance
would virtually suffice to explain underdevelopment. However, as Bollinger
and Hofstede note, France, Italy (particularly in the south), and Japan are
also countries of high hierarchical distance.
Control over Uncertainty

Some societies condition their members to accept uncertainty about the future, taking each day as it comes. There
is little enthusiasm for work. Thebehavior and opinions of others are tolerated because deep down people feel
relatively secure inthe status quo.
In other societies, people are acculturated to conquer the future. This leads
to anxiety, emotionalism, and aggressiveness, which produce institutions oriented toward change and the limitation
of risks.
Africa, except for the southern tip of the continent, appears to belong entirely to the category of societies with weak controls over uncertainty. To create secure societies, three levers are available: technology, jurisprudence, and
religion. We might say that African societies are societies of strong control
over uncertainty; unfortunately, the control is exercised only through reli-
Need
Africa
Does
a Cultural Adjustment
Program?
69
gion. In the final analysis, if Africans immerse themselves in the present and
demonstrate a lackof concern for tomorrow, itis less because of the safety of
community social structures that envelop them than because
of their submission to a ubiquitous and implacable divinewill.
The African, returning to the roots of religion, believes that only God can
modify the logic of a world created for eternity. The world and our behavior
are an immutable given, bequeathed in a mythical past to our founding ancestors,whosewisdomcontinues
to illuminate our life principles. The
African remains enslaved by his environment. Nature is his master and sets
his destiny.
This postulate of a world governed by an immutable divine order in a universe without borders is accompanied by a peculiarly African perception of
the notion of space and time.
The Tyranny of Time

The African sees space and time as a single entity. The Nigerians say, A
watch did not invent man. Africans have always had their own time, and
they have often been criticized for it. As an example, Jean-Jacques ServanSchreiber writes:
Time in Africa has both a symbolic and cultural value that are very important
in the manner in which it is lived and felt. This is frankly both a benefit and a
handicap-a benefit to the extentthat it is satisfying for individuals to live during a period at a rhythm that is their own and that they have no desire to give
up. But it is also a handicap to the extent that they are in competition with
countries that do not have the same work methods and for which competition
at the level of productivity, for example, passes through a more rational useof
time.6
Servan-Schreiber is right. In traditional African society, which exalts the
glorious past of ancestors through tales and fables, nothing is done to prepare for the future. The African, anchored in his ancestral culture,is so convinced that the past can only repeat itself that he worries only superficially
about the future.However, without a dynamic perception
of the future, there
is no planning, no foresight, no scenario building; in other words, no policy
to affect the course of events. There can be no singing of tomorrows so long
as our culture does not teach us to question the future, to repeat it mentally,
and to bend it to our will. In modern society, everyone must prepare. Otherwise, as Servan-Schreiber reminds us, there will
be no more seats on the
train, no moremoney at the end of the month, nothing in the refrigerator for
70
MATTERS
CULTURE
the dinner hour, and nothing in the granaries in between season^.^ All in all,
daily life in Africa!
Indivisible Power and Authority

Over the course of several millennia, societies in the West evolved substantially outside of the influence of religion, leading to the separation of the
things of this world from the spiritual world. This evolution also led to the
advent of the power of the state, which was certainly still spiritual but detached from supernatural forces thatno longer intervened inthe governing of
this world. In Africa, however, the forceof religion continues to weigh both
on individual and on collective destiny. It is common for African leaders to
claim magical powers.
It is difficult to explain African passivityother than by the fear inspired by
a God hidden in the folds of the clothes of every African chief. If a king or
president escapesan attack (even a simulated one), the entire population will
deduce that he has supernatural power and
is therefore invincible. This
propensity to equate all power with divine authority does not concern only
the fathers of the nation; itaffects everycitizen-even the most ordinaryas soon as heis given any authority whatsoever. Take an African, give him a
bit of power, and he will likely become bumptious, arrogant, intolerant, and
jealous of his prerogatives. Constantly on his guard and anenemy of competence (not a criterion for electing gods), he is ruthless until an inopportune
decree designates his successor.He ends his career entirely devoted
to the cult
of mediocrity. (It is a well-known fact in our republics thatto end the career
of a technocrat or a politician for good, you need only point out his excellence.)
The African will not accept changes in social standing: Dominant and
dominated remain eternally in the places allocated them, which
is why
change in social classifications is often condemned. We complain about the
difficulties in promoting the private sector inour states. These difficulties are
rooted in thejealousy that dominates all interpersonal relations, whichis less
the desire to obtain what otherspossess than to prevent any change in social
status.
In Africa, you must be born dominant; otherwise, you have no right to
power except by coup ditat. The entire social body accepts, as a
natural
fact, the servitude imposed by the strong manof the moment. It has been argued that the underdeveloped are not thepeople, they are the leaders. Thisis
both true and false. If African peoples were not underdeveloped (that is to
say, passive, resigned, and cowardly), why would they accept underdeveloped leaders? We forget that every people deservesthe leaders it gets.
Does Africa
a Need
Cultural Adjustment
Program?
The Community Dominatesthe Individual

If we had to cite a single characteristicof the African culture, the subordination of the individual by the community would surely be the reference point
to remember. African thought rejects any view of the individual as an autonomous and responsible being. The African is vertically rooted in his family, in the vital ancestor, if not in God;horizontally, he is linked to his group,
to society, to the cosmos. The fruit of a family-individual, society-individual
dynamic, all linked to the universe, the African can only develop and bloom
through social and family life.
How dowe restore the degreeof autonomy to theindividual that is necessary for his affirmation as a political, economic, and social actor, while preserving this sociabilitythat is the essence of the existence of the African? The
suppression of the individual, the cardinal way of ensuring equality in traditional societies, is demonstrated in all areas-not only in economic matters,
where the ultimate market price is a function of the presumed purchasing
power of the buyer, but in cultural matters, where oral traditions have monopolized the transmission of culture. We might even wonder if it wasnt by
design that Africans avoided the written word to assure the suppression of
individualism. African thought avoids skepticism, another virus carried by
the individual. Consequently, the established belief system remains absolute:
As soon as ancestral beliefs are threatened, the only possible choice is between the established order and chaos.
The concept of individual responsibility does not exist in our hyper-centralized traditional structures. In Cameroon, the word responsible translates as chief. Telling peasants that they are all responsible for a group
initiative is to tell them therefore that they are all chiefs-which inevitably
leads to endless interpersonal conflicts.
The death of the individual in our societies explains not only the culture of
silence in which menlike President Jerry Rawlings of Ghana rise up but also
explains the contempt in which people hold
all those that occupy an intermediate position in the hierarchy. Thus, in an African ministry, it is well understood that the only person who can solve any problem whatsoever, be it the
most commonplace, is the minister himself. Supervisors, managers,and other
officials are there only for show. Our ministers have no complaints. It is not
good to delegate ones authority at therisk of encouraging the birthof a new
political star who may eventually prove to be a competitor.
We must be realistic. Tribalism blooms in our countries because of both
the negation of the individual and the precariousness of his situation in the
absence of an operative set of individual rights and responsibilities. Should
we then continue, while dancing and singing,
to drift collectively toward hell
71
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MATTERS
CULTURE
to safeguard a hypothetical social consensus?

Or has the moment come
to restore all rights to individuals?
Excessive Conviviality and Rejectionof Open Conflict

The African works to live but does not live to work. He demonstrates a
propensity to feast that suggests that African societies are structured around
pleasure. Everything is a pretext for celebration: birth, baptism, marriage,
birthday, promotion, election, return from a short or a long trip, mourning,
opening or closure of Congress, traditional and religious feasts. Whether
ones salary is considerable or modest, whether ones granaries are empty or
full, the feast must be beautiful and must include the maximum possible
number of guests.
He who receives gives, but he who is received also gives in order to truly
participate in the joy or pain of his host. Sociability is the cardinal virtue of
all human beings; indeed, the African considers any person he meets a friend
until the contrary is demonstrated. Friendship comes before business; isitimpolite, in a business discussion, to immediately go to the crux of the matter.
The African has an inexhaustible need for communication and prefers interpersonal warmth over content. Thisis the main reason for the inefficiency
of
African bureaucracies. Each petitioner, instead of writing, seeks to meet in
person the official in charge of examining his file, thinking this eliminatesall
the coldness of writing letters back and forth.
Differences that are the basis for social life elsewhere are not perceived or
are ignored to maintain ostensible social cohesion. It is the search for social
peace based on a shaky unanimity thatpushes the Africanto avoid conflictalthough the continent is surely not free of it. In some African societies, the
avoidance of conflict means that justice cannot be rendered in the daytime.
In some Bamileke (WestCameroon) villages, the constituted bodies in charge
of security and justice are secret and meet at night. Members wear masks to
prevent being identified.
Conflict is inherent in human groupsof whatever size, yet we try to sweep
it under the rug-and have been highly unsuccessful in doingso.
Inefficient Homo Economicus

In Africa, what classifies man is his intrinsic value and his birth. If the
African is not very thrifty, it is because his visionof the world attributes very
little importance-too little-to the financial and economic aspects of life.
Other than some social groups like the well-known Bamileke of Cameroon
or the Kamba of Kenya, the African is a bad H. economicus. For him, the
Does Africa
a Need
Cultural Adjustment
Program?
73
value of man is measured by the is and notby the has. Furthermore, because of the nature of the rapport that theAfrican maintains with time, saving for the future has a lower priority than immediate consumption.
Lest
there be any temptation to accumulate wealth, those who receive a regular
salary have to finance the studies of brothers, cousins, nephews, and nieces,
lodge newcomers, and finance the multitude of ceremonies that fill social life.
It should not come as a surprise that the urban
elite embellish these spending traditions by behaving like nouveaux riches. They, of course, have access
to large amounts of money, chiefly in government coffers,
and to therelatives
and friends who are the beneficiaries of our free-spending habits are added
banks in Switzerland, Luxembourg, and the Bahamas. African governments
are not, it is evident, any better at economic management than are African
individuals, as our frequenteconomic crises confirm.
The High Costs of Irrationalism

A society in which magicand witchcraft flourish todayis a sick society ruled
by tension, fear, and moral disorder. Sorcery is a costly mechanism for managing conflict and preserving the status quo, which
is, importantly, what
African culture is about. Therefore, is not witchcraft a mirror reflecting the
state of our societies? There is much to suggest this. Witchcraft is both an instrument of social coercion (it helps maintain and perhaps even increase the
loyalty of individuals toward the clan) and very
a
convenient political instrument to eliminate any opposition that might appear. Witchcraft is for us a
psychological refuge in which all our ignorance finds its answers and our
wildest fantasies becomerealities.
Contrary to what some might be.lieve, the Christian religion, far from
putting an end to witchcraft in Africa, has legitimized
it. The existence of Satan is recognized by the Bible and the White Fathers, thus confirming the existence of sorcerers and other evil persons.
Sects, usually based on the magical power of the leader or prophet, are
proliferating in Africa. In Benin, a particularly religious land thatis the cradle of Haitian and Brazilian voodoo, fifty-eight new sects wereborn between
1981 and 1986, bringing the total number of denominations in the country
to ninety-two. In Kenya, there mightbe as many as1,200 sects; in some rural
districts, there are more churches than schools. Some prophets, their temples on the street,become affluent becauseof their ability to detect bad spirits. Others can protect againstdisease. Still others can help you protect your
job and enhance your income.
An example I particularly likeis that of Kombo, a transporter with afleet
of trucks serving the Ivory Coast and Burkina Faso. Kombo believes that to
74
MATTERS
CULTURE
European precautions-the regular maintenance

of vehicles-it is
necessary
to add African precautions. What do these include? Well, his witch doctor
gives him some porcupine-fish powder that he pours into his tires in orderto
prevent punctures. Why, you might ask? Because, when attacked, this thorny
fish has the ability to inflate until it doubles in volume. The powder of this
fish is therefore perfect for maintaining tire pressure.
Sorcery also extends to government. Witch doctors surround African presidents, and nothing that really matters in politics occurs without recourse to
witchcraft. Occult counselors, responsible for assuring that authorities keep
their power by detecting and neutralizing possible opponents, have power
that the most influentialWestern advisers would envy. The witch doctors often amass fortunes, and they sometimes end up with
official designations, enjoying the direct exerciseof power.
Football, the opiateof Africans, competes with politicswith respect to sorcery. The story made the rounds that the Elephants of Abidjan lost their
match against Egypt for the African Cup because the captain
of the team lost
a magic charm on the field a little before halftime. The entire team searched
for it in vain. Everyone believed that the Egyptians had found it and had
made it disappear. Thanks to this deceit, they won the match, two goals to
one.
The fact that Africa is not alone in celebrating irrationalism at the outset
of the twenty-first century does not excuse our propensity todelegate to sorcerers and witch doctors the responsibility for solving our problems. JeanFranqoisRevelhasasked,Mightman
be an intelligentbeing
that
intelligence does not guide?*In my view, the African is the intelligent being
that uses his intelligence least-so long as he is happy to live life as it comes.
In an Africa that refuses to link knowledge and activity, our authentic cultural identity is operating when wesay, as Revel notes, Give us development
in the form of subsidies, so as to spare us the effort of establishing an efficient relationship with real it^."^ That same culture lies behind our claim to
the right to inefficiency in production, the right to corruption, and the right
to disrespect basic human rights.
Cannibalistic and TotalitarianSocieties

What Africans are doing to one another defies credulity. Genocide, bloody
civil wars, and rampant violent crime suggest that African societiesat all social levels are to some extent cannibalistic. Those who write laws and those
who are responsible for enforcing them are those who trample on them.
Thus, in almost all African countries, the day after gaining independence, in-
Cultural
Adjustment
a Need
Africa
Does
Program?
75
vestment codes designedto attract foreign investment were promulgated. Yet

affluent Africans jostle each other at the counters of Swiss, French, Belgian,
and English banks, giving the impression that they have no confidence in
themselves, in their country,or in what they produce. They appearto destroy
with their own hands what they havebuilt.
The truth quickly becomes apparent. Seen from the inside, African societies are like a football team in which, as a result of personal rivalries and a
lack of team spirit, one player will not pass the ball to another out of fear
that the latter might score a goal. How can we hope for victory? In our republics, people outside
of the ethnic cement (which
is actually quite
porous when one takes a closer look at it) have so little identification with
one another that the mere existence of the state is a miracle-a miracle in
part explained by the desire for personal gain. Thereis rarely any vision of a
better future for all. At the same time, initiative and dynamism are condemned as signs of personal enrichment. The sorcerer wants equality in misery. There are numerous cases in which someone who has built a house has
been told not to reside in it; others who have begun construction have been
told to stop the work
if they value theirlives.
Was African totalitarianism born with independence? Of course not! It
was already there, inscribed in the foundations
of our tribalcultures. Authoritarianism permeates our families, our villages, our schools, our churches. It
is for us a way of life.
Thus, faced with such a powerful, immovable culture, what can we do to
change Africas destiny? We are condemned eitherto change or toperish.
CULTURE AND CHANGE
Our first objective is to preserve African culture, one of the most-if not the
most-humanistic cultures in existence. But it must be regenerated through a
process initiated from the inside that would allow Africans to remain themselves while being of their time. We must keep these humanistic values-the
solidarity beyond age classification and social status; social interaction; the
love of neighbor, whatever the color of his skin; the defense of the environment, and so many others. We must, however, destroy all within us that is
opposed to our mastery of our future, a future that must be prosperous and
just, a future in which the people of Africa determine their own destiny
through participation in the political process.
In doing so, we must be mindful that culture is the mother and that institutions are the children. More efficient and just African institutions depend on
modifications to our culture.
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MATTERS
CULTURE
The Four Revolutions We MustLead

We need to undertake peaceful cultural revolutions in four sectors: education, politics, economics, and social life.
Education. The traditional education of the African child prepares boys and
girls for integration into their tribal community. To the child are transmitted
not only the habits customary for his
or her ageand sex, but all the valuesand
beliefs that are the cultural foundation of the group to which he or she belongs. In a system in which educationis perceived above all as an instrument
of socialization, the traditional African childis educated by the entire community. The problem is that this system offers few incentives for childrento improve themselves,to innovate, or to dobetter than their parents.
How then can we reform educational systemsso strongly handicapped by
both a conservative culture and a lack of infrastructure and pedagogical facilities? (It is, for example, not unusual for there tobe 125 students in a single classroom.) Verysimply,by
assertingtheabsolutepreeminence
of
education, by suppressing the construction of religious structures and other
palaces to the detrimentof schools, and by modifying the content of the curricula, accenting not only science but especially the necessary changes of the
African society. This means critical thinking, affirmation of the need for subregional and continental unity, rational developmentof manual aswell as intellectual methods of work, and, in general, the qualities that engender
progress: imagination, dissent, creativity, professionalism and competence, a
sense of responsibility and duty, love for a jobwell done.
The African school should henceforth mold future businesspeople, and
therefore job creators, not just degree recipients who expect
to be offered
sinecures. From the time the child is in elementary school, the young African
will have to be awakened to time management, notonly in terms of production but especially in terms of maintenance of infrastructure and equipment.
The teaching of technological maintenance is surely more important than
courses on the role of the one-party system in national integration and
on the
infallibility of the Father of the Nation.
But change must not stop there. The role
of the African woman-the
abused backbone of our societies-in society
must also be transformed.
Women do not have access to bank accounts, credit, or property. They are
not allowed to speak. They produce muchof our food,yet they havelittle access to agricultural training, credit, technical assistance, andso on.
In Africa as elsewhere, the emancipationof women is the best gauge of the
political and social progress of a society. Without an African woman who is
free and responsible, the African man will be unableto stand onhis own.
Need
Africa
Does
a Cultural
Adjustment
Program?
Politics. Once education has been reformed,Africanpoliticalsystems will

change virtuallyby themselves. A new type of citizenshipwill emerge, onethat
gives more room to the individual, his worth as a social actor, his ability to
adapt to his institutional environment, and the demands that progress puts on
his community. African nations need
to extend the pluralismthat already exists
in the diversityof their peoplesto the political arena. They must cultivate
tolerance and emphasize merit. Regional integration must replace nationalism.
Economics.Torevolutionizeoureconomicculture,wemustunderstand
that instead of depending on a world market that we are virtually excluded
from, we must first establish integrated markets among ourselves. We must
accept profit as the engineof development. We must recognize the indispensable role of individual initiative and the inalienable right of the individual to
enjoy the fruitsof his labor. We must understand that there canbe no real or
lasting economic growth without full employment. The entire African population must be put to work. It is impossible for anyone to be both unemployed and a goodcitizen, especiallyin countries with no social safety net.
SocialLife.African
civil societywill not emerge withoutqualitative
changes in behavior, first in the relationships among Africans and then with
respect to behavior toward foreigners, to whom wegenerally feel inferior. We
must have more self-confidence, more trust in one another, and a commitment to a progress that benefits all. We need more rigor and a systematic approach to the elaboration of strategies-and the implementation of decisions
taken-whatever the costs.
CONCLUSION
We are now at a crossroads. Thepersistence and destructiveness of the economic and political crises that have stricken Africa make it necessary for us
to act without delay. We must go to the heart of our morals and customs in
order to eradicate the layer of mud that prevents our societies from moving
into modernism. We must lead this revolution of minds-without which
there can be no transfer of technology-on our own. We must place our bets
on our intelligence because Africans, if they have capable leaders, are fully
able to distance themselves from the jealousy, the blind submission to the irrational, the lethargy that have been their undoing.If Europe, that fragment
of earth representing a tiny part of humanity, has been able to impose itself
on the planet, dominating it and organizing it for its
exclusive profit, it is
only because it developed a conquering culture of rigor and work, removed
from the influence of invisible forces.We must do the same.
77
part two
CULTUREAND
POLITICALDEVELOPMENT
7
Culture and Democracy
R O N A L DI N G L E H A R T
Building on the Weberian tradition, Francis Fukuyama (1995), Lawrence

Harrison (1985, 1992, 1997), Samuel Huntington (1996), and Robert Putnam (1993) argue that cultural traditions are remarkably enduring and shape
the political and economic behavior of their societies today. But modernization theorists from Karl Marx to Daniel Bell (1973, 1976) and the authorof
this chapter (1977, 1990, 1997) have argued that the rise of industrial society is linked with coherent cultural shifts away from traditional value systems. This article presents evidence that both claims are true:
Development is linked with a syndrome of predictable changes away
from absolute social norms, toward increasingly rational, tolerant,
trusting, and postmodern values.
But culture is path dependent. The fact that a society was historically
Protestant or Orthodox or Islamic or Confucian gives rise to cultural
zones with highly distinctive value systemsthat persist when we
control for theeffects of economic development.
Distinctive cultural zones exist and they have major social and political
consequences, helping shape important phenomena from fertility rates
to
economic behavior and-as this chapter will demonstrate-democratic institutions. One major dimension of cross-cultural variation is especially important to democracy. As we will see, societies vary tremendously in the extent
81
to which they emphasize survival values or self-expression values. Societies that emphasize the latter are far likelier to be democracies than societies
that emphasize survival values.
Economic development seemsto bring a gradual shift from survival values
to self-expression values, which helps explain why richer societies are more
likely to be democracies. As we will see below, the correlation between survivauself-expression values and democracy is remarkably strong. Do they go
together because self-expression values (which include interpersonal trust,
tolerance, and participationin decisionmaking) are conduciveto democracy?
Or dodemocratic institutions cause these values
to emerge? Itis always difficult to determine causality, but the evidence suggeststhat it is more a matter
of culture shaping democracy than the other way around.
MODERNIZATION AND CULTURAL ZONES
Huntington (1993, 1996) argues that the world is divided into eight or nine
major civilizations based on enduring cultural differences that have persisted
for centuries-and that the conflicts of the future will occur along the cultural fault lines separating these civilizations.
These civilizations were largely shaped by religious traditions that arestill
powerful today, despite the forces of modernization. Western Christianity,
the Orthodox world, theIslamic world, and the Confucian, Japanese, Hindu,
Buddhist, African, and Latin American regions constitute the major cultural
zones. With the end of the Cold War, Huntington argues, political conflict
will occur mainly along these cultural divisions, not along ideological
or economic lines.
In a related argument, Putnam ( 1 9 9 3 ) claims that the regions of Italy
where democratic institutions function most successfully today are those in
which civil society was relatively well developed centuries before. Harrison
(1985, 1992,1997)argues that development is strongly influenced by a societys basic cultural values. And Fukuyama(1995) argues that asocietys ability to compete in global markets is conditioned by social trust: low-trust
societies are at a disadvantage because they are less effective in developing
large, complex social institutions.
All of these analyses reflect the assumption
that contemporary societies are characterized by distinctive cultural traits
that have endured over long periods of time-and that these traits have an
important impact on thepolitical and economic performance of societies.
How accurate is this assumption?
Another major body of literature presents a seemingly incompatible view.
Modernization theorists, including the author of this chapter, have argued
that the world is changing in ways that erode traditional values. Economic
82
MATTERS
CULTURE
development almost inevitably brings the decline of religion, parochialism,

and cultural differences.
Using data from three waves of the World Values Survey (WVS), which
now covers sixty-five societies containing 75 percent of the worlds population, this article presents evidence that both claims are true. Economic development seems to be linked with a syndrome of predictable changes away
from absolute social norms and toward increasingly rational, tolerant, trusting, and postmodern values. But culture is path dependent. The fact that a
society was historically Protestant, Orthodox, Islamic, or Confucian gives
rise to cultural zones with highly distinctive value systems that persist when
we control for theeffects of economic development.
These cultural differences are closely linked with a number of important
social phenomena, of which we will focus on one: they are strongly linked
with the extent to which a society has democratic institutions, as measured
by scores on the Freedom House ratings of political rights and civil liberties
from 1972 through 1997.Before I demonstrate this point, let us examine the
evidence that enduring cross-cultural differencesexist, even though economic
development tends to bring systematic cultural changes.
TRADITIONAL/RATIONAL-LEGAL AND
SURVIVAL/SELF-EXPRESSION VALUES:
TWO KEY DIMENSIONS OF CROSS-CULTURAL VARIATION
To compare cultures in a parsimonious fashion requires a major data-reduction effort. Comparing each of the eight or nine civilizations on one variable
after another, among the hundreds of values measured in the World Values
Surveys (and the thousands that conceivably might be measured), would be
an endless process. But any meaningful data-reduction process requires a relatively simple underlying structure of cross-cultural variation-which we
cannot take for granted.Fortunately, such a structure does seem to exist.
In previous research (Inglehart 1997, chap. 3) the author of this chapter
analyzed aggregated national-level data from the forty-three societies included in the 1990-1991 World Values Survey, finding large and coherent
cross-cultural differences. The worldviews
of the peoples of rich societies differ systematically from those of low-income societies, across a wide range of
political, social, and religious norms and beliefs. Factor analysis revealedtwo
main dimensions that tapped scores of variables and explained over half of
the cross-cultural variation. These two dimensions reflect cross-national polarization between traditional versus secular-rational orientations toward au-
and
Culture
thority and survival versus self-expression values. They make it possible to

plot each societys location on a global cultural map.
This article builds on these findings by constructing comparable measures
of cross-cultural variation that can beused with all three waves of the World
Values Surveys, at both the individual level and the national level. This enables us to examine changes over time along these dimensions.
The earlier
analysis (Inglehart1997) used factor scores based on twenty-two variables in
the 1990-1991 surveys. We selected a subset of ten variables that not only
had high loadings on these dimensions but had been utilized in the same format in all three waves of the World Values Surveys. This subset was used to
minimize problems of missing data (when one variable is missing, an entire
nation is lost from the analysis).
The factor scores generated by this reduced pool of items are highly correlated with the factor scores generated by the twenty-two items used earlier
(Inglehart 1997, 334-335, 388). The traditionalhecular-rational dimension
used here is almost perfectly correlated with the factor scores from the comparable dimension based on eleven variables; the same is true of the survivalhelf-expression dimension. We are tapping a robust aspect of crosscultural variation.
Each of these two dimensions taps a major axisof cross-cultural variation
involving dozens of basic values and orientations. The traditionallsecular-rational dimension reflects, first of all, the contrast between societies in which
religion is very important and those in which it is not, but it also taps a rich
variety of other concerns. Emphasis on the importanceof family ties and deference to authority (including a relative acceptance of military rule) are major themes, together with avoidance of political conflict and an emphasis on
consensus over confrontation. Societiesat the traditionalpole emphasize religion, absolute standards, and traditional family values; favor large families;
reject divorce; and take a pro-life stance on abortion, euthanasia, and suicide. They emphasize social conformity rather than individualistic achievement, favor consensus rather than open political conflict, support deference
to authority, and have high levels of national pride and a nationalistic outlook. Societies with secular-rational values have the opposite preferences on
all these topics.
These orientations have a strong tendency to go together across the more
than sixty societies examined here. This holds true despite the fact that we
deliberately selected items covering a wide rangeof topics: we could have selected five items referring to religion and obtained an even more tightly correlated cluster, but our goal was
to measure broad dimensions of crosscultural variation.
83
84
CULTURE MATTERS
Adherence to these values seemsto have important consequences in theobjective world. For example, societies that emphasize traditional values have
much higher fertility rates than those that emphasize rational-legal values.
SURVIVAL/SELF-EXPRESSION VALUES
The survival/self-expression dimension involves the themes that characterize postindustrial society. One of its central components involves the polarization between materialist and postmaterialist values. Extensive evidence
indicates that these values tap an intergenerational shift from emphasis on
economic and physical security toward increasing emphasison self-expression,subjectivewell-being,andquality
of life (Inglehart 1977, 1990,
1997). This cultural shift
is found throughout advanced industrialsocieties;
it seems to emerge among birth cohorts that have grown up under conditions in which survival is taken for granted. These values are linked with
the emergence of growing emphasis on environmental protection, the
womens movement, and rising demands for participation in decisionmaking in economic and political life. During the past twenty-five years, these
values have become increasingly widespread in almost all advanced industrial societies for which extensive time-series evidence is available. But this
is only one component of a much broader dimension of cross-cultural variation.
Societies that emphasize survival values show relatively low levels of subjective well-being, report relatively poor health, are low on interpersonal
trust, are relatively intolerant toward outgroups, are low on support for
gender equality, emphasize materialist values, have relatively highlevels of faith
in science and technology, are relatively low on environmental activism, and
are relatively favorable to authoritarian government. Societies that emphasize self-expression values tend to have the opposite preferences on all these
topics. Whether a society emphasizes survival values
or self-expression values
has important objective consequences. As we will see, societies that emphasize self-expression values are much more likely
to be stable democracies
than those thatemphasize survival values.
A GLOBAL CULTURAL MAP: 1995-1998
Let us now examine the location

of each of our sixty-five societieson thetwo
dimensions generated by the factor analysis we have just examined.The vertical axis on our global cultural map (see Fig. 7.1) corresponds to the polarization between traditional authority and secular-rational authority. The
horizontal axis depicts the polarization between survival values and well-
-2.0
-1.5
85
-1.0
4.5
0.5
1.0
1.5
2.0
Survival vs. Self-Expression
FIGURE 7.1 Locations of Sixty-Five Societies on Two Dimensions of

Cross-Cultural Variation
NOTE: The scaleson each axis indicate the countrys factor scores
on the give
dimension.
SOURCE:The data for the following fifty societies are from the
1995-1998 World
Values Survey: U.S., Australia, NewZealand, China, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea,
Turkey, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, the Philippines, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia,
Great Britain, East Germany, West Germany, Switzerland, Norway, Sweden, Finland,
Spain, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Poland,
Bulgaria, Bosnia, Slovenia, Croatia, Yugoslavia, Macedonia, Nigeria, South Africa,
Ghana, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Mexico, Peru,
Puerto Rico, Uruguay, Venezuela.Data for Canada, France, Italy, Portugal,
Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Iceland, Northern Ireland, Austria, Hungary, Czech
Republic, Slovakia, and Romania are from the1990 World Values Survey. The
positions of Colombia and Pakistan are estimated from incomplete data.
86
MATTERS
CULTURE
being. The boundaries around groups of countries in Figure 7.1 are drawn
using Huntingtons (1993, 1996) cultural zones as a guide.
This map is remarkably similar to the one generated from the 1990-1991
surveys (Inglehart 1997, 93). We find distinct and coherent Protestant,
Catholic, Latin American, Confucian, African, and Orthodox cultural zones,
reflecting the fact that thesocieties within these clusters have relatively similar values. Although these surveys include only a few Islamic societies, they
tend to fall into the southwest cornerof the map.
Religious traditions seem to have had an enduring impact on the contemporary value systems of sixty-five societies,as Weber, Huntington, and others
have argued. But religionis not the only factor shaping culturalzones. A societys culture reflects its entire historical heritage.One of the most important
historical eventsof the twentieth century was the
rise and fall of a communist
empire that once ruled a third of the worlds population. Communism has
left a clear imprint on the value systems of those who lived under it. Despite
four decades of communist rule, the former East Germany remains culturally
close to what was West Germany, but its value system has been drawn toward the communist zone. And although China is a member of the Confucian zone, it too falls within a broad communist-influenced zone. Similarly
Azerbaijan, though part of the Islamic cluster, also falls within the communist super-zone that dominated it fordecades.
The influence of colonial ries is apparent in theexistence of a Latin American cultural zone adjacent to Spain and Portugal. Former colonial ties also
help account for theexistence of an English-speaking zone containing Britain
and the other English-speaking societies. All seven of the English-speaking
societies included in this study
show relatively similar cultural characteristics.
Australia and New Zealand were not surveyed until 1995-1998, but they
both fall into the English-speaking cultural zonethat the authorof this chapter found with the1990-1991 data. Geographically, they are halfway around
the world, but culturally Australia and New Zealand are neighborsof Great
Britain and Canada.
The impact of colonization seems to be especially strong when reinforced
by massive immigration from the colonial society. The fact that Spain, Italy,
Uruguay, and Argentina are all relatively close to each other on the border
between Catholic Europe and Latin America illustrates the point that though
geographically remote from each other, the populations of Uruguay and Argentina are largely descended from immigrants from Spain and
Italy. Similarly, Tom Rice and Jan Feldman (1997) find strong correlations between the
civic values of various ethnic groups in the United States and the values prevailing in their countries of origin-even two or three generations after their
families migrated.
87
HOW REAL ARE THE CULTURAL ZONES?
The placement of each societyon Figure 7.1 is objective, determined by a factor analysis of survey data from each country. The boundaries drawn around
these societies are subjective, guided by Huntingtons division of the world
into several cultural zones. How real are these zones? The boundaries
could have been drawn in various ways because these societies have been
influenced by a variety of factors. Thus, some of the boundaries overlap 0thers-for example, the ex-communist zone overlaps the Protestant, Catholic,
Confucian, Orthodox, and Islamic cultural zones.
Similarly, Britain is located
at the intersection of the English-speaking zone and Protestant Europe. Empirically, Britain is close to all five of the English-speaking societies, and we
included it in that zone. But with only slight modification, we could have
drawn the borders to put
Britain in Protestant Europe, for itis also culturally
close to those societies. Reality is complex. Britain is both Protestant and
English speaking, and its empirical position reflects both aspectsof reality.
Similarly, we have drawn a boundary around the Latin American societies
that Huntington postulated were a distinct culturalzone: all ten of them do
indeed show relatively similar values in global perspective. But
with only minor changes, we could have drawn this border to define a Hispanic cultural
zone including Spainand Portugal, which empirically are also relatively close
to the Latin American societies.Or we could have drawn a boundary that
included Latin America, Catholic Europe, and the Philippines and Ireland in a
broad Roman Catholic cultural zone. All of these zones are both conceptually and empirically justifiable.
This two-dimensional map is based on similarity of basic values, but it
also reflects the relative distances between these societies on many other dimensions, such as religion, colonial influences, the influence of communist
rule, social structure, and economic level. The influence of many different
historical factors can be summed up remarkably well by the two cultural
dimensions on which this map is based. But because these various factors
do not always coincide neatly, there are some obvious anomalies. For example, Japan and the former East Germany fall next to each other. This is
appropriate in the sense that both societies are highly secular, are relatively
wealthy, and have high proportions of industrial workers; but itis inappropriate in that Japan was shaped
by a Confucian heritage, whereas East Germany was shaped by Protestantism. (To be sure, Harrison [1992] has
argued that important parallels exist between Confucian and Protestant
culture.)
Despite such apparent anomalies, societies with a common cultural heritage generally fall into commonclusters. But their positions also reflect their
88
MATTERS
CULTURE
level of economic development, their occupational structure, their religion,

and other major historical influences. Their positions on this two-dimensional space reflect a multi-dimensional reality. The remarkable coherence
between these various dimensions seems
to reflect the factthat a society's culture has been shaped by its entire economic and historical heritage, which in
turn shapes them.
Economic development seems to have a powerful impact on cultural values. The value systems of richer countries differ systematically from thoseof
poorer countries. The overall structure of Figure 7.1 reflects the gradient
from low-income countries (located near the lower left quadrant) torich societies (located near the upper right).
Figure 7.2 demonstrates this point. A redrawn version
of Figure 7.1, it
shows the economic zones into which these sixty-five societies fall.All nineteen societies with annual per capita gross national products over $15,000
rank relatively high on both dimensions and fall into a zone at the upper
right-hand corner. This economic zone cuts across the boundaries
of the
Protestant, ex-communist, Confucian, Catholic, and English-speaking cultural zones. Conversely, all of the societies with per capita GNPs below
$2,000 fall into a cluster at the lower left of Figure 7.2, in an economic zone
that cuts across theAfrican, South Asian, ex-communist, and Orthodox cultural zones. The evidence suggeststhat economic development tends to move
societies in a common direction, regardless of their cultural heritage. Nevertheless, distinctive cultural zones continue to persist two centuries after the
industrial revolution was launched.
GNPkapita is only one indicator of a society's level of economic development. As Marx argued, the rise of the industrial working class was a key
event in modern history. Furthermore, the changing natureof the labor force
defines three distinct stages of economic development: agrarian society, industrial society, and postindustrial society (Bell 1973, 1976). Thus still another set of boundaries could be drawn around the societies in Figures 7.1
and 7.2. Thesocieties with a high percentage of the labor force in agriculture
are located near the bottom of the map, the societies with a high percentage
of industrial workers near the top, and the societies with a high percentage in
the service sector nearthe right-hand sideof the map.
Modernization theory implies that as societies develop economically, their
cultures will tend to shift in a predictable direction, and our data fit the implications of this prediction. Economic differences are linked with large
and pervasive cultural differences.Nevertheless,wefindclearevidenceofthe
persistence of long-established cultural zones. Using the data from the latest
available survey for eachsociety,wecreated
dummy variables to reflect
whether a given society is predominantly English speaking or not, ex-communist or not, and so on, for eachof the clusters outlinedon Figure 7.1. Empirical
and
Culture
89
1.8
1.3
.-
2-
0.8
0.3
ni
+ -0.2
L
Jui
1 -0.7
.s
5
e
I-
-1.2
-1.7
-2.2
-2.0
-1.5
-1.0
-0.5
0.5
1.0
1.5
2.0
FIGURE 7.2 Economic Level of Sixty-Five Societies

Superimposed on Two Dimensions of Cross-Cultural Variation
NOTE: All but one of the sixty-five societies shown in Figure
7.1
fit into the economic zones indicated here: only the Dominican
Republic is mislocated.
SOURCE: Economic levels are based on the World Bank's
purchasing power parity estimates asof 1995;see World
Development Report, 1997, pp. 214-215.
analysis of these variables shows that the cultural locations of given societies
are far from random. Eightof the nine zones outlinedon Figure 7.1 show statistically significant relationships withat least oneof the two major dimensions
of cross-cultural variation (the sole exception is the Catholic Europe cluster; it
is fairly coherent but has a neutral position on both dimensions).
Do these cultural clusters simply reflect economic differences? For example, do the societies of Protestant Europe have similar values simply because
they are rich? The answeris no. The impact of a society's historical-cultural
heritage persists when one controls for GNPkapita and the structure of the
labor force in multiple regression analyses (Inglehartand Baker 2000).
To illustrate how coherent these clusters are,
let us examine oneof the key
variables in the literature on cross-cultural differences: interpersonal trust (a
MATTERS
90
5000
CULTURE
9000
1 3000
17000
21000
25000
GNP/Capita (World Bank purchasing power parity estimates, 1995 U.S. $)
FIGURE 7.3 Interpersonal Trust by Cultural Traditionand Level of Economic

Development and Religious Tradition
Trust by GNPkapita: r = .60 p < .OOO
component of thesurvival/self-expressiondimension).JamesColeman
(1988, 1990), Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba (1963), Putnam (1993),
and Fukuyama (1995) argue that interpersonal trust is essential for building
the social structureson which democracy depends and the complex social organizations on which large-scale economic enterprises are based. As Figure
7.3 demonstrates, virtually all historically Protestant societies rank higher on
interpersonal trust thanvirtually all historically Catholic societies. This holds
true even when wecontrol for levels of economic development: interpersonal
trust is significantly correlated with the societys level of GNWcapita, but
even rich Catholic societies rank lower than equally prosperous historically
Protestant societies.
A heritage of communist rule also seems to have an impact on this variable, with virtuallyall ex-communist societies ranking relatively
low. Accordingly, historically Protestant societies that experienced communist rule, such
as East Germanyand Latvia, show relatively low levels of interpersonal trust.
91
Of the nineteen societies in which more than 35 percent of the public believe
that most people can be trusted, fourteen are historically Protestant, three are
Confucian influenced, one is predominantly Hindu, and only one (Ireland)is
historically Catholic. Of the ten lowest-ranking societies in Figure 7.3, eight
are historically Catholic; none is historically Protestant.
In passing, we note the striking correlation of these data with the Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index addressed in Chapter9,
by Seymour Martin Lipset and Gabriel Salman Lenz.
Within given societies, Catholics rank about as high on interpersonal trust
as do Protestants. It is not a matter of individual personality, but the shared
historical experience of given nations that is crucial. As Putnam (1993) has
argued, horizontal, locally controlled organizations are conducive
to interpersonal trust; rule by large, hierarchical, centralized bureaucracies seems to
corrode interpersonal trust. Historically, the Roman Catholic Church was
the prototype of a hierarchical, centrally controlled institution; Protestant
churches were relatively decentralized and more open to local control.
The contrast between local control and dominationby a remote hierarchy
seems to have important long-term consequences for interpersonal trust.
Clearly, these cross-cultural differences
do notreflect the contemporary influence of the respective churches. The Catholic Church has changed a great
deal in recent decades. Moreover, in many of these countries, especially the
Protestant ones, church attendance has dwindled to the point where only a
small minority of the population attend church regularly. The majority have
little or no contact with the church
today, but the impactof living in a society
that was historically shaped by once-powerful Catholic or Protestant institutions persists, shaping everyone-Protestant, Catholic,
or other-who is socialized into a given nations culture.
Protestant and Catholic societies seem to display distinctive values today
mainly because of the historical impact their respective churches had on the
societies as a whole, rather than through the contemporary influence of the
churches. This is why we classify Germany, Switzerland,and the Netherlands
as historically Protestant societies (historically, Protestantism shaped them,
even though today-as a result
of immigration, relatively low Protestant
birthrates, and higher Protestant rates of secularization-they may have
more practicing Catholics than Protestants.
CULTURE AND DEMOCRACY
The idea that political culture is linked with democracy had great impactfollowing the publication of The Civic Culture (Almond and Verba 1963) but
went out of fashion during the 1970s for a variety of reasons. The politicalculture approach raised an important empirical question: Did given societies
92
MATTERS
CULTURE
have political cultures that were relatively conducive to democracy? Some

critics alleged that this approach was elitist in finding that some cultures
were more conducive to democracy than others. Any right-minded theory
should hold that all societies are equally likely to be democratic. The problem is that tailoring a theory to fit a given ideology may produce a theory
that does not fit reality, and consequently predictions will eventually
go
wrong; the theory will provide misleading guidance to those who are trying
to cope with democratization in the real world.
By the 1990s, observers from Latin America to Eastern Europe to East
Asia were concluding that cultural factors played an important role in the
problems they were encountering with democratization. Simply adopting a
democratic constitution was not enough.
Culturalfactorshavebeenomittedfrommostempiricalanalyses
of
democracy partly because, until now, we have not had reliable measures of
them from more than a handful
of countries. When cultural factors are taken
into account, as in the work of the author of this chapter (Inglehart 1990,
1997) and Putnam (1993), they
seem to play an important role.
Economic development leadsto twotypes of changes that areconducive to
democracy:
It tends to transform a societys social structure, bringing
urbanization, mass education, occupational specialization, growing
organizational networks, greater income equality, and a variety
of
associated developments that mobilize mass participation in politics.
Rising occupational specialization and rising education lead
to a
workforce that is independent minded and has specializedskills that
enhance its bargaining power againstelites.
Economic development is also conducive to cultural changes that
help stabilize democracy. It tendsto develop interpersonal trust and
tolerance, and it leadsto the spread of post-materialist values that
place high priority on self-expression and participation in
decisionmaking. Insofar as it brings higher levels of well-being, it
endows the regime with legitimacy, which can help sustain
democratic institutions through difficult times. Legitimacy
is an asset
to any regime, but it is crucial to democracies. Repressive
authoritarian regimes can hold on topower even when they lack
mass support, but democracies must have masssupport or they can
be voted out of existence.
Positive outputs from a political system can generate mass support for political incumbents. In the short term, this supportis calculated on the basis of
what have you done for me lately? But if a regimes outputs are seen as
and
Culture
93
Iceland
200 -
180
00
Portgat
Japan
Cantado. Tealand
Ne
SwitzerlanJ pdelherlon
Britain
Finland
W s t Germany
0.
0.
Venezuela
7160 co
0.
'5,140
Dominican
Repyblic
.-F
Uruguay *Argentina
India.
"
3120 x
2100
Norway U.S.A. Swede
\pe2mark//'Au$ralia \
Belgium.Irela,$
Spain
,&trio
*Colombia
~ South~Kyea ~Philippines
~
Poland'
Taiwan.
*Chile
*Mexico
*Turkey
'Czech
'South Africa
Lithupia
Estonia.
.Peru
Slovenia'
Bangladesh
80
*Brazil
laliva
~lovakia
.Croatia
40
20
0
-2.0 -1.0 -1.5
JChina
I
4.5
0.5 1.5 1.0
2.0
FIGURE 7.4 Self-Expression Values and Democratic Institutions

NOTE: Vertical axis is the sumof the Freedom House ratings for civil liberties and
political rights from 1981 through 1998. Since these ratings give high scoresfor low
levels of democracy, we reversed polarity by subtracting these sums from236
(China, which had the maximum score of235, has a scoreof 1 after this
transformation). Horizontal axis reflects each country's mean factor score
on the
survivalhelf-expression dimension: It taps levels of postmaterialist values, trust,
tolerance, political activism, and subjective well-being among each public. r=.88
N=63 p=.OOOO
SOURCE: Freedom House surveys reported in successive editions Freedom
of
in the
World; survey data from the 1990 and 1995 World Values Surveys.
positive over a long time, the regime may develop "diffuse support" (Easton
1963)-the generalized perception
that the political system is inherently
good, quite apart from its current outputs. This type of support can endure
even through difficult times.
94
MATTERS
CULTURE
The World Values Survey data make it possible to test this thesis on a
worldwide scale. As Figure 7.4 demonstrates, a societys position on the survivauself-expression index is strongly correlated with its level of democracy,
as indicated by its scores on the Freedom House ratings of political rights
and civil liberties from 1972 through 1998. This relationship is powerful. It
is clearly not a methodological artifact or merely a correlation because the
two variables are measured at different levels and come from completelydifferent sources. Virtually all of the societies that rank high on survivalkelfexpression values are stable democracies; virtuallyall the societies that rank
low have authoritarian governments. We will not attempt to unravel the
complex causal linkages in this chapter. For the moment, let us simply note
that the powerful linkage shown in Figure 7.4 persists when we control for
GNPkapita and spell out the mainpossible interpretations.
One interpretation would be that democratic institutions give rise to the
self-expression values that are so closely linked with them. In other words,
democracy makes people healthy, happy, tolerant,and trusting, and itinstills
post-materialist values (at least in the younger generation). This interpretation is extremely appealing. It provides a powerful argument for democracy
and implies that we have a quick fixfor most of the worlds problems: Adopt
democratic institutions and live happily ever after.
Unfortunately, the experience of the people of the former Soviet Union
does not support this interpretation.
Since their dramatic move toward
democracy in 1991, they have not become healthier, happier, more trusting,
more tolerant, or more post-materialist. For the most part, they have gone in
exactly the opposite direction. Latin Americas history of constitutional instability is another example.
An alternative interpretationis that economic development gradually leads
to social and cultural changes that make democratic institutions
increasingly
likely to survive and flourish. This would help explain why mass democracy
did not emerge until relatively recently in history
and why, even now, it is
most likelyto be found ineconomically more developedcountries-in particular, those that emphasize self-expression valuesrather than survival values.
The latter interpretation has both encouraging and discouraging implications. The bad news is that democracy is not something that canbe easily attained by simply adopting the rightlaws. It is most likely to flourish in some
social and cultural contexts than in others, and the current cultural conditions for democracy seem relatively unfavorable in Russia, Belarus, Ukraine,
Armenia, and Moldova.
The good news is that the long-term trend of the past several centuries
has been toward economic development, a process that has accelerated and
spread around the world during the past few decades. Furthermore, eco-
and
Culture
9s
nomic development tends to give rise to social and cultural conditions under which democracy becomes increasingly likely to emerge and survive. If
the outlook is discouraging concerning much of the former Soviet Union,
the evidence in Figure 7.4 suggests that a number of societies may be closer
to democracy than is generally suspected. Mexico, for example, seems ripe
for the transition to democracy, since its position on the post-modern values axis is roughly comparable to thatof Argentina, Spain, or Italy. A number of other societies are also in this transition zone, including Turkey, the
Philippines, Slovenia, South Korea, Poland, Peru, South Africa, and Croatia.
Although China falls farther back on this dimension, it is experiencing
rapid economic growth, which, as we have seen, seems to bring a shift toward self-expression values. The ruling Chinese communist elite are clearly
committed to maintaining one-party rule, and as long as they retain control
of the military they should be able to enforce their preferences. But the Chinese show a predisposition toward democracy that
is inconsistent with
Chinas very low ranking on the Freedom House ratings.
In the long run, modernization tends to help spread democratic institutions. Authoritarian rulers of some Asian societies have argued that the distinctiveAsianvalues
of thesesocietiesmakethemunsuitablefor
democracy (Lee 1994). Theevidence from the World Values Surveys-not to
mention the evolution of Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan to democracydoes not support this interpretation. It suggests that Confucian societies may
be readier for democracy thanis generally believed.
CONCLUSION
Economic development seems to bring gradual cultural changes that make

mass publics increasingly likely to want democratic institutions and to be
more supportive of them once they are in place. This transformation is not
easy or automatic. Determined elites who control the army and
police can resist pressures for democratization. But development tends
to make mass
publics more trusting and tolerant and leads them to place an increasingly
high priority on autonomy and
self-expression inall spheres of life, including
politics, and it becomes difficult and costly to repress demands for political
liberalization. With rising levels of economic development, cultural patterns
emerge that are increasingly supportive of democracy, making mass publics
more likely to want democracy and more skillful at getting it.
Although rich societies are muchlikelier to be democratic than poor ones,
wealth alone does not automatically bring democracy. If that were true,
Kuwait and Libya would be model democracies. But the process of modern-
96
MATTERS
CULTURE
ization tends to bring cultural changes conducive to democracy. In the long

run, the only way to avoid the growth of mass demands for democratization
would be to reject industrialization. Few ruling elites are willing to do so.
Those societies that do move onto the trajectory of industrial society are
likely to face growing pressures for democratization.
The evidence suggests that culture plays a much more crucial role in
democracy than the literature of the past two decades would indicate. The
syndrome of trust, tolerance, well-being, and participatory values tapped by
the survivalhelf-expression dimension seems particularly crucial. In the long
run, democracy is not attained simply by making institutional changes or
through elite-level maneuvering. Its survival also depends on the values and
beliefs of ordinary citizens.
REFERENCES
Almond, Gabriel, and Sidney Verba. 1963. The Civic Culture. Princeton: Princeton
University Press.
. 1990. The Civic Culture Revisited. Boston: Little, Brown.
Bell, Daniel. 1973. The Coming of Post-Ifzdustrial Society. New York: Basic.
. 1976. The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism. New York: Basic.
Coleman, James S. 1988. Social Capital in the Creationof Human Capital. Arnerican Journal of Sociology 94: 95-121.
. 1990. Foundations of Social Theory. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Diamond, Larry, ed. 1993. Political Culture and Democracy i n Developing Countries. Boulder: Lynne Rienner.
Diamond, Larry, withJuan Linz and Seymour Martin Lipset. 1995. Politics in Developing Cozrntries. Boulder: Lynne Rienner.
Easton, David. 1963. The Political System. New York: Wiley.
Fukuyama, Francis. 1995. Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity.
New York: Free Press.
Gibson, James L., and Raymond M. Duch. 1992. The Origins of a Democratic Culture in the Soviet Union: The Acquisition of Democratic Values. Paper presented
at the 1992 annual meetingof the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago.
Gibson, James L., with Raymond M. Duch. 1994. Postmaterialism and the Emerging Soviet Democracy. Political Research Quarterly 47, no. 1: 5-39.
Harrison, Lawrence E. 1985. Underdevelopment Is a State of Mind-The Latin
Americarz Case. Cambridge: Harvard Center for International Affairs; Lanham,
Md.: Madison Books.
. 1992. Who Prospers? How Cultural Values Shape Economic and Political
Success. New York: Basic.
and
Culture
. 1997. The Pan-American Dream: D o Latin Americas Cultural Values Discourage True Partnership? New York: Basic.
Huntington, Samuel P. 1993. The Clashof Civilizations? Foreign Affairs 72, no. 3 .
. 1996. The Clash o f Civilizations and the Remaking o f World Order. New
York: Simon & Schuster.
Ingelhart, Ronald. 1977. The Silent Revolution: Changing Values and Political Styles
in Advanced Industrial Society. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
. 1990. Culture Shift in Advanced Industrial Society. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
. 1997. Modernization and Postmodernization: Cultural, Economic, andPolitical Change in Forty-Three Societies. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Inglehart, Ronald, and Wayne Baker. 2000. Modernization, Cultural Change, and
the Persistence of Traditional Values.American Sociological Review, February.
Lee Kuan Yew and Fareed Zakaria. 1994. Culture Is Destiny: A Conversation with
Lee Kuan Yew. Foreign Affairs 73, no. 2: 109-126.
Lipset, Seymour Martin. 1990. American Exceptionalism Reaffirmed. Tocqueville
Review 10.
. 1996. American Exceptionalism. New York: Norton.
Putnam, Robert. 1993. Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy.
Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Rice, Tom W., and Jan L. Feldman. 1997. Civic Culture and Democracy from Europe to America. Journal ofPolitics 59, no. 4: 1143-1172.
U.S. Bureau of the Census. World Population Profile:. 1996. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office.
Weber, Max. 1958. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. New York:
Scribners.
Welzel, Christian, and Ronald Inglehart.Forthcoming.AnalyzingDemocratic
Change and Stability: A Human Development Theory
of Democracy.
97
8
Social Capital
FRANCIS FUKUYAMA
Social capital can be defined simply asan instantiated set of informal values
or norms shared amongmembers of a group that permits them to cooperate
with one another. If members of the group come to expect that others will
behave reliably and honestly, then they will come to trust one another. Trust
acts like a lubricant that makes any group or organization run more
efficiently.
Sharing values and norms in itself does not produce social capital because
the values may be the wrong ones. Southern Italy, for example, is a region of
the world that is almost universally characterized as lacking in social capital
and generalized trust, even though strong social norms exist. The sociologist
Diego Gambetta tells the following story:
A retired [Mafia] boss recountedthat when he was a young boy, his Mafiosofather made him climb a wall and then invited him to jump, promising to catch
him. He at first refused, but his father insisted until finally he jumped-and
promptly landed flat on his face. The wisdom his father sought to convey was
summed up by these words: You must learn to distrust even your parents.
The Mafia is characterized by an extremely strong internal code of behavior, omerth, and individual Mafiosi are spoken
of as men of honor.
Nonetheless, these norms do not apply outside asmall circle of Mafiosi. For
the rest of Sicilian society, the prevailing norms can be described more as
Social Capital
99
take advantage of people outside your immediate family at every occasion

because otherwise they will take advantage
of you first. And as the example
cited by Gambetta suggests, even families may not be that reliable. Such
norms obviously do not promotesocial cooperation, and the negative consequences for both good government and economic development have been
documented extensively.2 SouthernItaly, one of the poorest parts of Western
Europe, has traditionally been the source of the extensive corruption plaguing the countrys political system.
The norms that produce social capital, by contrast, must substantively include virtues like truth telling, meeting obligations, and reciprocity.Not surprisingly, these norms overlap to a significant degree with those Puritan
values that MaxWeber found critical to thedevelopment of Western capitalism in his bookThe Protestant Ethic and the Spirit
of Capitalism.
All societies have some stock of social capital; the real differences among
them concern whatmight be called the radius of trust. That is, cooperative
norms like honesty and reciprocity can be shared among limited groups of
people but not with others in the
same society. Families are obviously important sources of social capital everywhere.
However, the strength of family bonds differs from society to society; it
also varies relative to other types of social obligation. In some cases, there
appears to be something of an inverse relationship between the bonds of
trust and reciprocity inside and outside the family: when one is very strong,
the other tends to be weak. In China and Latin America, families are strong
and cohesive, but itis hard to trust strangers, andlevels of honesty and cooperation in public life are much lower. A consequence is nepotism and pervasive public corruption. What made the Protestant Reformation important for
Weber was not so much that it encouraged honesty, reciprocity, and thrift
among individual entrepreneurs, but that these virtues were for the
first time
widely practiced outside the family.
It is perfectly possible to form successful groups in the absence of social
capital, using a varietyof formal coordinationmechanisms like contracts, hierarchies, constitutions, legal systems, and the like.
But informal norms
greatly reduce what economists label transaction costs-the costs of monitoring, contracting, adjudicating, and enforcing formal agreements. Under
certain circumstances, social capital may also facilitate a higher degree of innovation and group adaptation.
Social capital has benefits that go well beyond the economic sphere. It is
critical for the creationof a healthy civil society-the groups and associations
that fall between the familyand the state. Civil society, which has been the focus of considerable interest in former communist countries since the
fall of the
Berlin Wall, is said to be critical to the success of democracy. Social capital al-
roo
MATTERS
CULTURE
lows the different groups within a complex society

to band together to defend
their interests, which might otherwisebe disregarded by a powerful ~ t a t e . ~
Although social capital and civil society have been widely praised as good
things to have, it is important to note that they are not always beneficial. Coordination is necessary for all social activity, whether good
or bad. The
Mafia and the Ku Klux Klan are constituent parts of American civil society;
both possess social capital, and both are detrimental to the health of the
broader society. In economic life, group coordination is necessary for one
form of production, but when technologyor markets change, a different type
of coordination with perhaps adifferent set of group members becomes necessary. The bonds of social reciprocity that facilitated production in an earlier time period become obstacles to production in a later time period, as is
the case for many Japanese corporations in the 1990s. To continue the economic metaphor, social capital at that point can be said to be obsolete and
needs to be depreciated in thesocietys capital accounts.
The fact that social capital can on occasion be used for destructive purposes or can become obsolete does not negate the widely shared presumption
that it is generally a good thing for a society to have. Physical capital, after
all, is not always a goodthing, either. Not only can it become obsolete, but it
can be used to produce assault rifles, thalidomide, tasteless entertainment,
and a whole range of other social bads. But societies have laws to forbid
the production of the worst social bads, whether by physical or social capital, so we can presume that most of the uses to which social capital will be
put will be no less good from a social standpoint than the productsof physical capital.
And so it has been regarded by most people who have employed the concept. The first known use of the term social capital was by Lyda Judson
Hanifan in 1916 todescribe rural school community center^.^ The term was
also used in Jane Jacobss classic work The Death and Life of Great American Cities, in which she explainedthat the dense social networks that existed
in older, mixed-use urban neighborhoods constituted a form of social capital
that encouraged public~ a f e t yThe
. ~ economist Glenn Loury, as well as the
sociologist Ivan Light, used the term social capital in the 1970s to analyze
the problem of inner-city economic development: African Americans lacked
the bonds of trust and social connectedness within their own communities
that existed for Asian American and other ethnic groups, which went a long
way toward explaining the relative lack of black small-business development.6 In the 1980s, the term social capital was brought into wider useby
the sociologist James Coleman and the political scientist Robert Putnam.
Putnam stimulated an intense debate over the role of social capital and civil
society in Italyand the United States.
Social Capital
IO1
H O W DO WE MEASURE SOCIAL CAPITAL?
Neither sociologists nor economists have been happy with the spreading use
of the term social capital. Sociologists see it as part of the broader conquest of the social sciences by economics, and economists regard it as a nebulous concept that is difficult if not impossible to measure. And indeed,
measurement of the total stock of cooperative social relationships based on
norms of honesty and reciprocity is not a trivial task.
Robert Putnam has argued inMaking Democracy Work that the qualityof
governance in the different regions of Italy is correlated with social capital,
and that social capital has been in decline in the United States since the
1960s. His work illustrates some of the difficulties involved in the measurement of social capital, for which he uses two types of statistical measures.
The firstis information on groups and group
memberships, from sports clubs
and choral societies to interest groups and political parties, as well as indices
of political participation such as voter turnout and newspaper readership. In
addition, there are more detailed time-budget surveys and other indicators
of
how people actually spend their waking hours.
The second type of data is
survey research such as the General Social Survey (for the United States) or
the World Values Survey (for over sixty countries around the world), which
ask a series of questions concerning values and behavior.
The assertion thatAmerican social capital has been declining over the past
two generations has been hotly contested. Numerous scholars have pointed
to contradictory data showing that groups and group membership have actually been increasing over the past generation while others have argued that
the available data simply do not capture thereality of group life in a society
as complex as theUnited States.*
Aside from the question of whether it is possible to comprehensively count
groups and group memberships, there are at least three further measurement
problems with this approach. First, social capital has an important qualitative
dimension. Although bowling leagues
or garden clubs might be, as Tocqueville suggests, schoolsfor cooperation and public spiritedness, they are obviously very different institutions from the
U.S. Marine Corps or the Mormon
Church in termsof the kinds of collective action theyfoster. A bowling league
is not, to say the least, capable of storming a beach. An adequate measure of
social capital needs to take account of the nature of the collective action of
which a group is capable-its inherent difficulty, the value of the groups output, whether it can be undertaken under adverse circumstances, andso on.
The second problem has to do with what an economist would call the
positive externalities of group membership, or what we might label the
positive radius of trust. Although all groups require social capital to oper-
I02
MATTERS
CULTURE
ate, some build bonds of trust (and hence social capital) outside their own
membership. As Weber indicated, Puritanism mandated honesty not simply
toward other members of ones religious community but toward all human
beings. On the other hand, normsof reciprocity can be shared among only a
small subset of a groups members. In a so-called membershipgroup like the
American Association of Retired People (AARP), which has a membership
of
over 30 million, there is no reason to think that any two given members will
trust each other or achieve coordinated action just because they have paid
their yearly dues to the same organization.
The final problem concerns negative externalities. Some groups actively
promote intolerance, hatred, and even violence toward non-members. Although the Ku Klux Klan, Nation of Islam, and Michigan Militia possesssocial capital, a society made up of such groups would not be particularly
appealing and might even cease to be a democracy. Such groups have problems cooperating with each other, and the exclusive bonds of community
uniting them are likely to make them less adaptive by sealing them off from
influences in the surrounding environment.
It should be clear that coming up with abelievable number expressing the
stock of social capital for a large and complex society like the United States
based on a census of groups is next to impossible. We have empirical data, of
varying reliability, on only a certain subset of the groups that actually exist,
and no consensus means of judging their qualitative difference^.^
Alternatively, insteadof measuring social capitalas apositive value, it might
be easier to measure the absence of social capital through traditional measures
of social dysfunction, such as ratesof crime, family breakdown, druguse, litigation, suicide, tax evasion, and the like. The presumption is that since social
capital reflects the existence of cooperative norms, social deviance ipso facto
reflects a lack of social capital. Indicators of social dysfunction, although
hardly unproblematic, are far more abundant than data on group memberships and are available on a comparativebasis. The National Commission on
Civic Renewal hasused this strategy to measure civic disengagement.
One very serious problem with using social dysfunction data as a negative
measure of social capitalis that they ignore distribution. Just as conventional
capital is unevenly distributed within a society (i.e., as measured by wealth
and income distribution studies),so social capitalis also likelyto be unevenly
distributed-strata of highly socialized, self-organizing people may coexist
with pockets of extreme atomization and social pathology.
THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS
Social capital is not, as sometimes portrayed, a rare cultural treasure passed

down from one generation to the next, which,
if lost, can never be regained.
Social Capital
4
103
Hierarchically
generated
More formal
Less formal
FIGURE 8.1 A Continuum of Norms
Rather, it is created spontaneously all the time by people going about their
daily lives. It was created in traditional societies, and it is generated on a
daily basis by individualsand firms in a modern capitalistsociety.
The systematic study of how order, and thus social capital, can emergein a
spontaneous and decentralized fashionis one of the most important intellectual developments of the late twentieth century. Leading the charge have
been the economists-not a surprising development, given that the discipline
of economics centers around markets, which are themselves prime examples
of spontaneous order. It was Friedrich von Hayek who laid out the program
of studying what he called the extended orderof human cooperation, that
is, the sum total of all of the rules, norms, values, and shared behaviors that
allow individuals to work togetherin a capitalistsociety.lo
No one would deny that social order is often created hierarchically. But it
is useful to see that order canemerge from a spectrumof sources that extends
from hierarchical and centralized types of authority to thecompletely decentralized and spontaneous interactions of individuals. Figure 8.1 illustrates
this continuum.
Hierarchy can take many forms, from the transcendental
(e.g., Moses
coming down from Mount Sinai with the Ten Commandments) to the mundane, as when a CEO announces a new corporate ethos that will govern
customer relations. Spontaneous order has similarly diverse origins, ranging
from the blind interaction of natural forces to highly structured negotiations
among lawyers over underground water rights. By and large, the norms created spontaneously tend to be informal-that is, they are not written down
and published-whereas norms and rules created by hierarchical sources of
authority tend to take the form of written laws, constitutions, regulations,
holy texts, or bureaucratic organization charts. In some cases, the boundary
between spontaneous and hierarchical order is blurry; in English-speaking
countries like Britain and the United States, for example, common law
evolves spontaneously through the interactionof a myriad of judges and advocates, but it is also recognized as binding by the formal judicial system.
Besides arraying social norms along a continuum from hierarchically generated to spontaneously generated, we can overlay another continuum of
norms that are the productof rational choice and norms that are socially in-
Spontaneously
generated
MATTERS
104
~~
_____
CULTURE
~~~
FIGURE 8.2 The Universe of Norms I

herited and a-rational in origin. Combining our two axes produces a fourquadrant matrix of possible types of norms, as illustrated in Figure8.2. "Rational" as used hererefersonly
to the fact that alternative norms are
consciously debated and compared ahead of time. Clearly, rational discussion can lead to bad choices that do not serve the true interests of the people
making them, whereas a-rational norms can be quite functional, as when religious belief supports social order or economic growth.
In many respects, this distinction between
rational and a-rational corresponds to the disciplinary boundary between sociology and economics. Sociology is, in the end, a discipline devoted
to the study of social norms.
Sociologists assume that as human beings grow and mature, they are socialized into a whole series of roles and identities-Catholic, worker, deviant,
mother, bureaucrat-defined by a series of complex norms and rules. These
norms bind communities together and are tightly enforced by them, sharply
limiting the kinds of choices people can make about theirlives.
INSIGHTS OF THE ECONOMISTS
Over the past generation, economists have paid increasing

attention to the
importance of norms and rules in economic life. Ronald Heiner pointed out
that as rational human beings we simply cannot make rational decisions
at
every point in day-to-daylife. Were we to do so, our behavior would be both
unpredictable and subject to paralysis as we perpetually calculated whether
we should tip the waiter,stiff the cab driver of his fare, or put away adifferent amount of our paycheck every month in our retirement account."In fact,
it is rational for people to impose simplifying rules on their own behavior,
even if these rules do not always yield correct decisions in every circumstance
because decisionmaking is in itself costly and often requires information that
is unavailable or faulty,
Social Capital
105
The entiresub-discipline within economicsof the new institutionalismis

built around the observation that
rules and norms arecritical to rational economic behavior. What the economic historian Douglass North labels an institution is a norm or rule, formal or informal, governing human social
interaction. He points out that norms are critical for reducing transaction
costs; if we did not have norms, for example, requiring the respect of property rights, we would haveto negotiate ownership rules on a case-by-case basis, asituationthatwould
be conduciveneither tomarket exchange,
investment, nor economic growth.
Thus economists do not differ from sociologists in stressing the importance of norms. Where they do differ is in their self-perceived ability to give
an account of the origins of norms and rules. Sociologists (aswell as anthropologists) are, by and large, much better at describing social norms than explaining why they cameto be that way. Many sociological descriptions paint
a highly static picture of human society, observing, for example, that lowerclass boys in Italian neighborhoods in New York are socialized
by peer
group pressure to join gangs.
But this kind of assertion simply begs the question of where those peer
group norms came from in the first place. We can trace them back a generation or two into the historical past, but ultimately we face an absence of evidence for their more distant origins. There was for a time a school
of
functionalist sociology and anthropology that tried to find rational utilitarian reasons for the most bizarre social rules. The Hindu ban on eating
cows was ascribed, for example, to the fact that cows were resources that
had to be protected for other uses like plowing and dairy farming. What
could not be explainedis why the Muslims in India, who faced the same ecological and economic conditions, ate cows with gusto, or why the ban persists when a McDonalds in New Delhi can import all the beef it wants from
Australia or Argentina.
Into the breech have stepped economists, who in recent years have not
been shy about applying their methodology to ever wider aspects of social
behavior. There is a large and well-developed branch of economics-game
theory-that seeks to explain how social norms and rules come about. As
noted above, economists do not deny that human action is bounded by all
sorts of rules and norms: How human beings get to these norms, however,is
for them a rational and therefore explicable process.
To oversimplify a bit, economic game theory starts from the premise that
we are all born into the world as isolated individuals with bundles of selfish
desires or preferences, not with lots of social ties and obligations to one another. In many cases, however, we can satisfy those preferences more
effectively if we cooperate with other people and therefore end up negotiating
cooperative norms to govern social interactions. People can act altruistically
106
MATTERS
CULTURE
1
Rational
Social Engineering
The market
Constitutionalism
Formal law
Common law
b
Hierarchically
generated
Revealed
religion
Historical
tradition
Spontaneously
generated
Folk religion
Incest taboos
Biologically
grounded norms
A-rational
FIGURE 8.3 The Universe of Norms I1
by this account, but only because they have calculated at some level that altruism is of benefit to themselves (presumably because other people will then
behave altruistically as well). The mathematics behind game theory simply
seeks to understand in a formal way the strategies
by which people can move
from selfish interests to cooperativeoutcomes.
If we try to locate various types of norms within our previous four-quadrant matrix, we come up with something like Figure
8.3.
The rules concerning car pools, for example, belong in the rational, spontaneously generated quadrant. That is, the rules were evolved in a decentralized fashion, but presumably after some discussion and trial and error
among the participants. Formal law, whether promulgated by dictatorships
or democracies, belongs in the rational hierarchical quadrant, as does constitution writing, socialengineering, and all other efforts to
guide communities from the top. Commonlaw, on the other hand,is generated just like the
car pool rules, spontaneously and rationally. Organized revealed religion
usually comes from a hierarchical source-indeed, the ultimate hierarchical
authority, God-and the rules it dictates are not adopted with rational debate. Some folk religions (e.g., Taoism and Shintoism in East Asia) and
quasi-religious cultural practices may have evolved in a decentralized, a-rational way. These forms of religious norms belong, therefore, in the lower
left and lower right quadrants,
respectively.Finally, certain norms are
Social
I07
grounded in biology and belong firmly within the a-rational, spontaneously

generated quadrant. The incest taboois in this category. The most recent research indicates that human incest taboos, although conventional, draw
upon natural aversions that human beings have to sexual relations between
close relatives.
It is possible to hypothesize, as many have done, that as societies modernize, norms tend to be created less in the lower than in the upper quadrants,
and particularly in the upper left one (i.e., by government authority). The
terms that have classically been associated with modernization by theorists
like Henry Maine, Max Weber, &mile Durkheim, and Ferdinand Tonniesrationalization, bureaucratization, the shift from status
to contract, and
gemeinschaft to gesellschaft-all suggest that formal, rationallegal authority,
often vested in the state, becomes the chief source of order in modern societies. Yet as anyone who has tried to wade through the thicketof unwritten
rules concerning gender relations in a modern American workplace
or school
knows, informal norms have not disappeared from modern life and are not
likely to doso in the future.
Since people tend to be more awareof norms issuing from hierarchical authority than from Hayeks extended order of human cooperation, it may
be useful to look more closely at the two quadrants on the rightside of Figure 8.2 to begin to understand the extent and limits of spontaneous order.
Self-organization has become a buzzword not only among economists and
biologists but also among information technology gurus, management consultants, and business school professors. Nevertheless, it can come into being
only under certain distinct conditions, and it is not a universal formula for
achieving coordination in human groups.
RULES FOR POOLS
Over the past generation, the greatest number of theoretical and empirical
studies of spontaneous order have come out of economics and related fields
like law and economics and public choice. Many early studies in this genre
had to do with the origin of norms regarding property rights.13 So-called
common pool resources that are shared withincommunities-resources like
meadows, fisheries, forests, underground water, and air-constitute especially difficult problems of cooperation because they are subject
to what Garrett Hardin referred to as the tragedy of the commons.yy14 Hardin argued
that thetragedy of the commons led to social disaster as seas were overfished
and meadows overgrazed. According to him, the problem of sharing common resources could be solved only through hierarchical authority, presumably by a coercive state or even a supranational regulatory body.
108
MATTERS
CULTURE
In contrast to thishierarchical approach to norm generation, a numberof

economists have suggested more spontaneous approaches. The fountainhead
of the entire law andeconomics field was Ronald Coases frequently cited article, The Problem of Social Cost, in which he argues that when transaction costs are zero, a change in the formal rulesof liability will have no effect
on the allocationof resource^.'^ The problem of applying the Coase theorem
to real-world situations is, of course, that transaction costs are almostnever
zero. It is usually costly for private individuals to work out fair agreements
with one another, particularly when one is substantially richer or more powerful than the other.
On the other hand, transactioncosts have been low enough in many cases
that economists have been able to identify quite a number of intriguing cases
of self-organization, whereby social norms have been created through a bottom-up process. Robert Sugden describes the rules for sharing driftwood on
English beaches, where first come is first served, but only if a moderate
amount is taken.16Robert Ellickson gives numerous examplesof spontaneous
economic rules. Nineteenth-century American whalers, for example, often
faced potential conflicts when a whale harpooned by one ship would break
free and be captured and sold by another ship that hadnt invested time and
effort hunting it. Whalers developed
an extensive set of informal rules to regulate such situations and divide the catch equitably.
Much of the spontaneous-order literature tends to be anecdotal and does
not give us a good senseof how often new norms are actually created dein a
centralized manner. One exception is the work of Elinor Ostrom, who has
collected well over5,000 case studiesof common poolresources, a sufficient
number to allow her to begin making empirically grounded generalizations
about the phenomenon.ls Her broad conclusion is that human communities
in a variety of times and places have found solutions to the tragedy of the
commons much more often thanis commonly predicted. Many of these solutions involve neither the privatization of common resources (the solution favored by many economists) nor regulation by the state (the solution often
favored by non-economists). Rather, communities have been able to rationally devise informal and sometimes formal rules for sharing common
resources in a way that is equitable and does not lead to their premature
depletion or exhaustion. These solutions are facilitated by the same condition that makes a two-sided prisoners dilemma soluble: iteration. That is, if
people know that they have to continue to live with one another in bounded
communities in which continued cooperation will be rewarded, they develop
an interest in their own reputations, aswell as in the monitoringand punishment of those who violate community rules.
Social
109
It is clear from the workof Elinor Ostrom and others that spontaneous order occurs only under certain well-defined conditions and that in many situations it eitherfails to materialize or leads to situations that are not good from
the standpoint of society as a whole. Ostrom notes that there are many instances of failed efforts to establish norms for the sharing of common pool
resources. Her conditions for self-organization suggest several categories of
reasons explaining why societies will not always
be able to come up with
spontaneous-order solutions.
Size. Mancur Olson pointed out that the free-rider problem becomes more
severe as group size increases because it becomes increasingly difficult
to
monitor the behavior of any one individual. Members of a medical practice
or partners in a law firm are likelyto know if one of them is not pulling his
or her weight; the same is not true in a factory employing 10,000 workers.
Furthermore, when groups get larger than this, the system begins to break
down. It becomes difficult to associate faces with reputations; monitoring
and enforcement become increasingly costly and subject to economies of
scale that dictate designating certain members of the group to specialize in
these activities.
Boundaries. For spontaneous order
to occur, it is important to put clear
boundaries on group membership. If people can enter and exit the group at
will or if it is not clear who is a member (and therefore who has a right to
benefit from the common resources of the group), then individuals will have
less incentive to worry about their reputation. This explains, among other
things, why crime rates tend to be higher and levels of social capital tend to
be lower in neighborhoods with a great dealof transience, such as those undergoing rapid economic changeor those around railroad or bus stations.
Repeated Interaction. Many of the communities studied by Elinor Ostrom
that have successfully solvedcommon pool resource problems are traditional
ones with virtually no social mobility or contact with the outside world,
such
as mountain villagers, rice farmers, fishermen, and the like. People worry
about their reputation only if they know they will have to continue to deal
with one another for an extended period
in the future.
Prior Norms Establishing a Common Culture. The establishment of cooperative norms often presupposes the existence of a set of prior norms held in
common by the individuals making up the group. A culture provides a common vocabulary of not just words but also gestures, facial'expressions, and
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personal habits that serve as signals of intent. Culture helps people distinguish cooperators from cheaters, as well as in transmitting behavioral rules
that make action within a community more predictable. People are much
more willing to demand the punishmentof people who have broken the rules
of their own culture than those of another. Conversely, new cooperative
norms are much harder to generate across cultural boundaries.
Power and Justice. Informal social norms can frequently reflect the ability
of one group to dominate another through its greater wealth,
power, cultural
capacity, intellectual ability, or through outright violence and coercion. Certain social norms may be seen as unjust, eventhough they are voluntarily accepted by the communities that practice them. The norms justifying slavery,
or those subordinating women tomen, are examples.
The Persistence of Bad Choices. Even if unjust, inefficient, or counterpro-
ductive norms came into being, one could argue that they would spontaneously disappear precisely because they did not serve the interests of the
communities that practiced them. In the law and economics literature, there
is often an explicit evolutionary assumption that whatever survives represents fitness in some senseand that thereis therefore over timean evolution
toward efficiency. Evil, inefficient, or counterproductive norms can persist
in a social systemfor generations, however, becauseof the influence of tradition, socialization, and ritual.
Social capital can be generated spontaneously in relatively small, stable
groups, in which participants number in the hundreds or in some cases thousands. It can also emerge in larger populations in societies where government
and the rule of law exist already, and indeed it is an important consequence
of a rule of law. But when spontaneous groups get too large, various public
goods problems (e.g., who will negotiate the rules, monitor free riders, enforce norms, and the like) become insuperable. Elinor Ostroms catalog
of
rules regarding common pool resources constitute culture with a small csmall rules for small communities that we do not generally associate with
large and important cultural systems. The spontaneous-order literature can
give no account of norm formation that applies to the largest scale groups:
nations, ethno-linguistic groups, or civilizations. Culture with a capital Cwhether Islamic, Hindu, Confucian, or Christian-does not have spontaneous roots.
The four-quadrant matrixof Figure 8.2 is only a taxonomic framework for
beginning to think about wheresocial capital actually comes from in contemporary societies. Peoples views of where cooperative norms actually come
from is highly colored by ideological preferences as to where they ought to
Social Capital
111
come from: traditionalist conservatives think they ought to come from religion and other sources of a-rational hierarchy populating the lower left
quadrant; liberals worried about the workings of untrammeled markets
want them to come from the upper
left (e.g., in the form of a state regulatory
agency); and libertarians of the right andleft hope they will arise from either
of the spontaneous-order quadrants on the right side. It should be clear, however, that in contemporary societies each quadrant contains a non-trivialset
of cases and that the four sources of social capital all interact with one another in complex ways.
Formal laws play an important role in shaping informal norms, as in the
case of civil rights legislation in the United States, whereas informal norms
make the creationof certain kinds of political institutions moreor less likely.
Religion remains an important source of cultural rules, even in apparently
secular societies; at the same time, religious rules are subject to a spontaneous evolution as they interact withsocietys
a
given historical environment.
Understanding these relationships, and providing an empirical map
of the
sources of actual cultural rules,is a project for the future.
Corruption,
Culture, and Markets
S E Y M O U RM A R T I NL I P S E T
G A B R I E LS A L M A NL E N 2
AND
Widespread interest in the social requisites of democracy and economic development has stimulated a growing literature
on the extent, sources, and
consequences of corruption. This chapter seeks to integrate theoretical and
empirical analyses of corruption. Following a cross-cultural and transhistorical discussion of corruption, it reports some empirical findings from the research literature. It then seeks to integrate these findings and some original
research into two theoretical frameworks: the means-ends schema from
Robert Mertons scholarship and particularistic assumptions derived from
Edward Banfield.
What is corruption? Students of the subject provide different definitions.
As Arnold Heidenheimer writes in Political Corruption, the word corruption has a history of uniquely different meanings and connotations. Political scientists and philosophers emphasize its presence in politicsor the state:
efforts tosecure wealth or power through illegal means-private gain at public expense.
Corruption has been ubiquitous in complex societies from ancient Egypt,
Israel, Rome, and Greece down to the present. Dictatorial and democratic
polities;feudal,capitalist,
andsocialisteconomies;Christian,Muslim,
Culture,
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and Markets
113
TABLE 9.1
Corruption Perceptions Index1998
1. Denmark
2. Finland
3. Sweden
4. New Zealand
23. Botswana
24. Spain
25. Japan
26. Estonia
27. Costa Rica
5. Iceland
28. Belgium
6. Canada
29. Malaysia
7. Singapore
8. Netherlands
30. Namibia
31. Taiwan
9. Norway
10. Switzerland
32. South Africa
11. Australia
33. Hungary
12. Luxembourg
34. Mauritius
13. United Kingdom 35. Tunisia
14. Ireland
36. Greece
15. Germany
37. Czech Rep.
16. Hong Kong
38. Jordan
17. Austria
39. Italy
18. United States
40. Poland
41. Peru
19. Israel
20. Chile
42. Uruguay
43. South Korea
21. France
44. Zimbabwe
22. Portugal
45. Malawi
46. Brazil
47. Belarus
48. Slovak Rep.
49. Jamaica
50. Morocco
51. El Salvador
52. China
53. Zambia
54. Turkey
55. Ghana
56.Mexico
57. Philippines
58. Senegal
59. Ivory Coast
60. Guatemala
61. Argentina
62. Nicaragua
63. Romania
64. Thailand
65. Yugoslavia
66. Bulgaria
67. Egypt
68. India
69. Bolivia
70. Ukraine
71. Latvia
72.Pakistan
73. Uganda
74. Kenya
75. Vietnam
76. Russia
77. Ecuador
78. Venezuela
79. Colombia
80. Indonesia
81. Nigeria
82. Tanzania
83. Honduras
84. Paraguay
85. Cameroon
Hindu, and Buddhist cultures and religious institutions have all experienced
corruption but not, of course, in equal measure. The omnipresence, the persistence, and the recurrent character of corruption suggest that it cannot be
treated as a dysfunction reducibleby purposive human action.Research and
study should try to explain why there is more corruption in one time, place,
or culture than in others.
Until recently, empirical research in the field consisted primarily of case
studies. In response to the growing needs of multinational companies, however, consulting firms have developed a numberof corruption indices, transforming the study of corruption and allowing social scientists to test a
number of hypotheses about both itscauses and its consequences.
One of the commonlyused indicators of political corruptionis Transparency
Internationals Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI). Table 9.1 is the 1998 listing of eighty-nine countries, ranked from the
least to the most corrupt.
This index is a poll of polls drawing upon numerous distinct surveysof
expert and general publicviews of the extent of corruption in many countries
around the world. The CPI subsumes credible indices of corruption for
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countries in which a minimum of three polls exist; in some cases the index
averages as many as twelve.All sources use a similar definition of corruption
involving the misuse of public power for private benefits. The CPI averages
poll results that attempt todifferentiate between political and administrative
corruption and thusclaims to represent the general perceptionof corruption.
The CPI does not deal with the problemsof commensurability-intersocietal
and intracultural differences in corruption. Nor does it include measures of
corruption in private organizations, such as
insider trading.
CPIs methodology is subject to controversy, some authors assuming that
it deals only with surveys of the attitudes of international executives toward corruption. In reality, however, it includes samples of the populations. The CPI only counts countries in its index for which
at least one such
population survey is available. In any case, the polls of executives and experts correlate very highly with the population surveys. The CPI is scaled
from 0 (least corrupt) to 10 (most corrupt). Ronald Inglehart reports from
the 1995 World Values Survey that the responses to a question inquiring
about the extent of corruption in the respondents countries correlate
highly with CPI rankings.
The bulk of this chapter focuses on the relationship between values and
corruption. The lack of cross-national quantitative data on values and attitudes has long hindered comparative study in the area. However, the World
Values Surveys, conducted in 1981-1982,1990-1993, and 1995-1996, provide social scientists with large samplesof such information on a range of attitudes and values. The 1995-1996 survey sampled over sixty countries; the
data set is unfortunately not yet available for analysis but soon will be. The
analysis in this chapter uses the 1990-1993 survey, which was carried out in
forty-three countries containing 70 percent of the worlds population. They
include nations with per capita incomes as low as
U.S.$399 per year to those
as high as $30,000 per year. The quality of the samples varies greatly. The
surveys carried out in some less developed and former Soviet countries are
drawn disproportionately from the urban, literate populations,
which tend to
have orientations relatively similar
to those found in industrial societies3 The
findings thus probably underestimate the size of cross-national differences
among First, Second, and Third World nations.
ECONOMICS AND CORRUPTION
Hard evidence has documented corruptions detrimental effect on many aspects of economic development. Research indicates that higher levels of corruption significantly reduce GNP growth rates. Paolo Mauros regression
analysis found that a 2.4 decline in the corruption index (scaled from 1 to
10) is associated with a four percentage point increase in the per capita
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growth rate.4 The effect

of corruption on growthseems to result in part from
reduced levels of investment. The negative impact on investment may derive
from the added risk that corruption
brings to investors calculations. Corruption may also reduce economic growth by reducing public spending on education. A 2.38 drop (one standard deviation) in the corruption index
is
associated with an increase in government spending on education by around
half a percent of GDP.S
Why does corruption influence education? Research suggests that governments plagued by corruption spend relatively more money
on items that facilitate the exactionof graft.6 Corrupt public bureaucrats mayshift government
expenditures to those areas in which they can collect bribes more efficiently.
Larger, hard-to-manage projects, such as airports or highways, facilitate
fraud. However, in areas such as education, expenditures and their products
are more visible and should presumablybe less open to corruption.
Other research ties corruption toincome inequality. Cross-national studies
have found a strong relationship among corruption, income inequality, and
poverty. The lower a countrys scoreon the corruption index, the morelikely
it is to have a high Gini coefficient, meaning greater income inequality.
A
0.78 increase in thegrowth rate of corruption is linked to a drastic decline in
the rate of income growth among thepoor-7.8 percentage points per year.
The variable most robustly associated with corruption in international
comparisons is per capita income.* The wealthy and most economically developed countries are the least politically corrupt. The top twenty, as measured by the Transparency International 1998 Corruption Perceptions Index,
have a per capita income in purchasing power of U.S.$17,000 or more (see
Table 9.1 for the corruption scores), whereas the twenty most corrupt
have a
per capita incomeof $4,000 or less. The latter drawlargely from theranks of
the less developed and formerly communist countries. Only six Western European states fall outside the upper twenty.
A number of assumptions may explain the corruption-income relationship.
Greater income may reduce corruption by changing the incentive structures
of public officials: Increased wealth would seemto reduce the marginal value
of expected monetary gains from corruption. At the same time,
the cost of
penalties-imprisonment, criminal record, embarrassment, loss of future job
prospects-probably rises with income.
Economic development may also reduce corruption through its important
and positive impact on democracy, which, evidence suggests, reduces corrupt i ~ n Additionally,
.~
development increaseslevels of education, which may improve the oddsof catching abuse.O The degree to which a countryis integrated
into the world economy, as measured by international trade, should also be
negatively associated with corruption. Incorporation into the global community exposes nationsand citizens to the normsof more economically developed
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MATTERS
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societies regarding personaland market behavior, and groups like theEU and
NAFTA condition membership on the adoptionof these norms.
CULTURE AND INSTITUTIONS
Systematic cross-national research into the ways that cultural and political
variables affect the potentialities for corruption is largely a recent phenomenon. Quantitative evidence points to a link between corruption andsocial diversity, ethno-linguistic fractionalization, and the proportions of a countrys
population adhering to different religious traditions. In a sophisticated comparative study, Daniel Treisman found strong evidence that a number
of cultural and institutional factors has reduced levels of corruption. In harmony
with studies of factors related to democratization, his analysis suggests that a
greater percentage of Protestants and aBritish colonial history aretwo of the
most important factors associated with low levels of national corruptionsecond only to GNP.
Possible mechanisms by which Protestantism affects such behavior willbe
discussed below. With respect to British colonial origin, Treisman argues that
it infused a lasting emphasis on procedure rather than authority. To quote
Harry Eckstein, Procedures, to them [the British], are not merely procedures, but sacred rituals. The willingness by judges and public officials to
follow the rules, even when doing so threatens authority, would seem to increase the chances of exposing corruption. British heritage may also reduce
corruption through its positive relationship to democracy.
Two sociological approaches help illuminate the relationships between culture and corruption. The first stems from the work of sociologys founding
figure, Emile Durkheim, as extensively reformulated by Robert K. Merton.
In his Social Theory and Social Structure, Merton presents a means-ends
schema that can account for variationsin norm violations.12A second relates
to the family. Political scientist Edward Banfield developed an intriguing
analysis of the ways in which a strong familial orientation, as in southern
Italy and Sicily, helps explain highlevels of corr~ption.~ The
underlying theory stems from Plato, who pointed
out that the inherent relations among
family members, especially parents and children, press them to give particularistic preferences (nepotism). Banfield noted that corruptionis linked to the
strength of family values involving intense feelingsof obligation.
THE MEANS-ENDS SCHEMA
Mertons theory implies that corruption is motivated behavior stemming

from social pressures that result in norm violations. He emphasizes that all
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social systems set cultural goals-objectives-that

human actors seek to
achieve, as wellas approved means to gain them
(i.e., institutionalized
norms). Those seeking to secure the goals by socially approved means are
conformists, to use Mertons formulation. However, social systems also press
many who have little access to the opportunity structure-whether because
of their race, ethnicity, or from a lack of skills, capital, material, and other
human resources-to seek the dominant goals from high income to social
recognition. Many achievement markets are inherently organized so as to
create a large gap between demand (goals and values) and supply (means).
Consequently, many, who recognize early on that they have little access to
opportunity, will reject the rules
of the game and tryto succeed by unconventional (innovative or criminal) means. Merton notes the ways this analytic
framework helps explain variations in deviant behavior between higher and
lower classes and among different ethnic groups in America, generalizations
documented by Daniel Bell.14
Mertons theory implies that cultures that stress economic success as an
important goal but nevertheless strongly restrict access to opportunities will
have higher levels of corruption. This hypothesis finds support in data from
the cross-national 1990-1993 World Values Survey, which yield evidence for
the hypotheses derived from Merton on the relationship between achievement motivation, as measured by a scale of World Values Survey items, and
corruption. The extreme cases conform to the analytic framework. The less
affluent countries with high achievement motivation are the most corrupt.
For instance, Russia, South Korea, and Turkey have the highest levels
of
achievement orientation according to the scale. These countries are also
among the more corrupt.
Conversely, as anticipated by Mertons framework, countries that are relatively low on achievement motivation and high on
access to appropriate
means should have relatively low levels of corruption. Denmark, Sweden,
and Norway fit the bill best. Surprisingly, they are the least achievement oriented according to our scale and are also the least corrupt. Presumably, the
means-ends strain is weak among them.
The Scandinavian pattern is produced by the relationship between achievement motivation and structurally differentiated access to opportunity. Surprisingly, the achievement scale is strongly-but negatively-correlated with
per capita income. This suggests a conundrum: The richer a country, the
lower the level of achievement motivation. These results may appear to
counter Webers cultural theory. However, in dealing with the impactof religious values on economic development, Weber anticipated that the positive
relationship with Protestantism would decline once high productivity had
been institutionalized. It may be suggested that although todays wealthy na-
I I ~
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tions were once among the most achievement motivated

(i.e., before development), their citizens, now affluent, are led, as John Adams anticipated, to
pursue non-work-related goals-music, art, literature-to become post-materialists, t o use Ronald Ingleharts termin01ogy.l~ The elites and middle
classes of some less developed nations, on the other hand, reacting to an
awareness of their inferior economic status, may be incited toward higher
levels of achievement motivation.
A multiple regression analysis relating the 1990 World Values data to the
Corruption Perceptions Index as the dependent variable was undertaken to
test the hypothesis. As noted, Mertons theoretical analysis implies that serious corruption will plague countries with high levels of achievement orientation and low access to means. The actual relationship is reasonably strong
and statistically significant at conventional levels. A 1.1change in a countrys
achievement index score (one standard deviation, scaled from 1 to 5 ) is associated with almost a half-point change in a countrys corruption score. The
models goodness-of-fit is high, explaining a good deal of the variation in
corruption. The linkage between these two variables remains strong when
controlling for other key factors.
Many indices of the availability of economic resources and of economic
freedom have been developed.We primarily use the 1997 Indexof Economic
Freedom (IEF) published by the Wall Street Journal and the Heritage Foundation. Scaled from 1 (no freedom) to 5 (totally free), the index purports to
measure the degree to which a government supports the free market. It includes several factors: freedom to hold property, freedom to earn a living,
freedom to operate a business, freedom to invest ones earnings, freedom to
trade internationally, and freedom to participate in a market economy. In a
regression analysis, a 0.75 change (one standard deviation) in the Index
of
Economic Freedom is associated with almost a one and a half point change
in a countryscorruption score.
Like the IEF, per capita income maybe an indicator of the availability of
economic resources and even of the extent to which the bulk
of the population is economically satisfied. Thus the fact that per capita income relates
so powerfully to corruption further supports the idea that the availability
of institutionalized means to achieve desired ends lowers levels of corruption, reinforcing the validity of Mertons assumptions. This model, combining the 1997 Index
of Economic Freedom and per capita income,
explains a good dealof the variance in corruption. Achievements relationship to corruption remains robust when controlling for variables that relate to corruption-like per capita income and the percentage Protestant
and of British national origin-suggesting that this scale captures an important factor.
arkets
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AMORAL FAMILISM
The second major cultural framework, one derived from Plato via Banfield,
assumes that corruption is in large part an expression of particularism-the
felt obligation to help, to give resources to persons to whom one has a personal obligation, to the family above all but also to friends and membership
groups. Nepotism is its most visible expression. Loyalty is a particularistic
obligation that was very strong in precapitalist, feudal societies. As Weber
implied, loyalty and the market are antithetical. The opposite of particularism is universalism, the commitment to treat others according to a similar
standard. Market norms express universalism; hence, pure capitalism exhibits and is sustained by such values.
Plato contended two and a half millennia ago that family ties, especially
those between parents and children, are the chief forces underlying institutionalized social classesand ascription.16He argued that to create an egalitarian society, a communist one, such ties-the family itself-would have to be
eliminated. Children would have to be reared from birth in public institutions, not knowing their parents. Plato, of course, could not have believed
that a society without parental ties was viable, but his discussion points up
the social power he attachedto the family.
In trying to understand capitalisms initial rise in Protestant cultures, Weber noted that the pre-industrial norms in Catholicsocieties were communitarian, requiring above all that the
society, the family, and the dominant
strata help the less fortunate. He believed that these values worked against
the emergence of a rationally driven market economy. Conversely, a stress
on
individualism, concern for self, is more conducive to capital accumulation.
Calvinism and Protestant sectarianism fostered such behavior. Sectariansbelieve that God helps those who help themselves. Weber pointedout that the
great achievement of . . . the ethical and ascetic sects of Protestantism was to
shatter the fetters of the sib [the extended family]. As Lawrence Harrison
notes, There is evidence that the extended family is an effective institution
for survival but an obstacle to development.1s Solidarity with the extended
family and hostility to the outsider who is not a member of family, the village, or perhaps the tribe can produce a self-interested culture.
Edward Banfield, studying southern Italy, carried the analysis further with
the concept of amoral familism: a culture that is deficient in communitarianvaluesbutfostersfamilialties.
He writes: In asociety of amoral
familists, no one will further the interest of the group or community except
as it is to his private advantage to do
There is little loyalty to the larger
community or acceptance of behavioral norms that require support of others. Hence, familism is amoral, gives rise to corruption, and fosters deviance
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from norms of universalism and merit. Anything goes that advances the interests of one's self and family. The Mafia is an extreme example of amoral
familism. Banfield, in effect, argues that corruption in southern Italy and
comparable traditional societies is an expression of forces similar to those
that sustain the Mafia.
The World Values Survey1990, together with aggregatestatistics from the
World Bank, provide data that we employ to create a scale of familism. The
first item in the scale deals with unqualified respectfor parents, measured by
the percentage of people who agreed that regardless of the qualities and
faults of one's parents, a person must always love and respect them. The second item is the percentage of people who think that divorce is unjustifiable.
The third, from theWorld Bank, is the mean numberof children per woman.
Those nations thatscore high on this scale tendto be among the more corrupt. Known for their strong familial ties, most Asian nations rank among
the more corrupt. On the other hand, Scandinavians are by far the lowest on
the familism scale-as noted, these countries are considered the least corrupt.
Regression analysis affirmsthe association. The familism scaleand CPI relate
strongly. The relationship remains significant when controlling for per capita
income. A model that includes the familism scale,the achievement scale, and
purchasing power parity explains a great deal
of the variation in theCPI.
In short, thisanalysis affirms theamoral familism thesis. In another model,
we added a variable for the percentage of Protestants. Treisman has shown
that this measure is powerfully linked to perceptions of corruption. This result suggests that familism is an intervening variable between religion and
corruption. In other words, Protestantism reduces corruption, in part
because of its association with individualistic, non-familistic relations.
RELIGION, CULTURE, AND CORRUPTION
In the preceding discussion we showed that cultural variables help explain

and predict levels of corruption. But what explains culture? Dealing with
this complex question is far beyond the limits of this chapter. However, the
social science consensus that religion is an important determinant of variations in larger secular cultures offers some helpful suggestions. Countries
dominated by Protestants are less corrupt than others. The Protestant religious ethos is more conducive to norm-adhering behavior. Protestants, particularly sectarians, believe that individuals are personally responsible for
avoidingsin,whereasotherChristiandenominations,particularlythe
Catholic Church, place more emphasis on the inherent weakness of human
beings, their inability to escape sin and error, and the need for the church to
be forgivingandprotecting.TheCatholic,Anglican,andOrthodox
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Churches tend to be more accepting of human weakness because the clergy

have the authority to relieve the individual of some sense of responsibility.
Given a more tolerant attitude toward the possibility of sinning, acceptance of human frailty and of the assumption that no one canbe a saint are
natural consequences.
The sectarian ethos and theevangelical ethos, on the other hand, are more
likely t o foster adherence to absolute values, especially with respect
to
morals. They encourage adherents to press hard to attain andinstitutionalize
virtue and to reduce, if not destroy, the influence of evil people and wicked
institutions and practices. Politically, they tend to view social and political
dramas as moralityplays-battles between God and the devil-with compromise virtually unthinkable.
Protestants have retained important elements of their evangelical origins.
Most denominations expect adherence from childrenof practitioners as a result of a conscious voluntary decisionon reaching adulthood. Some require a
conversion experience (rebirth) as a sign of sincere faith. Good standing in
these groups has been contingenton righteous living in accordance with precepts that are sometimes very concrete. In a number of countries, the more
ascetic branches of Protestantism have supported measuresto inhibit or limit
alcoholic beverages and outlaw gambling.
Protestantism is strongly linkedto perceptions of corruption. The relationship remains significant when controlling for per capita income but becomes
somewhat less so. This suggests that up to a quarter of the relationship between Protestantism and the CPI is linked to higher incomes or more advanced levels of economic development of Protestants. On the other hand,
this finding also implies that as much as 75 percent of Protestantisms relationship to corruptionmay result from cultural factors.
An analysis of the relationship between our achievement scale and the percentage of Protestants in a country is congruent with the assumption that
Protestants have becomeless achievement oriented. Although Weber stressed
that Protestants tend to be more achievement oriented than Catholics or
other traditionalists, this may no longer be the case. Now that most Protestant nations are wealthy, the evidence suggests that they have changed their
value foci. The achievement scale correlates negatively with the percentage
Protestant in a given country, meaning that the more Protestants, the lower
the level of achievement motivation. This provides us withanother reason to
expect lower corruption levels among Protestant nations as compared to
Catholic ones.
According to Mertons logic, the availability of institutionalized means in
wealthier societies (in this case the accessibility of economic resources) also
implies lower corruption scores in Protestant countries, whichon average are
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MATTERS
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more affluent. Catholic governments also tend to be more interventionist,

limiting economic freedom, whereas Protest&& countries are more market
oriented, with some partial exceptions (e.g., Scandinavia). As expected, the
Index of Economic Freedom correlates positively with Protestantism, meaning that the higher the percentage of Protestants, the greater the freedom.
Finally, Banfields amoral familism thesis provides an even more basic explanation for why Catholic countries may be more corrupt than Protestant
ones. According to conventional wisdom, Catholic countries are more communitarian and familistic, whereas Protestants emphasize individualism and
self-reliance. The World Values Survey data support these ideas. The familism scale correlates with Protestantism in the expected direction.
As discussed above, the analysis suggests that familism, or the lack thereof, is a
major intervening variable between Protestantism and corruption.
DEMOCRACY AND CORRUPTION
What can be done to reduce corruption, other than increasing productivity

and becoming more modern? For answers, we may lookto Webers discussion of the effects of a politically open societyon limiting state power-more
democracy, individual freedom, and the rule of law. Democracy-which
entails political opposition, freedom of the press, and an independent judiciary-fosters
potentially
powerful
corruption-reducing
mechanisms.
Opposition parties have an interest in exposing corruption in government in
order to win elections. In a democracy, a ruling
party or government that
fails to reform may lose elections. One-party states, on the other hand, lack
such incentives. Mikhail Gorbachev, while still a reformist communist, publicly voiced on at least two occasions his misgivings about the potential for
abuse inherent in a one-party system. As a communist, of course, he did not
advocate a multiparty system. Rather, he urged the Soviet press andintelthe
lectuals to fulfill the role of the opposition in exposing norm violations.
The 1999 resignation of European Union commissioners over charges of
fraud, cronyism, and mismanagement highlights some
of the potential
cleansing effects of democracy. The democratically chosen European Parliament-a volatile mixture of political parties, national, regional, and sectoral
interests-launched
anonslaughtagainsttheunelectedcommissions
Mediterranean [corrupt] practices, stemming from southern, more Catholic
Europe.O The victory of this representative institution mark[ed] a radical
shift in power from the non-elected bureaucracy-the
Commission-to the
elected European Parliament.21
An analysis of the relationship between corruption and democracy broadly
confirms these hypotheses. The data
on democracy come from Freedom
Markets
and
Culture,
Corruption,
123
Houses Annual Surveyof Political Rights and Civil Liberties.2z Scaled from
1
(most free)to 7 (least free), the index consists
of two parts. The first, political
rights, includes responses to the following questions: Are the head(s) of state
and legislative representatives electedthrough free and fair elections? Do citizens have the right to form competitive political parties or other organizations? Is there a significant opposition vote or a realistic opportunity for the
opposition to increase its support? Thesecond index, civil liberties, includes
a measure of freedom and independence in the media, freedomof speech, assembly, equality under the law, access to an independent, non-discriminatory
judiciary, and protection from political terror, unjustified imprisonment, and
so on.
The combined Freedom House index of democracy (averaging both indices), taken overthe lifetime of the index, 1972-1998, correlates highly and
inversely with CPI 1998. In a regression analysis, this combined index of
democracy remains significant when controllingfor purchasing power parity
in per capita terms. However, the unstandardized coefficient loses abouthalf
of its value, and when other key factors are entered into the equation, it becomes insignificant. This suggests that about half of the negative correlation
between democracy and corruption results from the fact that democracies
tend to be wealthier (i.e., provide more accessto opportunity).
Although the average Freedom House score may not relate robustly
to corruption, Treisman found that the number of consecutive years a country had
been a democracy remained related to perceptions of corruption, even when
controlling for key factors. Thus, democracy is an important factor in predicting national corruption levels. There is some indication that thecivil liberties indicator, particularly the rule
of law enforced by an independent
judiciary, is more important thanpolitical rights.
CONCLUSION
The emergence of developed economieswas facilitated by emphases on rationality, small family size, achievement, social mobility, and universalism-elements that characterize modernity as distinct from traditionalism. Ideally,
they were marked by the decline of familism, of values that sustain particularistic mutual-help systems, which run counter to those functional for a
market economy. Valuesthat sustain and express the logic of the market followed on the breakdown of feudal-type stratification systems that stressed
obligation and loyalty.
The strong emphasis of Asian countries on group obligation, especially to
the family, which is much more powerful inthe most recently feudal country,
Japan, than in America or Europe, implies a high level of corruption. The
124
MATTERS
CULTURE
Transparency estimates indicate that most large East Asian countries do

score highon corruption,well above the median. Japan,of course, seemingly
is a major exception. It has an extremely low crime rate. Interpretations of
Japan suggest that rules and the law areless often violated there because doing so disgraces ones family or other in-groups and shames the malefactor.
However, reports of high-level business and political corruption keep surfacing. In Transparencys 1998 Corruption Perceptions Index, Japan ranks
twenty-fifth, lower than Chile, Portugal, Botswana, and Spain, and only
slightlyaboveCostaRica,
Belgium, Malaysia,Namibia,Taiwan,and
Tunisia.
The former communist countries, except for Hungary and the Czech Republic, all rank below the median. They share, to various degrees, an amalgam of familism, statist communitarianism, hierarchical religious cultures
(Catholicism and Orthodoxy), and party particularism, which produced a
high level of corruption under communism. They arealso, for the most part,
poor.
We havefocused on two explanations of corruption, the Mertonian
means-ends schema and the Banfield emphasis on familism. The issues that
Merton and Banfield identified-inadequate means to attainprescribed goals
and particularistic norms inherent in the family-will continue to affect the
behavior of nations. If rationally oriented economic values and the rule of
law become dominant in less developed and former communist countries,
and if they foster development, levels of corruption should fall, as they have
in the three now well-to-do and highly market oriented and relatively law
abiding Chinese societies:Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore.
part three
THEANTHROPOLOGICAL
DEBATE
10
Traditional Beliefs and
Practices-Are Some Better
than Others?
ROBERT B. EDGERTON
For those of us who are besieged daily by headlines and television reports
concerning gang violence, the endangered environment, homelessness, child
abuse, the threat of drugs, AIDS, and divisive political partisanship, the idea
that some things people do may be harmful to themselves and others is unlikely to seem controversial. More and moresurveys rate various cities in the
United States in terms of their relative quality of life, and the same thing is
being done of foreign countries.
Political systems are evaluated as well. Many people would surely
be troubled by any relativistic insistence that the political systems of Iraq, Hitlers
Germany, or the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia were, or are, as good for the
people who live in them or near them as those in Norway, Canada, or
Switzerland, for instance. Most people would probably also react with disbelief to the anthropological assertion that there is no scientific basis for the
evaluation of another societys practice of (for instance) human sacrifice,
genocide, or judicial torture, except as the people in that particular society
themselves evaluate these practices. Nevertheless, that is exactly what many
and
Beliefs
Traditional
Practices
I27
proponents of cultural relativism and adaptivism have asserted-and these

principles continue to be strongly held, especially in anthropology.
These ideas are rooted in thebelief that primitive societies were far more
harmonious than modern ones. Misery, fear, loneliness, pain, sickness,and
premature death are commonplace inAmericas urban ghettos and among its
homeless people, just as theyare in SouthAfricas black townships, the starving villages of the Sudan, the slums of Brazil, and the ethnically cleansed
regions of the Balkans. People in such places are seen to be the hapless victims of various kinds of social, cultural, and environmental pressures, including governmental neglect, racism, corruption, ethnic, religious, and political
strife, as well as economic exploitation.
However, many prominent scholars in anthropology and other disciplines
believe that this sort of misery is not natural to the human condition. They
believe that people in smaller, more homogeneous folk societies have historically lived in far greater harmony and happiness, and that people in many
small societies continue to doso today. The belief that primitive societies are
more harmoaious than modern ones, that savages were noble, that life
in the past was moreidyllic than life today, and that human beings once had
a sense of community that has been lost is not only reflected in the motion
pictures and novels of our popular culture but is deeply engrained in scholarly discourse aswell.
THE HAPPY SAVAGE
In thisview, human misery is the result of divisive social disorganization, ethnic or religious diversity, class conflict, or competing interests that plague
large societies, particularly nation-states. Smaller
and simpler societies, on
the other hand, have developed their cultures in response to the demands of
stable environments; therefore, their way of life must have produced far
greater harmony and happiness for their populations. Anthropologist Robin
Fox, for example, vividly described the upper Paleolithic environmentof biggame hunters as one in which there was a harmony of our evolved attributes as a species, including our intelligence, our imagination, our violence
and, our reason and ourpassions-a harmony that has been lost (1990, 3).
When a small society that lacks this kind of harmony is found, social scientists often conclude that this condition must
be the resultof the disorganizing
effects of culture contact, particularly economic change and urbanization.
Like cultural relativism, this idea has been entrenched in Western thought for
centuries (Nisbet 1973; Shaw 1985).
When Robert Redfield published hisnow well-known folk-urbantypology
in 1947, he lent the authority of anthropology to this ancient distinction
128
MATTERS
CULTURE
(Redfield 1947). The idea that cities were beset by crime, disorder, and human suffering of all sorts while folk societies were harmonious communities
goes back to Aristophanes, Tacitus, and the Old Testament. It received renewed support in nineteenth-century thought from such influential figures as
Ferdinand Tonnies, Henry Maine, Fustel de Coulanges, Emile Durkheim,
and Max Weber. Others joined them in creating a consensus that the moral
and emotional commitment, personal intimacy, social cohesion, and continuity over time that characterizedfolk societies didnot survive the transition to
urban life, in which social disorganization and personal pathology prevailed.
During the twentieth century, the contrast between folk community and
urban society became one
of the most fundamental ideas in Western
thought, taking hold among social philosophers, political scientists, sociologists, psychiatrists, theologians, novelists, poets, and the educated public in
general. As a case in point, Kirkpatrick Sale answered criticisms of his recent
book The Conquest of Paradise (which examines the European conquest of
the native peoplesof America) by insisting that unlike the culturesof Europe,
the primal communities of preconquest America were markedly more
harmonious, peaceful, benign and content (Sale 1991).
Some folk societies were harmonious, but others were not. There is a pervasive assumption among anthropologists that a populations traditional beliefs and practices-their culture and their social institutions-must play a
positive role in their lives or these beliefs and practices simply would not
have persisted. Thus it has often been written that cannibalism, torture, infanticide, feuding, witchcraft, female genital mutilation, ceremonial rape,
headhunting, and other practices that may be abhorrent
to outsiders must
serve some useful function inthe societies in which they aretraditional practices. Impressed by the wisdom of biological evolution in creating suchadaptive miracles as protective coloration or feathers for flight, most scholars
have assumed that cultural evolution too has
been guided by a process of
natural selection that has retained traditional beliefs and practices that meet
peoples needs. Therefore, when a society was encountered that appeared to
lack a beneficial systemof beliefs or institutions, it was usually assumed that
the cause must lie in the baneful influence of other peoples-colonial officials, soldiers, missionaries, or traders-who had almost always been on the
scene before anthropologists arrived.
The frequency with which traits that may have
been maladaptive occurred in small-scale societiesis simply not known because ethnographic accounts so seldom address the possibility that someof the beliefs or practices
of the people being described might be anything other than adaptive. If one
were to select a substantial number of ethnographic monographs more or
less at random, one would probably find, as I did, that no more than a
ces
and
Beliefs
Traditional
129
handful would contain an analysis of the maladaptive consequences of any

particular belief or practice. Instead, if seemingly bizarre, irrational, inefficient, or dangerous beliefs or practices are described at all, they are usually
presumed to be adaptive and are treated as if they must serve some useful
purpose. For example, even the most extreme forms of penile mutilationslashing open the urethra, scourging it with abrasive stalks
of grass or other
plants, mutilating the glans or infibulating it-have typically been analyzed
in the ethnographic literature (if not the psychiatric) not as irrational, nonadaptive or maladaptive practices, but in terms of their positive social, cultural, or psychological consequences (Cawte, Djagamara, and Barrett 1966;
Favazza 1987).
RATIONALIZING ADAPTIVENESS
The cumulative impact of relativistic and adaptivist assumptions has led generations of ethnographers to believe that there simply must be a good social
or cultural reason why a long-established
belief or practice exists. If it has endured for anylength of time, it must be adaptive-or so it has been either implicitly or explicitly assumed by most of the people who have written what
we know about thelives of people in small traditional societies.
Not everyone has made this assumption, however. Some ecologically oriented ethnographers, for example, have provided descriptions that carefully
assess how adaptive a particular populations beliefs or institutions may be.
Walter Goldschmidts ethnographyof the Sebei of Uganda is a good example.
After analyzing the relatively positive socialand cultural adaptations that the
Sebei made during their recent history, he described what he referred to as
disequilibria and maladaptation, especially the failure of the Sebei to establish a social order capable
of maintaining their boundaries, and the failure
to develop a commitment to a relevant set of moral principles (1976, 353).
His analysis went on to specify the changing socioeconomic circumstances
that led to these failures.
Similarly, Klaus-Friedrich Koch, writing about the then unacculturated
Jalt, who in the mid-1960s lived in the remote eastern Snow Mountains of
Irian Jaya before foreign influence changed their
lives, concluded that thedisputes and killing thatwere so common and so divisive among them resulted
because Jalt methods of conflict management were very few and very
inefficient (Koch 1974, 159). Others, most notablyC. R. Hallpike, have pointed
to similarly maladaptive practices in other societies (1972, 1986). However,
even ecologically oriented ethnographers have typically paid scant attention
to maladaptation. Instead, the emphasis has been placed on showing the
adaptive fit between various economic activities and the environment.
13 0
MATTERS
CULTURE
For the most part, when the costs and benefitsof a particular belief or institutionalized practice are discussed in ethnographic writing, the result
is
vintage Dr. Pangloss. For example, if it is acknowledged that a certain belief
system, such as witchcraft, may have costs for a population, it is quickly asserted that it also has benefits that far outweigh them. When Clyde Kluckhohn and Dorothea Leighton wrote their classic ethnography, The Navaho,
they concluded that the traditional Navahobelief in the existence of witches
among themengendered fear, led to violence, and sometimes caused innocent
people to suffer tragically. Even so, they argued that witchcraft beliefs
keep the core of the society solid by allowing the Navaho to redirect all
the hostility they felt toward friends and relatives onto witches. What
is
more, these beliefs prevented the rich and ceremonially powerful from attaining too much power and, in general, servedto prevent socially disruptive actions (Kluckhohn and Leighton1962,240). Kluckhohn and Leighton did not
consider why the Navaho required witchcraft beliefs to achieve these ends
with the fear, violence, and tragic suffering that resulted for many people,
when less conflicted solutions for the same problems had been found by
other societies.
They were not alonein this. Most ethnographers appearto agree with psychologist Donald T. Campbell, who wrote in favor of an assumption of
adaptiveness becauseno matter how bizarre a traditionalbelief or practice
might seem, once it is understood it will make adaptive sense (Campbell
1975, 1104). Othershave agreed with Marvin Harriss declaration that there
is no need to assume that beliefs or practices are adaptive because it has already been demonstrated that sociocultural systems are largely
if not exclusively composed of adaptive traits (1960, 601). Both the assumption that
culture must always be adaptive and the assertion that it has already been
shown that cultures consist largely or exclusively of adaptive traits fly in the
face of considerable evidence to the contrary. With the partial exception of
economic practices, there has been no demonstration
of such widespread
adaptiveness (Edgerton 1992).
This issue is not of interest only to anthropologists-a tempest confined to
an exotic, primitive teacup. The ethnographic recordis important for anyone who has aninterest in understanding why human societies, including our
own, sometimes do not function as well as they might. It is undeniable that
some folk societies have been relatively harmonious and that some still are,
but life in smaller and simpler societies has hardly been free of human discontent and suffering. Although there is not enough space here to document
my assertion, some small populations have been unableto cope with the demands of their environments, and some have lived in apathy, conflict, fear,
hunger, and despair. Others have embraced practices like feuding that led to
Traditional Beliefs and Practices
*3I
their destruction. Nevertheless, the belief persists that small-scale societies

are better adapted to their ecological circumstances than we are. Some may
be, but others decidedly are not.
Humans in various societies, whether urban or folk, are capable of empathy, kindness, even love,and they can sometimes achieve astounding mastery
of the challenges posed by their environments. But they are also capable of
maintaining beliefs, values, and social institutions thatresult in senselesscruelty, needless suffering, and monumental folly in their relations among themselves as well as with other societies and the physical environment in which
they live. People are not always wise, and the societies and cultures they create are not ideal adaptive mechanisms, perfectly designed to provide for human needs. It is mistaken to maintain,asmanyscholarsdo,that
if a
population has held to a traditionalbelief or practice for many years, then it
must play a useful role in theirlives. Traditional beliefs and practices may be
useful, may even serveas important adaptivemechanisms, but they may also
be inefficient, harmful, and even deadly.
THE VALUES AND DISVALUES OF
CULTURAL RELATIVISM
The principle of cultural relativism is not without historical value. It has

helped to counter ethnocentrism and even racism. It has also provided
an important corrective to ideas of unilinear evolution, which presumed that all
societies passed through the same stages of progress until they eventually
reached the near perfection of one or another version of Western European
civilization. Moreover, the relativists insistence on respect for the values
of other people may have done more good for human dignity and human
rights than it has done harm science.
to
Even the overheated assertions of the
so-called epistemological relativists have been useful, by reminding anyone
audacious enough to compare the adequacy of cultures that any sociocultural system is a complex network of meanings that must be understood in
context and, as much aspossible, as its members understand it (Spiro 1990).
They may even be right in arguing that some understandings and emotions
are unique to a particular culture, and that the meanings and functions
of
some practices may remain permanently beyond the comprehension of outside observers of the foreign culture.
However, epistemological relativists not only claim that each of these
worlds is wholly unique-incommensurable
and largely incomprehensible-they assert that the people who inhabit them are said have
to different
cognitive abilities. In what Dan Sperber has referred
t o as cognitive
apartheid and ErnestGellner has called cognitive anarchy, various post-
I32
MATTERS
CULTURE
modern relativists and interpretivists postulate fundamental differences

from one culture to the next in cognitive processes involving logic, causal
inference, and information processing (Gellner 1982; Sperber 1982). The
existence of such basic cognitive differences has yet
to be demonstrated,
and if the history of research into human cognition and intersubjectivity is
any guide, it willnot be.
The historyof cultural relativism or adaptivism is the more remarkablebecause some of the worlds most respected anthropologists, all of whom had
earlier endorsed the principle of cultural relativism, eventually published
anti-relativistic evaluations of folk societies. For example, in
1948 Alfred
Kroeber, then the doyen of American anthropology, not only rejected relativism but declared that as societies progressed from simple to more complex, they became more humane, and he asserted-in language calculated
to make present-day anthropologists hair stand on end-that the mentally
unwell in modern advanced cultures tendto correspond to thewell and influential in ancient and retarded culturesyy (1948, 300). Furthermore, Kroeber
continued, progress, as he referredto cultural evolution, not only involved
advances in technology and science but the abandonment
of practices such as
ritual prostitution, segregating women at parturition or menstruation, torture, sacrifice, and belief in magic or superstition. Two yearslater, Ralph Linton,anotherleadinganthropologist,whopossessedperhapsthemost
encyclopedic understanding of world ethnography of anyone then alive,
wrote that there could be universal ethical standards, a position that Clyde
Kluckhohn, by then no longer a committed relativist, endorsed three years
later (Kluckhohn 1955; Linton 1952).
Robert Redfield, famous for his folk-urban comparison, agreed with Kroeber by declaring in 1953 that primitive societies were less decent and humane than more advanced civilizations: On the whole the human race
has come to develop a more decent and humane measure of goodness-there
has been a transformation of ethical judgment which makes us look at noncivilized people,not asequals, but aspeople on a different level of human experience (1953, 163).
In 1965, George Peter Murdock, then the worlds leading figure in comparative cultural studies, wrote thatBenedicts relativistic idea that a cultural
belief has no meaning except in itscontext was nonsense and thatMelville
Herskovitss assertion that all cultures must be accorded equal dignity and
respect was not only nonsense but sentimental nonsense (1965, 146). He
added that it was an absurdity to assert thatcannibalism, slavery, magical
therapy, and killing the aged should be accorded the same dignity or validity as old-age security, scientific medicine, and metal artifacts.
All people,
Murdock insisted, prefer Western technology and would rather be able to
Practices
and
Beliefs Traditional
I 33
feed their children and elderly than kill them (1965, 149). With a very few
exceptions, anthropologists not only did not embrace these anti-relativistic
views, they held even more strongly to the belief that culture is and must be
adaptive.
MALADAPTIVENESS
There are many reasons why some traditional beliefs and practices may become maladaptive. Environmental change is one. Others are more complex,
having to do with various aspects of human problem solving. There is ample
evidence, for example, that in many societies people can provide no rational
reason for clingingto certain beliefs or practices, and that some of their most
important decisions-where to hunt, when to raid an enemy, when to fish,
what toplant-are based on prophecies, dreams, divination, and other supernatural phenomena. One southern African kingdom was utterly destroyed
when its cherished prophets urged that all its cattle be killed and no crops be
planted. The result was predicted to be a millennium; instead, it was starvation, as a more rationalbelief system would have predicted (Peires1989).
Even when people attempt to make rational decisions, they often fail. For
one thing, no population, especially no folk population, can ever possess all
the relevant knowledge it needs to make fully informed decisions about its
environment, its neighbors, or even its own social institutions. Whatis more,
there is a large body of research involving human decisionmaking, both under experimental conditions and in naturally occurring situations, showing
that individuals frequently make quite poor decisions, especially when it
comes to solving novel problems or ones requiring the calculation of the
probability of outcomes. These are precisely the kinds of problems that pose
the greatest challenges for human adaptation.
Most humans are not greatly skilled in assessing risk, especially when the
threat is a novel one, and they tend to underestimate the future effects of
warfare and technological or economic change. Even when disasters such as
droughts, floods, windstorms, or volcanic eruptions recur periodically, people consistently misjudge the consequences (Douglas
and Wildavsky 1982;
Lumsden and Wilson 1981). Nor do they readily develop new technology,
even when environmental stress makes technological change imperative
(Cowgill 1975). Western economists employ the concept of bounded ratio:
nality to refer to peoples limited ability to receive, store, retrieve, and
process information, and economic decision theory takes these limitations
into account. Because of their cognitive limitations, along with imperfect
knowledge of their environment, people inevitably make some imperfect decisions (Kuran 1988).
13 4
C U L T U R E MATTERS
Humans are often non-rational, a point

vividly made byDan Sperber, who
wrote that apparently culturalbeliefs are quite remarkable: they do not appear irrationalby slightly departing from common sense,
or timidly going beyondwhattheevidenceallows.Theyappear,rather,likedown-right
provocations against common sense rationality (1985, 85). As Sperber and
others have pointed out, people in many folk societies are convinced that humans or animals canbe in two places at the same time, can transform themselves into other kinds of creatures or become invisible, and can alter the
physical world in various ways through their own beliefs. They also think
magically at least some of the time; indeed, it is very likelythat the principles
of sympatheticmagicareuniversallypresentbecausethehumanmind
evolved to think in these ways (Rozin and Nemeroff1990).
Moreover, all available evidence indicates that humans, especially those
who live in folk societies, make their decisions using heuristics that encourage them to develop fixed opinions, eventhough these opinions are based on
inadequate or false information. These same heuristics also encourage people
to cling to their opinions, even when considerable evidence to the contrary
becomes available. As R. A. Shweder has concluded, human thought is limited to its scientific procedures, unsophisticated in
abstract reasoning, and
somewhat impervious to the evidence of experience ( 1 9 8 0 , 7 6 ) .
RATIONALITY AND IRRATIONALITY
None of this should be surprising, really, for no less rational a thinker than
Aristotle was convinced that male babies were conceived at times when a
strong north wind blew, and despite many generations of secular education,
contemporary Americans continue to be less than fully rational. Various surveys have reported that 80 percent of contemporary Americans still believe
that God worksmiracles, 50 percent believe in angels, and more than a third
believe in a personal devil (Gallup and Castelli 1989; Greeley 1989; Wills
1990). Furthermore, as I mentioned earlier, our ability to identify the risks in
our environment is limited. As Mary Douglas and Aaron Wildavsky noted,
all populations concentrate on only a few of the dangers that confront them
and ignore the remainder, including some that are manifestly dangerous. The
Lele of Zaire, for example, faced many serious dangers, including a large array of potentially life-threatening diseases. Still, they concentrated on only
three: bronchitis, which is less serious than the pneumonia from which they
also suffer; infertility; and being struck by lightning, a hazard that is a good
deal less common than thetuberculosis from which they frequently suffer yet
largely ignore (Douglas and Wildavsky 1982). According to the Science Advisory Board of the Environmental Protection Agency, Americans do the
and
Beliefs Traditional
Practices
13 5
same, worrying most about relatively unimportant environmental threats

while largely ignoring potentially much more dangerousrisks.
Thomas Gilovich has described the cognitive processes that allow even
highly educated Americans to hold fervently to demonstrably false beliefs.
Noting surveys of American collegestudents that indicate that as many 58
as
percent believe that astrological predictions are valid while 50 percent think
that the Egyptianpyramidswerebuiltwithextraterrestrialassistance,
Gilovich describes the many ways in which contemporary Americans distort
reality by their tendency to impute meaning and order to random phenomena, remembering only those instances that confirm their established beliefs
while forgetting those that areat variance with them (Gilovich1991).
If modern Americans are less than rational calculators-and these examples hardly exhaust the catalog of folly contributed to by those among us
who are thought to
be most rational, such as our engineers, physicians, scientists, and educators-then it is unreasonable to expect people whose cultures
are even less secular than ours to be more efficient problem solvers than we
are. I am not arguing thatpeople in folk societies makeless than rational decisions or hold maladaptive beliefs because they are cognitively less competent than people in literate, industrialized societies.
C . R. Hallpike, among others, has concluded that the thought
processes of
people in small-scale societies are incapable
of comprehending causality,
time, realism, space, introspection, and abstraction asutilized in Westernscience (Hallpike 1972). Whether so-called primitive thought is less abstract,
more magical, or less able to assess marginal probabilities is an issue that
continues to be debated, but its resolution is largely irrelevant to the point I
am attempting to make. I am asserting that most people in all societies, including those most familiar with Western science, sometimes make potentially harmful mistakes and tend to maintain them. It is possible that people
in small-scale societies make more mistakesof this kind, but maladaptive decisions are made inall societies.
IDENTIFYING PROBLEMS
For people to optimize the adaptiveness of their beliefs and practices, they
must not only think rationally but must be able
to identify the problems that
need to be solved. This is often difficult. Some problems, like changes in climate or soil erosion, developso gradually thatby the time theycan be identified, no human response is effective. Others, like the encroachment
of
diseases or the hazards of dietary change, may not be perceived as problems
at all. Humans lived with the deadly hazard of malaria for millennia before it
was finally understood very late in the nineteenth century that it was trans-
13 6
CULTURE MATTERS
mitted by mosquitoes. Many populations still do not understand the causes

of the deadly diseases that plague them. And still other phenomena may be
perceived as problemsbut prove to be insoluble because the societyis torn by
conflicting values or interest groups. How much energy are people willing to
expend to increase their food supply? Will people give up a tasty but unhealthy diet for one that is more nutritious but less flavorful? Will leaders
willingly give up some of their privileges to benefit the society as a whole?
Will men do so to benefit women? Will elders yield some of their authority
and rights to younger men? Will men yield rights to women?
This is not to say that people in various societiesdo not worry about what
they perceive to be problems; societies with recognized leaders, councils, or
bureaucracies often do make decisions that are intended to be solutions.
Members of the Hawaiian priesthood and aristocracy abolished their
system
of food taboos in an effort toresolve what they perceived as a problem, and
a Pawnee chief tried to abolish human sacrifice. Among the Sebei of Uganda,
a prophet named Matui instituted a new ritual, translated as passing the
law, in which all men of a parish gathered together and swore not to commit a number of acts (Goldschmidt 1976, 204). Matuis innovation was
probably adaptive for the Sebei because it reduced interclan violence, but
such farsighted leadership must have been uncommon inhuman history. The
wisdom of various leaders decisions over the entire course of human evolution is unknown, but if the written record of history is any guide, few of
them led to optimally beneficial outcomes.On the contrary, as Barbara Tuchman pointed outin The March of Folly, a great many were horrifically counterproductive (Tuchman 1984). Marvin Harris, long a leading proponent of
the view that virtually all traditional beliefs and practices are adaptive, recently reached the surprising conclusionthat all major stepsin cultural evolution took place in the absence
of anyones conscious understandingof what
was happening. And, he adds, the twentieth centuryseems a veritable cornucopia of unintended, undesirable, and unanticipated changes (Harris
1989,495).
Rational, calculated decisions intended to resolve a peoples problems seldom occur in small societies. Most of the time, how people hunt, fish, farm,
conduct rituals, control their children, and enjoy their leisure are not matters
for discussion at all or atleast not discussion about how tomake these activities more efficient or pleasurable. People complain incessantlyabout various
things in their lives. They may sometimes try something new, but only rarely
do they attempt any fundamental change in their traditional beliefs or practices. Large changes, if they occur at all, are typically imposedby some external event or circumstances-invasion, epidemic, drought. In the absence of
such events, people tend to muddle through by relying on traditional solu-
Traditional Beliefs and Practices
I 37
tions that arose in response to previous circumstances. Most populations

manage to survive without being rational calculators in searchof optimal solutions. It appears, for example, that folk populations typically adopt strategies that assure a life-sustaining butless than maximalyield of food, and they
resist changes that entail what they perceive to be risks, even though these
new food-providing practices would produce more food.
The reluctance of people to change has led some anthropologists to refer
to their economic strategies in termsof minimal risk and least effort.Beliefs and practices tend to persist not because they are optimally beneficial
but because they generally work just well enough that changes in them are
not self-evidently needed. Given all that we know about the sometimes astoundingly bad judgment of rational planners in modern nations, it seems
unlikely that people in smaller and simpler societies who lack our scientific
and technological sophistication would always make optimally adaptive decisions, even should they try to do so. Furthermore, even if a population
somehow managed to devise a nearly perfect adaptation to its environment,
it is unlikely that it could maintain it for any
length of time.
My assertion is not that traditionalbeliefs and practices are never adaptive
and that they never contribute to a populations well-being, and I am not
claiming that people never think rationally enough
to make effective decisions about meeting the challenges posed by their environments. Nor am I
arguing that human behavior is driven solely by the socially disruptive aspects of biological predispositions such as paranoid ideation and selfishness.
Humans are often driven by greed, lust, envy, and other attributes that challenge the common good. But people are also predisposed to cooperate, to be
kind to one another, and sometimes even to sacrifice their interests for the
well-being of others (Edgerton 1978, 1985).
However, if maladaptive beliefs and practices are as common as they appear to be, their existence poses a challengeto the prevailing adaptivist paradigm. Subsistence activities must be reasonably efficient for a population to
survive, but they need not be optimal (in the senseof providing the best possible nutrition for the least expenditure of time and energy). It is highly unlikely that any population has achieved an optimal economic adaptation;
indeed, it is not at all clear that any population has even attemptedto do so.
Social organization and culture -will be affected by the technology available
to a population and by its economic activities, but neither social institutions
nor cultural belief systems have commonlyled to anything that couldbe considered maximally adaptive utilization of the environment. Nor have they
unfailingly enhanced the well-being of all members of that population.
Just as no population has yet devised an optimal means for exploiting its
environment, so it is most unlikely that all members of a population have
13 8
MATTERS
CULTURE
agreed about what an optimal environmental exploitation shouldbe. Moreover, no population yet reported has met the needs
of all its members to their
own satisfaction. All, including those whose members are healthiest, happiest, and longest-lived, could do better; all could improve health and safety;
all could further enhance life satisfaction. There has been no perfect society
and no ideal adaptation-only degrees
of imperfection. Sometimes knowingly and sometimes not, populations adjust their ways of living in effortsto
better their lives, but none has yet created the optimal society. Not only are
humans capable of errors and of misjudging the ecological circumstances
that they must learn to cope with, but they are given to pursuing their own
interests at the expense of others and to preferring the retention of old customs to the development of new ones. Culture may tend to be adaptive, but
it is never perfectly so.
It should thus not be assumed, as it so commonly is, that any persistent,
traditional belief or practice in a surviving society must be adaptive. Instead,
it should be assumed that anybelief or practice could fall anywhere along a
continuum of adaptive value. It may simply
be neutral or tolerable,or it may
benefit some members of a society while harming others. Sometimes it may
be harmful to all.
In closing, I quote British anthropologist Roy Ellen: Cultural adaptations
are seldom the best of all possible solutions and never entirely rational
(1982,251).
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Cawte, J., N. Djagamara, and M. G. Barrett. 1966. The Meaning of Subincision of
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Douglas, M., andA. Wildavsky. 1982. Risk and Culture: A n Essay on theSelection of
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Edgerton, R. B. 1978. The Study of Deviance-Marginal Man
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Schuster.
11
Culture, Childhood,
and Progress in
Sub-Saharan Africa
THOMAS S . WEISNER
Every economic system consistsof a world of social beings livingout cultural

careers, who bring their goals, motives, capacities,and cultural modelsof the
world to economic life. Cultures around the world imagine and try to guide
children into wonderful and varied cultural careers in hopes
of producing the
kinds of social beings they value. Cultural careers start before we are born
and are foreshadowed in childhood pathways. Are the cultural careers of
children in the less developed world significantly hindering economic market
activity or new forms of civil society, and if so, should parenting and child
life become a focus for change efforts intended
to encourage economic
progress?
My comments focus on sub-Saharan Africa-the except-for continent
(Roe 1999)-that part
of the world seemingly least economically favored
and farthest from the ideal of a pluralist polity. In my view, there is nothing
fundamental in the parenting and child care practices in Africa today that
would prevent economic development under some version
of a market model
or a local version of a more pluralist society. Many values and practices in
African family life and child care are at least compatible with economic de-
142
MATTERS
CULTURE
velopment and political pluralism. These include the shared, socially distributed caretaking of children; the high value placed on combining schooling
and shared family work for children; the evidence that parents want their
children to show a mix of individual cleverness and compliance to elders;
and the advantages of social networks that can mediate between rural and
urban settings.
Furthermore, parents actively debate how
to raise children and try out new
practices and family arrangements. Hence, there are children and families
potentially ready for a variety of economic and political activities. The task is
to put such activities and institutions in place rather than fundamentally
change the values and practices
of African parents and families. There willbe
children and young adults there toengage in those activities once they are in
place.
Finally, the conception of culture and values as rather inflexible traits that
are inculcated early and become part
of a national cultural character is
mostly wrong. Cultural beliefs and practices are tools for adaptation,
not
simply fixed patterns that determine institutions. Culture is a mix of shared
values and beliefs, activities organized in daily routines of life, and interactional experiences that have emotional meaning. Cultures often raise children
in ways that cause them problems when
they become adults that thenhave to
be solved anew. Western children are taught to be all they can be and to expect reasons for everything. They are offered choices and are expected
to negotiate rules. As adults, they may struggle to compromise and work well in
social groups at work, and to realize that no one can perfectly realize every
childhood dream.
African children learnto be interdependent, to share resources, and to live
within family and community authority systems withat best covert questioning of them. As adults, they may struggleto break away from thosevery beliefs to be autonomous, curious, searching for new alliances. Beliefs, values,
activities, and experience are never perfectly integrated during childhoodand
across developmental stages.
Children acquire cultural knowledge through mostly nonverbal channels
of participation and modeling-verbal tuition and language are important
but are not the dominant mode
by any means. These channels for acquiring
culture do not necessarily give consistent information, and in times
of
change, these levels of cultural experience and modes of acquisition can be
quite inconsistent. What all children learn about rheir culture and what
parents try to inculcate is always experienced ambivalently, is filled with
mixed messages, and is often resisted. Cultures may have a clear central
tendency and normative pattern, but they are hardly monolithic and uniform.
Culture,
Childhood,
and
Progress in Sub-Saharan
Africa
I43
PARENTS, CHILDREN,
AND CHANGE IN EAST AFRICA
There certainly are conditions in the political economy of nation-states and

the international economy that inhibit economic growth in Africa. Africa is
the place where all the plagues of the economically poor nations are exponentially compounded (Landes 1998, 499; UNICEF 1992; Weisner 1994).
Development and change are presumably occurring in much of the world,
except-Africa (Roe 1999). Fertility rates have declined and development
proceeds at least somewhat in most places, presumably except for Africa (although the fertility transition is actually under way in many places [Bradley
1997; Robinson 19921). Economic growth exemplars can be found in most
every continent, except for Africa (but some exist). Roe characterizes the
except-Africa trope as part of a narrative that itself leads to negativity
about development. He suggests a variety of positive counternarratives of
development that focus on variety, surprise, unpredictability, and the complexity of circumstances on the ground.
But concerns over narrativity hardly capture the deeply felt and serious
economic and social problems Africans face. Daniel Etounga-Manguelle outlines the problems facing African communities in this volume,
and I share
many of his concerns. He personally experiences the conditions that inhibit
the desires for changeand progress for millions in Africa. Etounga-Manguelle
sees cultural features as the causeof these negative African institutions: Culture is the mother and . . . institutions are the children. More efficient and just
African institutions depend on modifications to ourculture.
In Africa, as anywhere, culture can
be oppressive and destructive. Although I agreethatmanyexperiencetheculturalpatternsEtoungaManguelle describes as harmful, and tens of millions of Africans hope they
will change, I think that he is wrong to argue that cultureprecedes resourcebased, institutional, and politico-economic factors. Rather, these factors are
loosely coupled within a complex.
Africa is not the except-for case as far as parenting and child development
beliefs and practices are concerned, and child care practices can hardly
be
blamed as among the primary conditions blocking economic and social
progress. We should begin instead with the regions ecological constraints,
and with the regional, national, and international institutions restricting and
channeling the potential capacities of African children and youth, instead of
proposing to change ways children are being raised and the values and goals
parents have for their children.
My argument is not blindly optimistic in the face of the obvious poverty
and problems plaguing so much of sub-Saharan Africa, nor does it absolve
I44
MATTERS
CULTURE
culture from a role in understanding the past and shaping the future progress
of African communities. The absence of conditions in which families and
communities can organize a sustainable daily life for themselves is the single
most important factor inhibitingchildren and families from raising their economic level and is a fundamental concern of anthropological studies (Weisner 1997a). Tens of millions of children and parents in Africa and elsewhere
around the world do not have the most basic conditions of health, security,
and stability; nor do they have opportunities for acquiring literacy and other
skills that would put them in a position to engage in a wider civic polity or
make much economic progress. With Etounga-Manguelle,
I deeply believe
that African children deserve these basic material and social goods and the
opportunity to find activities and institutions in their societies they can engage in to promote thosegoals.
Those who argue thatAfrican cultural values and practices are the reasons
why these basic materialand social goods arenot available propose changing
African cultural values. But the evidence from studies of families and children suggest that such change has been under way for at least two generations and that there
is amplevariety and heterogeneity within African
communities to provide individuals who are ready for change. Providebasic
support for children and then let them and their parents adapt tochange, including turning to new child rearing valuesand practices.
Some would argue,however, that theevident variationsin values and practices within cultures, although interesting, are irrelevant to the larger argument about relationships between culture and economic progress because so
many sub-Saharan African states show slow or declining economic development and slow or no evidence of the emergence of democratic society. Ecological, cultural, and historical circumstances certainly play some role in
these comparative differences, but the connections are at best only loosely
coupled. Understanding local cultural change and variability is essential for
understanding what is really going on among families and children within
African societies. How else can we know what todo-how and whether and
at what level and in which community to intervene? Only studiesof real contemporary cultural circumstances can address that issue. This is a research
program that, it seems to me, should be given the highest priority.
CHILD REARING, PARENTAL GOALS,
AND ECONOMIC PROGRESS IN THE DEVELOPED WORLD
There is an association between certain core parental beliefs and child care
practices, and economic progress in the developed world. Those beliefs and
Culture,
Childhood,
and Progress
Sub-Saharan
inAfrica
I45
practices have not necessarily caused economic progress butare often associated with them in the West. A pedagogical developmental model (LeVine
et al. 1994) emphasizes stimulation and responsiveness in the service
of boldness, exploration, verbal skills, and literacy. It is characterized by a concern
with individual child stimulation and active engagement
of the child with
others, exploratory behavior, active recognitionof cognitive and verbal signs
of intelligence, verbal communication, and question-response exchanges.
Individualism, autonomy, self-reliance,and self-expression are also encouraged in children. Parents look for signs of precocity in children and openly
boast or glow in the admiration of others who remark on such precocity.
There might be a steady drumbeat of praise and encouragement: Good job!
Way to go! Nice try! Be all you can be! Youre so smart/athletic/
beautiful. Parents interpret typical developmental milestones as signs of intelligence or unusual abilities. For instance, babies everywhere in the world
begin to display a social smile at around three months of age. Many African
parents interpret it as a signof physical health. Western parents interpretthis
as an early signof intellectual understanding and intelligence.
Along with these parental goals of energetic precocity, however, Western
parents may worry over whether the child has sufficient and secure basic trust
withinastablesocialnetwork,attachment
security, andenoughselfesteem. There is variation across NorthAmerica and Europe in suchbeliefs,
and commitmentto this ideal-typicalset of practices is not uniform (Harkness
and Super 1996). However, this model is recognized as among the acceptable,
desirable ways to raise children and is not questioned or challenged. There is
quite high consensus about
its desirability and normality.
African parents of course have equivalent hopes and goals for achievement
and success for their children. But rather than individual verbal praise, parents are more likely to emphasize integration into a wider family group and
show acceptance through providing opportunities for such integration,
through giving food and other materialpossessions, and through physical affection and contact with their younger children. Parents encourage children
to learn through observation and cooperation with others instead of providing active, adult-child verbal stimulation, and they encourage interdependence skills rather than individualistic autonomy. Robert Serpell (1993) has
called this a socially distributed model for socializationof children.
Many African parents and children today actually have a much more
mixed model of parenting, incorporating pedagogical, autonomy-centered,
and sociocentric developmental goals. In addition, individual variation in
children (in temperament and other constitutional capacities) and in families
inevitably leads to heterogeneity in these patterns, ensuring that there are
146
MATTERS
CULTURE
children growing up all the time who are in concord as well as in conflict
with traits similar to those of the pedagogical/autonomy models.
I do not mean to
gloss the obviously wide diversityof cultures and families
across the African continent, but these are useful summary patterns for
illustrative purposes. These patterns certainly
fit, at least in part, child life in
many regions of Africa as a central tendency with substantial variations and
local differences around those tendencies. I share Etounga-Manguelles view
that there is of course very significant diversity across Africa, but also
a
foundation of shared values, attitudes, and institutions that bind the nations
south of the Sahara together, and in many respects those
to the north as
well. Diversity across Africa around this central cultural pattern strengthens my argument that there are children and families throughout Africa
ready to engage in new formsof market activity and civic life.
THERE IS SOME CONTINUITY IN ECONOMIC PROBLEMS
Africa in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries consisted of dynamic

and expansionist political economies. Eastern African cultures steadily expanded into new territories, had active trading networks into Arabia and the
Middle East (as well as regionally within Africa), and intermarried with
neighboring groups. It took savvy and ambition to be socially and economically successful under the very difficult circumstances of that era, just as it
still does in the contemporary era.
The economic problems that faced parents and children in African communities then are still present now. Allen Johnson and Timothy Earle summarize these as the four universal politico-economic problems of production
risks, warfare and raiding (security), inefficient resource use, and resource
deficiencies (1987). Such problems remain omnipresent. Communities face
the task of finding other solutions in a world of global markets, regionalization, dramatically increased accessto information, and increasing inequality.
The task is how to find a better fit between solutions useful in the past that
still characterize parenting and child care and new solutions requiring new
child care practices and parental goals, rather than the de novo creation of
awareness of such problems. This search for new solutions seems to be happening in parenting and family life today.
Furthermore, communities need a variety of talents in children, not just
narrow economic skills as contemporary Western market economies may define them. When we think about the fit between the
need for economic
progress, parental goals for children, and child socialization, isitnot only entrepreneurial talent, competence in literacy and numeracy, or basic health
that matter. Dealing with security,risk, and inefficiency problems requiresin-
Culture,
Childhood,
Progress
and
in Sub-Saharan
Africa
147
dividuals with varying talents and socialization experiences in a community,

not only those with a single-minded preparation for economic innovation
or
wide social networks with an exclusively cosmopolitan outlook.
MARKET PRICING IS A UNIVERSAL PRINCIPLE OF
SOCIAL RELATIONS AND MENTAL LIFE
A market economic calculus may well

be among a small number of universal
principles available in all societies and learned and used by all children to
some degree (Fiske1991,1992). Alan Fiske sets out four suchuniversal principles of social relations: communal sharing (solidarity, unity in agroup), authority ranking (status, inequality, hierarchy in social relations), equality
matching (egalitarian, peer relations among separate coequals), and market
pricing (exchange relationships determined by pricing or utility). These elementary relational structures are likely universal properties of the mind as
well as of social organization.
If the four forms are universal propertiesof both mind and society,all humans from childhood are preparedto appraise and relate to others using one
or combinations of these four. Market calculus may not be as salient in mind
and society as those interested in economic progress might
want, but itseems
that social beings everywhere learn how to balance among these four kinds
of social relationships. Here again, the problem for those interested in economic development is not to create asense of market thinking and social relations de novo in children and their parents but rather to develop and
extend what is already available.
CULTURAL VALUES DO NOT DEFINE CULTURES OR
THE POTENTIALS FOR CHANGE
Cultural values do not define or constitute a culture, although they are often
thought to be the key cultural barrier to economic progress. Clyde Kluckhohn, a founder of the anthropological study of values, described values in
abstract terms as "conceptionsof the desirable"-shared ideas about whatis
good (D'Andrade 1995, 3). Kluckhohn actually opposed culture to "life"
and to adaptation, and he did not consider values systems as determinative
(Edmonson 1973; see also Kluckhohn and Strodtbeck 1961,21).
Life [Kluckhohn] regarded as essentially disorderly and chaotic. Culture involved order imposed on life, and for the human species, was necessary for life
to continue. . . . It was clear enough to him that not all individuals are made
healthy and happy by their cultures, that in the longrun not all societies are in-
148
CULTURE MATTERS
sured growth or survival by their cultures, and that successful societies do not
indefinitely preserve their cultures intact but must change them. (Fischer
and
Vogt 1973, 8)
Barth (1993) argues that we should not reify values by concentrating on
their institutional expression but should focus on their uses in socialization.
However, values d o affect behavior when they inhere in institutions; cultural
values are therefore powerful and should be taken seriously at institutional
and social action levels. But they are adaptive tools, subject to negotiation
and change; they do not determine or constitute culture.
Values matter in how they guide social action. They do so by accounting
for the world as it is constructed-making sense of it and why we should
even act in it atall in a meaningful way; by providing a guide to attentional
appraisal processes (e.g., what should we be attending to?); by providing socially sanctioned rationales for actions that are
justified to oneself and others
by invoking shared values; and by providing a form of social identification
and labeling-the belief that I am a person with spiritual
values, for instance,
as compared to others who do not share those
values (DAndrade 1991).
Values serve different functions for different people. Respect for authority
and ones elders might help children know who to attend to but would not
help explain the natureof the contemporary changing worldor serve as a primary social identification. Women may use values concerning respect for authority to know whatthey haveto attend to, but they may not share with male
authority the justificationsand social identificationsthat such valuesimply.
A UNIVERSAL STANDARD FOR ASSESSING CULTURES WITH

REGARD TO CHILDHOOD: WELL-BEING AND BASIC SUPPORT
LEAD TO THE POTENTIAL FOR SUSTAINABLE CULTURAL LIFE
Cultures should be judged on their ability to provide well-being, basic support, and sustainable dailylives for children and families. I do not have a relativist stance with regardto these features of childlife. We can certainly give
our advice and ally ourselves with those in a society
who share ourvisions of
meaningful goals and cultural practices. But we should leavetoitthe internal
mechanisms of change and debate within communities as to
how, with what
specific content, and toward what cultural goals these three conditions
should be achieved.
Well-being for children is the abilityto engage in the activities deemed desirable by their community, and the positive psychological experiences produced thereby. Resilience and the potential for change depend on such
Culture,
Childhood,
and
Africa
I49
engagement by children and their families. Marketeconomic activity or participation in shared civil society depends on such cultural well-being more
than on the provision of particular values or beliefs (Weisner 1997b), although the contentof beliefs of course matters aswell.
Children and parents also require basic support. Support systems for children have certain features recognizable around the world. These include affection, physical comfort, shared solving of problems, provision of food and
other resources, protection against harm and violence, and a coherent moral
and cultural understanding of who can and should provide support, and the
appropriate ways to do so (Weisner 1994).
Cultures provide basic support in different ways and mean different things
by it. What is important to assess across cultures is whether children have
culturally coherent, reasonably predictable support. Tensof millions of children and parents in Africa and elsewheredo not have this basic level of support.
Well-being and basic support combine to provide a sustainable daily routine of life for children. Sustainable routinesof family life have some stability
and predictability, have meaning and value with respect to parents' and children's goals, can minimize or balance inevitable conflicts and disagreements
within a family and community, and havean adequate fit to the available resources of the family. If parents and children can create sustainable routines,
the cultural basis for change, new competencies, and innovation is present.
Without this, no intervention is likely to succeed (Weisner 1997a).
CHANGING PARENTING AND
CHILDHOOD SOCIALIZATION IN EAST AFRICA
African family and child care practices differ in emphasis

from Western, middle-class parental goals and child care, yet they are not incompatible with
versions of market economic activity and change in political life. More importantly, they can promote well-being and sustainable family life through
socially distributed parenting and child care, flexible and changing moral debates about family resources and authority, an emphasis on childhood traits
combining independence with respect, and expanding family social networks
associated with increased modernity and less stress.
Socially Distributed Parenting and Care of Children

Socially distributed support in shared management family systems can be
found in many places around the world (Weisner 1997a). Some of the characteristics of this culture complex include the following:
I50
Child caretaking often occurs as a part

of indirect chains of support
in which one child assists another, who assists a third. Support is
often indirect and delayed, not necessarily organized around
exclusive relationships between child and parent.
Children look to other children for assistance and support as much
or more than to adults.
Girls are much more likelyto docaretaking and domestic tasks than
boys. Boys clearly provide support, caretaking, and nurturance to
other children as well, although more infrequently as they reach late
middle childhood.
Mothers provide support and nurturance for children as muchby
ensuring that others will consistently participate in doingso as by
doing so directly themselves; fosteringand other formsof sharing
children are common.
Care often occurs in the contextof other domestic work doneby
children.
Aggression, teasing, and dominance accompany nurturance and
support and come from thesame people; dominance of these kinds
increases with age.
Food and material goods are a powerful cultural concern and are
used to threaten, control, soothe, and nurture.
Verbal exchange and elaborated question-framed
discourse rarely
accompany support and nurturance forchildren; verbal negotiations
regarding rights and privileges between childrenand dominant
caretakers are infrequent.
Social and intellectual competence in childrenis judged in part by a
childs competence in managing domestic tasks, demonstrating
appropriate social behavior, doing child care,and nurturing and
supporting others-as well as through signs of school achievement.
Children are socialized within this system through apprenticeship
learning of their family rolesand responsibilities.
This pattern of African life promotes deference to older siblings and
adults, training in sociability and nurturance toward others,
jealousy and
anger toward these same community members, competitive striving, and
some distrust of those outside of ones home community.
Socially distributed support is part of a culture complex-a set of loosely
coupled ecological circumstances, beliefs, and practices that interrelate and
contribute to each other. It is almost always the case that persistent, stubborn, and hard-to-change features of a culture are that way in part because
they are embedded in a culture complex that
is an emotionally learned,high-
Culture,
Childhood,
and
Africa
151
consensus, tacit, cultural model of the world. The shared support culture is
loosely coupled with features like high fertility; concerns over child health
and mortality; expanded, extended, or joint household family patterns; a
high maternal workload; and multiple affect and attachment patternsof diffused emotional and social behavior. Analyzing the entire, contextualized
culture complex is essential. Change is unlikely to occur by simply pointing
to one or another part of a culture complex and expecting itto take place in
that particular feature.
Socially distributed caretaking certainly might inhibit individualism and
autonomy in children, through diffusing affective ties and contributing to a
more sociocentric senseof personhood and self that might limit autonomy.
Early child labor contributions to the family estate can conflict with schooling, time for play, and social development. Control of childrens work effort
might conflict with their autonomy and explorations of new kinds of work
and learning.
Although these characteristics are related, the connections are loose and
situational, and they vary across families and individual children. For example, children participating in shared caretaking
do a bit better in school.
Competence in school abilities does not decline due to either boys or girls
participation in socially distributed caretaking. Child fostering is another
practice in which effects are positive or mixed. Fostering reinforces the female social hierarchy as children move from lowerto higher-status households. Effects on the child depend in part on whether the foster mother
requested the child (such children seem to do well) or whether a child was
forced by circumstances into a move (Castle 1995).
There Is a Varied and Complex Moral Discourse

About Parenting and Children
Cultural change is far more difficult when cultural values and practices are
so deeply held and tacitly accepted that minds and discourses are closed. But
African debate seems quite open. Carolyn Edwardshas presented an interesting version of open debate over the value of shared support in her story of
Daniel and the School Fees (Edwards 1997, 50-51). Her informants mix
notions of basic reasonableness andflexibility in family decisions with values of respect.
In this moral dilemma, Daniel completes his secondary school education
because his brother helps pay his school fees. Daniel then gets a wage job in
Nairobi while his wife and children live in the rural community. Eight years
later, Daniels son is ready to start school and needs fees. Daniels parents
come to him and say that the brother who paid for Daniels school has had
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CULTURE
an accident and the brothers child (who is the same age as Daniels child)
now needs school fees, and Daniel should pay them. But Daniel has only
enough moneyto pay for one child. His wife says that he should pay for their
own son first. What do you thinkDaniel and others should do? Why?
Edwards presented this dilemma to moral leaders in two Kenya rural
communities-individuals recognized as responsible, honest, and available
for wise advice. About half were non-schooled and half had some secondary school. She also interviewed secondary school students. Her sample
comes from two communities in Kenya: Abaluyia and Kipsigis. She found
that
all the men-young and old, married and unmarried-shared a common vocabulary for talking about the underlying issues and moral conflicts raised by the
dilemmas. The core valuesof respect, harmony, interdependence, and unity were
not only alive and well, they were stressed overand over as the central virtues
of
family living. . . . The idealof seeking reasonableness in ones thinking and behavior seemed more prominent among the [Abaluyia] men, whereas maintaining
respectful relations . . . seemed to preoccupy the Kipsigis elders and students.
(Edwards 1997, 82)
There were clear differences in moral reasoning due
to generation, cultural
community, and religious and cultural background. For example, the bettereducated secondary school students were less likely to use authority criteria
in evaluating the moral stories. Those from the Abaluyia, a community that
had more education and was influenced
by Quaker/Protestant missions,
more often mentioned reasonableness.
Although arguments regarding what to do about the school
fees differed, there was a shared basic moral
and values vocabulary sufficient to
have a meaningful debate. This common framework meant that arguments
pro and con were grasped by everyone. There was flexibility in debates,
multiple available scripts for understanding, and an openness to change in
peoples use of values justifications to account for different decisions by
Daniel or others. Similar kinds of debates occur about economic strategies
or the distribution of family resources to children (Super and Harkness
1997).
Such moral debates regarding child rearing are going on in Kenyan communities every day. The ambiguities and ambivalence in choosing the best
strategies about what is right can be heard in the moral debates about such
matters. Cultural beliefs and moral ideals regarding how to organize family
life and child rearing are not based on rigid values.
Culture,
Childhood,
and
Africa
I53
Parental Goals for Childrens Behavior

Traits parents desire for their children are also changing. Beatrice Whiting
identified eight character traits that mothers prefer their children to have
based on community interviews with Kikuyu mothers in Central
Kenya.
Four-confidence, inquisitiveness, cleverness, and bravery-were selected as
character traits that were considered good for success in school by Kikuyu
mothers and by students (and perhaps in market economiclife and political
participation as well). Four others-good-heartedness, respectfulness, obedience, and generosity-were chosenasexamples
of characteristicsthat
stressed harmonious interaction in a hierarchical, patrilineal, mixed rural
and peri-urban community.
Both clusters of traits are considered at least somewhat desirable. The dimension contrasts the relative advantages for schoolingonly, not their overall cultural desirability. Furthermore, these traits are desired for both boys
and girls. These parents tryto trainchildren for a mix of traits. Since there is
already expectable temperamental and other variation within sibling groups,
and since there is variation in modernity across households, there are many
children relatively more likely to display one or the other cluster of attributes, as well as manywho are quitebalanced in both.
Parents were asked which of these traits they could actually train in their
children and which were more likely to be innate and inborn. Parents understood that both nature and nurture matter in development, as do parents
around the world.Generally, childrens traitsthat are visible in everyday cultural practices-those that are learned through guided participation or
various forms of apprenticeship and informallearning-are more likely to be
thought amenable to direct parental influence.
Most parents thought that curiosity, good work habits, industriousness,
obedience, and respect for adults could all be trained. The reason? Children
could learn these traits by being put to work in the household or sent to others for work. Kikuyu parents saidthat they definitely could allow childrento
ask questions and learn the answers through tuition at home or in schools.
They could encourage curiosity through practices they could establish in their
own daily routines. But being clever or brave, generous or good-heartedthese traits are inborn, a partof core personality (Whiting 1996,22-25).
Whiting also developed a composite index of modernity, which included
parents education, mothers knowledge of Kiswahili and/or English, radio
ownership, Christian church membership, and other items. Parents with
these characteristics were more likely to value traits in their children such as
confidence, inquisitiveness, cleverness, and bravery; they were relatively less
I54
MATTERS
CULTURE
likely to value being generous, obedient, and respectful. But again, mostparents want bothclusters of traits in their children.
Modernity Is Associated with Increased Social

Connectedness and Affiliation withN e w Groups
Finally, more modern attitudes are found among families with
ties to both
rural and urban communities, rather than to only one or the other.
Since
1970, I have followed families from western Kenya who tried
to colonize
both the cities and other rural areas to achieve economic and social gain
(Weisner 1997a). Compared to families living mostly in Nairobi, families
that had relatives in multiple locations and moved back and forth between
those settings along with their children had lower levels of reported psychophysiological stress and similar levels of overall modernity in their attitudes.
The children incities had higher levels of child-child and parent-child conflict
and aggression, and lower levels of sociability and nurturance compared to
rural-resident children or rural-urban commuting children. Parental strategies for deploying their children and other kin for survival and security varied.Families
andchildrenwithsociallydistributednetworksacross
generations and places were doing as well or better than their counterparts
trying to make it in only one location.
CONCLUSION
Let parents and children around the world decide how to innovate and experiment with their cultural practices. If those with the means to do so can
provide activities and new institutional contexts encouraging market accumulation or pluralism in politicallife, the evidence suggeststhat we will find
many families and children there toengage in those activities. If such new institutions and communityactivities are planned and prepared with local cultural understanding in mind (Klitgaard 1994), they can and will find their
place. If market economic activities and new and more positive forms
of civic
political life become available, there will be children and parents in contemporary African communities sufficiently well fitted to engage in those new
activities.
Of course, like all cultural ways of life, socially distributed socialization
has costs as well as benefits for individuals and for economic development.
This is the case, for example, for the continuing gender segregation that restricts the cultural careersof boys and girls and the institutionalized jealousy
and fears of neighbors and other cultural groups outside ones own. Although parents often say that boys and girls are equally likely to have this
Culture,
Childhood,
and
Progress
Sub-Saharan
in Africa
=ss
mix of traits (and greater formal education and economic success increases
the likelihood that parents say this), the cultural careers of boys and girls
keeps gender segregation highly salient, although increasingly fragmented
and changing in the direction
of increased equality. Localbeliefs certainly can
make equitable distributionof wealth and interventions on behalfof children
and families difficult and complex (Howard and Millard 1997).
Millions of African parents and children are prepared for change, are increasingly cosmopolitan or at least aware of alternatives, and creatively do
change their familylife and child care practices.Yet many resist change at the
same time. Parents and communities are, of course, ambivalent. They have
the impulse to defend the predictability of life . . . a fundamental and universal principle of human psychology (Marris 1975,3).Parenting and child
care are changing and adapting, but there clearly are powerful, emotionally
felt cultural models that make such change both
possible yet difficult.
Given the cultural importance, personal intimacy,and ambivalence that attach to parenting and child rearing, why focus on changing the values and
practices of childrens cultural careers that families both defend and are
struggling to change? Indeed, I have to wonder why those interested in
achieving economic development and new forms of civic life displace our attention by focusing on the detailsof how parents shouldraise their children.
Families could be helped so much more easily through the provision
of the
means to establish basic and universally desired social supports and thereby
the wherewithal to achieve meaningful daily routines of family life. There is
little basis for prescribing interventions and new-values orientations that require specific changes in parental goals or child care practices within the
family system, giventhe evidence that changeis already widely occurring and
that there is inherent individual variability built in to the child development
process. But there certainlyis reason to provide a foundation thatestablishes
any cultures ability to provide well-being for children: the basic social supports of security, stability, health, and resources that permit families to
achieve for their children a sustainable daily routine in their community that
meets their goals.That is progress.
REFERENCES
Barth, F. 1993. Are Values Real? TheEnigma of Naturalism in the Anthropological

Imputation of Values. In The Origin of Values, edited by Michael Hechter, Lynn
Nadel, and Richard E. Michod, pp. 3146. New York: Aldine de Gruyter
Bradley, C., and T. S. Weisner. 1997. ccIntroduction:Crisis in the African Family. In
African Families and the Crisis o f Social Change, edited by T. S. Weisner, C.
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Bradley, and I?.Kilbride, pp. xix-xxxii. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood PresdBergin

& Garvey.
Bradley, C. 1997. Why Fertility Is Going Down in Maragoli. In African Families
and the Crisis of Social Change, edited by T. S. Weisner, C. Bradley,and P. Kilbride,
pp. 227-252. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood PresdBergin& Garvey.
Castle, S. E. 1995. Child Fostering and Childrens Nutritional Outcomes in Rural
Mali: The Role of Female Status in Directing Child Transfers. Social Science and
Medicine 40, no. 5: 679-693.
DAndrade, R. 1991. Afterword to Human Motives and Cultural Models, edited by R.
DAndrade and C. Strauss, pp.225-232. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
. 1995. The Development of Cognitive Anthropology.New York: Cambridge
University Press.
Edmonson, M. S. 1973. The Anthropology of Values. In Culture and Life: Essays
in Memory of Clyde Kluckhohn, edited by W. Taylor, J. L. Fischer, and E. Z. Vogt
eds., pp. 157-197. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.
Edwards, C. C. 1997. Morality and Change: Family Unity and Paternal Authority
Among Kipsigis and Abaluyia Elders and Students. In African Families and the
Crisis of Social Change, edited byT. S. Weisner, C. Bradley, and P. Kilbride, pp.
45-85. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press/Bergin& Garvey.
Fischer, J. L., and E. Z. Vogt. 1973. Introduction to Culture and Life: Essays in Memory of Clyde Kluckhohn, edited byW. Taylor, J. L. Fischer, and E. Z. Vogt, pp.
1-13. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press
Fiske, A. P. 1991. Structures of Social Life: The Four Elementary Forms of Human
Relations. New York: Free Press.
. 1992. The Four Elementary Forms of Sociality: Framework for a Unified
Theory of Social Relations. Psychological Review 99: 689-723.
Goldschmidt, W. 1990. The Human Career. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Harkness, S., C. M. Super, and R. New, eds. 1996. Parents Cultural Belief Systems.
New York: Guilford.
Howard, M., andA.V. Millard. 1997. Hunger and Shame: Poverty and Child Malnutrition on Mozrnt Kilimanjaro. New York: Routledge.
Johnson, A. W., and T. Earle. 1987. The Evolution of Human Societies: From Foraging Group toAgrarian State. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Klitgaard, R. 1994. Taking Culture into Account: From Letsto cH~w.
In Culture
and Development in Africa, edited by I. Serageldin and J. Taboroff, pp. 75-120.
Washington, D.C.: World Bank. Proceedingsof an international conference heldat
the World Bank, Washington, D.C.
Kluckhohn, F. R., and F.L. Strodtbeck. 1961. Variations in Value Orientations.
Evanston, Ill.: Row, Peterson.
Lancy, D. 1996. Playing on the Mother-Ground:Cultural Routines for Childrens Development. New York: Guilford.
Culture,
Childhood,
and
Africa
Landes, D. 1998. The Wealth and Poverty o f Nations: W h y Some Are So Rich and
Some So Poor. New York: Norton.
LeVine, R. 1973. Patterns of Personality in Africa. Ethos 1, no. 2: 123-152.
LeVine, R., S. Dixon, S. LeVine, A. Richman,P. H. Leiderman, C. H. Keefer, and T. B.
Brazelton. 1994. Child Care and Culture: Lessons from Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Marris, P. 1975. Loss and Change. New York: Doubleday Anchor.
Robinson, W. C. 1992. Kenya Enters the Fertility Transition. Population Studies
46: 445-457.
Roe,E. 1999. Except-Africa: Remaking Development, Rethinking

Power. New
Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction.
Serpell, R. 1993. The Significance of Schooling: Life-Journeys in an African Society.
New York: Cambridge University Press.
Super, C. M., and S. Harkness. 1997. Modernization, Family Life, and Child Development in Kokwet. InAfrican Families and the Crisis of Social Change, edited by
T. S. Weisner, C. Bradley, and P. Kilbride, pp. 341-353. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood PressBergin & Garvey.
UNICEF. The State of the Worlds Children, 1992. New York: UNICEF.
Weisner, T. S. 1984. A Cross-Cultural Perspective: Ecocultural Niches of Middle
Childhood. In The Elementary School Years: Understanding Development During Middle Childhood, edited by Andrew Collins, pp. 335-369. Washington, D.C.:
National Academy Press.
. 1994. The Crisis for Families and Children in Africa: Change and Shared
Social Support for Children. Health Matrix: ]ournu1 of Law-Medicine 4, no. 1:
1-29.
. 1997a. Support for Children and the African Family Crisis. In African
Families and the Crisis of Social Change, edited by T. S. Weisner, C. Bradley, and P.
Kilbride, pp. 20-44. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood PressBergin & Garvey.
. 1997b. The Ecocultural Project of Human Development: Why Ethnography
and Its Findings Matter. Ethos 25, no. 2: 177-190.
Weiser, T. S., with C. Bradleyand P. Kilbride, eds. 1997. African Families and the Crisis of Social Change. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood PressBergin & Garvey.
Whiting, B.B. 1996. The Effect of Social Change on Concepts of the Good Child
and Good Mothering: A Study of Families in Kenya.
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Wildavsky, A. 1994. How Cultural Theory Can Contribute to Understanding and
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Washington, D.C., 1994.
15 7
I2
Moral Maps,
First World Conceits,
and the New Evangelists
R I C H A R DA .S H W E D E R
ECONOMISTS BRAINS: $2.39 A POUND!
Does cannibalism have nutritional value or is it just a form of high cuisine?

Although this question is a topic of solemn debate in anthropology, at grand
ceremonial occasions anthropologists are known to have a sense of humor.
Being an anthropologist, I thought I wouldbegin this chapter with an admittedly baroque variation on an old joke about the market for brains in Papua
New Guinea.
This guy from the First World walks into a gourmet food store in Papua
New Guinea. He goes to the meat section, where he sees a bill of fare designated assorted Westerners. It contains two general offerings: evangelical
missionaries (religious and secular), who think it is their mission in life to
make our world a betterplace by their moral lights, and romantic relativists,
who think whatever is, is okay and actually seem to like it here. He notices
many delicacies, all neatly arranged in bins.
The first bin has a sign that says Economists Brains from the World
Bank: $2.39 a Pound! The label on the bin reads, These people want to
Moral Maps, First World

Conceits,
and
the
N e w Evangelists
I59
loan us lots of money at very favorable rates (which of course we are never
going to pay back), if only we willdo things more likethe way theydo things
in the West. They want us to formalize contracts, createan independent judiciary, and prohibit the preferential hiring of members of ones own ethnic
group. And thats just forstarters.
The sign on the second bin says Protestant Ethicists Brains: $2.42 a
Pound. The label reads, These people want us to change our work habits
and our ideas about the good life. They want us to stopwasting our time on
elaborate rituals for dead ancestors. They want to loan us lots of money at
very favorable rates (whichof course we are never going
to pay back), if only
we will start thinking about things the way they think about things in the
West (or atleast in the verynorthern sections of the West). Northern Western
folk are convinced that everything is nefarious except the impersonal pursuit
of work and that only the rich will be saved. They tell us that sustainable
growth is the contemporary code word for the adoption of Protestant values. They believe that God blesses men in the sign of their material prosperity, especially their purposefully amassed wealth. They want us to be saved.
They want to save us.
The sign on the third bin says Monocultural Feminists Brains: $2.49 a
Pound. The label reads, These people want us to change our family life,
gender relations, and reproductive practices. They want us to devalue the
womb, which is associated in their minds with bad things such as big families, domesticity, and a sexual division of labor. They want us to revalue the
clitoris (which is associated in their minds with good things such as independence, equality, and hedonic self-stimulation) as the biological essenceof
female identity, and as the symbol and means of female emancipation from
men. And they want NATO to send in a humanitarian invasion force unless
we promise to join the National Organization of Women and the League of
Women Voters.
The sign on the final bin says Anthropologists Brains:$15.00 a Pound.
The label reads, These people think we should just take the money and
run!
Dismayed, our visitor walks over to the guy behind the counter and he
says, Whats this! Havent you heard about the moral superiority
of the
West (or atleast of the northernmost sections of the West)?Dont you know
that the reason we [in the First World] are better than you [in the Third
World] is that we are humanists who endorse the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Man? Dont you know that when it comes to brains
there is basic oneness to humankind? Dont you know that the major reason
for differences in the world [variations in human capital] is that people in
the southern sections of the globe grow up in impoverished cultures [cul-
I60
MATTERS
CULTURE
tures of poverty]? That is why they are badly equipped for life on the information highway and in the global fast lane. That
is why they are untrustworthy, corrupt, undisciplined, unskilled, and poor. Okay, I can understand a
slight difference in price for economists brains, Protestant ethicists brains,
and monocultural feminists brains ($2.39 a pound/$2.42 a pound/$2.49 a
pound), but $15.00 a pound for anthropologists brains? Thats ridiculous!
Its illogical! Its unfair! It defies transparency!
The guy behind the counter replies: DO you know how many anthropologists we had to kill before we could find apound of brains?
So I admit to feeling a bit brainless writing for a volume whose contributors include so many distinguished scholars and evangelists from disciplines
other than my own. Lawrence Harrison recruited me to this effort by stating,
with characteristic candor, that he wantedme to write as a skeptic and critic
because he thought I believed in culture but not in progress. He said
that he was planning toinvite other types of skeptics and critics as well, such
as those who believe in progress but not in culture.
I do believe in progress, at least in a limited sense (more on that below).
And I suspect that the precise sense in which I believe in culture (more on
that too) may not seem very helpful (or even sensible) to those who have argued here that culture matters.
What does it mean to say that culture matters? It depends on who
is
speaking. The theme of this volume is expressive of an intellectual stance
known as culturaldevelopmentalism. For a cultural developmentalist, the
assertion that culture mattersis a way of saying that some cultures are impoverished or backward, whereas others are enriched or advanced. It means
there are good things in life (e.g., health, domestic tranquillity,justice, material prosperity, hedonic self-stimulation, and small families) that all human
beings ought to want and have but that their culturekeeps them from wanting and/or having.
Here is how you can tell if you are a cultural developmentalist.Do you like
to inspect the globe with an ethical microscope and draw moral maps of
the world? Or, doing what amounts to pretty much the same thing, do you
like to construct quality of life indicators that canbe used to rank cultures,
civilizations, and religions from better to worse? If you are a cultural developmentalist, you probably feel deeply disturbed by the staying power and
popularity of various (archaic) ways of life and (superstitious) systems
of belief because you think they are relatively devoid
of truth, goodness,
beauty, or practical efficiency. You probably want to enlighten the residents of the dark continents of the world. You probably want to lift them
up from error, ignorance, bad habits, immorality, and squalor, and refashion
them to be more progressive, more democratic, more scientific, more civic-
Moral
Maps,
First World
Conceits,
and
the
New Evangelists
61
minded, more industrious, more entrepreneurial, more reliable, more rational, and more like (the ideal)us.
Culture matters for me too but in a rather different sort of way: If I were
ever to refer to a culture of poverty, I would probably reserve the expression for ascetic communities in which the renunciation of wealth and the repudiation of worldly goods had been positively valued asan objective good.
Furthermore, given my conception of precisely how culture counts, I might
even try to find some merit inthat conception of the good.
Although the idea of an impoverished culture is not exactly an oxymoron, it hasplayed almost no part inmy own field research. To make matters worse, my commitment to the very idea of culture has its source in an
interest in other cultures as sources of illumination (Shweder 1991, 1993,
1996a, 1996b, 1997; Shweder et al. 1998). I have never put much stock in
the view that holds that a good reason for becoming interested in other cultures is that they are impedimentsto therealization of some imagined universal aspiration of all people to be more like northern Europeans. And while I
certainly believe in the importance and moral decency
of our wayof life, I do
not believe in our moral superiorityover all the rest.
Thus I do not think that northern Europeanshave a corner on the market
for human progress. I do not believe that cognitive, spiritual, ethical, social,
political, and material progress go hand in hand. Societies in command of
great wealth and power can be spiritually, ethically, socially, and politically
flawed. Many vital, intellectually sophisticated, and admirable cultures,
places where philosophers live in mud huts, have evolved in environments
with rudimentary technology and relatively little material wealth. Hence, I
do notbelieve that either we or they
have implemented the only credible
manifestation of the good life.
Obviously, I am one of the heretics at this revival meeting and it is not the
greatest of feelings. So let me continue my presentation with a coupleof confessions, which will perhaps reduce some
of my anxiety over being drafted as
a designated skeptic.
CONFESSION 1: I AM AN ANTHROPOLOGIST
My first confession, of course, is that I am an anthropologist.Unfortunately,

given all the turmoil in the profession of anthropology these days, this confession is not very informative. It carries no implications (as it would have
fifty years ago or even twenty yearsago) for how I mightfeel about the concept of culture, whether I am for orit against itor whether it makes me laugh
or cry.3
I 62
MATTERS
CULTURE
For the sake of accuracy in describing the current scene in anthropology,

let me note that there was a time in anthropology when such words as
primitive, barbarian, savage, or even underdeveloped were put in
quotation marks, if they were used at all. There was a time when the idea
that there is only one way to lead a morally decent and rational life, and its
our way, would have been seen, quite frankly, as obscene.
But things have changed. Monocultural feminism has put
an end to any
facile relativism in anthropology and hasgiven a new meaning to the idea of
political correctness. So, along with the international human rights movement and various agencies promoting Western-style globalization (UNICEF,
WHO, perhaps even NATO), there are plenty of anthropologists these days
who take an interestin other cultures mainly as objectsof scorn. The slogan
It is not cultural, its [fill in the blank: criminal, immoral, corrupt, inefficient, barbaric] (or alternatively, It is cultural and its [fill in the blank:
criminal, immoral, corrupt, inefficient, barbaric]) has become the rallying
cry for cultural developmentalists, Western interventionists of all kinds, and
some schools of cultural anthropology as well.
I regret this ironic turn of events. Cultural anthropology was once a discipline that was proudof its opposition to ethnocentric misunderstanding and
moral arrogance as well as its anti-colonial defense of other ways of life.
That wasyesteryear.
These days there are plenty of anthropologists (the post-culturalists) who
want to disown the concept of culture. They think the word culture gets
used in bad faith to defend authoritarian social arrangements and to allow
despots to literally get away with murder. Indeed, as the world of theory in
cultural anthropology turns, it seems to be dCji vu all over again. Despite
a century of objections by anthropological pluralists, relativists, and contextualists such as Franz Boas, Ruth
Benedict, Melville Herskovits, Robert
LeVine, Clifford Geertz, and others, an intellectual stance reminiscent of late
nineteenth-century white mans burden, cultural developmentalism is
back. The self-congratulatory, up-from-barbarism theme of (certain versions
of) Western liberalism (including the sensational accusation
that African
mothers are bad mothers, human rights violators, and mutilators of their
daughters) has once againbecome fashionable on the anthropological scene,
at least among those anthropologists who are the most politically
corre~t.~
The current scene within anthropology is sufficiently complex (and perverse) that there areeven anthropologists who think they own the concept
of
culture but do not want anyone,
including themselves,to doanything with
it. I am not oneof them. Regardless of whether the idea of culture makes me
laugh or cry, I like it a lot. I cant get rid of it. I find we cant live by ecumenism alone. Membership in some particulartradition of meanings is an es-
Moral
Maps,
First World
Conceits,
and
the
N e w Evangelists
163
sential condition for personal identity and individual happiness. Inmy view,
thick ethnicity and cultural diversity both have their place and are part of
the natural and moral order of things. I do not think Mother Nature wants
everyone to be alike.
What do I mean by culture? I mean community-specific ideas about
what is true, good, beautiful, and efficient. To be cultural, those ideas
about truth, goodness, beauty, and efficiency must be socially inherited and
customary; and they must actuallybe constitutive of different ways of life.
Alternatively stated, culture refers to what Isaiah Berlin called goals, Values and pictures of the world that are made manifest in the speech, laws,
and routine practices of some self-monitoring group.
There is a lot more packed into that definition than I can unpack in a single chapter. There is the notion that actions speak louder than words and
that practices are a central unit for cultural analysis. That is one reason I
dont much like value questionnaires and find it hard to feel enthusiastic
about research based on the analysis of official creeds or on endorsement
patterns for abstract stand-alone proposition^.^
Furthermore, one of the things culture is certainly not aboutis national
character. I am not going to have much to say about national character
studies here, but they went out of fashion about forty years ago, and for
good reason. They went out of fashion because it is far better to think about
human behavior and motivation the way rational choice theorists or sensible
economists do, rather than the way personality theorists do. Rational choice
theorists think about action as something emanating fromagency. That is
to say, action is analyzed as the joint product of ccpreferences (including
goals, values, and ends of various sorts) and constraints (including
means of various sorts, such as causalbeliefs, information, skills, and material and non-material resources),all mediated by the will of rational beings.
This stands in contrast to the way in which personality theorists think about
behavior. Personality theorists think about action as forced. They try to
explain action as the joint productof two types of vectors, one pushing from
inside, called person (described in terms
of generalized motives and
sticky global traits), and the other pushing from ccoutside, called situation.
Looking for types of persons as a way of explaining cultural practices has
not proved very useful.If one triesto characterize individuals in terms
of personality traits or generalized motives, one usually discoversthat individuals
within cultures vary much more among themselves than they do from individuals in other cultures (Kaplan 1954). One also discovers that if there is
any modal typeat all (e.g., an authoritarian personality type or a personality type with a need for achievement), it is typically characteristic of no
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more than about one-third of the population. It has long been recognized
among psychological anthropologists and cultural psychologists that (quoting Melford Spiro 1961) it is possible for different modal personality systems to be associated with similar social systems, and for similar modal
personality systems to be associated with different social systems. Looking
for types of personalities to explain differences in cultural practicesis a dead
end (see Shweder 1991).
CONFESSION 2: I A M A PLURALIST
My second confession is that I am a culturalpluralist. My version of cultural

pluralism begins with a universal truth, which I refer to as the principle of
confusionism. A confusionist believes that the knowable world is incomplete if seen from any one point of view, incoherent if seen from all
points of view at once, and empty if seen from nowhere in particular.
Given the choice between incompleteness, incoherence, and emptiness, I opt
for incompleteness while staying on the move between different ways of seeing and valuing the world.
This version of cultural pluralism is not opposed to universalism. Culture
theorists do not divide into only two types, those who believe that anything
goes (the radical relativists) and those who
believe that only one thinggoes
(the uniformitarian universalists).I strongly believe in universalism, but
the type of universalism I believe in is universalism without the uniformity,
which is what makes me a pluralist. In other words, I believe there are universally binding values but that there arejust too many of them (e.g., justice,
beneficence, autonomy, sacrifice, liberty, loyalty, sanctity, duty). I believe that
those objectively valuable ends of life are diverse, heterogeneous, irreducible
to some common denominator such as utility or pleasure, and that they
are inherently in conflict with each other. believe
I
that all the good things in
life cant be simultaneously maximized.believe
I
that when itcomes to implementing true values there are always trade-offs, which
is why there aredifferent traditions of values (i.e., cultures) and why no one cultural tradition has
ever been able to honor everything that is good.6
Cultural pluralism has other implications, some
of whicharehighly
provocative. For example, there is the claim that the members of the executive board of the American Anthropological Association did the right and
courageous thing in 1947 when they decided not to endorse the U.N. Declaration of the Rights of Man onthe grounds that it was an ethnocentric document. In 1947, anthropologists werestill proud of their anti-colonial defense
of alternative waysof life (see Shweder 1996b).
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PROGRESS AND PLURALISM: CAN THEY COEXIST?
Pluralism does not imply the rejection of the ideas of progress and decline.
Progress means having more and more of something that is desirable (i.e.,
something that should be desired because it is good). Decline means having less and less of it. Name a specific good (e.g., taking care of parents in
old age, eliminating contagious disease), and we can make objective judgments about progress with respect to that good. If maximizing the likelihood of child survival during the first nine months after birth is the measure
of success, then the United States is objectively more advanced than Africa
and India. If maximizing the likelihood of child survival during the first nine
months after conception (in the womb)
is the measure of success, then Africa
and India (where abortion rates are relatively low) are objectively more advanced than the United States (where abortion rates arerelatively high).
Of course there is much that is discretionary (i.e., not dictated by either
logic or evidence) in any decision about how to name and identify specific
goods and thusmorally map the world.For example, the sheer quantity of
life, or reproductive fitness, is the measure used by evolutionary biologists
for estimating thesuccess of a population. By that measure of success-the genetic reproductionof ones tribe or ancestral line-how are weto evaluate the
birth control pill, the legalization of abortion, and the reductionof family size
in the high-tech societiesof the First World?Do we narrate a storyof decline?
Or, to select a second example, what type of story should we tell about
quality of life measures such as life expectancy at birth? Thelonger lived a
population, the greater the frequencyof chronic illness, the greater the likelihood of functional impairment, and hence the higher the aggregate amount
of pain (a true qualitative measure) experienced by that population. Good
things (e.g., more years of life, no physical pain) do not always correlate. A
longer life is not unambiguously a better life, or is it? Or, if longevity is a
measure of success, then why not also numerousness or sheer population
size, with China and Indiaat the top of the list?
And why life expectancy at birth? What principle of logic or canon of inductive science dictatesthat standard for drawing moral maps and assessfor
ing cultural progress? Why not
life expectancy at age fortyor, for thatmatter,
at conception? Why not take the more comprehensive life-course perspective
of the fetus and notjust its later viewpoint as a newly born infant? As noted,
if one considers the hazards of the womb theFirst World and former Second
World look worse off than many societies in Africa and Asia. Consider how
different our life expectancy tables would be if we factored in the 20 to 25
percent abortion rates in the United States and Canada or the 50-plus per-
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cent abortion rates in Russia, as compared to rates as low as2 to 10 percent

in India, Tunisia, and some other partsof the underdeveloped world.
The pro-life/pro-choice debate (I am pro-choice)is not the issue here. The
issue is the discretionary aspect of moral mapping and the degrees of freedom one has in deciding whose ideals are going to be selected as the gold
standard of the good life. As societies become technologically sophisticated,
rates of abortion often rise, thereby lowering the life expectancy rate of the
population (assuming that life expectancy is calculated from the point of
conception rather than at birth). In some parts of the world, often in those
parts of the world where reproductive success and large families are valued,
early childhood is a relatively dangerous timeof life. In other places, often in
high-tech places where small families are valued and the womb is no longer
thought of as a sanctified ground, the real dangers comeearlier in life, and if
you are an unwantedchild, the womb canbe hazardous to your health.
Once a particular good is selected and named, objective assessments of
advance and decline can be made. That type of value-specific assessment is
quite different, however, from any form of triumphal progressivism, which
tries to pick out some one cultural tradition as superiorto all the rest. Things
can be made to seem either better or worse, depending on the criteria of
value that you choose to select. When it comes to reviewing all the many potentially good things in life, cultural pluralists believe that there are pluses
and minuses to most long-standing cultural traditions (see Shweder et al.
1997).And when it comesto constructing narratives aboutprogress, they believe that there is lots of room for discretion (and ideology) in how one tells
the story of who is better and whois worse.
It is also possible to make such value-specific judgments about progress
without believing in the overall superiority of the present over the past, or
that most changes are for the good. It
is even possible to make criterionspecific judgments of progress and decline while being a neo-antiquarian,
that is, someone who rejects the idea that the world woke up,emerged from
darkness, and became good for the first time yesterday or three hundred
years ago in northern Europe. A neo-antiquarian does not think thatnewness is a measure of progress and is quite prepared, in the name of progress,
to revalue things from distantplaces and from outof the distant past.
Pluralists do make critical judgments. Indeed, the stance of justification
is so central to my style of cultural analysis that I would define a genuine
culture, a culture deservingof appreciation, as a wayof life that is defensible
in the face of criticism from abroad. Pluralism is the attempt to provide that
defense of others, and not only as a corrective to the partiality and exaggerations of various modern formsof ethnocentrism and chauvinism (including the claim that theWest is better than all the rest), although thatis reason
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enough. Right now, with the fall of communism and the rise of global capitalism, including the expansion of our Internet, we (in the West) feel full of
ourselves. It is at times such as thesethat we might do well to remember that
Max Weber, the author of The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism,
did not voice a preference for Protestantism over Catholicism
or for the
North over the South. He was
a. critical pluralist who put out warnings about
the iron cage of modernity, about the impersonalrules of the bureaucratic
state that redefine ones moral obligations to kith and kin as a form of corruption, and about the hazards
of an unbridled economic rationality.
Throughout history, whoever is wealthiest and the most technologically
advanced thinks that their wayof life is the best, the most natural, the Godgiven, the surest means to salvation, or at least the fast lane to well-being in
this world. In the sixteenth century, Portuguese missionaries to China believed that their invention of clocks, of which they were very proud, was
knock-down proof of the superiority of Catholicism over other world religions (Landes 1998, 336-337). For all I know, their mechanical timepiece
may have been counted as an argument in favor of absolute monarchy. Dazzled by our contemporary inventions and toys (e.g., CNN, IBM, Big Mac,
blue jeans, the birth controlpill, the credit card) and at home
in our own way
of life, we are prone to similar illusions and the same type of conceits.
MILLENNIAL PROPHECIES:
THREE IMAGES OF THE NEW WORLD ORDER
These are confusing times, especially when one tries to imagine the broad
outlines of the new world order thatis likely to replace the old capitalist/
communisdunderdeveloped three worlds scheme.
One reason for the confusion is that the self-congratulatory, enlightenment origin story about the ascent of secularism, individualism, and science
has taken its lumps in the1990s and may not be all that useful for predicting
the direction of change in the early twenty-first century. Thirty years ago,
many social scientists predictedthat, in the modern world,religion would go
away and be replaced by science. They predicted that tribes would go away
and be replaced by individuals. They were wrong. That has not andwill not
happen, either globally or locally. Multiculturalism is a fact of life. The former Second World, once an empire, is now many little worlds. The development of a global world system and the emergenceof local ethnic or cultural
revival movements seemto go hand in hand. At thelimit, political succession
may even have its rewards
for cultural minority groups. The potential rewards include direct receiptof financial aid and military protection from various power centers, and perhaps even a voice
at the United Nations.
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Moreover, many of us now live in nation-states composed, as Joseph Raz

has put it, of groups and communities with
diverse practices and beliefs, including groups whose beliefs are inconsistent with each other.We will continue to doso, if for no other reason than thereality of global migration and
the fact that community and divinity are
essential goods and must be acknowledged for the sake of individual identity and human progress.
Of
course, life in such a world can be hazardous, especially for members of immigrant or minority groups living in multicultural states or for members of
different civilizations or cultures who are in geopolitical conflict. In such a
world, one hopes that itis not just culture that matters but also a particular
pluralistic conception of culture because the right conception of culture can
be useful in minimizing some of the risks associated with difference and
with multicultural life.
There is a second reason these are confusing times. It would be nice
to
have in hand a valid general causal explanationfor the wealth and poverty
of
peoples, cultures, or nations, but we dont. If by causation we mean what
J. S. Mill meant by it-all the necessary conditions that are jointly sufficient
to produce an effect-I think we must admit that we do not really know
what causes economic growth. Sicily in the fifteenth century, Holland in the
sixteenth century, Japan today;social scientists can pick a people, culture,or
nation and tell a plausible story about some of the reasons for economicfailure or success, in that case. But that is a far cry from a general causal theory.
Try listing all the potential causal conditions for wealth production mentioned by David Landes (1998) in his monumental economic history of the
world. Then askyourself this question: Areany of those conditions sufficient
to produce economic growth? The answeris no. Are any of those conditions
even necessary?
Having guns did it here. Having Jews did it there. In this case it was immigration policy; in that case it was having access to quinine. In this case itwas
freeing the serfs; in thatcase itwas theavailability of fossil fuel. In this case it
was the weather; in that case it was willingness to trade with outsiders. In
this case it was having good colonial masters; in that case it was high consumer demand. In this case and that case it was luck. Singaporeis not a liberal democracy, but it is rich. India is the worlds most populous democracy,
but it is poor. Sweden in the eighteenth century was a sparsely populated
democracy, and it was poor too. People who are religiously orthodox and
dont believe in gender equality (e.g., Hasidic Jews) canbe rich. Fully secularized egalitarian societies(e.g., former communist countries in Eastern Europe) may fail to thrive from an economic point of view. In 1950, Japan had
Confucian values (which at the time didnt look very Western) and was
poorer than Brazil. In 1990 Japan had the same Confucian values, which
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all of a sudden seemed very Protestant-like, as Japan outstripped Brazil.If

I were a cynic, I would say that our most able economic historians are really
good at identifying some of the unnecessary conditions that might have been
jointly sufficient to produce wealth in any particular special case. Less cynically, I think it is fair to say that despite many impressive post hoc historical
accounts of the case-specific conditions that have promoted growth, one is
entitled to feel confused about the general causes of economic success, if by
causation we mean what J. S. Mill meant when he defined the term.
How then are we to grasp the big changes that are taking place in the
world order? What is the relationship between globalization (the linking of the worlds economies), westernization (the adoption of Western
ideas, ideals, norms, institutions, and products), and economic growth? If
you keep your ear to the ground these days, you can hear many prophecies
or speculations about the shapeof the new world order. will
I
conclude by
mentioning three.
Prophecy I : The WestIs Best and Will Become Global

(or at Least I t Should Try to Take Over the World)
The prediction here is that Western-like aspirations will be fired up or freed
up by globalization and will be the cause and the concomitant of economic
growth. Western-like aspirations include a desire for liberal democracy, the
decentralization of power, free enterprise, private property, individual rights,
gender equality, and so on, and perhaps even a taste for Western products.
With regard to globalization, westernization, and economic growth,
this prediction imagines causal effects in all directions. Basically, this is the
Western enlightenment origin story universalized and projected into the
future.
Prophecy 2: Others WillHave a Piece of the Rock and

Hold On to Their Distinctive Culture Too.
In the early 1970s, I had a Sudanese student who did his Ph.D. on attitudes
toward modernization among African students, using a beliefs and values
questionnaire. He discovered that the materialism factor in his questionnaire was orthogonal to the individualism factor; one could value material
wealth without giving up the collectivist valuesof the tribe. The Saudi Arabians liked that message so much they hired him to teach in their universities.
Perhaps that is why Samuel Huntingtons thesis (1996) that the West is
unique but not universal and that other civilizations do not need to become
like us to benefit from the technologies of the modern worldis so popular in
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the non-Western world. This prediction imagines globalization and economic

growth without deep cultural penetration from the West. Cultures and civilizations are encouraged to remain diverse while everyone gets apiece of the
pie.7
Prophecy 3 : A Liberal Ottoman-Style Empire with

Two Castes (CosmopolitanLiberals and Local Non-Liberals)
I associate the first prophecy with Francis Fukuyama (1992) and the second
with Samuel Huntington (1996). Let me conclude with my own augury.
Imagine a world order that is liberal in the classical sense. Its leaders assume
a stance of neutrality with regardto substantive cultural issues. They dont
condition aid and protection on changes in local gender ideals, forms of authority, kinship structures, or coming of age ceremonies. They dont try to
tell the members of different cultural groupsthat theyhave to live together or
love each other or share the same emotional reactions, aesthetic ideals, and
religious beliefs. They dont try to tell them how to run their privatelives or
that they must have private lives. Imagine that in this world order various
sanctioning mechanisms make it possible
to enforce minimal rules of civility:
exit visas are always available, and no aggression is permitted across territorial boundaries. Imagine thatsuch a world system is set up to support decentralized control over cultural issues and hence to promote local cultural
efflorescence. Such an emergent new world order might look like a postmodern Ottoman millet system on a globalscale.
I imagine this system would be
two tiered and operating at two levels,
global and local. I imagine its personnel will belong to two castes. There
will be the cosmopolitan liberals, who are trained to appreciate value neutrality and culturaldiversity and who run the global institutions
of the world
system. And there will be the local non-liberals, who are dedicated to one
form or another of thick ethnicity and are inclined to separate themselves
from others, thereby guaranteeing that thereis enough diversity remaining
in the world for the cosmopolitan liberals to appreciate. The global elite
(those who are cosmopolitan and liberal) will, of course, come from all nationalities. In the new universal cosmopolitan culture
of the global tierof the
world system, your ancestry and skin color will be far less important than
your education, your values, and your travel plans. It is already the case in
the postmodern cosmopolitan world that you dont have to grow up in the
West to be Western any more than you have to grow up in the southern
world to adopt an indigenous Third World point of view. Finally, I imagine
that it would be possible in this new world order forindividuals to switch
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Maps,
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Conceits,
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New Evangelists
tiers and castes in both directions, moving from global liberalism to local
non-liberalism and back, within the courseof a single life.
With regard to globalization, westernization, and economic growth,
I
would hazard this guess. If it should turn out as an empirical generalization
that economic growth can be pulled off relying only on the shallow or thin
aspects of Western society (e.g., weapons, information technology, Visa
cards), then cultures wont converge, even as they get rich. If economic
growth is contingent on accepting the deep or thick aspects of Western culture (e.g., individualism, ideals of femininity, egalitarianism, the Billof
Rights), then cultures will not converge and will not develop economically
because their senseof identity will supersede their desirefor material wealth.
REFERENCES
Fukuyama, Francis. 1992. The End o f History and the Last Man. New York: Free
Press.
Harrison, Lawrence E. 1992. Who Prospers? How Cultural Values Shape Economic
and Political Success. New York: Basic.
Huntington, Samuel P. 1996. The West Unique, Not Universal. Foreign Affairs 75:
28-45.
Kaplan, B. 1954. A Study of Rorschach Responses in Four Cultures. Papers of the

Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, 42:2. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Landes, David S. 1998. The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Rich
and Some Are So Poor. New York: Norton.
Obermeyer, C. M. 1999. Female Genital Surgeries: The Known, the Unknown, and
the Unknowable. Medical Anthropology Quarterly 13: 79-106.
Obiora, L. A. 1997. Rethinking Polemics and Intransigencein the Campaign
Against Female Circumcision. Case Western Reserve Law Review 47: 275.
Shweder, Richard A. 1991. Thinking Through Cultures: Expeditions in Cultural Psychology. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
. 1993. Cultural Psychology: Who Needs It? Annual Review of Psychology
44: 497-523.
. 1996a. True Ethnography: The Lore, the Law and the Lure. In Ethnogruphy and Human Development: Context and Meaning in Social Inquiry edited by
R. Jessor, A. Colby, and R. A. Shweder. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
. 1996b. The View from Manywheres. Anthropology Newsletter 37, no. 9:
1.
Shweder, Richard A., ed. 1998. Welcome to Middle Age! (and Other Cultural Fictions). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
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Shweder, Richard A., with M. Mahapatra and J. G. Miller. 1990. Culture and Moral
Development. In Cultural Psychology: Essays on Comparative Human Development, edited by J. s. Stigler, R. A. Shweder, and G. Herdt. New York: Cambridge
University Press.
Shweder, Richard A., with N. C. Much, M. Mahapatra, and L. Park. 1997. The Big
Three of Morality (Autonomy, Community, Divinity) and the Big Three Explanations of Suffering. InMorality and Health,edited by P. Rozin andA. Brandt. New
York: Routledge.
Spiro, M. 1961. Social Systems, Personality, and Functional Analysis. In Studying
Personality Cross-Culturally, edited by B. Kaplan. New York: Harper & Row.
Stolzenberg, N. M. 1997. A Tale of Two Villages (or, Legal Realism Comes to
Town). In Etbnicity and Group Rights-Nomos X X X I X , edited by I. Shapiro and
W. Kymlicka. New York: New York University Press.
Richard Shweders note1 (see below) evoked reactions by Daniel Etounga-Manguelle,
Carlos Alberto Montaner, and Mariano Grondona. Their comments appear after the
footnote, along with a further comment
by Richard Shweder.
Among the many fascinating remarks heard at the conference were several indigenous testimonials from cosmopolitan intellectuals out of Africa and Latin America. These representatives from the Third World played the part of disgruntled insiders, bearing witness to the
impoverishment of their own native cultures, tellingus how bad things can be in the home country. That role has become increasingly complex, even dubious, in our postmodern world, where
the outside is in and the inside is all over the place (think of CNN, VISA, and the Big Mac). For
most globe-hopping managers of the world system, including cosmopolitan intellectuals from
out of the Third World, travel plans now matter more than ancestry. Consequently, onefeels
inclined to raise doubts about any claims to authority based on an equation of citizenship (or
national origin) with indigenous voice. After all, whose voice is more indigenous? The
voice of a Western-educated M.B.A. or Ph.D. from Dakar orDelhi, who looks downon his or
her own cultural traditions and looks up to the UnitedStates for intellectualand moral guidance
and material aid? Or the voice of a Western scholar who does years of fieldwork in rural villages in Africa or Asia and understands and sees value in the traditions of others?
COMMENTS OF MONTANER, ETOUNGA-MANGUELLE, AND

GRONDONA, WITH FURTHER COMMENTS BY SHWEDER
Carlos Alberto Montaner
Richard Shweders comment is typical of those who expect

Third World reactions
from Latin Americans. He simply doesnt understand that Latin America is an extension of the West. I dont understand why Shweder thinks that we ought
to resign ourselves to authoritarian governments and economic modelsthat condemn half of our
people to misery when the entire world-beginning with the Japanese-believes
that
it was admirable when Japan copied the production techniques and social organization of the West. Perhaps the Brazilian favelas, with their infinite, barbaric misery,
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seem picturesque to him. I cannot accept those subhuman conditions. I believe that
they must be eradicated and that the people living in them must have a chance for a
better, more human life.
How do I know what Latin Americanswant? Its very simple: by following migration trends. Surveys demonstrate that half or more of the populations of Mexico,
Colombia, and Guatemala, among others, would abandon their countries for the
United States. Why? Because the United States offers them what they dont find in
their own countries.
What Shweder says of these representatives from the Third World play[ing] the
part of disgruntled insiders could also be applied to the Americans who are concerned about improving subhuman conditions in the black and Puerto Rican ghettos.
Ifheis to be consistently uncritical of the values and attitudes of a culture, then he
onzerta.
should have no problem with the Sicilian
Daniel Etounga-Manguelle
As a disgruntled insider and cosmopolitan intellectual from Africa,I appreciate

the opportunity to comment on Richard Shweders note.I do so with some diffidence.
After all, I am responding to a Western scholar who identifies himself as more indigenous than I am because he has done years of fieldwork in rural villages in . . .
Asia and understands and sees value in the traditionsof others,
I have to confess that I failed to receive the intellectual and moral guidance and
material aid I expected at the Harvard symposium, so I am going to tell the truth:
We Africans really enjoy living in shantytowns where there isnt enough food, health
care, or education for our children. Furthermore, our corrupt chieftaincy political systems are really marvelous and have permitted countries like Mobutus Zaire to earn
us international prestige and respect.
Moreover, surely it would be terribly boring
if free, democratic elections were organized all over Africa. Were that to happen, we would no longerbe real Africans, and
by losing our identity-and our authoritarianism, our bloody civil wars, our illiteracy,
our forty-five-year lifeexpectancy-we would be letting down not only ourselves but
also those Western anthropologists who study us so sympathetically and understand
that we cant be expectedto behave like human beings who seek dignity
on the eve of
the third millennium.We are Africans, and our identity matters!
So let us fight for it with the full support of those Western scholars who have the
wisdom and courage to acknowledgethat Africans belongto a different world.
Mariano Grondona
There is a methodological difference between Richard Shweder and Latin Americans

like Carlos Albert0 Montaner and myself. Shweders goal, were he focused on Latin
America, would be to understand it. We want to change it. Anthropologists need the
societies they study to remain relatively static and predictable, like an entomologist
studying bees or ants. Montaner and I, on the other hand, have an existential approach to our region: It is our world-where we come from-which we love. Be-
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cause of our commitment to it, we want it to advance to new levels of human fulfillment, closer to those in the developed world.
One must ask who represents Latin America better, Shwederand other foreign social scientists or Montaner and myself? We belong to our region. We feel it. The fact
that millions of Latin Americans are voting with their feet as they migrate to the
developed countries and that the overwhelming electoral majorities are supporting
progressive governments throughout our region eloquently testifies that our views
and concerns are widely shared.
To be sure, we travel back and forth between Latin America and
the developed countries. But these experiencesdo not alienate us from Latin America. Rather, they both increase our concern about conditions, particularly for poor people, in Latin America and
focus us on what needs
to be done to change those conditions. Likethe vast majorityof
our countrymen, wewant our nations to have the democratic stability, justice, opportunity for advancement, and prosperitythat we find in the advanced countries.
Richard A. Shweders Reply to Montaner,
Etounga-Manguelle, and Grondona
As far as I can tell nothing in note 1 (or in my chapter) recommends authoritarian

rule, a life of squalor,or death at anearly age. In authoritarian power orders, those in
power act in such a way
that only their own interests are served,
and no one can stop
them from doing so. I think the world would be a far better place if there were no
such ordersof power. And nothing suggests that we must be uncriticalor accepting of
the received ideas, attitudes, and practices of any cultural tradition, including our
own. As I state in my chapter, Pluralists do make critical judgments. Indeed, the
stance of justification isso central to my style of cultural analysisthat I would define
a genuine culture, a culture deserving of appreciation, as a way
of life that is defensible in the face of criticism from abroad.
If one truly cares to achieve some appreciation of a cultural tradition, one must usually engage in some participant observation and in a process of sympathetic understanding. One initially tries to bracket all ethnocentric reactions and discover what is
of others. There
good, true, beautiful, or efficient in the ideas, attitudes, and practices
is no guarantee that appreciation will be achieved. There is no guarantee that everything thatis, is okayor genuine. Ideas, attitudes, and practices that are demonstrably
bad, false, ugly, or inefficient should be criticized and perhaps even changed. So much
for red herrings andthe bogeyman of radical relativism. My essay is in fact a critique of
both radical relativism(whateveris, isokay) and ethnocentric monism(there is only
one way to lead a morally decent, rational and fulfilling life, and its our way), although by my lightsI did not see many radical relativistsat the conference.
In a moment I will respond to one or two other points raised by Carlos Albert0
Montaner, Daniel Etounga-Manguelle, and Mariano Grondona. First, however, I
want to focus on what was actually said in note 1, namely, that in the postmodern
world, one should be skepticalof all claims to authority based on the equationof citizenship (or national origin) with indigenous voice.And I want to tell you a story,
which illustratesthat point.
Moral Maps, First World

Conceits,
and
the
N e w Evangelists
17s
Rabindranath Tagore is modern Indias most acclaimed poet.

He was a recipientof
the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913, a spokesman for the India nationalist movement, and an admirer, interpreter, and literary beneficiary of the classical Sanskrit literatures of India. In 1877, Tagore visited England for the first time. He was sixteen
years old. He went thereto study law. In his book India and Europe: An Essay in Understanding, Wilhelm Halbfass quotes Tagores impressions:
I had thought that theisland of England was so small and the inhabitantsso dedicated to
learning that, before I arrived there, I expected the country from one end to the other
would echo andre-echo with the lyrical essays of Tennyson; and I also thought that wherever I might be in this narrow island, I would hear constantly Gladstones oratory, the explanation of the Vedas by Max Mueller, the scientific truth of Tindall, the profound
thoughts of Carlyle and the philosophy of Bain. I was under the impression that wherever
I would go I would find the old and the young drunk with the pleasure of intellectual
enjoyment. But I have been very disappointed in this.
Apparently, the young Tagore, a political and civic outsider

to the British Isles, was
culturally more English and spoke the English language far better than most Englishmen. His reference to Max Mueller is highly pertinent to note 1 because it was Max
Mueller, a German philologist and orientalist who taught
at Oxford, to whom Hindu
Brahmans turned to learn about Sanskrit and their own classical literary traditions.
This situation of outsiders and insiders trading places and keepingeach
others valuable cultural heritages in play is not unusual, especially in the contemporary world.We live ina world where Afro-Caribbean scholars translate ancient Greek
texts, where scholars from Africa, Asia, and Europe write perceptive books
about the
United States, and wherethe Max Mueller effect is aliveand well. For example, Gusii
intellectuals from Kenya, some of whom are quite expert inWestern philosophy and
science, read Robert LeVines work (conducted from the 1950s through 1990s) to
learn about the meaning, value, and history of Gusii norms and folkways. The main
point of this observation is a simple one: Statementsabout the prosand cons of a cultural tradition do not gain authorityand should not be granted authorityon the basis
of claims to ancestry, membership,or national origin.
Note 1 was an aside, a parenthetical remark about my fascination with one aspect of the structural organization of the conference. The conference was choreographed in such a waythat there was one session in which all the speakers from the
Third World participated, and they spoke pretty much with one voice, supporting the idea that Western civilization is superior to all the rest. Now, of course,
this idea is not unpopular in many capitals of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. It is
especially popular among those Western, westernized, or westernizing elites who
tend to view the received beliefs, attitudes, and everyday practices of non-Western
peoples, even their own countrymen, as unenlightened, superstitious, magical, authoritarian, corrupt, or otherwise unworthy or embarrassing. But that type of
wholesale acceptance of Western modernity over non-Western traditionalisms
of various kinds has never been the only voice in town in either the West or the
East, the North or the South, the developed or the underdeveloped
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MATTERS
CULTURE
world. Had there been other types of voices in the session, the voice of Third
World intellectuals who might speak with pride and admiration about indigenous ideas, attitudes, and practices, the session would perhaps have been less fascinating. Perhaps I would not have been led to wonder about the use of insider
testimonials from the Third World to lend authority to the idea that the Protestant First World really gotit right.
Carlos Alberto Montaner and Mariano Grondona are impressed by migration patterns, by the factthat millions of Latin Americans are voting with their feet in favor of the developed world. The first timeI ever heard the voting with your feet
argument was in the 1960s, when a famous conservative made the argument
that
black migration patterns into South Africa far exceeded black migration patterns
out
of South Africa. He interpreted this as evidence that black Africans were voting with
their feet in favor of the apartheid government of South Africa over other African
states! I suspect they were not voting or expressing their moral and cultural preferences at all-just going where there were higher-paying jobs.
Daniel Etounga-Manguelle seemsto imply that one cannot live a dignified lifeand
a life that is distinctively African at the same time. As I stated in my essay, I am not a
fan of broad categories suchas Latin Americanor African as ways of identifying
cultural communities-Bahia is not San Paolo, the Yoruba are not the Masai. Nevertheless, I do believe, as did Edward Sapir, that the societies in which different societieslive are distinctworlds, not merely the same world with differentlabels
attached. For a pluralist, distinctness or difference is not a term of disparagement. With complete respect for all three ofmy critics, whose sincerity I never
doubted, whose company and conversation I much enjoyed, and whose testimonials
and arguments I found fascinating,I fully confessto rejecting the idea that the onlyor
very best way to be dignified, decent, rational, and fully human is,to live the lifeof a
North American or a northern European.
part four
CULTUREAND GENDER
13
Culture, Gender,
and Human Rights
B A R B A R AC R O S S E T T E
Overthelastdecade,noothernationshavebeendrawnintosuchcomprehensive and profoundly important debates about cultural identity and human rights as the United States and Canada. In the press, in academia, in
ethnic communities, and among major religious organizations, there
is a palpable sense of shift in NorthAmerican civilization. It is sometimes welcomed
and often feared.
That there are apprehensions should not be surprising.N o country in history has voluntarily changed its ethnic profile in such a short time as the
United States has.We need only lookat early Hollywood films and the
television programs of the 1950s to see the mental image thatused to be conjured
up by the word American. Across most of the United States there were
largely two kinds of faces, European and African, and in those heads and
hearts people shared, for better or worse, a similar mainstream culture that
was more American andless like that of any of their ancestors. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, however, American faces reflect virtually all
the worlds ethnic communities and many minds and hearts are determined
not to lose-or if
necessary to reinvent-ancestral cultures. Does that fragment us or does it make us the first truly planetary nation?
Whatever it does, our changing mix draws us with greater frequency into
debates about broader definitions of human rights and their relationship to
Human
and
Gender, Culture,
Rights
I79
cultural bottom lines. The new environment should also lead

us into more informed, clear-sighted, and judicious considerations of human rights problems abroad. But just as thelinguistic diversityof our ancestorshas not made
us a multilingual nation, a variety of cultural backgrounds has yet to make
us-the media included-better judges
of distant practices, traditions, or
causes, which also appear on our shores in the luggage of immigrants. Two
imperatives collide:to salvage a core American culture while making way
for
different modes of life, without always having the necessary information to
comprehend them. Reactions to cultural practices may thus be contradictory
in different contexts and places-in Africa and Afghanistan, for example,
which are approached with inconsistent attitudes.
An era of reexamination in the United States coincides with a new age of
cultural awareness abroad, at worst spawning the destructive ethnicity (further fueled by economic troublesand political uncertainty) seen in Africa, the
Balkans, and Indonesia.Atthesametime,countries
in everyregionarealso
.
feeling the effects of significant social change. The burgeoning assertion of
womens rights will have long-run effectson traditional social practices. The
intense pressure of overpopulation in the worlds poorest nations puts the
essentials of life-food, water, and air-under greater strain everyyear.
The world is belatedly discovering that women and natural resources are
not unrelated. In countries like Bangladesh and Indonesia, more authority in
female hands has shown that lower birthrates follow, along with rising demands for education, better farming techniques, and more investment in the
land and villages. In Africa, UNICEF (the United Nations Childrens Fund)
found in its State of the Worlds Children 1999 report that mothers are beginning to band together to demand schools, seeing themas the key to a better life for their children and often for themselves. In Burkina Faso, where
only 9 percent of women over the age of fifteen can read, women have
formed twenty-three Pupils Mothers Associations to monitor the enrollment
and attendance of girls in school. In Pakistanand Egypt, among otherplaces,
local communities have found ways
to train teachers for
village schools.
The results are quick to discern: A 10 percentage-point increase in girls
primary enrollment can be expected to decrease infant mortality by 4.1
deaths per 1,000, and a similar rise in girls secondary enrollment by another
5.6 deaths per 1,000. This would mean concretely in Pakistan, for example,
that an extra year of schooling for 1,000 girls would ultimately prevent
roughly 60 infant deaths. But in no small number of traditional societies,
listening to women would still be taking a momentous cultural step.
With the world in social ferment, intellectual disputes over culture and human rights have become more frequent in recent years, particularly when issues take on international dimensions. Major international human rights
180
MATTERS
CULTURE
groups, once considered fringe activist organizations by many governments,

have built solid reputations for their legal and investigative work. They have
pushed long-dormant international covenants to the center of public debate,
lobbied successfully for permanent institutions (e.g., an international criminal court), and generally moved into the foreign policy establishment. They
are now consulted by State Department officials, invited to set up university
centers, and listened to by the Council on Foreign Relations. But these human rights experts, largely well-trainedlawyeqare almost by nature purists
and universalists who are loath to bend principles to fit cultural wrinkles.
Moreover, their frequent insistence on the preeminence of civil and political
rights defined in concrete ways has brought them into conflict with those
who believe that economic and social rights come first or, more broadly, that
cultures outside the Western mainstream see politics and civil society differently and must hew to their own values when setting priorities and codifying
principles.
To add to the mushrooming controversiesover rights and cultures worldwide, those who argue for cultural exceptions to international humanrights
models are themselves coming under attack from dissenters within their own
societies. In Southeast Asia, for example, some well-known promoters
of
Asian values are on the streets battling the
forces of reformmi-a situation
that not many wouldhave predicted a few years ago. Dissidents, energized as
well as outraged by hard economic times, say that they have had enough of
the kind of Asian values that brought corruption and cronyism and stifled
political growth. In the Muslim world, where militancy once seemed inexorable, a question being heard more often from North Africa through the
Middle East and South Asia to the Pacific is, Who speaks for Islam? Pluralism is in the air, and the voices of dissent are both female and male.
THE KEY ROLE OF WOMEN
Some of the most intense efforts to rethink and realign the mix of religion,
rights, and culture are indeed being made todayby Muslim women, but they
are not alone. In the months leading up to the1995 U.N. Fourth World Conference on Women, local and regional meetings in Africa, Asia, Europe, and
the Americas were organized to write agendas for Beijing, where both the
formal conference and a parallel unofficial gathering of nongovernmental organizations were held. The impassioned speeches and papers presented
by regional assemblies from widely different cultural and geographic settings
included some astonishingly similar goals. Building on the 1994 Conference
on Population and Development in Cairo, women were clarifying and defining a genreof rights universal to them.
Human
and
Gender, Culture,
Rights
x81
Their demands cut across old sectors, rendering irrelevant some timeworn
disputes about civil or economic rights. Women spoke pragmatically of the
right to own and inherit property or to start a business, and the need to establish and protect these activities by law-an
economic demand coupled
with a political call for more women
in legislatures. Women also sought
changes in family laws to give them rights equal to those of spouses or parents. They demanded the right to say no to unwanted children or unwanted
sex, putting control over their own bodies and reproductivelives in the category of fundamental freedoms. Womens rights are human rights became a
familiar slogan. In Beijing, a Nepali housewife who raided her small savings
account to travel to China could meet farmers from Tanzania, writers from
Teheran, and inner-city Americans in a varietyof occupations. Most of these
women from diverse backgrounds found that they had more in common than
they had expected. Back home, buoyed by their newfound networks, many
of these women took a new look at the cultural assumptions surrounding
them.
For women, the interplay between a prevailing culture or ethos and their
daily lives is not a hypothetical topic. Despite great political and economic
gains in many places, women around the world still have good reason to be
sensitive to how cultures affect them. Indeed, for large numbers of women,
cultural sensitivity is not an intellectual exercise or a social attitude taught in
seminars by consultants. Cultural shifts and the political use of traditional
practices can create intolerable, if not life-threatening, situations for women.
Over the last twodecades, middle-class women in Iran, Afghanistan,and Algeria have discovered how quickly life can turn upside down and how powerless they can suddenly become inthe face of tumultuous change.
THE DOMINANCE OF MEN
In many societies, the cultural rules are unambiguously made

by men who
frequently choose, deliberately or otherwise, to use women as the symbolsof
their beliefs or policies. When leaders or policies change, so can cultures.
Women are told what towear, where to go or not go, how to live. Although
the collarless shirt (with a necktie ban) became the male uniform of Islamic
piety among Iranians and the Taliban of Afghanistan enforce a regulation
length for mens beards, in both countries-one Shiite, one Sunni-it is the
life of women that is most constrained by dress codes and restrictions on
work and play. Saudi Arabiafalls into the samecategory of nations, in which
the holiness of men is measured by the degree to which various parts of
women are made invisible and their smallest
hopes-to drive a car, for example-are denied.
I 82
MATTERS
CULTURE
The phenomenon is not confined to conservative Islamic cultures. Mennonite and Amish girls in Pennsylvania are still told of Biblical strictures
against wearing trousers, though few of them may be listening to the warnings and their chances of being physically abusedfor defiance are very slight.
In Laos, for many years wearing a sarongto work in governmentoffices was
mandatory for women, whereas men dressed pretty much as they liked, apparently without fear of diluting the national character. When the rebel soldiers who overthrew Mobutu
Sese SekoenteredKinshasa,theZairian
capital, in 1997, they ordered women in jeansoff the streets and brandished
their bayonets, at least for a few heady days. Guerrilla armies, various breeds
of ideologues, perhaps even fashion designers getinto the business of making
social or political statements by dressing the female body in one way or another.
Women, who are rarely in a position to make the religious or social rules,
tend to be swept up into a culture in the broadest sense, which takes in religion, the economy, the arts, the law, and entertainment, as well as the often
subtly defined rules of social behavior involving public life, family relationships, and the place of children. A male-dominant cultureis, in short, the atmosphereinwhichmostwomen
liveall thetime,withfewerlines
of
definition between work and home, career and family, than many men in
most countries enjoy.
Furthermore, any cultural milieu may generate unpredictable, even paradoxical results for women. A free society in political terms does not necessarily mean a better life, as more than 100 million poor, illiterate, and often
victimized women in Indiawho are unable to
escape the culturalapartheid of
caste could demonstrate. Living in a notably tolerant, even egalitarian, culture does not necessarily liberate women either. In countries like Thailand,
where women have made considerable gains in the economy and society, and
Cambodia, a freewheeling atmosphere can actually make the sexual enslavement of women and girls easier because prostitution on a grand scale, catering to every need and fetish, is not very shocking.
The complexity of womens lives within the context of their varying cultures is only beginning to be understood, as development experts focus more
on the centrality of people, not projects, in both the poorer countries of the
global South and in pocketsof underdevelopment in the richer industrial nations of the North. What is certain now is that countries ignore the lives of
women at their economic and social peril.
India, a nation aspiringto rank among theworlds leaders, is in trouble on
this point, according to its own development experts. Its population is nearing the 2 billion mark, and it is likely to overtake China as the worlds most
populous nation in the first half of the twenty-first century. But the numbers
Gender, Culture,
and Human Rights
183
of the disadvantaged are huge. Barelyhalf of Indias population is literate, a

necessary step by most measures toward a fully productive society; little
more than a thirdof its women can read and write. Up
to a half of births are
not registered, putting millions of children in an official limbo where they
may be denied basic services because officially they do not exist. Moreover,
development studies report that the broader social indicators in India are
pulling the South Asian region down to or below the level of sub-Saharan
Africa.
The problems are most acute in northernIndia. In its State of the Worlds
Childrert 1999, UNICEF reports that no women are literate in manyvillages
in the poor state of Bihar. Nationwide, again led by the northern tier of
states, half of Indias children are malnourished, with nearly one in five affected to the point of stunting. Twenty percentof children under five years of
age are severely underweight; less than 30 percent of the population has access to sanitation-any kind of toilet, including a rudimentary latrine-and
20 percent of the population lacks clean water. According to UNICEF, the
World Bank, and other organizations,unless women are involved in development at the local level, the countrys much publicized middle class will be
perched on top of a larger and larger number of disadvantaged people, who
already number in the hundreds of millions. As gaps in the living standard
grow and resources shrink, social unrest may become inevitable.
FEMALE CIRCUMCISION/MUTILATlON
Precisely how new theories of development that place women at the center
translate into pivotal roles for women in defining the dominant culture,
whatever it may be, is harder to decide. Nowadays, when neither feminism
nor human rights constitutes a monolithic concept with all-purpose formulas
applicable worldwide, looking at cultural practices of any kind demands a
certain relativism. Furthermore, as women and men do not inevitably see
their culture through the same eyes, adding women to the mix only makes
the picture more complicated. Men may also control culture by controlling
power, from the village police on up to the national government, and they
tend to dismiss the complaints of women in the name of tradition. In many
places, women make progress only when a prominent
man-the village elder,
a supreme court judge, apresident-has a change of heart.
These complexities are reflected in the intellectual battle over what
is
termed either female circumcisionor female genital mutilation-the choice of
language reveals the position one takes. To follow the logic
of Aziza Hussein,
an Egyptian family planning expertand a founderof the Egyptian Societyfor
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MATTERS
CULTURE
the Prevention of Practices Harmful to Women and Children, the evolution

of genital cutting is more or less as follows.
The first premise is that the practice has long served menby rendering the
women they marry uninterested in sex
or unappealing and inaccessible to
any otherman-a safe, albeit damaged, piece of property. Next comes the rationalizatiodbelief that nogirl or womanwill be marriageable unless she has
submitted to this process. Peer group pressure begins to kick in. By this time,
women, not,men,may be the enforcersof the practice, enshrining itand validating it within a certain culture. But, says Hussein, that does not erase the
basic truth, which is that this is a procedure invented on behalf of men that
most women would rather not experience. A doctor in a Cairo
childrens
hospital told me that it was pointless, not to mentioncruel and dangerous,
to mutilate a woman in the name
of destroying desire. Moreover, she
added, All impulses, including sexual impulses, start in the brain.
When, from a distance, the argumentis made that thegenital cutting of females (which often involves the mutilationof the entire genital area, leading
to lifelong and life-threatening infections and incontinence) must be a tradition of worth because people support it, whose voices are we hearing? What
people? Hussein argues that, at some point, the cultural argument is no
longer valid and societies have to make their decisions based on science and
medicine-and perhaps a contemporary understanding of human sexual behavior, since depriving a woman of the possibility of sexual arousal and orgasm is taking away partof her life.
In December 1997, Egypts highest court agreed. Upholding a ban on the
practice in government hospitals imposed in 1996-admittedly only a
start
in ending the procedure legally-the court dismissed the arguments of some
Islamic scholars that there
were religious grounds for the tradition. Circumcision of girls is not an individual right under Shuriu, the court said. There
is nothing in the Koran that authorizes it.
One of the inconsistencies found in Western responsesto the humanrights
of women in the Islamic worldis that some influential scholarly and cultural
experts who are willing to find validity in genital cutting rites in Africa are
absolutely unwilling to give an inch of ground to the Taliban in Afghanistan
when these Muslim zealotsbar women from schools and jobs. It
is not going
too far to say that U.S. Afghan policy rests almost entirely at this point on
the issue of how women are treated.Again the question is, Whose voices are
we hearing? In this case, the answeris the articulate, middle-class women of
Kabul and a few other urban centers. Not men this time, but not
village
women either.
Where is our cultural sensitivity here? Incremental improvements in the
lives of Afghan women have been ruled out by feminist absolutism, boldly
Gender, Culture,
and Human Rights
18s
enunciated by Hillary Rodham Clinton andSecretary of State Madeleine Albright: Either the Taliban give inon womens rights or there will be no diplomatic recognition or aid. The Taliban, who have heard the Wests message
face-to-facefromanumber
of internationalofficials(includingEmma
Bonino, speaking for the European Union, and Carol Bellamy, the executive
director of UNICEF), have tried to make thecase for assistance in rebuilding
Afghanistans education system to conform with Islamic principles and their
conservative vision of Muslim culture. They wantnew teacher-training institutes and duplicate schools for boys and girls. In some areas of the country,
the Taliban have allowed home schools for girls to operate with minimal or
no interference behind the scenes. In some villages, girls have more
of a
chance of getting a rudimentary education now than they did when a quarrelsome coalition of holy warriors ruled the country and kept it in a state of
civil war for nearly a decade. These holy warriors, the mujahedeen who
brought down theSoviet army, had Americanand European support.
THE CASE OF BHUTAN
Considering the case of Bhutan reduces the debate over culture and human
rights to one of its most esoteric yet instructional cases. This small Buddhist
kingdom in the Himalayas, wedged between China and India,
is the last of its
cultural breed-a Tibetan, Tantric monarchy that once counted Ladakh,
Sikkim, and, above all, Tibet, among its ranks. From the mid-1970s, when
Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and her intelligence networks undermined
Sikkims Buddhist monarchy and engineered the countrys collapse and absorption into India, until the late 1980s, when an ethnic Nepali, largely
Hindu, fifth column similar to the movement that had delivered up the
Sikkimeseseemedpoised
todotothesameforBhutan,theBuddhist
Bhutanese elite began to panic. They were incapable of policing a long land
border with India, over which ethnic Nepali migrants were enteringillegal
as
immigrants to swell the ranks of the local minority population.
Instead,theBhutanesetriedapolicy
of cultural enforcement. Tobe
Bhutanese meant wearing a prescribed national costume, building homes
in a
certainstyle,andacceptingtheleadership
of theBuddhistmonarchy.
Bhutanese Nepalis were justifiably distressed,
but before they could make
their peace with Bhutans king, Jigme Singye Wangchuck, not an intolerant
man, they were drawn into a larger pro-democracy movement flourishing in
Nepal. Bolstered by flying squads of radical students from across Asia, many
Bhutanese Nepalis were persuaded to join a revolt against the monarchy.
Later, fleeing Bhutan to refugee camps in Nepal by way of India, which initially did nothing to stop the campaign, the
Bhutanese Nepalis created a pub-
I 86
MATTERS
CULTURE
lic relations nightmare for Bhutan that continuesto this day. Using questionable data from essentially Nepali sources, organizations like Freedom House
consistently rank Bhutan very low in
civil and human rights, although in
terms of human development, as measured by U.N. agencies, the country is
outpacing most of its neighbors.
Western human rights organizations were at first convinced that a Himalayan ethnic cleansing was in train. Western nations, unrepresented in the
isolated Buddhist kingdom because India insisted on controlling its foreign
policy, fell back on diplomats in Katmandu, Nepals capital, who were in
turn under the influence of Nepali human rights groups or of foreign organizations with branches in Nepal. These organizations, often barred from
Bhutan by a short-sighted government, portrayed the situation as a struggle
of democratic forces against an absolute tyranny.
On their side, the Bhutanese saw it as a last-ditch struggle to preserve an
endangered culture. Years passed before major international rights organizations recognized the king of Bhutans story as being closer to the truth than
the lurid tales toldby his enemies who, incidentally,see in Bhutan a large under-populated stretch of fertile Himalayan land into which the excess population of Nepal might conveniently spill. Inexplicably, the armyof Westerners
willing to demonstrate on behalf of the Dalai Lamas claim to Tibet have
been all but silent in the faceof the cultural annihilationof Bhutan. Theissue
remains unresolved, and many Bhutanese are perplexed and angry. What
exactly do you want fromus? an enraged Bhutanese official once shouted at
me as I asked about reports of violence against Nepalis in his district. Good
question.
THE TAMIL, EAST TIMOR, AND

KASHMIR QUESTIONS
The terrain on which cultural values and human rights interact often conceals land mines. Special interestgroups whose principalgoals are not necessarily the improvement of human rights have learned to manipulate the
media and legislatures by championing causes in one-dimensional terms. In
an age of information overload, a heart-rending story may not always be
checked too carefully.
For years, the Sinhalese-led, Buddhist-dominated government
of Sri
Lanka was on thedefensive because of persuasive ethnic Tamil propaganda
abroad that a kindof genocide was being carried out against their community. Tamils, both Hindus and Christians, were winning asylum abroad
only to use it, the Sri Lankan government said,to raise money and arms for
and
Gender, Culture,
Rights
Human
187
a particularly brutal organization known as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil

Eelam-Tamil Eelam being the name of an area they intended to carve out
of northeastern Sri Lanka for a homeland. Other Tamils, separated by history and caste, who dominate the
islands tea plantations in the central
hills, did not support them. Eventually, the world caught up with the atrocities of the Tamil Tigers, now listed as a terrorist organization in the United
States. But for years, sheer ignorance of events in Sri Lanka, despite extensivenewscoverage,allowedWesterners
to make cultural assumptions
about the country that were often wide
of the mark or told only part
of the
story.
The misperception was encouraged by India, which for years helped
to
arm and train the Tamil guerrillas against the Sri Lankan government-at
least until the Tamils turned their guns on Indian peacekeeping troops, who
tried to reverse New Delhis course and eventually assassinated (or so those
in NewDelhi believe) Rajiv Gandhi, the former prime minister,
who had sent
Indian forces numbering up to 50,000 to the beleaguered island. Prominent
Sri Lankans, among them Neelan Tiruchelvam, the leading Tamil moderate
and internationally recognized constitutionalist, who was workingon an autonomy plan for the Tamil areas that the Tigers deemed not radical enough,
were also ruthlessly murdered.
Much of Sri Lankas conflict was and is political, economic, or even ideological, not strictly ethnic and not religious. However, culture does play
sig-a
nificant role in both East Timor and Kashmir. In East Timor, a combination
of Portuguese-inspired Catholicism and indigenous religious and ethnic differences with Muslim Java, Indonesias Javanese-dominated military, and
settlersfromotherethniccommunities,particularlythe
Bugis of South
Sulawesi, pose fundamental problems, even without politically inspired violence.
In Kashmir, which has been fought overby Pakistan and India since1947,
the people are also ethnically and linguistically separate, and they are not at
home in either country. Kashmiris are Muslims, but they have little in common with the Muslims
of India or large parts of Pakistan, and their problems
in the Kashmir valley, the setting of a decade-long war with Hindu India, are
not primarily religious, but rather cultural and political.
Both East Timor and Kashmir are considered disputed territories by the
United Nations. But the Timorese, with strong support from Catholics and
the European-based organizations that supported revolutionary groups in
other Portuguese colonies (Mozambique and Angola in particular), have enjoyed a high profile. Indonesia,on the other hand, has
been made a pariah in
a way that India was not when it marched into
Portuguese Goa and annexed
it without a hintof democratic ritual.
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CULTURE
CONCLUSION
More recently, the sometimes problematic role of cultural touchstones has

been revealed inthe controversy over thelife of the Guatemalan Nobel laureate Rigoberta Menchu. Scholars and investigative journalists now say that
her childhood and youth, although certainly harsh, were not asfull of deprivation and tragedy as first portrayed. It also seems that cultural stereotypes
played a large part in creating an irresistible account of a poor Guatemalan
Indian girl at the mercy of a heartless European military dictatorship. This
image made her-and used her as-a cultural icon representing indigenous
people across the region. Even now, there are those who argue that this overarching cultural symbolismis more important than mere facts.
Scholarship, journalism, the human rights establishment-and historydemand a higher standard. The way Americans deal with complex ethnic
conflicts abroad (or political conflicts in ethnic trappings) often seems to indicate that our cultural sensitivity stops at the waters edge. Ironically, campaigns waged with the best intentions are often shallowor poorly informed,
and they are as muchpolitically motivated by their leaders in this country as
by their counterparts in distantsocieties.
In the end, there must be a meaningful link between our value system-including the importance we attach to honesty and a truth notcolored by ideology-and our foreignpolicy.Afterall,
central elements of that value
system, rooted in both Western and Eastern cultures, have acquired a universality through the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights.
14
Culture, Institutions, and
Gender Inequality in
Latin America
MALA H T U N
Gender discrimination has been a remarkably consistent feature

of most cultures. Women everywhere have been accorded inferior economic, social, and
legal status. The universalityof sex-based inequality and the diversity of national cultures make any simple connection between sex discrimination and
cultural attitudes dubious. The important question is whether and what cultural attributes contribute to and sustain progressive changes in gender relations.
This chapter analyzes the role played by culture in contemporary changes
in the position of women in Latin America. Though traditional models
of
cultural influences on economic development and democracy are convincing
in many ways, they cannot explain the impetus for change in gender relations
across countries and cultures. Anglo-Protestant culture, held by some scholars to be particularly conducive to capitalist development and liberal democracy, has historically been compatible with systematic gender discrimination.
Major progress in gender relations inthe United States sincethe 1960s is less
attributable to culture than to economic transformations, womens movements, and changing Supreme Court jurisprudence. In Latin America, by
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contrast, the cultural heritage has been deemed hostile to private capital accumulation and liberal democracy. Yet this heritage has not prevented Latin
America from making great strides in gender equality over the past twenty
years.
The second part of the chapter explorestwo ways in which culturalattributes contribute to and sustain changes in gender relations. First, underlying
cultural values account for the diverse ways in which different societies conceive of achieving gender equality. Second, cultural attributes related to the
performance and efficiency of state institutions affect the sustainability of
changes in gender relations. If there is a significant gap between policy and
enforcement, a widespread feature of Latin America, advances in womens
rights in politics and the law may prove ephemeral.
CULTURE AND GENDER IN NORTH AND
SOUTH AMERICA COMPARED
Prominent social andpolitical theorists from Tocquevilleand Weber to many

of the distinguished contributors to thisvolume have postulated that culture
exerts a decisive influence on peoples
a
economic and political development.
Scholars such as Howard Wiarda and Lawrence Harrison argue that Latin
Americas cultural particularities account for the distinctive historical trajectory of the region, characterized by cycles of authoritarian rule and pronounced social inequality. Anglo-Protestant values, by contrast, are deemed
responsible for the capacity of Anglo-American societies to generate wealth
and support stable democratic institutions. As Harrison argues, I believe
that there is no other satisfactory way to explain the sharply contrasting
evolution of the North and the South in the [Western] Hemisphere than culture-the strikingly different values, attitudes, and institutions-that have
flowed from the Anglo-Protestant and Ibero-Catholic traditions.
My intention is not to evaluate the claim that culture accounts for national
variation in economic development and democracy, but merely to urge caution in using cultural argumentsto explain differences in gender relationsbetweentheUnitedStatesandLatinAmerica.Anglo-Protestant
cultures
vigorous work ethic, propensity to save, and valorization of individual rights
may have contributed to the good things of capitalism and democracy, but
they were historically compatible with laws and policies that severely discriminated against women. Major changes in womens status are relatively
recent. Consider the institution of coverture. Long after the founding of the
republic, U.S. laws continued to uphold coverture rules that granted a husband legal representation of and exclusive control over the body and the
property of his wife. Beginning with Married Womens Property Acts in the
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mid- to late-nineteenth century, some elementsof coverture were eradicated,

but male prerogatives in marriageand the family remained firmly entrenched
well into the twentieth century. The last remnants
of coverture were only
abolished by the U.S. Supreme Courts 1992 decision in Planned Parenthood
v. Casey, which held that women do not lose their constitutionally protected liberty when theymarry.2
For centuries, Anglo-Protestant culture in the United States condoned,and
the judiciary tolerated, differential and discriminatory treatment of women
in the workplace and the exclusion
of women from certain professions. Prior
to the Equal Pay Act of 1963 and the enactment of Title VI1 of the Civil
Rights Act of 1964, statutes, rules, and regulations that discriminated
by
gender were widespread in many states and federal agencies. Enforcement of
these laws has been instrumental in expanding womens employment opportunities, although many de facto discriminatory practices have been upheld
by courts employing loose standards of scrutiny.
Bureaucratic invasion of personal and marital privacy on issues
like sexuality and reproduction also seems to violate liberal values. Still, only in 1965
did the U.S. Supreme Court rule that a constitutional right to marital privacy
prevented states from outlawing theuse of contraceptives by married couples.
Violence against women is another area in which state action has beenrelatively recent. The Violence Against Women Act(VAWA),which creates federal penalties for crimes of violence against women and provides funds to
states for prevention and treatment programs, was only enacted in 1994.
Economic equality, recognition of womens rights to exercise control over
fertility, and official condemnation of violence against women arenot part of
the Anglo-Protestant cultural heritage but are relatively recent events provoked by social changes and feminist movements.
Adherents of the culture and development schoolbelieve that Latin Americas Ibero-Catholic culture is less conducive to capitalism and democracy
than the Anglo-Protestant culture of the United States. As Wiarda puts it,
[Latin Americas]economywas
and remainsmercantilist and state-directed
rather than capitalist and individually directed; its social structure wastwo class
rather than multi-class and pluralist; its political institutions were hierarchical
and authoritarian rather than democratic; its culture and religion were orthodox, absolutist, and infused with Catholic-Thomist precepts as contrasted with
the religiousnonconformity and pluralist precepts of the North American
colonies.g
When seen in light of the traditional sexism of Roman Catholic ethics and
secular ideologies like machismo and marianismo, the authoritarian and hi-
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erarchical features of Ibero-Catholic culture appear to be particularly hostile

to womens advancement.As one scholar has remarked, LatinAmericas gender relations are harsh patriarchal systems whose endurance is rivaled only
in the Arab world. Though some data show that Latin American cultural
values have remained coherent and stable over time,5 recent changes in gender relations and womens status have been remarkable. Shifts in society,
law,
and policy are no less revolutionary than what has happened in the United
States since the 1960s. There aresigns of a convergence in womens position
among countries withdifferent cultural heritages, as well as persisting variation among countries within thesame cultural zone.
In politics, economics, education, and the law, changes in gender relations
in Latin America are impressive. In the region today, women represent
an average of 15.4 percent of the members of Congress, the second highest regional average in the world and ahead of the 13 percent in the United States
(the world average is also 13 percent). In some countries, womens presence
is very high, such as Argentina and Cuba (28 percent); Costa Rica (19 percent); Ecuador, El Salvador, and Mexico (17 percent); and the Dominican Republic (16 percent). Womens participation in the economy has skyrocketed.
Region-wide, women made up 20 percent of the labor force in 1970. By
1995, this had grown to around35 percent (U.S. women make up45 percent
of the labor force).
The wage gap between women and men continues to be significant but is
not much different from the wage gap registered in industrialized countries.
In the early 1 9 9 0 ~womens
~
wages were between 20 and 40 percent lower
than mens. However, the wage gap is much smaller for younger women. According to one study, women workers between twenty-five and thirty-four
years of age earned 80 to 90 percent of mens salary. Women have made impressive gains in literacy and in education. Illiteracy among women has
dropped substantially, and women make up about half
of students in primary, secondary, and post-secondary education. In several countries, women
represent more than half of university students. In the United States, women
constitute 50 percent of secondary students and55 percent of post-secondary
students.6
Latin Americans have made notable progress in implementing legal reforms to grant women formal equality. The constitutions of several Latin
American countries recognize the equal rights of women and men: constitutions in Brazil, Cuba, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, and Paraguay include
gender equality as a basic principle.Civil codes have been reformed to eliminate the institution of marital power (potestud marital) and to grant women
equality in the management of common property, household decisionmaking, and authority over minor children.
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At least twelve Latin American countries have adopted new laws stipulating penalties for domestic violence and expanding the authority of law enforcement to protect victims. Hundreds of police stations staffed by female
law-enforcement officers specially trained in domestic violence and sex
crimes have been established throughout the region. Nineteen Latin American countries have ratified the U.N. Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), and Argentina has incorporated
CEDAW into its national constitution. In the same year that the U.S. Congress enacted the Violence Against Women
Act, members of the Organization
of American States adopted the Inter-American Convention
on Violence
Against Women, subsequently ratified by at least twenty-six OAS member
states.
However, Latin American countries continue to exhibit significant variation regarding women in terms of political representation, economic opportunities, education, and legal position. Although women occupy 28 percent
of the seats in Argentinas Congress, they make up
merely 3 percent of
Paraguays Congress and 6 percent of Brazils. Women account for 41 percent of the labor force in Uruguay, but merely 26 percent in Ecuador. In
countries likeBolivia, Guatemala, andPeru, in which a substantial portionof
the population is indigenous, rural womens illiteracy is much higher than
mens. In Peru, for example, 46 percent of rural women are illiterate, compared to 10 percent of rural men. The situation of womens health exhibits
tremendous variation across countries. In Costa Rica, the maternal mortality
rate is 60 per 100,000 live births; in Bolivia, the rate is 650 per 100,000 live
births. Whereas in Uruguay a1946 civil code reform granted married women
full legal agencyand equality in marriage, in Chilethe old institution of marital power continued to structure the default regimeof property relations between husband -and wife
in 1999. Costa Rica and Venezuela legalized divorce
in 1886 and 1904, respectively, but pro-divorce reformists only achieved
their goals in Brazil in 1977 and in Argentina in 1987. There is also substantial variation in the statusof women across social class and color within each
country.
These examples point to twoconclusions. First, in terms of aggregate participation in the economy, education, and politics, the status
of women in
Latin America and the United Statesis converging. In spite of cultural differences betweenthe tworegions, there are growing structural similarities in the
position of women. Second, there is persistent and marked variation in
womens position among Latin American countries with a similar cultural
heritage. There is no simple relationship between culture and gender, for cultural attributes appear to have little explanatory power for shifts in gender
relations. The cultural valorization of gender equality seems to be the prod-
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uct, rather than the cause, of changes in the structure of gender relations.
When gender relations change, culture moves in response.
CULTURAL FRAMES AND THE
SUSTAINABILITY OF WOMENS ADVANCEMENT
Although culture cannot be posited as a causeof major change in gender relations, cultural factors nonetheless profoundly affect the character and the
durability of advances in womens position. Cultural norms and values provide frames within which changes in gender relations are interpreted and determine how different societies conceive of achieving gender equality. In the
United States, progressive changes in womens rightsare strongly marked by
our values. Laws on thefamily, divorce, and abortion, for example,reflect an
individualist ethos to a much greater extent than laws on the European Continent and in Latin America. Whereas U.S. courts have decided that individual liberty and self-determination are the supreme values
to be protected,
judges and legislators in continental Europe are more deeply engaged in an
ongoing moral conversation about abortion, divorce, and dependency and
more likely to moderate individual rights with attention to social context
and individual responsibility.* The United States has gone further than any
other Western country in making marriagefreely terminableat the will of either party, in casting the issue of abortion as a matter of individual privacy
and self-determination until fetal
viability, and in articulating a constitutional
right to marital privacy.
Latin Americas different cultural heritage has meant that changes in
womens rights are less marked by liberal individualism and the principle of
non-state intervention than in the United States.On the one hand, this creates
hurdles for feminists and liberals aiming to relax existing prohibitions on
abortion. Abortion is considered a crime in every Latin American country except Cuba, although the majority of countries permit abortions to be performed to avert a threat to the mothers life or when the pregnancy results
from rape. Clandestineabortion is widespread in the region, but campaigns
to
legalize abortion have not received widespread public support.Clearly, moral
and political pressure from the Roman Catholicbishops is a major factor impeding the liberalization of abortion laws. Yet the absence of a cultural and
juridical tradition defending the right to privacy and self-determination also
makes it difficult to advance the claim that womens interest in controlling
their reproductive lives trumps the states interest in protecting the fetus.
O n the other hand,affirmative action to secure womens presence in public
decisionmaking is widespread in Latin America, a policy measurethat would
be virtually unthinkable in the United States. In the
1990s, nine Latin Ameri-
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I95
can countries-Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Panama, Peru,and Venezuela-passed national laws establishing
quotas for womens participation as candidates in general elections. Quota
laws require that 20 to 40 percent of the candidates fieldedby political parties
be women. After quota laws were enacted, womens presence in Congress increased from 5 to 28 percent in Argentina, from 7 to 12 percent in Bolivia,
from 16 to 19 percent in Costa Rica, and from 10 to 16 percent in the DominicanRepublic.LatinAmericascorporatisttradition,inheritedfrom
Thomist thought and the social teachingsof the papal encyclicals, provides a
favorable cultural environment for advancing claims about womens right to
representation as a group. Cultural attributes modulate the movement
toward
gender equality in different societies, prioritizing some issues over others and
casting a distinct toneto national debates on womensrights.
THE GAP BETWEEN LAW AND BEHAVIOR
Although changes in aggregate statistics and national law and policy are crucial components of the movement toward gender equality, they do not tell
the whole story. The sanctioningof laws by democratically elected representatives attests on one level to a cultural endorsement of gender equality.
Rhetorical and symbolic changes in law and policy communicate messages
about equality throughout society at large. Still, the contradiction between
well-intentioned bureaucratic policy and uneven bureaucratic application
and enforcement is a widespread feature of Latin American societies. The
problem is not gender specific, since tendencies toward corruption, human
rights abuses, tax evasion, and arbitrary law enforcementreduce the efficacy
of state institutions in many areas.
The gap between law and behavior is at least as severe when it comes to
gender-related laws, and it thwarts the sustainability of recent advances in
womens rights. On the one hand, laws long abolished continue to influence
behavior, such as the legitimate defense of honor used to acquit men who
murder their adulterous wives in Brazil. On the other hand, newly adopted
laws, such as recent reforms on sexual and domestic violence in most countries of the Latin American region, are not implemented. Narrowing the gap
between law and practice requires cultural adjustments as
well as deeper
changes within legal institutions.
THE LEGITIMATE DEFENSEOF HONOR IN BRAZIL
The legitimate defense of honor thesis in Brazil became famous in the late
1980s, when a jury in the southern stateof Parani voted to acquit a man of
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MATTERS
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murder on the grounds that he had acted legitimately to defend his honor
when he killed his estranged wife and her lover, The state court of appeals
upheld the decision, but the Supremo Tribunal da Justiqa, Brazils highest
court for civil and criminal matters, annulled the jurys decision in 1991 and
ordered a new trial. When the case was retried inParani later that year, another jury acquitted the defendant on the grounds of a legitimate defense of
honor. The jurys decision prompted domestic and international outrage, and
a special mission of Human Rights Watch was sent to Brazil to investigate
the problem of violence against women.
The legitimate defense of honor thesis has no explicit basis in Brazilian
law. In the colonial period, the Philippine Ordinances permitted men to kill
wives discovered in adulterous acts, as well as their male companions. Later,
the criminal code of the Brazilian Empire (adopted in 1830), the penal code
of the First Republic (1890), and the current penal code (adopted in 1940)
explicitlyprecludedhomicideasasolutionforthecrime
of adultery.
Nonetheless, the 1940 code introduced the idea of legitimate defense against
unjust aggression putting fundamental rights at risk, and some
legal doctrines consider honor to be a fundamental good or right. The legal doctrine of legitimatedefenseandtheexistence
of atacitbasisforthe
consideration of honor as a legal good gave wayto a jurisprudential practice
that permits men to murder their adulterous wives andbe acquitted.
The laws valorization of honor stems from the importance of reputation
in social relations. As a prominent interpretation of the penal codestates:
Good reputation is essential for men, constituting the indispensable of
base
their
position and social effectiveness. Good men only surround themselves with men
of good names. If anyone acquires a bad name, friends and acquaintances will
desert him, and he will no longer be accepted in good social circles. He willbe
deprived of the confidence and prestige in which society holds gentlemen. Without a good reputation, moreover, it is impossible to attain or successfully exercise positions of merit, influence, or responsibility, because those with a bad
name do not deserve c~nfidence.~
A man with an adulterous wife, known in Brazilian slang as a

torno
(someone who wears the hornsof a cuckold), stands to lose his good name,
social position, and opportunities. The legitimate defense
of honor is used by
defense lawyers and is accepted by juries because resort to homicide in light
of a threat to honoris seen as understandable. Jury behavior reveals that the
honor and reputation of men and entire families depends on perceptions of
womens morality and sexual behavior. Killing adulterous wives and their
partners allows men to restore their honor in the faceof society at large.
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As early as 1955, higher courts inBrazil began to overturn lower court decisions acquitting murderson the groundsof a legitimate defenseof honor. In
Brazil's civil law system, however, higher court decisions do not establish a
precedent that is formally binding on lower courts. Brazilian appellate courts
therefore lack the institutional power to rectify the contradictory jurisprudence that has evolved over the honor defense. Furthermore, trial court
judges have not always exercised their prerogative to instruct juries on what
theories and defenses are permitted by the law. Instead, they have chosen to
defer to the jury's sovereignty, even when thejury's reasoning has no basis in
formal law. Use of the honor defense signals a persisting conflict within
Brazilian culture over female sexuality and within Brazilian legal institutions
over the status of honor and thescope of legitimate defense.
SEXUAL AND DOMESTIC VIOLENCE
In the 1990s, countries all over Latin America reformed their penal codes to
reclassify the crime of rape and introduced new legislation aimed to punish
and prevent domestic violence. Rape, historically considered a crime against
custom, honesty, or decency, was recast as a crime against individual sexual
freedom and dignity. Marital rape was penalized, and hundreds of women's
police stations were created throughout the regionto receive and investigate
complaints of violence against women. As mentioned earlier, at least twelve
countries adopted lawson domestic or intra-family violence that offer judges
and law enforcement officials new competencies to resolve violent situations.
These new laws and policies are the catalyst for a cultural shift. Violence
against women and family membersis increasingly seen as a violationof human rights and therefore as a policy problem, the family no longer being
viewed as remaining outside the purview
of state power and formal laws.
However, the behavior of citizens and law enforcement officers has not kept
up with the spiritof the new laws.
In the first place, incidents of sexual violence are severely underreported.
Estimates from Mexicoand Peru suggestthat merely 10 to 20 percent of rape
cases are reported to the police. Second, the rate of investigation, prosecution, and sentencing of violent aggressors is disturbingly low. Data from
Brazil show that only one-third of violent incidents in the state of SHo Paulo
were followed up with a police investigation, and few investigations actually
led to prosecution or conviction. In Mexico, only 15 percent of offenders in
one sample of rape cases studied were sentenced. Data from Ecuador show
that just 1 percent of the total number of incidents of sexual violence reported to the authorities led to a conviction.1 The reluctance to investigate
and prosecute in cases of sexual violence contrasts sharply with the state's
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MATTERS
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presumption of guilt and overzealous prosecution of suspects in other areas

of criminal law.
Low prosecution and sentencing rates of violent aggressors stem from the
insensitivity of law enforcement officersto victims of violence, reflecting the
widely held sentiment that women victims must have deserved or consented
to whatever happened to them. Analysis of court cases shows that judges are
more favorable to virgins and frequently blame victims for provoking the
rape. Many judges and prosecutors pressure women to reconcile with their
partners instead of pressing charges. Rape victims have also complained that
medical examiners question them extensively about their sexual history.
On the other hand, victims themselves often fail to cooperate with the investigation or desist from prosecuting the perpetratorsof violence. Some victims reconcile with their partners and therefore
see no need to continue.
Others fall subject to social pressure from friends and family members. In a
1997 case in Peru, a woman victim of a gang rape was pressured by family
members into marrying one of her assailants to defend the family honor;
charges against the rapist were dropped. (The penal code loophole that exempted rapists who married their victims was removed in April 1997, after
domestic and international outcry.)
Although womens police stations were intended to mitigate some of the
problems mentioned above, they suffer from a shortageof financial and material resources, lack a standard operating procedure for processing cases or
dealing with victims, and are often inconveniently located. Working in
womens police stations is also considered to be of low prestige within the
police force as a whole. Tosum up, the application andenforcement of existing laws represents the greatest challenge facedby womens rights advocates
in Latin America.
CONCLUSION
Culture is an essential butinsufficient conceptfor understanding the progress

toward and prospects for gender equality in Latin America. Cultural values
alone do not explain patternsof change and continuity on gender issues. In
spite of long-standing cultural biases against women, womens capabilities
and opportunities relative to men have substantially improved over the past
few decades in Latin America. Although there
is considerable variation
among countries, the enactmentof egalitarian laws andpolicies by democratic governments and legislatures reflects a growing cultural commitment to
equal opportunity. However, the persistent gap between law and behavior attests to the resilience of discriminatory practices. Cultural changes did not
provoke contemporary advances in womens status in Latin America, but
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cultural change is indispensable for guaranteeing the implementation and

sustainability of these advances over the longer term.
What policy strategy points a way out of this dilemma? The exercise of
presidential leadership has been an important engine of policy change. In
fact, enthusiastic backingby the president and his party was the common denominator for some of the most sweeping changes in law and policy on gender in the 1990s. Presidential commitment also facilitated implementation.
Without the executive decrees regulating implementation
of Argentinas
quota laws, for example, the quota would not have caused womens representation in Congressto rise from 5 to 28 percent. The institutional and normative powers in the handsof the president make the exerciseof presidential
authority effective for securing gender-related changes, eventhough the presidents ideas about gender are not necessarily shared by everyone. However,
by demonstrating a commitment not only to gender-equality rhetoric but
also to practice, those at the pinnacle of political power may spearhead the
broad transformations necessary to effect more fundamental progress in gender equality throughout Latin America in the twenty-first century.
part five
CULTUREAND
AMERICAN
MINORITIES
15
Taking Culture Seriously:
A Framework and an
Afro-American Illustration
O R L A N D OP A T T E R S O N
THE CONTRADICTORY APPROACH TO CULTURE
There is something very odd about how the culture concept

is used today. On
the one hand, at no other time in the history
of the concept has it been more
popularly debated or more seriously considered. In academia the relatively
new discipline of cultural studies flourishes. And in the American public
arena, so-called culture wars have become what Hunter calls a reality sui
generis . . the defining forces of public life. And yet, at the same time, in
academic and intellectual circles, including an influential group of professional anthropologists and nearlyall sociologists, there is strong resistance to
attempts to explain any aspectof human behavior in cultural terms.z
In the humanities and liberal circles generally, a rigid orthodoxy now prevails that can be summarized as follows: Culture is a symbolic system to be
interpreted, understood, discussed, delineated, respected, and celebrated as
the distinctive product of a particular group of people, of equal worth with
all other such products. But it should never be used t o explain anything
about the people who produced it. In humanistic terms, culture is often
Seriously
Taking Culture
203
likened t o a text t o be read and interpreted. Although explanations of the

text are permitted, no claims of objectivity can be made for such explanations. The understanding of culture is wholly subjective and reflects as much
about the interpreter as the interpreted.
In sociological circles, culture occupies what Mabel Berezin calls a fissured terrain in which there
is epistemological dissidence between scholars who privilege the possibility of explanation . . . and those who privilege
exegesis or interpretati~n.~
But even those who favor explanation tend to
shun any causal role for culture.Typically, as in the so-called production-ofculture school, culture is the dependent variable, something to be described
and, with all due caution, to be explained by organizational, economic, and
other such hard independent variables. All attempts to reverse this explanatory equation and make culture orelements of culture the independent
variable are inherently suspect. Oddly, thisis the very opposite of what prevailed during the first half of this century, when the Parsonian theory of values as ends and normative regulators of action was predominant. However,
as Ann Swidler has pointed out, because the general rejectionof the Parsonian approach left sociologists without an alternative formulation of cultures causal significance, scholars either avoid causal questions or admit the
values paradigm through the back door.4 Swidler proposedan approach to
the problem that has won wide favor. Although isita start in the right
direction, her conception of culture as a tool kit from which people selectively
draw theirstrategies of action as it suits their purposes
is too open-ended and
voluntaristic to offer real explanatory power. Cultural analysis is reduced to
a mere supplementof rational choice theory.
The hostility to cultural explanations is especially marked in the study of
Afro-Americans and the many problems that they
face. There are good and
bad reasons for this. Too many studies of Afro-American problems up to
the late sixties-when the reaction set in-relied on a simplistic or untenable conception of culture that was used in a crudely deterministic way to
explain Afro-American social problems. Afro-American culture was seen as
an encrusted accretion of the Afro-American past that hadbecome a fixed,
explanatory black box invoked to explain anything and everything about
the group. Outmoded nineteenth-century views of culture as some kind of
cake of custom lingered in many writings. Hardly more palatable was
the over-determining functionalism and values framework of the Parsonian
school.Althoughthemoresophisticatedadvocates
of theculture of
poverty school such as Oscar Lewis did not commit many
of the errors that
they are now routinely accused of, in the hands of non-specialists, cultural
accounts of the groups problems were too often circular, reductionist, and
static.
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MATTERS
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Unfortunately, it was and is still too often the case that cultural explanations are employed by reactionary analysts and public figures who attribute
the social problems of the poor to their values and thereby wash their
hands and the hands of government and the taxpayers of any responsibility
for their alleviation. Indeed, perhaps the main reason why cultural explanations are shunned by anthropologists and sociologists-both very liberal disciplines-is the fact that they have been so avidly embraced by reactionaries
or simple-minded public figures. Culture as explanation languishes in
intellectual exile partly becauseof guilt by association.
This lastis only the worst of some very bad reasonsfor therejection of cultural explanations. Another of these is the liberal mantra, still frequently
chanted, that cultural explanations amount to blaming the victim. This is
sheer nonsense and a simple analogy reveals itssilliness. Consider the all too
common case of someone who has lowself-esteem and behaves in extremely
self-destructive ways as a direct result of having been sexually abused as a
child. A sympathetic person might point to the persons psychological problems and urge him or her to seek therapy. It would be absurd to accuse that
person of blaming the victim. Yet this is exactly what happens when a sympathetic analyst is condemned for even hinting that some Afro-American
problems may be the tragic consequences of their cultural adaptation to an
abusive past.
Another bad reason for the censorship
of cultural explanations in the
study of Afro-Americans is ethnic nationalism and so-called black pride. Ethnic pride, once a necessary corrective
to centuries of ethnic dishonor and negativestereotyping,hasnowhardenedintoethnicglorificationand
Afro-centrism, both given academic legitimacyby multicultural studies. Any
scholar who invokes historico-cultural explanations for social problems is
seen as an agent who comes to bury and not to praise, a threat to the feelgood insistence on a usable past and a proud, non-problematic culture
that can hold itsplace and parade its laurels at the great
American multi-cultural powwow.
Yet another reason for thesuspicion of cultural explanations is the misunderstanding, especially on thepart of policy specialists and others concerned
with correcting social ills, that nothing can be done about culture. Thismisunderstanding springs from the view of culture as something immutable.
Closely related to this reason for the rejection of cultural explanations is a
conviction held by many that itis a racist viewof a group. Behind this charge
is a riot of intellectual ironies. The modern anthropological study of culture
began as an explicitly anti-racist reaction against the racialismof social Darwinism, especially under the liberal influence of Franz Boass cultural relativism. For the first half of this century, culture was preciselythat which was
Taking Culture Seriously
205
not biological in human development. Cultural relativism, however, has a

way of biting its own tail and descending into essentialism, as I pointed out
in my critique of its use during the seventies by both ethnic revivalists in
America and defenders of the apartheid regime of South A f r i ~ a . ~ M orere
cently, the same criticism has been made of the latest wave of ethnic celebrationinAmerica,Walter
Benn Michaelsstatingflatlythatthemodern
multi-cultural concept of culture and ethnic identity have simply become
substitutesforracism.6Althoughcritics
of multi-culturalismsuchas
Michaels condemn the multi-cultural use of culture as racist from a universalist standpoint, many multi-culturalists condemn cultural explanations in
equally vehement terms as racist,
as the long litany of attacks on Senator
Daniel Patrick Moynihan and his report make clear. Thus in 1970 the liberal
sociologist Robert Blauner labeled those of his colleagues who emphasized
the lower class rather than ethnic distinctiveness
of Afro-American life as
neo-racists. Incredibly, then, the culture concept has become a term
of
abuse and has been condemned as racistby both universalists and relativistic
multi-culturalists in their quarrels with each other.
A deeper irony in the attack on cultural explanations as racist is the fact
that critics of the explanatory role of culture all make one quiet, backdoor
exception to the causaluse of the concept. The exceptionis its use in the intellectual war between environmentalists and genetic determinists. In thesocalled Bell Curve Wars a few years ago, when the
I Q controversy went
through its latestcycle in America, Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray,
although losing the war, grievously injured one
of the mainstays of the liberal
defense of the environmental position,namely, that the persistent single standard deviation difference in IQ scores between Afro-Americans and EuroAmericans is to be explained primarily in socioeconomic terms. Herrnstein
and Murray drew on the vast body of accumulated evidence to show that
this position is no longer tenable. Structural explanations of IQ differences
were often vitiated by what Arthur Jensen has called the sociological fallacy, namely, the fact that the presumably independent structural variables
explaining away the IQ effects were themselves partly the effectsof subjects
IQs.
I do not intend to rehash the IQ controversy
here except to note that when
the dust had settled one major point emerged with crystal clarity, and it has
both a negativeand a positive aspect. The negative aspectis that although genetic factors can explain only a small part
of the differences in social and
economic outcomes that exist between Afro-Americansand Euro-Americans,
neither can standard socioeconomic variables such as family income. This
important point, whichnearly got lost in the heat of the debate, has been reinforced by more recent findings, especially those reported in a work that is
206
MATTERS
CULTURE
of far greater scientific integrity than T h e Bell Cztrve, namely, The BlackWhite Test Score Gap, edited by Christopher Jencks and Meredith Phillips.
The general conclusion of this group of scholars is that, first, the test-score
gap between Afro-Americans and Euro-Americans is indeed important in explaining later occupational status and income, although what itis measuring
is not so much innate intelligence as learnable cognitive
and educational
skills. Second, this test-score gap is only partly explained by the class or social background of students. The still substantial income difference between
Afro-Americans and Euro-Americans explains, at best, about one point of
the large ethnic gap in students test scores. And when all socioeconomic
background factors are considered, such as wealth and occupation, no more
than a thirdof the ethnic gapis explained, which is about the same as Herrnstein and Murray estimated.8
If the answer to the skill gap is to be found neither in the g-loadingon IQ
scores nor in the socioeconomic differences between the two groups, where
is it to be found? Here we come to thepositive side of what emerged from
the Bell Curve controversy. The answer, in a nutshell, is culture. Cultural
beliefs and practices, writes psychologist Howard Gardner in his critique
of the Bell Curve, affect the child at least from the moment of birth and
perhaps sooner. Even the parents expectations of the unborn child and their
reactions to the discovery of the childs sex have an impact. The family,
teachers, and other sources of influence in the culture signal what is important to the growing child, and these messages have both short- and longterm impact.
Significantly, Meredith Phillips and her collaborators found large effects
on childrens test scores resulting from parenting practices, accounting for
over 3.5 points of the test gap between Afro-Americans and Euro-Americans.
Whats more, their controls strongly indicated that these practices were
wholly environmental.
Psychological studies bear out these findings. It is remarkable that, barely
five years before T h e Bell Curve was published, Arthur Jensen, unquestionably the most sophisticated defenderof the genetic viewof ethnic differences,
had very nearly thrown in the towel with his concessionthat the genetic hypothesis will remain untested in any acceptably rigorous manner for some
indeterminatelength
of time,mostlikelybeyondthe
life span of any
present-day scientists.1 Psychologist Nathan Brody, in an exhaustive review
of the state of knowledge on the subject, concluded that thereasons for the
differences are probably to be found in the distinctive cultural experiences
encountered by black individuals in the United States. Responding
to
Herrnstein and Murray, anotherdistinguished psychologist, Richard Nisbett,
arrived at much the same conclusion. Arguing that there are systematic dif-
207
ferences in the socializationof black and white children thatbegin in the cradle, he reviewed several studies, one of which concerned children of mixed
marriages:
Under the assumptionthat mothers are more importantthan fathers to the intellectual socialization of their children and that socialization practices of whites
favor the adoption of skills that result in high scoreson IQ tests, one would expect that the childrenof unions where the mother is white
and the father is black
would have higher IQs than the children of unions where the mother is black
and the father is white. And in fact, this is the case. Children
of black-white
unions have IQs nine points higher if it is the mother who is white.
Although selection factors could not be discounted, they seemed to work
in both directions and cancel themselves out. Nisbett quite reasonably concluded that the higher IQs of the children born to white mothers would
have to be attributed largely to ~ocialization.~
There is a profound ironyin the uses and responses to the kindof findings
just cited. When used in the IQ debate to defend the liberal, environmental
position they are acceptable, even eagerly embraced. But in any other context
the use of these same findings would be viewedwith outrage. Why? Because
findings like these are anathema to notions of ethnic pride, identity politics,
and the prevailing relativism of liberal academic circles. In any other context
statements by Phillips and her collaborators that for parents who want their
children to do well on tests (which means almost all parents), middle-class
parenting practices seem to work or that <racial differences in parenting
practices also appear to be important, as well as Nisbetts argumentthat the
cultural practices of Euro-American mothers are more effectivethan those of
Afro-American mothers, would condemn them as certifiable racists and unregenerate cultural chauvinists on any campusin America.
This is a ridiculous state of affairs. Afro-Americans and their academic
supporters simply cannot have it both ways.
If cultural factors areto be given
prime explanatory status in the IQ wars, they cannot be reduced by multicultural and liberal sociological
critics to what MargaretArcher has calleda
position of supine dependence.lJ This selective censorship of the causal use
of the culture concept has distorted the study
of Afro-American social history
and contemporary issues.
The plain truth,of course, is that there is no necessary conflict between the
causal use of culture and its treatment in purely descriptive or dependent
terms. Usually the conflicts can be resolved once it is understood that different conceptions of culture are being used and that causal studies often proceed at quite different levels of analysis from those that approach it
in
208
MATTERS
CULTURE
symbolist or descriptive terms. Furthermore, a cultural explanation does not

preclude social causes. Often whats most interestingand useful in any analysis is to identify and disentangle the complex explanatory interplay between
cultural and non-cultural factors, an interplay in which both sets of factors
can be both independent and dependent in ones causal model. Above all, it
should be understood that to explain is not to be deterministic. As Goodenough wisely points out, Biology helps explain human behavior but does
not determine it. Similarly, culture helps explain behavior but does not determine it, either.Is
THE CULTURE CONCEPT
By culture I mean a repertoire of socially transmitted and intra-generationally generated ideas about how to
live and make judgments, both in general terms and in regard to specific domains of life. It is an information
system with varying levels of specificity: on one level it is as broad as aset of
ideas about styles of public self-presentation; on anotherlevel, it is the microinformation system prescribing the best way to make bagels, curried chickpeas, or Jamaican jerk pork. This information system is more than what
people must learn in order to be able to function acceptably as membersof a
social group in theactivities in which members of the group engage with one
another,I6 as Goodenoughoriginally phrased it in a seminal statement. For
one thing, as Eugene Hunn has pointed out, the culture concept must address not only what is formally appropriate, but also whatis ecologically effective. Hence, culture is what one must know to act effectively in ones
environment. For another, culture sometimes embraces transmitted antisocial behavior and not only what is acceptable to a group. This point is of
special importance to those who study the Afro-American experience, since
often the cultural processes one wishes
to understand are precisely those that
are deviant and not acceptable to either the broader Euro-American society
or tothe Afro-American group. We cannot restrict the cultural exclusivelyto
what is normative.
I take the very sensible advice of Roger Keesing that it is best to narrow
the concept of culture so that it includes less and reveals more.19 Thus Roy
DAndrade speaks of a particulate theoryof culture; that is, a theory about
the pieces of culture, their composition and relationto other things.20
Culture is acquired or learned by individuals; it is what they know. This,
however, does not preclude a collective or shared dimension of culture. How
can anindividualist, internal viewof culture be reconciled with any notion of
culture as a shared group phenomenon? Through the notion
of cultural models, which, as Keesing argues, are atonce cultural andpublic, as the histori-
Culture
Taking
209
cally cumulated knowledgeof a people and the embodiments of a language,

and cognitive, as paradigms for construing the world.21
These models, however, are not mere tool kits, as sociologist Ann Swidler
argued in her frequently cited
paper.2 Although this viewis valuable for sociologists in emphasizing the role of agency in cultural analysis, it nonetheless
fails to capture two other critical aspects of culture. A tool kit is useless if
there is nothing to make or do. Cultural elements are always, first, plans for
living, blueprints for how to think, judge, and do things. A tool kit is also
useless without the know-how or skill to use the tools. Cultural models are
also rules for how torealize cultural plans.
There is some controversy about where these rules come from. It is likely
that the same capacity for rule making that directs our acquisition of language also works with the acquisition of some cultural models, especially
models of social behavior. Although some rules are inferred by ones innate
rule-making capacity, others are taught, andsome are derived from a combination of both methods.
Dorothy Holland and Naomi Quinn argue against any
typology of cultural models into models of and models for, as some have proposed,
suggesting instead that
underlying cultural models of the same order-and in some cases
the same underlying model-are used
to perform a variety of different cognitive tasks.
Sometimes these cultural models serveto set goals for action, sometimesto plan
the attainment of said goals, sometimesto direct the actualizationof these goals,
sometimes to make sense of the actions and fathom the goals of others, and
sometimes to produce verbalizations that may play various parts in all these
projects as well as in the subsequent interpretationof what hashappened.:
In other words, cultural models are the sociological counterparts of biological stem cells.
How are these models acquired? In two ways. They are inherited from the
preceding generation through socialization, and they are learned intra-generationally from peers and significant others through imitation and teaching,
as well as indirectly from agents such as the mediaor popular figures. I agree
with Robert Boyd and Peter Richerson that social learning is the transmission of stable behavioral dispositions and that stable means those that are
substantially divorced from environmental contingencies.24 Although I will
be drawing on the cultural theoryof Boyd and Richerson in what follows, I
differ from them by including within the cultural domain models of behavior
that are learned through trial and error by individuals in their responses to
interactions with others and other environmentalor structural forces.
MATTERS
2IO
CULTURE
socIo-cuLTuRAL
DETERMINANTS
JNDMDUAL
OUTCOMES
mbll
B Modified
Transmitted
A
Cultural Models
Structural
Environment
Cultural Models
D Outcomes
FIGURE 15.1 Interactions Among Cultural Models, the Structural Environment,

and Behavioral Outcomes
Two further featuresof culture should be noted at this point. First, cultural
models are not to be confused with behavior. Boyd and Richerson note that
"two individuals with identicalsets of culturally acquired dispositions maybehave quite differently in different environments. yy25 Second, culture changes
and the forces that account for variations and instability are as important in
any theory of culture as the forces leading
to the transmissionof stable models.
THE INTERACTIONAL APPROACH TO

CULTURE AND THE STRUCTURAL ENVIRONMENT:
AN AFRO-AMERICAN ILLUSTRATION
Let me illustrate the relationship between culture and social structure an

with
example from the Afro-American experience. Cultural models and structural
or environmental factors have cultural and behavioral outcomes for individuals, yielding a causalmatrix consisting of (A)cultural models inherited from
the previous generation;(B) modified cultural modelsthat are the outcomeof
changes in the inherited models due to transmission errors in teaching and
imitation, as well as adjustments to new strategies of coping with the environment learned by trial and error; (C) the currentset of environmental, especially structural, contingencies; and (D) the behavioral outcomes that we
wish to explain. Figure 15.1 diagrams these causal interactions.
." .
"
Behavioral
Seriously
Taking Culture
211
Let the problem to be explained (D) be the present high rate of paternal
abandonment of children among Afro-Americans. This rate currently stands
at 60 percent of all Afro-American children. It is the single greatest problem
of the group, as well as the source of other major problems. What are the
causal interactions accounting for this behavioral problem?
The present generation has inherited a cultural model (A) that originated
in one earlier environment, slavery(c. 1640-1865), and was later adapted to,
and transmitted through, a second environment, the sharecropping, or liencrop, system (c. 1880-1940). The Africans imported as slaves would have
brought with themwell-defined models of kinship, gender roles, and notions
of sexuality and paternity. Most of these models were devastated by the new
order; in particular, the role of father and husband had no legitimacy or authority. Men had no custodialclaims in their wivesor children. However, the
West African model of high fertility and the view that a mans masculinity
and status were enhanced by the number of his children dovetailed with the
demands of the slave system. A major preoccupation of the system was the
need for a growing slave population, especially after the slave trade was
abolished in 1807. Hence planters encouraged stable reproductive units. The
result was a behavioralpattern in which two-thirds of all unions consisted of
a man and a woman and their children and a third in which unattached
women reared their children with the helpof kinsmen.26
In Rituals of Blood I argued that tocall the unions between slave men and
women marriages and the households they fostered stable nuclear families is a sociological travesty. The revisionist scholarly focus on the structural formof slave unions has diverted attention from their functioning, from
the natureof the relationships that constituted
these unions and from the
cultural models associated with them. Most men did
not live regularly with
their partners. Halfof those in stable unions lived
on other plantations and a
third who had children had no such stable unions. Hence, even on the basis
of the revisionist historians own figures, at least two-thirds of adult men
who had children did not live in the same residence and often did not even
live on the same farm with their partners and progeny. In addition, therewas
on every estate a groupof unattached men without children who constituted
between 10 and 15 percent of all men and whose sexual needs hadto be met
somehow. Thus the great majority of men during slavery-at least threequarters of them-lived most of their lives away from stable households with
children, including a good number of those in so-called stable unions. Furthermore, whatever the natureof their unions, slaves rarelyhad time to interact with their children. The whole point
of slavery was that slaves were
worked like, well, slaves.
212
MATTERS
CULTURE
After two and ahalf centuries several cultural models emerged in response
to this system. One was a model
of compensatory sexuality. Denied any
claims to status in the broader society or any legitimate claims to their partners or children, men reinforced the transmitted West African model
of virility and high fertility as symbols of male pride and status. Closely related to
this was the model of unsecured paternity. This was not African. Rather, it
was a direct adaptation to the slave system. The master assumed the responsibility to provide for the slave's children and encouraged adults to have as
many as possible. Some may even have engaged in deliberate breeding2' Because they wanted to ownthe product of their male slaves' sexuality, masters
encouraged their male slaves to mate with slaves on their own plantations.
Such unions also greatly reduced the cost of labor control, since slaves in
such, stable reproductive unions were less likely to run away. Even so, as
noted earlier, only half of the regular unions of slaves were with partners on
the same plantations.
Other models developed that complementedthese two. One was themodel
of matrifocality, which highly valorized the mother-child relationship and
exalted it over the father-child bond. Another was the model
of female independence-a transmitted model that was reinforced and modified
by the
slave environment. Traditional West African societies were unusual for the
level of economic participation and relative independence of women. This
transmitted model was strongly reinforced
by the economic gender neutrality
of the slave system with regard to slaves. Women worked equally with men
in the fields. The demand for more slaves highlighted their childbearing capacity. Although owners encouraged both sexes to reproduce, legal ownership of slave progeny was determined by the mother. Indeed, some owners
strongly
favored
female
familial
ties,
carefully
preserving
sororal,
mother-daughter, and other matrifocal ties while ruthlessly selling off sons
and brothers.28
Finally, there was thesimple, brute fact thatslave men lackedthe one thing
that all other men primarily relied on for their domination of women: control of property.
These women-related models greatly reinforced the two male models under study: compensatory sexuality and unsecured or resourceless paternity.
Yet slaves also learned many other cultural models during slavery. American
slaves were, of necessity, strongly'influenced by the cultural models of their
Euro-American owners. They adopted and modified their owners' language,
religion, music (i.e., aspects of their music), and, naturally, their gender, marital, and familial models. Although some of these models, such as the stable
patriarchal ideal of legitimate marriages and families in which the husbandfather was the main provider, were beyond reach (and, as such, internalized
Seriously
Taking Culture
213
mainly as ideals), others, such as the sexual double standard and predatory
sexuality of many Euro-American Southern men would have been all too reinforcive of the emerging models of compensatory sexuality among the male
slaves.
The sharecropping system that followed slavery included two features of
special note. First, although the legal ownership of one person by another
was abolished in 1865, the culture of slavery clearly was not. Indeed, if anything, it was powerfully reinforced after the endof reconstruction and maintained the public denial of Afro-American male honor and masculinity. The
classic Southern methodof achieving this was,of course, communal lynching
which, as I have shown elsewhere, was a ritualized ceremony of human sacrifice culminating in the symbolic and literal castration of the Afro-American
male.
The second important feature of the sharecropping system was the fact
that although Afro-American men were denied most forms of meaningful
employment as well as ownership of land, they nonetheless had access to
whatever land they could farm as long as they agreed to the lien crop
arrangement. This had several devastating consequences, which have been
summarized by Tolnay:
The personal sacrifice of delayed and slowed family formation often associated with establishment of households in agricultural economies was not only
unnecessary for rural blacks but was also largely futile. Alternative economic
opportunities were also restricted because of the relative unavailability of nonagricultural employment opportunities for blacks and the generally hostile racial
atmosphere after the Civil War.29
These new features of the environment strongly encouraged a pattern of
early marriage and high fertility. The only way a man could make his way
was by applying as much labor as he could to the available land at his disposal, and the only way he could get this labor was from his wife and children. Thus slavery was followed by a behavioral tendency toward marriage
and large familiesamong themass of poor Afro-Americans. Amongthe small
middle class, as well as the not much larger urban working class, men and
women were at last able to realize the dominant cultural ideal of marriage
and respectable, patriarchal unions after slavery and did so, reinforced by
their fundamentalist faith. But our concern here
is with developments among
the mass of rural sharecroppers.
What was going on among the mass of poor sharecroppers beneath their
formal early marriagesand large families?Tragically, this system reinforced the
two male modelsthat had evolved during slavery. First, it reinforced the model
2x4
MATTERS
CULTURE
of unsecured paternity. Men did not have to take account of resources before
having children. Land and other means of production were readily available.
What they needed were hands-those of a good, strong woman and as many
children as possible. Tragically, children ended up supporting their fathers
rather than the other way around (households were best
off during those periods when children were most exploited) and were frequently prevented from
acquiring even a rudimentary education in order to serve
this purpose.
Second, the nefarious targeting of Afro-American manhood by the dominant Euro-American community led to an even greater need for masculine
compensation on the partof the mass of poor Afro-American males. Denied
all opportunities to prove their worth in the broader society, confined to a
semi-serf condition, mocked in blackface and the popular culture of minstrelsy in the northern half of the country, and brutalized into submission in
public acts of humiliation and ritual castration in their own part
of the country, poor Afro-American men could express their manhood in only one way:
through their virility and control of their own women. The women they
tried
to control, however, were no pushovers. Two and a half centuries under the
gender-neutral rack of slavery had seen to that. They deeply resented this
compensatory behavior, especially.when it took the form
of marital infidelity.
Unfortunately, most of them had little choice but to remain in their marriages
on the tenant farm, since opportunities were as blocked for them as they
wereforthemen.Insteadtheysoughtsupportandsolacefromtheir
kinswomen. Within this context, accordingto Anita Washington, the strong
bonds that have been noted to exist between Black mothers and their children, the great valueBlack women have been notedto place on their roles as
mothers, and the priority of this over their roles as wives and workers, are
easily u n d e r ~ t o o d . ~ ~
Here, then, beneath the surface calm of two-parent units documented in
the censuses, and the sole focus of revisionist historians, further incubated
the tragic conflict between Afro-American menand women and themale cultural models engendered during slavery that were to be transmitted, via the
great northern migration, to the
present period of the central cities.
To this period we now turn.
Point C in the diagram indicates the largely structural explanation of behavior emphasized by social scientists. Unemployment, low income, and the
neighborhood effects of segregated habitats, as well as ethnicand gender discrimination in employment, are the most obvious examples. Included also
are government programs aimed at helping the poor: AFDC, earned income
tax credit, and thelike. Another important featureof this environment thatis
of special interest to Afro-Americansis the importance of the sports industry
and the opportunities it offers to a few but enormously important athletic
215
stars. These conditions, although important in any final explanation, can directly account for only a small part
of D.
Many have argued that poor economic prospects for young, urban AfroAmerican men account for both their low marriage rate and the higher rate
of out-of-wedlock birth^;^' others have pointed to womens employment status inrelation tothat of theirItmay
be true,asKatherineNewman recently observed, that men who lack the wherewithal to be good
fathers, often arent.33But the fact remains that in nearly all other ethnic
groups in America, including Mexican Americans with higher
levels of
poverty than Afro-Americans, and in nearly all other known human societies, including India with its vast hordesof people in grindingurban poverty
and unemployment, poverty does not lead to the large-scale paternal abandonment of children. In fact, the best available data show little correlation
between job availability and the marriage rate.34Economist George Akerlof
recently argued that marriage explains mens labor force activity, along with
a good many other social outcomes. Married men have higher wages, are
more likely to be in the labor force,less likely to be unemployed because they
had quit their job, have lower unemployment rates, are more likely
to be fulltime, and
are
less likely to be part-year
Akerlof thinks
that
changing social factors (by which he means mainly what we are calling cultural models) explain the sharp decline in the marriage rate over recent
decades, a decline that in his estimation explains a good part of the increase
in crime and other social problems. However, he makes no attempt to account for these cultural changes. His dismissal of economic variables may
also be premature. An interactional model of the kind proposed here is better
able to explain how cultural patterns interact with structural
ones to produce
undesirable outcomes.
The transmitted cultural model (AD) is one possible answer. It is certainly
possible that a small minority of poor Afro-American men are simply actualizing the models of paternity they learned from the preceding generation.
However, I consider such direct effectsto be as secondary as direct structural
ones. First, recall that models are not thesame as behavior.Most Afro-American men exposed to these models have, in fact, adopted others and behave
differently. Icannot too stronglyoveremphasize the following point:The fact
that 60 percent of Afro-American children are fatherless does not mean that
anything near this percentage of Afro-American fathers have abandoned
their children. Indeed, the great majority of Afro-American fathers behave
with mainstream models of
responsibly toward their children and operate
paternity. Rather, a minority of usually poor men with limited edncation exhibit this behavior. But because of their higher rates of fertility, they end up
creating a problem of fatherlessness for the majority of the younger genera-
216
MATTERS
CULTURE
tion of the entire group. It is as great an error to underestimate the groupwide consequences of the reproductive behavior of this minority of men as it
is to generalize about Afro-American fathers on the basis of the models and
behavior of this minority.
Instead, the major explanations of the behavioral outcome D are the indirect paths CBD and ABD, as well as the more complex causal spirals such as
CDBD.
Consider, first, the path CBD. Lee Rainwater gave usan early (and still the
best) analysis of this path.36 Lower-class culture, he argued, represent[s]
adaptations to [the] demands society makes for average functioning and the
resources they are able to command in their own day-to-day lives.37While
holding to mainstream norms, lower-class men and women develop survival
techniques for functioning in the world of the disinherited: Over time, these
survival techniques takeon the character of substitute
games, with their own
rules guiding behavior. But . . . these operating rules seldom sustain a lasting
challenge to the validity of the larger societys norms governing interpersonal
relations and the basic social statuses involved in marriage, parent-child relations, and the like.38Instead, lower class sub-culture acquires limitedfztnctional autonomy from conventional culture just as the social
life of the lower
class has a kind of limited functional autonomyvis-a-vis the rest of society.
Tragically, it is precisely the disjuncture between the persistent commitment
to mainstream cultural models of paternal behavior, especially on the partof
women, that leads to the behavioral outcome of marital dissolution and paternal abandonment. Men are only too happy to live with women who put
up with their philandering. Afro-American lower-class women,
to their great
credit, refuse to do so, preferring single mothering than compromising their
deeply held models of proper (essentially mainstream) marital and paternal
behavior. An important dimension of CB is the fact that the modern urban
environment, for the first time, offers relatively better economic opportunities for women aswell as welfare support from the state.Unlike wives of the
sharecropping era, then, they are not forced to put up with male cultural
models and behaviors that offend their own cultural models and sense of independence. Hence CBD.
Note that this interpretation has the great merit
of taking account of
womens cultural models and socioeconomic condition, as well as mens
models and behavior, instead of simplistically considering only male circumstances (CD) in accounting for D.
The path AB refers to the modification of the inherited models under the
environmental pressure of C and in response to the adaptive strategies just
discussed. We see now that both the models of unsecured paternity and
compensatory sexuality are once again reinforced by the new set of struc-
217
tural contingencies. Both models are now fused into a new model, which
sometimes has a misogynistic edge. Lower-class men, with their low educational attainment and unrealistically high reservation wages, are now irrelevanttothepost-industrialsocietythathasemerged.Worse,anew
post-1965 influx of low-skilled immigrants have entered the system and in
many of the large cities are favored by employer^.^^ Black pride and aspirations have ledto higher levels of alienation. The inherited modelof compensatory sexuality acquires even greater urgency. The fact that women now
have the means to resist, somewhat, simply heightens the satisfactionof sexual victory. Male pride is defined now more than ever in terms of the impregnation of women. The majority of Rainwaters respondents indicated
that boys either do not care and are indifferent to the fact that their
girlfriends are pregnant, or with surprising frequency, they feel proud because
making a girl pregnant shows that you are a man!4o A quarter
of a century
after this research was conducted in the mid-sixties, Elijah Anderson and
others found identical culturalmodels, suggesting a systemof cultural transmission.41
Another new featureof the environment, C, bears directly on themodification and intensification of these two inherited models. This is the elimination
of the color bar in the sports industry, leading in turn
to the rise of a significant number of young Afro-American super-star athletes, most coming from
the ghettos. Although the actual numbersof these multi-millionaire stars are
infinitesimally small in comparison with the massof lower-class blacks, their
influence is vast. As role models, however, they have reinforcedboth the cultural model of predatory sexuality and unsecured paternity. These developments are associated with another, largely cultural, phenomenon: the rise of
hip-hop culture which, as with athletics, has seen the emergence
of many super-stars from the ghettos. This culture has blatantly promoted the most oppositional models of urban lower-class life, celebrating in gangsta-rap, as
never before, predatory sexuality and irresponsible paternity. It is reasonable
to conclude that among alarge number of urban, Afro-American lower-class
young men, these models are now fully normative and that men act in accordance with them whenever they can.
Thus we have Aand C leading to intra-generational and inter-generational
variants of B, both variants leading to a fused modified model of sexuality
and paternity among youngmen, expressed in D, which, in turn, encourages
attitudes toward mainstream society and work (DB) and a ghetto lifestyle
that reinforces the modified models of compensatory-cum-predatory sexuality and unsecured paternity. In this context
of opposition to mainstream
norms, the likelihood of the modified sexual and paternal models being actualized in D is even greater.
218
MATTERS
CULTURE
CONCLUSION
My main objective in thischapter has been to bring the concept of culture as

a causal factor back to the study of Afro-American problems without falling
prey to the methodological, theoretical, and ideological problems of many
previous works. I have argued that this task
is now of paramount importance, since the best that sociology has to offer has taken us to the limits of
purely structural explanationsof these problems.
I briefly noted near the beginning that many sociologists are reluctant to
take the causal role of culture seriously because of the persistence among
them of the hoary oldfallacy of cultural inertia. As I have emphasized in this
chapter, however, although cultural continuities certainly exist, people are
not slaves to them. They use them and they can change them if they really
want to.
It is often the case that cultural
models can be changed faster and moreeffectively than structural factors, and to point to their causal role
is in no way
to condemn oneself to the status quo. Indeed, the sociological critique becomes ironic when it is considered that the discipline's favorite explanation
for most matters is class. But what could be more immutable than class?
Consider the fate of one important area of American culture and its class
system over the second half of the twentieth century. During that time, the
entire cultureof Jim Crow-the system of legalized and culturally sanctioned
overt social, economic, and political segregation and discrimination, built up
during the previous three and a half centuries-was effectively abolished.
During that period too therewere fundamental changes in the cultural models of gender that had been built up over the previous millennia of human
history.
But during that same period, American economic inequality-the class
variable so beloved by sociologists as something always ripe for
change-has
grown greater than at any other
time in the nation's history.
Has the time not come for
us to start talking about the cake
of class?
_" " "
16
Disaggregating Culture
NATHAN G L A Z E R
The relationship between culture and the social and economic trajectories of
the various minority, racial, and ethnic groupsin the United Statesis embedded in a larger discussion of the role of culture in the fate of nations. The
context hasbeen set by such provocative theses on the causes
of international
conflict and the wealth of nations as those of Samuel Huntington, David
Landes, Lawrence Harrison, and Francis Fukuyama, and
by the extended debate on Asian values. In that larger discussion,
we deal with categories rather
grander than American ethnic groups, which for the most part
begin their
lives in America as fragments of much larger societies, nations, and civilizations and are soon enveloped throughprocesses of acculturation and assimilation into the larger American
society. In time, for mostof these groups, the
boundaries that once defined them fade through intermarriage, conversion,
and changing identities. It becomes doubtful just what,
if any, elements of
cultural distinctiveness they retain, and they become part of a larger American society and civilization.
In the larger discussion that frames this chapter, we deal with world religions, world philosophies, world cultures, of continental scale, as well as
with nations and societies. We consider the causes of international conflict,
of national wealth and poverty. In the smaller discussion, we deal with less
grand issues, such as the relative educational and economic success of various ethnic groups. In mostcases, their histories cannot easilybe followed beyond two or three generations in America.
220
MATTERS
CULTURE
What do the successes or failures of American ethnic and racial groups

have to do with such large categories as world civilizations, world religions,
and world cultures? What is the link between the large discussion and the
small one? Whatever may explain the fate of nations and continents, can it
help us understand the fateof American ethnic groups?
For example, what is the connection between a common fact that can be
observed among American ethnic groups, such as their concentration in certain economic niches, and the larger civilizations from which they have come
as immigrants? In New York City the newsstand business is the province of
Asian Indians, and in California the doughnut shop has been colonized
by
Cambodians. Is there any connection between that Indian occupational concentration in NewYork and Hindu civilization? (We could also refer to other
occupational concentrations of Indians, such as medicine and science, that
might make the question less ridiculous.) Is there any connection between
Khmer civilization and the Cambodian concentration in doughnut shops?
Whatever we have in mind when we think of Khmer civilization-whether
Angkor or the very different conditionsof today-at initial glance it is clearly
a far-fetched notion.
The shift in scale from Hindu civilization, with its three-thousand-year history, the billion people presently shaped in some respect by it, and its influence over great stretches of Asia, to the economic, social, and political
characteristics of a million Indian immigrants in the United States, is mindboggling. It leads us to realize that whatever we mean by culture or civilization in the large, we will have to have rather different things in mind when
we consider its rolein the fate of India and its role in the economic progress
of American Asian Indians. My discussion in this chapter is shaped by the
contrast between these two scales, and it tries to examine more closely what
we might mean when we use the category culture as an explanation.
CULTURE IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
I begin with some preliminary remarks on the shifting status of culture as an

explanation over the last century.We all realize that before we resort to culture today to explain the differences in economic progress or political attitudes among nations and ethnic groups, prefer
we to find other explanations.
Culture is one of the less-favored explanatory categories in current thinking.
The least favored, of course, is race-genetic characteristics-which played
such a large role over much
of the first half of the century, with suchevil consequences, and which still occasionally make an appearance. We prefer not
to refer to or make use of it today, yet there does seem to be a link between
race and culture, perhaps only accidental. The great races on the whole are
Culture
Disaggregating
221
marked by different cultures, and this connection between culture and race
is
one reason for our discomfort with cultural explanations.
There was a time when culture seemed a much more benign form
of explanation of difference than race. Consider Ruth Benedicts Patterns of Culture,
a highly respectedwork of the 1930s, read widely in American college classes
in the 1950s and 1960s because it explained group difference in non-genetic,
non-racial terms. Racial explanations have always
been conservative or
worse than conservative. They dont seem
to allow for change. Progressive
anthropologists resisted and attacked race as a category in social explanation. Cultural explanations, in contrast, seemed liberal, optimistic. One
could not changeones race but one could changeones culture.
Culture as an explanatory variable is no longer considered so benign. First,
as I pointed out, there is the inevitable link, not in logic but in fact, between
race and culture. Second, it seems invidious to use culture to explain why a
group or nation has not prospered. Since we all accept economic advancement as desirable, there must be something undesirable about a culture that
hampers economic advance. It is true that some trends in contemporary
thinking (e.g., those critical of the environmental consequences of economic
development or of the cultural effects of globalization) may today look with
favor on the cultures that hobble economic advance. For the most part, however, thinking runs the otherway. Geographic interpretations are,I think, becoming more popular. Without having to resort
t o race or culture, they
might, for example, explain the backwardness of Africa, where the few good
natural harbors on its coastline limited trade and interchange, as compared
to Greece or Europe.
On the political left, explanations based on differences in power and degree of exploitation are favored to explain differences among nations and
continents, as well as differences among American ethnic and racial groups.
Among radicals, and liberals too, cultural explanations are looked at suspiciously. They seem to blame the victim.
Cultural explanations have thus lost the liberal and progressive aura they
possessed in the days of Franz Boas, Ruth Benedict, and Margaret Mead.
Then, race was unchangeable but culture was not. Today, we find culture
almost as resistant to change as race. If we resort to world religions and civilizations whose origins we have to trace back two or three millennia
to
explain the nature of distinctive cultures, what hope do we have of really
changing their basic characteristics? And on the smaller scale of American
ethnic groups, if we resort to cultural explanations, what hope do we have
for the progress of the backward groups?
Culture seems to us these days almost as resistant to change as race. The
progressive anthropologists saw culture as changeable; today we are inhib-
222
ited in thinking of culture this way. One reason is that we are chary of intervening in a cultureto change its characteristics, assuming we knew how. At a
time when we think of all cultures as worthy of equal respect, what justification would we have to intervene-whether that intervention is public or private-and
changeaculturalfeaturethatwethinklimitseconomic
development? Whatis our mandate for intervention?In addition, we are not
very sure about how tointervene to change culture, or about what
aspects of
the culture of a group need changing. Culture is such a spongy concept covering so much-the original anthropological definition covered literally
everything that distinguished a group, aside from its genetic inheritancethat we would be at a loss to know what in culture holds up economic
progress. Is it family, religion, attitudes toward work, toward education?
Furthermore, under each of these categories, we can find subcategories some
think important to success.
This does not mean thatsocial scientists should not use culture for understanding. But they should know they are engaged in a dangerous enterprise.
To resort to culture as an explanatory variable raises political problems almost as serious as the resort
to race. Before we get to these, however, wefirst
have to consider the question of how we can use culture as an explanatory
variable.
CULTURE AS AN ANALYTICAL TOOL
In shifting from the grandscale of continents, world religions, and nationsto

American ethnic groups, we needto make two major modulations. When
we
have gone through them, we may be left with very little to explain by way of
culture, if we conceive it as culture in the large.
The F i r s t M o d u l a t i o n
Ethnic and racial groups in the United States are not randomly drawn from
the large populations that bear or are characterizedby a culture. The million
Chinese in the United States do not represent a China a thousand times
larger; and similarly with the million Asian Indians in the United States. This
is the case with every ethnic or racial group in the United States, even
if their
descendants outnumber the inhabitants of the nation from which they came,
as is true for theIrish and perhaps for some other groups as well. The visitor
to Ireland who knows theIrish of Boston is immediately struck by some surprising differences. Is this owing to the regions or classes of Ireland from
which American immigrants were drawn or to the effects of American civilization or culture affecting Irish immigrants and their descendants?
Culture
Disaggregating
223
Immigrants come fromdistinctive areas, classes, subgroups in eachsociety,

often from areas and subgroups with a tradition of emigration. Emigration
then sustains itself from these subareas socially and geographically through
family connection and a chainof useful knowledge communicated from relatives and friends in the country of immigration to the potential emigrants.
The immigrants who form an ethnic community in an immigrant nation
sometimes come from surprisingly small areas of the country whose name
identifies them. This seems to be true, for example, for the Bangladeshis in
Britain. Immigrants may be drawn from segments
of the elites of a society, as
is the case with Asian Indian immigrants, or they may represent the enterprising and trading classes, as is the case with Lebanese and Syrians. They
may on the contrarybe drawn from humble and hardworking peasants, as
is
the case with the early Chinese, Japanese, and Sikh immigrants to this country. It is more likely that they represent the humble, even if the more enterprising humble, than the elites.
In what way then do they bear or represent their cultures? Of course
they have cultures-everyone does. But if we are talking about culturein the
large, what does Confucianism or Buddhism or Taoism tell us about Chinese
emigrants, who come &om the southern coastlands, were peasants, and did
not speak Mandarin? What does Italy in the large tell us about the typical
Italian immigrant, poor, from the south, uneducated? Are we to take him as
anexample of thecultureandcivilization
of CatholicEurope, of the
Mediterranean, of peasant life, all of which and more may be considered to
mark him? From the point
of view of explanation, all these categories are too
large and diffuse. Catholic Europe has been contrasted with Protestant Europe by Max Weber and other analysts of the effort to explain
economic development,butonewonderswhatconnectionthere
is betweenthe
Catholicism of Italy and the Catholicismof Ireland, the countries from which
two of the largest immigrant Catholic groups in the United States come, and
whether their common Catholicism will explain much about them.
My point about this first modulation is that culture in the large must be
disaggregated to the very specific variants that characterize American immigrants, who came from distinct
provinces, classes, and subgroups of the large
culture. In the 1950s Robert Redfield and Milton Singer, anthropologists at
the University of Chicago, developed the notion that in culture we deal with
both a great tradition and the little traditions. The great tradition refers to
the canonical texts, the ceremonies, the priesthood, and the great historical
tradition, which may all mean very little to the people of the village, with
their little traditions, or to the burgeoning urban population. Parts of the
great tradition doget transmitted, but in modifiedor distorted terms, mixing
at the village level with autochthonous traditions that may have little to do
123
MATTERS
CULTURE
with the great tradition and at the urban level with the universal culture of
the mass media. When the people of the village or the people of the growing
towns emigrate to the United States, we may indiscriminately label them representatives of the great tradition with little warrant. I think that if we went
back to those studies and analyses, we would find much food for thought on
the relationship between culture and the varying fates
of immigrant groups in
the United States.One thing thatwe would learnis that whatever the characteristics of the great tradition, it may have little bearing on the little traditions.
Another key point that would be brought home to us is that it was rare
that the elite bearers of the great tradition were among the immigrants. The
experience of Jewish immigrants is not untypical. In each wave of immigration, from the earliest Sephardicof the seventeenth century to the German of
the nineteenth century to the East European of the late nineteenth century,
there were few menof learning, few rabbis, few carriersof the great tradition
that is the tradition we have in mind when we think of Jewish religion and
culture, the tradition of classic texts and roles. I have therefore always felt it
odd to find that the disproportionate Jewish achievement in higher education, which leadsto the disproportionate role in science, scholarship,and the
learned professions that has been so evident for the last half century, is attributed to the Jewish tradition of scholarship. That scholarship is a far cry from
the contemporary learning and education in which Jews excel. Indeed, the
Jewish great traditions looked on almost all contemporary learning with
suspicion and distaste. Further, few practitioners of traditional Jewish learning came with the immigrants. In time, it
is true, such adepts in the traditional high culture came, but I wonder what
they, and their efforts to
establish traditional rabbinic and talmudic learning in the United States, in
which they succeeded, had to do with Jewish achievement in theoretical
physics, law, medicine, and a hostof other areas based on higher education.
I am perhaps particularly attuned tosee the problems in this direct leap to
Jewish tradition to explainJewish achievement in scienceand scholarship because I am aware that personsof my generation who went on to substantial
achievement came from families, as mine, in which parents had never attended a formal Western school and had
little if any classic Jewishtraditional
education. Some of these parents were indeed illiterate, and many were not
literate beyond the abilityto read the prayer book. Some subtle moves are required to use their great tradition to explain the striking role of the children
of East European immigrants in higher education in the early twentieth century.
There are thus many slips and gaps along the way in moving from a great
tradition (which we can describe through its major canonic texts, its com-
Culture
Disaggregating
225
mentaries, its ceremonies, its history) to those who may practice various versions of it-little traditions, perhaps only distantly related. How much does
the great tradition explain in the fate
of those so distantly related to it?
I have been intrigued by a skeptical comment of the Singapore economist
John Wong on the possible roleof Confucianism in Asian and Singapore economic success. (There are not many such skeptical comments, which makes
this one all the more interesting.) Wong writes that economists will not take
the Confucian explanation seriously until
it is expressed in a testable hypothesis.
It is not enoughto argue in general terms
that the Confucian ethos is conducive to increased personal savings and hence
higher capital formation. It must also be demonstrated forcefully and specifically
whether such savings have been productively invested in business
or industry or
have been squandered in non-economic spending, such as the fulfillment of personal obligations, which is after all alsopart
a of the Confucian value system. It
must also be shown how Confucian values have actually resulted in effective
manpower development in terms of promoting the upgrading of skills
and not in
encouraging merely intellectual self-cultivation or self-serving literary pursuits.
A typical Confucian gentleman in the past would have shown open disdain for
menial labor.
What Wong is asking skeptically is whether we really can perform the exercise of moving from the great tradition of Confucianism to the success of
those societies or, we may add, the success of ethnic groups that we can connect to it. I have asked the same question about the connection between the
great tradition of Jewish learning and the disproportionate success
of Jews in
contemporary science, learning, and the high professions. It is too easy to
leap from the great tradition to the current groups and individuals that can
claim a historical connection. One may
see among the current descendants
of
the great tradition little of its authentic reality.
And it is not only John Wong who is skeptical of the usefulnessof the Confucian tradition or culture foreconomic development. Sun Yat-sen and other
reformers and revolutionaries were not only skeptical about the value
of
Confucian traditions but decried them for playing a major role in keeping
China backward and denounced Chinese traditional culture for holding back
Chinas economic and political development. Were they wrong? Did Confucianism change, so that in one period it restrained Chinas modern development and in another facilitated it? Are we not engaged in
an after-the-fact
explanation, whether for the Chinese or the Jews? How much has Confucianism to do with the educational and economic success of Chinese people
in America?
CULTURE MATTERS
226
Of course, despite the attention given to the great traditions, the greatreligions, and the Protestant ethic and its equivalents around the world, we may
be ableto give a perfectly good explanation anddefense of the role of culture
in economic achievementof ethnic groups by resorting to thelittle traditions,
the distinctive cultures of a trading and business community, for example, or
of a hardworking and stable peasantry. Successful ethnic groups have come
from both backgrounds, and others. But whatever the cultural background, a
second modulation is necessary in connecting culture to economic success,
and that is the circumstances immigrants found on their arrival, the state of
the economy, the opportunities available, the character of the areas in which
they settled, and the like.
Contemporary social scientists find the effect of a variable by holding all
other things equal. Thus if we are trying to determine the roleof prejudice or
culture in explaining lower earnings among blacks, we will have to make
such adjustments as comparing groups of the same age, the same education,
and the same geographical area. Since wages differ by area, perhaps we will
have to take into account differences in rural and urban residence, since
wages are affected by that too, and thelike. The result of such an exercise is
generally to reduce, or explain, a difference.A residual is produced, and it
is there that we may find the effect of discrimination or the effect of culture.
Sometimes indeed the entire difference can be explained away, and there is
no residual. But whether there is or is not, how we factor in culture, as
against discrimination, always remains a problem.
The Second Modulation

The problem occurs in setting up the explanatory model. How do we separate culture from non-cultural features that explain difference? Thus every
element in the example given above of trying to explain black-white earnings
differences mixes cultural with other elements. We want to explain differences in earnings, so we hold age constant. Butis not the fact that one group
is lower in age than another, or has more
children, also a culturalfeature? We
want to hold geography constant-people will do better in cities than in the
countryside, in the North and West than in the South. But arent there cultural factors in migration and the selection
of places to which to migrate?
Our comparison will hold family structure constant, noting that the large
proportion of female-headed families among blacks lowers average income.
But is not family structure a cultural feature parexcellence?
The point of such models used to analyze differences is to explain them,
but they also have inevitable political consequences.
A cultural explanation is
generally rejected by the group in question, whether it is doing better or
Disaggregating Culture
227
worse than some average. If it is doing better, it fears others will accuse it of
pride and hubris. Paying attentionto its presumably superior culture, it fears,
will lead to envy, anger, and worse. If the group is doing worse, it fears the
snobbish disapproval and disdainof the majority. It is of benefit, everygroup
thinks, to be seen as victim, not as superior.
For example, a few decades ago it was already evident
that Asian household incomes were as high as white, which would have seemed
on the face of
it to dispose of the discrimination issue. But then it was pointed out that
if we
put education in the model, Asian earnings are not as high as those of whites
of the same educational level. There have been efforts to show that there is
nothing special about high Jewish earnings. Afterall, Jews live in cities, where
earnings are higher for all; their average age is higher and earnings rise with
age; they go to better colleges and universities; they are more concentrated in
the high-earning professions; they have smaller families,
and so on. In the end,
the Jewish earnings advantage maybe erased by holding all these factors constant. But that does not dispose of the cultural explanation, which is inextricably mixed in with each feature we
control to explaindifference.
Jews have generally been concerned about the news of their earnings and
income advantage getting out. The census does not ask for religion, and thus
Jews do not appear in census statistics. The Jewish defense organizations
generally oppose any question on religion in the census, for this and other
reasons. Asians, all of whom are counted in the census as individual races,
generally try to explain away the statistical evidences
of their success for various reasons, among them the desire of some to hold on to victim status,
which may give some benefits. (There are no benefits now to Asian identity
for college admissions, but Asiansare still considered an underprivileged minority for government contracts.) Others want to hold on to the possibility
of a Rainbow Coalition of the colored peoples, and if Asians are better off
than the average, their eligibility for this coalitionfalls into question.
We may observe some odd contortions in the effort to maintain the victim
status of Asians-the claim that they are seriously and adversely affected by
discrimination, despite their present income and occupational profile. For instance, consider a paper writtenby the Chinese American historianJohn Kuo
Wei Chen.2 He first tells us that he takes great pleasure every yearin the announcement of the Westinghouse Science Talent Search winners because so
many Asians are among them: Yet as I have followed press coverage
and
public discussion of these students, . I have become increasingly concerned
about the dissonance between their actual high achievements and how those
achievements have been construed, declaring Asians a modelminority-despite compelling evidence defying overgeneralization.
He takes pride in
their achievement but resists the idea they are a model minority.
228
MATTERS
CULTURE
The nature of his concern over this reputation is not easy to divine. He
writes that a follow-up article to the Westinghouse story in the New York
Times dealt with Cardozo High School in Queens in New York City, which
produced eleven semifinalists,all Asian. This article led to an op-ed piece by
Stephen Graubard, editor of Daedalus. Kuo reports, disapprovingly, that
Graubard makes stable, single-parent families the primary cause of Asian
student success. Then, in the spirit of social welfare planning, he speculated
about what might be done for all those hundreds of thousands of children
who did not live in such stable environs. . . Graubard assumed that stable,
single-family neighborhoods provided the prerequisitesfor success.
Why Kuo resists this seemingly unobjectionable and common interpretation is unclear. We get some hint when he quotes approvingly a letter to the
New York Times from the Asian student winners at Cardozo in response to
the Graubard article, which rejects any generalization to explain their success. The letter attacks Graubards interpretations as stereotyping
. . . which
in its most extreme form is the root of prejudice, a disease that can never be
solved by science. The letter asserts that the parental role in the school careers of these students ranged from apathy to intense involvement, and the
reasons for student participation and success in the Westinghouse contest
were varied and individual. Kuo concludes: This formulation of Asian student success turned a complex phenomenon into a simplistic and historical
[perhaps he means unhistorical?] representationof the unchanging nature of
Asian cultures. All this is prelude to the main body of his paper, a study of
anti-Chinese prejudice in New York City in the nineteenth century. One is
left to conclude there is some connection between the anti-Chinese prejudice
of the nineteenth century and the mythof model minority success today.
THE KEY ROLE OF EDUCATION
I have suggestedthat it is not easy scientificallyto locate the cultural factors in

ethnic group success or failure and that it is not to anyones advantagepolitically to insist on the role of cultural factors in ethnic group failure
or success.
Despite the best methods and approaches of the contemporary social sciences, I believe that itis difficult to make a clear case that cultural factors
distinctive to one ethnic group or another are responsible for economic success
or failure. What we can do from the pointof view of social science is to determine the factors that seem to be regularly connected with the economic
fate of ethnic groups. The factor that emerges most sharply from researchis
education. This is also the favored measure for human capital. It correlates
best with later success in the form of higher-prestige occupations and higher
earnings.
Culture
Disaggregating
229
The great differences among groups in educational and occupational

achievement would seem to constitute aclear case for the significance of culture, since a taste for education would seem to be above all a cultural fact.
But the matter is not so simple. The taste for education, and subsequent success, varies by class. Are we to encompass class in culture? We could, but
then it is not ethnic culture that leads to the success-there is much in common in the working and middle classesof all groups. Further, as I have tried
to suggest, when we tryto trace back a taste for education
to the high culture
of a group (Jewish learning, for example), the connections raise some problems. Admittedly, an orientation to learning of some type may be transformed into an orientation to learning of a very different type, and this is
what may have happened to Jews; to Brahmins, who may have givenup Sanskrit for science; and to Chinese, who may have given up the Confucian classics for physics. All of these cases require closer examination than they have
received.
The children of Japanese peasants and Vietnamese boat people have also
done well in school. They are quite distant, one would think, from the great
traditions of learning in their societies, and the reasons for their
success
would also bear examination.
One reason for examining the potential cultural factors
in educational success, which has emerged as the key measurable factor for economic success,
is the idea, as expressed in the op-ed article by Stephen Graubard referred to
above, that we can learn from such cases. The learning is intended to guide
interventions into the ways of life of the less successful groups. I believe in
the possibility of such learning, but I wonder whether we want, for political
reasons or even for scientific reasons, to label whatever we learn as part of
the culture of some specific group. Thus many believe from research that
reading to children will assist them in learningto read. That is a general factor not connectedto any ethnic group. It would
be best to advocate it and encourage it for itself, rather than because it contributes to the
success of
Chinese or Vietnamese children. (Indeed, useful as it may be, it could not
have had much to dowith the successof second-generation Jews, Chinese,or
Japanese, most of whose parents could only have readto them in a non-English language and probably worked too much to read to them at all.)
Undoubtedly, strong support for education among parents is better for
children than the reverse. (But recall the talent search-winning Chinese students reference to the apathy of some of their parents.) Yet studies regularly show that AfricanAmerican parents strongly urge their childrento take
school seriously, urge on them the importance of school. All of these factors
that may contribute to educational success can be called cultural, but we
have to go into them very deeply before we find out why practices that seem
23 0
CULTURE MATTERS
similar or identical at first look seem to have such different effects in different groups.
I think culture does make a difference. But it is very hard to determine
what in culture makes the difference, as these examples suggest. Whatever it
is, I think it willbe more subtle than thelarge characteristics of the great traditions of a culture, since too many different outcomes, at different times,
seem compatible with each of the great traditions. They have all had their
glories and their miseries, their massacres and their acts
of charity, their
scholars and their soldiers, their triumphs of intellectual achievement and
their descents into silliness or worse. Rather, it makes more senseto think of
them as storehouses from whichpractices suitable for and useful for all may
emerge. In any case, they have gone through
so much change that it is
utopian to think that we can apply theirlessons if we can agree on them, in
the large. But the specific practices of ethnic and racial groups in the United
States, empathetically explored, may welltell us something useful.
part six
THEASIANCRISIS
17
Law, Family Ties, and the
East Asian Way of Business
DWIGHT H. PERKINS
During the Asian financialcrisis that began in 1997 and then spreadwell beyond the boundariesof Asia, much was said about the
close cooperation that
existed between business and government in the region. The term most often
heard was cronyism, and the implication was that it was directly responsible for the crisis. If the economies of East and Southeast Asia had followed a
different path, one based on the rule of law and an arms-length relationship
between business and government, there never would have been a financial
crisis; or so it was argued orimplied.
By now there have been many studies of the origins and nature of the
Asian financial crisis, and there is a consensus that the nature of government-business relations in the region did
contribute to what happened. A
typical financial panic triggered by macroeconomic mismanagement in Thailand and later in South Korea started these economies on a downward spiral,
but the depth of the decline had much to do withweaknesses in the systems
of these two countries. The nature of government-business relations had
even more to do with that sharp economic downturn suffered by Indonesia
and Malaysia.
But was cronyism really the cause of the deep recessions in these four
economies, or was it a symptomof something more fundamental? The main
argument of this chapter is that close business-government relations were
one manifestation of a broader phenomenon, the reliance on personal rela-
Law,
Family
Ties, and the East Asian Way of Business
23 3
tionships to provide business transactions with the security that is an essential component of any successful commercial system.
Societies made up of self-contained villages or autonomous feudal estates
do nothave to worry much about the
security of economic transactions. The
village elders or the feudal lord can enforce whatever rules they choose.
However, when trade takes place over long distances, local authority canno
longer guarantee that a transaction will be carried out in accordance with a
given set of rules. A trader can provide security for himself by shipping the
goods in a boat that
he controls and caninsist on immediate payment in gold
or silver. He can also hire a mercenary army to protect his goods along the
way and to prevent the loss of his gold payments to bandits or rapaciouslocal lords. Commerce handled in thisway, however, has very high transaction
costs and is justified only when the value of the goods per unit of weight is
extraordinarily high. The first Portuguese, Dutch, and British trading ships
that went to Asia for spices and silk, many of them not much different from
pirates, fit this model.
For commerce in more ordinary goodsof lesser value, there must be a way
of bringing transaction costs down. A general authority must provide security along the roador river; each individual trader should not haveto provide
it onhis own. Furthermore, a meansof payment must be found that does not
involve lugging large quantities of gold, silver, and copper back and forth.
Specialists in trade, shipping, and finance are more efficient than generalists
who handle all aspects of a transaction, but each must have some basis for
depending on the good-faith actionsof the others.
In Europe and North America, the required security was supplied by laws
backed up by a judiciarythat over time became increasingly independent
of the
other functions of government. This developmentof the rule of law backed up
by an independent judiciary took place over centuries, and the process was
well along by the eighteenth century. The main theme of this chapter is that
there was no comparable development of this kind of legal system in East and
Southeast Asia. There was, however, the development of long-distance commerce both within and between economies in Asia,and that commerce had to
have something that substituted for the rule of law. That substitute drew on
one of the strengths of East Asian culture: close personal relationships based
on family ties, as well as ties that extended beyond thefamily.
THE HISTORICAL ORIGINS OF THE
EAST ASIAN WAY OF BUSINESS
The central roleof the family in Chinese society dates back

to atleast Confucius and requires little elaboration here. The Confucian system establishes
clear hierarchical relationships within the family and between the family and
23 4
MATTERS
CULTURE
higher levels of the government, culminating in the .emperor. This system is

still a central component of Chinese, Korean, and Japanese culture. Because
much of the business community of Southeast Asia is Chinese in origin, these
same values play a central rolein that region as well.
Early work on the relationship between Confucian family values and economic development argued that these values were a serious barrier
to the
growth of large, successful businesses.2 The argument in essence was that
close family ties led to nepotism, which was inconsistent with a modern corporate economy in which universalistic values replaced the particularistic
values of family-based systems. This early literature, although widely debunked by subsequent China scholarship, could be seen an
as early precursor
of the modern arguments about the debilitating impact
of cronyism.
China, of course, had laws throughout itshistory. Southeast Asia also had
laws, most of which were provided by the colonial authorities. In the caseof
China, however, the laws were administered by the county magistrates, who
were the lowest rung on the ladder of the central government system of administration and control. The magistrates thus possessed a wide range of
powers, from taxation to the police to dispute resolution. Some magistrates
saw protection of local merchants as one of their charges, but this was not
the norm. Merchants seldom resorted to legal procedures to protect their
contracts because the law was not designed to protect such contracts. Going
to the judge was a formula for economic ruin in most cases.
Chinese merchants thus developed their own systems for sanctioning behavior that undermined the security of commerce. They formed guilds, and
the guilds typically had a regional as well as
an occupational foundation.
Shanghai merchants from the city of Ningbo, for example, formed a guild,
while bankers who originated from the province of Shanxi controlled Chinas
banking system through the endof the nineteenth century. These associations
were too large to be based on a single extendedfamily, but they were basedon
ties that had manyof the characteristics of Confucian relationships. It is easier
to trust someone from your home province, since it is likely that you either
know that person or know
members of his family, as well as his reputation.
But it was not necessary to rely on reputation alone. Families in China
were collectively responsiblefor the behavior of their members. In the caseof
the Shanxi bankers, family members were in effect held hostage
to thebehavior of an individual charged with the responsibility
of handling other peoples
money. If that individual absconded with the
money, he could notgo back to
his family. Although he could hide out in some distant city, without family
ties, he was a nonentity in Chinese society. Shanxi bankers, as a result, were
able to reliably transfer large sums of money from one part of China to another in relative safety.
Law,
Family
East
Asian
Ties,
the
and
Way of Business
23 5
Business relations within the overseas Chinese communities of Southeast

Asia were similar to those in traditional China. SoutheastAsia had fully developed legal systems administered by the British, Dutch, and French, but
few overseas Chinese turnedto these systems if they had any alternative. The
systems were administered in a language that many of the overseas Chinese
did not speak and by colonial judges whose culture and values the overseas
Chinese did not understand. The overseas Chinese, for the most part, settled
their differences within their own communities and regional associations.
Generally, it was easierto resolve disputes within a regional association
(e.g.,
Fujian, Guangdong, Hakka) ihan between associations. Business relationships, therefore, were heavily influenced by where ones family originated
from in China.
This system evolved over time,and some overseas Chinese learnedto work
within the colonial legal systems. Muchis made today of the role of the rule
of law in Hong Kong. It reflects the fact that what was originally a British
system run by and mainly for the colonial authorities gradually cameto be a
system run by and for the local population. In most of East and Southeast
Asia, however, the colonial system came to an end long before local people
came to value the colonial legal systemas somethingof their own thatserved
the interests of their own society.
CHANGES IN THE SYSTEM AFTER 1945
Whatever the strengths and weaknesses of the traditional Chinese and colonial systems of business relations andlaw, those systems were changed when
the Communist Party came to power in China and colonial rule ended in
Southeast Asia, Korea, and Taiwan.
The change was most radical in China, where the Communist Party-run
government first imported the economic system of the Soviet Union, including many of its laws and regulations. During the Cultural Revolution, Mao
Zedong led an effort that went to the extremeof abolishing most laws and
all lawyers. There was little or no security for anyone, least of all for someone who was in business, even if the business was state owned. That radical
experiment ended with Maos death in 1976, but China had to begin building a new legal system essentially from scratch. It was a relatively straightforward matter to write large numbers of commercial laws and have them
formally adopted. However, it was quite a different matter to create a legal
system that was capableof administering the laws efficiently andfairly. Dispute settlement in China still depended mainly on the discretionary authority
of rankingmembers of theChineseCommunistPartyandtheparty-
23 6
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dominated government. Individuals interested in doing business in China had

to take thatreality into account.
In Southeast Asia and to some degree even in South Korea, the change in
the system was not quite so radical as in China. For the most part, the colonial laws, particularly those that pertained
to commerce, remained on the
books. The responsibility for administering these laws, however, passed to
the new independent governments. In some cases, such as Singapore and
Malaysia, people having substantial experience with the colonial legal system
ran the new governments,and-at least for a time-maintained the spirit as
well as the letter of that system with respectto the commercial sphere.
In other cases, notably in Indonesia, the new government officials possessed little relevant experience with the old system, and the legal system deteriorated rapidly, after independence. Decades of writing new laws and
training lawyers left Indonesia at the end of the twentieth century with a legal system that was easily manipulated by money and political power. Elsewhereintheregion,thetendencywasforthe
legalsystem tocome
increasingly under the discretionary authority of the political leadership.
These changes in the way commercial law was administered in Southeast
Asia, Korea, and Taiwan meant that members
of the business community,
particularly persons of Chinese origin, had to continue to rely on their own
efforts to provide security for their transactions. Although they continuedto
rely on each other and their own associations, they
increasingly began to
build ties to their local governments-ties of a kind thatwere not really feasible in the colonial era, when the colonial authorities kept their distance from
local businesses, particularly the businesses of the overseas Chinese.
The nature of these ties to government varied, depending in part on the degree to which the culture of the business community was compatible with the
culture and interests of those who ran the government. In countries such as
South Korea and Japan, members of the business community and government personnel came from the same ethnic group and
even the same schools.
In fact, it was not always easy to tell where the government left off and private business began. In Thailand, a political leadershipthat actively discriminatedagainstthelocalChinesecommunityinthe
1950s subsequently
changed to an approach that fully integrated the local Chinese population
into Thai society.
In Indonesia and Malaysia, in contrast, the gap between government and
business was large and remained so throughout the latter half of the twentieth century. At the same time, however,both governments carried out an activisteconomic policy.Businesses, to prosper,had to buildties to the
governments that controlled their access to licenses, capital, and much else.
These ties, however, could not be built on Confucian-style family and re-
Law,
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Ties,
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the
Asian
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of Business
23 7
gional loyalties, since such loyalties did not exist across the gulf that separated Malay and Chinese cultures. Trust was made even more difficult by a
long history of communal violence.
The relationship between the local Chinese and the political authorities in
countries like Indonesia and Malaysia, therefore, was based on marriages of
financial convenience. Because the Chinese were often successful in business,
the political leadership could turn to them formoney, either to support their
political party or for more personal uses. Several local Chinese in Indonesia,
for example, got their start toward billionaire status by gaining access to licenses to log the tropical forests; they then built on those fortunes by establishing close business ties to various members of President Suhartos family.
In the early yearsof the governing Alliance parties in Malaysia, much of the
funding of political activity came from the Chinese business community. As
the Malay, or Bumiputra, who dominated government gained confidence,
however, they took steps to help develop Bumiputra-owned businesses that
then became the main source of funding for the dominant party of the governing coalition, the United Malay National Organization,or UMNO.
A neoclassical economic purist might say that both Confucian extended
family ties and the alliances formed between the overseas Chinese businesses
and the local non-Chinese political leadership were based on expectations
of
an economic return from those relationships. But even if most motivation is
reduced to a financial foundation, the ties that bound family members in a
Confucian society were far stronger and were likely to last longer than the
personal friendships formed across ethnic lines.
THE SYSTEM PRODUCED BY THESE VALUES
The business system produced by relying on family and other personal ties
for security had many features in common throughout most
of East and
Southeast Asia. The businesses themselves were generally owned and controlled by single families. Even limited liability corporations that sold their
shares on the local stock exchange were family controlled. Minority shareholders, and even a majority if they were non-family shareholders, had little
say in the operation of the business, and there was little protection for minority shareholder rights.
Where possible, control was passed down from the founder tohis sons or,
in rarer cases, to a daughter or a son-in-law. Generational changes in Chinese-owned companies often threatened the health of those companies because the founders descendants were frequently less competent or because
the siblings did not get along with each other.Even by the end of the 1990s,
very few private firms ownedby local people in Korea, Taiwan,Hong Kong,
23 8
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and Malaysia had made the transition to a professional (as contrasted to a

family-based) management and control system.
Throughout the East and Southeast Asian region there were many firms
run by professional managers, but they were controlledby European, Japanese, and American investors, or they were state owned. Governments like
those in Malaysia, Taiwan, and even Singapore relied on state ownership in
part to ensure that the ethnic group controlling the government got
its share
of economic power. In Malaysia, it was the Bumiputra elite who benefited
from state control and later privatizationof certain heavy industries. In Taiwan, it was the mainland Chinese who had come to the island in 1949 who
controlled the state-owned enterprises, whereas most
of the private sector
was in the hands of those born in Taiwan during the Japanese colonial period. In Singapore, it was the powerfulcivil service and political elite that ran
the state enterprises, whereas much of the private sector was dominated by
foreign direct investors.
Family and regional ties also heavily influenced relationships between
businesses, as well as relationships within individual businesses. There is,
however, little scholarly work on the networks
of relationships thatplay such
an important role in relations between overseas Chinese within and between
countries in ther e g i ~ nBecause
.~
these relationships are informaland because
they exist in an environment that is often perceived as hostile, it may never
be possible to fully understand the nature and scopeof these networks.
Where networks do not already exist, Chinese businesses spend time and
resources trying to develop them, even across ethnic lines. A standard statement about business practices in China is that American and European businessmen show up with their lawyers and try to write and negotiate formal
contracts that cover all contingencies. Chinese businessmen, in contrast, are
prepared to spend years visiting, entertaining, and getting to know the foreigners before they are prepared to get down to carrying out actual transactions with or without formal contracts.
There is some variation across the region in business and government relations, some of which has been described above. Underlying many of the patterns, however, is the attempt to achieve security where the rule of law is
absent and where governments are actively involved in trying to direct the
economy. Over 80 percent of the early foreign direct investment in China,for
example, came from Hong Kong investors or from other overseas Chinese
businesses, and most of this investment went into Guangdong Province,
where the familiesof most of these businessmen originated.
Even by 1997, when thelegal system in Chinas coastal cities had begun to
play an increasingly constructive role in business, total foreign direct investment from Europe and NorthAmerica totaled only U.S.$8.4 billion. Foreign
Law,
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direct investment from Hong Kong alone, in contrast, was $21.55 billion.
Taiwans foreign direct investment was officially $3.3 billion but was actually much higher, while tiny Singapores foreign direct investmentwas $2.61
billi~n.~
Chinese-owned businesses knew how to operate in a world in which legal
contracts were often not enforced. They had established working relationships with local governments and could turn to them for help when needed.
At a minimum, these close relationshipswith local governments could ensure
that these governments would not interfere with business operations. The
Americans and Europeans, on the other hand, who did not have these kinds
of relationships, tried to turn tothe underdeveloped legal system.
Where personal ties between government officials and businessmen were
based on family and family-like relationships (e.g., school ties, origin in the
same town or province), the line between the sphere of government and the
sphere of business was often blurred. Graduates of the University of Tokyo
took it for granted that they would staff the highest levels of the key economic ministries and would then retire at a relatively young age to lucrative
positions in the companies that they had up
to then regulated. Senior government officials in Korea moved easily to corporate think tanks or to head up
business associations.
In Malaysia, the government had as one of its primary goals the creation
of a Bumiputra billionaire elite, and government investments and licenses
were directed to that purpose. As already noted, this elite was in turn expected to fund the politicians who led the government. Thai politicians,
many of them former military officers, sat on the boards
of many public and
private enterprises. There was nothing secret or under the table about these
relationships. Within the elite, at least, they were accepted asthe normal way
of doing business.
Where deep ethnic cleavages separated the rulingelite from business, government relations, as pointed out above, tendedto be based more on the exchange of money in return for government support.These transactions were
much more likely to be seen by both the general public and the participants
themselves as illegal bribes.
THE IMPACT OF THESE RELATIONSHIPS ON
ECONOMIC PERFORMANCE
This way of business served Asia well for more than three decades. East and
Southeast Asia did not have to wait until they had a well-developed commercial law system before growth could accelerate. Investment climbed to a very
high share of GDP in most of the countries of the region, and, with notable
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exceptions, that investment was used efficiently by international standards.

High rates of investment would have been inconceivable if investors had
feared they would lose their investments to rapacious governments and unscrupulous competitors. If security had been absent, these investors,like their
counterparts in Latin America, would have sent much
of their money to New
York and Zurich, and growth wouldhave been much slower. They could also
have invested for short-term profits, but the long-term investments that are
critical for sustained growth would have been ignored. Instead, they kept
their money in the country and put it intofactories and infrastructure.
It is also true, however, that thisway of business did not always create institutions that stood up well to adversity, periods of which are an inevitable
part of the growth process. Reliance on personal ties within a business orbetween private businesses was not the main problem. Individual companies
might fail because the heir to the founder was incompetent or because longstanding personal ties led them to favor an inefficient supplier, but other
companies would simply take their place. The economy-threatening problems occurred becauseof the nature of the relationship between business and
powerful interventionist governments.
Because government and business ties were so close, businesses took it for
granted that government would help out if they got into trouble. Given the
pervasive nature of governments role in these countries economies,
there
was little doubt in the mindsof businessmen that government had the power
to intervene in support of business in general and of individual businesses in
particular. Governments would want
to intervene because they would be
helping out their friends and supporters. The
businesses, therefore, felt confident that they could afford to take large risks in implementing their investment strategies. The positive side of this was that it contributed to the high
rate of investment and many successful projects. The downside was that, in
some circumstances, the risks taken would
be excessive and could threaten
the entire economy.
It is this downside, or moral hazard, aspect of the government-business
relationship that came to the forein the financial crisis of 1997. The banks
and non-bank financial institutions turned out to be particularly vulnerable.
Many of the banks in Asia were owned outright by the state, and so they
took for granted that the state would bail them out of a crisis. Many other
private bank and non-bank financial institutions, like those in Thailand and
Indonesia, were controlled by politically powerful figures, and so they to felt
they could count on the government. And the governments in Thailand,
Malaysia, and Indonesia didin fact tryto help out.
The Thai decision to keep the exchange rate fixed until they nearlyran out
of foreign exchange wasdriven in part by a desire to help the financial insti-
Law,
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Ties,
and
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the
Asian
Way
of
Business
24
tutions that had borrowedso heavily abroad and would face a huge increase
in debt denominated in baht if there were a large devaluation. In Indonesia,
President Suhartos toying with a currency
board was probablydriven in part
by a desire to help his friends escape the consequences of their speculation
with foreign dollar- and yen-denominated debt. Malaysias decision to end
the convertibility of the Malaysian ringgit was also driven in part
by a desire
to keep the Bumiputra billionaires from going under because of their financial maneuvers.
These statements about the motivations behind these particular government interventions are controversial and cannotbe proved. Many of the participants in these decisions would no doubt deny such intentions and would
describe their motives in terms of general benefits to the society at large.
Some outside analysts would simply see these rescue attempts as mistakes in
judgment. No doubt, many other considerations played a role as well, but
from what we know of the general motives of much of the political leadership of these three countries, the motives inthe particular incidents described
above are, at the very least, plausible.
Moral hazard clearly had a great deal to do with the risky investment behavior and the weakness of the financial institutions. That behavior in turn
had much to do with the depth of the economic decline experienced during
the Asian financial crisis. There is also little doubt that the moral hazard
which was present resulted from the close ties between the government and
business. But to describe this all as the result of cronyi~mis to imply that
everyone would accept the interpretationthat government corruption was
responsible for what happened-that the Asian way of business was corrupt in
some universal sense.
What I have tried to argue here is that the Asian way of business and business-government relations were, for a long time, a successful adaptation by
business and government to a situation in which one of the prerequisites of
growth, the rule of law, was missing. Although this system did create numerous opportunities for what almost anyone would describe as corruption, the
system itself was not inherently corrupt, at least in terms of the values that
prevailed in East and Southeast Asia in the last half of the twentieth century.
The system also created moral hazard that led to some excessively risky and
unwise investment behavior. Many kinds of insurance also create moral hazard situations, butwe dont conclude that we should abolish them.
IMPLICATIONS FOR THE FUTURE
Personal relationships in business based on family and otherties served East

and Southeast Asia well for over three decades but badly during the last three
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CULTURE
years of the twentieth century. It may take many more years before the financial systems created by this approach to development are made healthy, but
recovery in these economies is likely to occur much sooner-indeed, it appears to be occurring in the summer of 1999. Does it follow then that the
Asian approach to business and government-business relations simply hit a
bump in the road and only needs to get back up on the bicycle and peddle
on?
The main point of this chapter is not that personal ties based on familytype relationships are superior to alternative ways of providing security for
economic transactions. For a time, these personalties were an adequate substitute for the way in which most industrial and postindustrial societies
achieve the same objective. There are at least two reasons, however, why
achieving security through personal ties is not likely to serve East and Southeast Asia well in the future.
The first reason is that theAsian crisis revealed the full extent of the weakness of the financial systems that arose in this kind of environment. Among
other problems, these financial systems, when opened up, were far too weak
to withstand or moderate the kinds of capital movements that characterize
the international economic system. They simply collapsed and took the economy with them.
There is now a wide-ranging effort and a growing literature on what the
Asian nations need to do torepair their financial systems. Reliable accounting standards, strengthened prudential regulation, and competition from
well-established international banks are among the many proposals.But the
task is not simply a narrow technical one of rewriting the laws and training
bankers. The Harvard Institute for International Development, among others, was involved in just such an effort in Indonesia over many years. The
laws were rewritten, bankers were trained, private banks were authorized
and proceeded to grow rapidly, and the commercial banks were given substantial autonomy from the central bank.And yet, as of 1999, all of Indonesias banks were technically bankrupt.
Perhaps no banking system could have withstood an 80 percent devaluation of the nations currency. Indonesias banking problems, however, were
also a resultof a decade in which manyof the banks had been the toysof the
ruling elite and could not have withstood even a mild crisis without government support. The problemin 1998 was that the government was nolonger
in a position to provide that support. To prevent the recurrence of a similar
crisis at some later date, the banks must stop
being subject to the discretionary interventions of high officials in support of pet projects. As long as
government is directly and heavily involved in promoting particular business
projects, however, the banks will always be vulnerable, as even Japan in the
Law,
Family
Asian
East
Way
the
Ties,
and
of Business
243
1990s has demonstrated. If government officials are to be restrained from

these kinds of intervention, there must be some institution capable
of enforcing that restraint. That institution, in most industrial and postindustrial
societies, is the rule of law administered by an independent judiciary.
A second reason for believing that personal relationsbetween government
and business will not serve as well in the future is that the international economic system itself has changed. The rules of that system, as manifested in
such institutions as the World Trade Organization, are geared
to economic
systems that are based on therule of law. Perhaps the international economic
system could have been designed differently, but it is not going to be fundamentally altered in order to accommodate developing countries. Small and
poor developing economies canopt outof the system or can be treated as exceptions, but the nations of East and Southeast Asia are not small and they
are no longer poor. Many of them are among the major trading nations of
the world, and they want and need access to the markets of Europe and
North America. Fairly or not, that access will require the nationsof East and
Southeast Asia to strengthen thedegree to which their economic systems are
governed by transparent laws instead of opaque discretionary actions by
government officials.
Asian values served economic development well for nearly half a century.
They are not likely to serve the region as well in the future. The challenge
now is to complete the processof creating a strong modern economy built on
a foundation of law.
18
Asian Values:
From Dynamos to Dominoes?
L U C I A N W. P Y E
There is no example in history to match the dramatic

reversals in fortune of
the Asian economies during the second half of the twentieth century. Widely
shared views about the fundamental cultural determinants
of the Asian countries have been turned on their heads two times in four decades. First, the
long-established assumption that Asian cultures lacked the capacity
to generate economic growth was dramatically shattered in the 1970s and 1980s by
the emergence of the miracle economies and especially the four little
tigers. As the region became the envyof the developing world, there wasfor
a time much talkabout anAsian model for economic development. But then,
even more suddenly, in the late 1990s there came crises and collapses. First,
Japan went into a severe recession, if not depression, that has lasted a full
decade, and then the Southeast Asian and South Korean economies went
from financial crises to more fundamental setbacks. A decade of hype about
superior Asian values was tellingly deflated.
After a decade of 10 percent annual growth rates, the Asian economies
contracted 15 percent in 1998, their stock markets losing over
half their
value and their currencies 30 to 70 percent of their value. In 1996, some $96
billion in capital had flowedinto thefive countries of South Korea, Thailand,
Malaysia, Indonesia, and Singapore, but in
1997 there was an outflow of
over $150 billion. In one year, Indonesias per capita GNP fell from $3,038
Asian Values
245
to about $600. The International Labor Organization estimated that some

10 million Asians lost their jobs.*
Thus, in a matter of a year, the future of Asian economies became uncertain, and the trumpets heralding the greatness of Asian practices were silenced. Yet the collapse of the miracles should not end the discussion
about Asian values but should ignite a more sober and critical analysis of
the importance of values in producing sustainable economic development.
Instead of the somewhat obnoxious nationalistic chest beating that went
with a great dealof the Singapore and Malaysia versionof the debate over
Asian values, what is now called for is an explanation of how the same set of
cultural values could have produced both the dynamos and the dominoes.
The fact thatAsia could go from the extremes of stagnation to dynamic economic growth and then tocollapse raises a serious challenge as
to the validity
of cultural factors for explaining national development. Clearly, the fundamental cultures did not change.
To examine this significant problem, we need first to expose some of the
exaggerated rhetoric about the supposed superiority
of Asian values and seek
a more realistic understanding of the economic performance of the Asian
countries. We also need to clarify some points in the theories
about Asian
cultures and economic development, including another look
at what Max
Weber had to say about Confucianism and the development of capitalism.
I will then propose two hypotheses that can help explain how the same
cultural values can produce such dramatically different results. The first
is
that the same values, operating, however, in quite different circumstances,
can and usually will produce different
effects. That is, the values of the Asian
cultures have remained the same but the contexts have changed, and hence
what had been positive outcomes became negative ones.
The second hypothesis is that cultural values are always clusters of values
that at different times can be combined in different ways and thus produce
different effects. This is a tricky argument that must be made with care to
avoid the danger of reinforcing the criticism that it is always possible to find
some cultural considerations to explain whatever has happened. Valid explanations require appropriately solid cultural variables, as well as precise
linking of cause and effect.
JUST THE FACTS, NOT THE HYPE
ABOUT MIRACLE ECONOMIES
It is easy to dismiss much of the rhetoric generated in the Asian values debate as just a manifestation of Asian triumphalism in the wake of success,
which may have reflected a need to be heard over the din of the Wests tri-
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CULTURE MATTERS
umphalism about winning the ColdWar. Yet the emergence of the four little dragons and the impending emergence of China as a potential new superpower,allinvaryingdegreesemulatingtheJapanesemodel
of
state-guided capitalism, did provide the basis for claims
of Asian distinctiveness. The combination of economic successes and authoritarian rule clearly
suggested that the Asian countries had hit upon something deserving of attention. The concept of Asian values quickly became a shorthand explanationforeconomicachievementsandajustificationforauthoritarian
governmental practices.
The Asian values debate was further complicated by the fact that, in the
1970s, not just Asians but Westerners got carried away with the vision of
miracle economies in Asia and of a West in decline. There is thus a need to
put into perspective some of the exaggerated claims about how exceptional
the Asian achievements actually were.
First, there was a strange tendency in some quartersto think of Japan, the
leader of the miracle economies, as a Third World country that almost
overnight rose to become the second largest economy in the world. In fact,
Japan began to industrialize with the
Meiji Restoration in the last third
of the
nineteenth century. The United States started
to industrialize at about the
same time. Japan was a significant industrial power by the time of the First
World War and was able to take advantage of disruptions in the European
economies to capture markets for consumer goods and
especially textiles,
first in Asia and Africa and then in Europe andAmerica.
By the 1920s, Japan had the
worlds third largest navy and a merchant marine of equal magnitude. By the late 1930s, its economy was the third or
fourth largest in the world, depending on whether its investments in Korea,
Taiwan, and Manchuria were included. Its prewar auto industry was the
match of most in Europe, and of course it produced a very impressive military airplane, the Zero. Those who see the emergence of a powerful Japan
only in the 1960s tend to forget the
challenge Japan posed in the Pacific War.
The pre-miracle backwardness of other parts of Asia has also been overstated. It has been much
too easy to treat Emperor Qianlong as a buffoon
because of his arrogant letter toKing George 111, declaring that we have never
valued ingenious articles, nor do we have the slightest needof your countrys
manufactures. Yet at the time of his reign, the Chinese economy was in fact
larger than Great Britains. Indeed, before the industrial revolution transformed the world economy, and when agriculture was
still king, the huge
agricultural populations of Asia produced a disproportionate share of the
worlds economic output. At the end of the eighteenth century, Asia as a
whole registered 37 percent of the worlds economic output, and for all the
hype about their miracle economies,
by the mid-1990s Asias share had
Asian Values
247
dropped back to 31 percent. The outlook before the disasters struck was that
Asia would not regain its earlier share until 2010.
What had impressed people in the last few decades was
of course the
growth ratesof the Asian economies. With Asian economies boasting
10 percent rates and the West3 percent or less, Asians were held in awe. Butattention was all on the percentage figures and not on the net growth in absolute
terms. For all the excitement about a decade of 10 percent growth in the
Chinese economy, the fact remains that not during a single year
of that
decade did the growth produce an addition to the Chinese economy that
matched the net growth of the
U.S. economy for thatyear. Thus inevery year
in what was called its decade of growth, China was not catching up but was
actually falling further behind. The inescapable fact of arithmetic is that 10
percent of a $600 billion economy is less than a thirdof 2.5 percent of a $7.5
trillion economy-$60 billion compared to $187.5 billion. The moral is that
focusing on growth percentage figures without regard to the base numbers
can produce seriously false impressions.
I make these points not to belittle the accomplishments of the Asians but
rather to counter a tendency to think in magical terms about miracles. It is
true that there has been a historic transformation in living conditions as
Asian households benefited from the growth rates. For the Chinese, going
from less than $100 per capita income in 1985 to $360 in 1998 has meant
that now there is more than one color television set per household, whereas
then fewer than one infive households owned one; whereas7 percent had refrigeratorsthen, 73 percent do
Therehaveindeedbeenmanifestimprovements in living conditions, and the Chinese are justified in believing
that their childrens future will be brighter still.
WHAT MAX WEBER REALLY SAID
Having clarified the factsto some degree, Inow turn to examine the theoretical considerations in the analysisof the relationship of Asian cultural values
and economic development. As a preface, however, I will review what Max
Weber had to say on that subject. Weber, of course, remains the unsurpassed
master of the cultural origins of capitalism. As everyone knows, he found
those origins in the Protestant ethic, which, on being popularized, has unfortunately come downto little more than aversion of the Boy Scout oath, a banallisting
of suchvirtuesashardwork,dedication,honesty,thrift,
trustworthiness, willingnessto delay gratification, and respect for education.
Weber, in fact, saw the cultural origins of capitalism in far more complex
terms. In particular, he was intrigued with two paradoxes.
24 8
CULTURE MATTERS
The first was the historical fact that monks, devoted solely
to otherworldly
considerations and living totally asceticlives in their monasteries, created extraordinarily efficient organizations for making worldly profits. The second
paradox was that the critical actors in creating capitalism were Calvinists
who believed in predestination and not those Christians who helieved that
virtuous living and good deeds would be rewarded in the hereafter. Weber
recognized that an account book approach to rewards and punishments got
people off too easily, whereas with predestination there was a profound sense
of psychic insecurity that would drive people to grasp for any possible sign
that they might belong among the elect. The key drive was psychic anxiety.
In his detailed analysisof Chinese culture and in his comparison of Confucianism with Puritanism, Weber emphasized the degreeto which the ideal of
the Confucian gentleman stressed adjustment to the outside, to the conditions of the
Confucian
culture
idealized
harmony
without
producing any intense inner tensions or psychic insecurities; none of the problems
with nerves, as Weber puts it,
that Europeans have-a reference to the
problems that Freud analyzed.
Weber goes into great detail describing Chinese character as being well adjusted, as having unlimited patience and controlled politeness, of being
insensitive to monotony and having a capacity for uninterrupted hard
work. But these, he insists, were not the qualities that could spontaneously
produce capitalism. At the same time, Weber was remarkably prescient in
recognizing that they were qualitiesthat could make for great
skill in emulating capitalistic practices. He wrote that theChinese in all probability would
be quite capable, probably more capable than the Japanese, of assimilating
capitalism which has technically and economically been fully developed in
the modern culture area.s
Thus the criticism that the recent economic successes of the Confucian
countries disprove Weber is an incorrect reading of his theories. Weber foresaw that China mightindeed be able to emulate capitalistic practices in time.
In fact in many ways Weber shared the Enlightenments positive
views about
China. The historic fact remains, however, that the Asian successes came
about through access to the world economic system and not as the result of
internal, autonomous developments.
THE PARADOXICAL RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN
CONFUCIAN VALUES AND ECONOMIC BEHAVIOR
Considering the assimilation of capitalism by Confucian cultures, we come

upon some paradoxes that are the match of those in Max Webers theories
about the economic behavior of monks and Calvinists. For example, Confu-
Asian Values
249
cianism formally placed the merchant near thebottom of the social scale, below even the peasant, However, as a consequence of having to live with this
stigma, Chinese merchants had no choice but to excel at making money.
True, they could educate their sonsto pass the imperial examinations and become mandarin officials, but that would mean thesuccessful business would
last only one generation. Otherwise, they had no alternative butto specialize
in a skill that the Confucian mandarin-scholars despised. As marginalized
people in their own society, their situation was somewhat analogous to that
of the Jews in feudal Europe.
A second paradox, and one thatis troubling to Americans raised on Horatio Alger stories extolling hard work as the sure path from rags to riches,
is that Confucianism scorned hard work and all forms of physical exertion
while idealizing leisure and effortlessness. The Confucian gentleman wore
long fingernails to prove that he did not have to work with his hands. Taoism, of course, reinforced this view by elevating to the highest philosophical
level the principle of wu-wei, or non-effort, of accomplishing things with the
minimum expenditure of energy. In Chinese military thinking, the ideal was
to win battles not by exerting prodigious effort but by compelling the opponent to exhausthimself. As far as I know,no other cultureis the match of the
Chinese in idealizing effortlessness and decrying the folly of hard physical
work. For the Chinese, Sisyphus is not a tragedy but a hilarious joke. Certainly in Chinese culture, hard workis not a prime value in itself but only an
imperative dictated by necessity.
Instead of idealizing hard work, Chinese emphasize the importance
of
good luck, the likelihood of which can be increased by proper ritual acts.
Again, it is Taoism with its concept of the Tao, the Way, or the forces of nature and history, that gives a philosophical foundation to the basic Chinese
view that much of life is determined by forces externalto the actorsinvolved.
Some people are more skilled than others in flowing with the current and
thus being blessed with good luck. Others foolishly buck the tide and are
born losers. This stresson good fortune does not, however, produce fatalisa
tic approach to life-there are always things that can be done to increase the
chance of good luck, and if things turn out badly, it was only bad luck, which
it is hoped will change in time.
This stress on the role of fortune makes for an outward-looking andhighly
reality-oriented approach to life, not an introspective one. People need to be
ever alert to exploit opportunistically anything that might improve their
chances for good fortune. This appreciationof the prime importance of external forces makes for extreme sensitivity
to objective circumstances,to the lay of
the land, and to the importance of timing in taking action. The focus of decisionmaking is on judging carefully the situation
and exploiting any advantages.
250
MATTERS
CULTURE
Thus, what might seem at first an otherworldly emphasis on luck has the
paradoxical effect of instilling a vivid appreciation of objective realities. This
orientation has made the Chinese very appreciative of the character and
structure of markets. Markets are not a theoretical abstraction for Chinese
but are vivid and dynamic realities.
This readiness to think in terms of clearly conceptualized markets explains
a critical difference between Chinese and Western capitalism. Western capitalism is technology driven-build a better mousetrap, and people will come
to your doorstep. But the driving force in Chinese capitalism has always been
to find out who needs what and to satisfy that market need. Western firms
seek to improve their products, strengthen their organizational structures,
and work hard to get name recognition. Chinese entrepreneurs try to diversify, avoid getting a reputation for producing just a prime product, and
always be ready to change production in response to what the market wants.
Americans know that they are being flooded by consumer goods from Taiwan and China, butthey do not know the
names of the companies producing
those goods.
Although scorning physical exertion and hard work, Confucianism upheld
the importance of self-improvement, and hence the culture respected achievement motivation. The concept of need for achievement as formulated by
David McClelland describes an important Chinese cultural value. McClelland demonstrated that countries that have had success in development also
rated high in need for achievement, as measured in such ways as the motivationstaughtinchildrensbooks.
Every attempt to measure need for
achievement among Chinese people confirmswhat anygeneral, impressionistic understanding of Chinese culture would suggest-that the Chinese rank
high in such a drive. Chinese children are taught the importance of striving
for success and the shame of not measuring up to parental expectations.
Yet, paradoxically, Chinese culture also stresses the rewards
of dependency, a psychological orientation that goes against the grain of the Horatio
Alger ideal of the self-reliant individual. The paradoxical combination
of
achievement and dependency was centralto the traditional Chinese socialization practices, which sought to teach the child early that disciplined conformity to the wishes of others was the best way to security and that being
different was dangerous. The result was a positive acceptance
of dependency.
The combination of achievement and dependency dictated an implicit goal
of the traditional Chinese socialization process, which was to strive to resolve achievement needs by diligently carrying out the assigned role within
the family, and hence by being properly dependent. On this score, Chinese
and Japanese family norms significantly differed. In China, achievement was
Asian Values
251
rewarded within the family, and the Confucian duties of the sons to the father, and of the younger and older brothers to each other, were lifetime obligations. The tradition was thus inward looking, and there was a basic
instinct to distrust people in the non-family world.6 In Japan, however, the
tests of achievement in both samurai and merchantfamilies were in terms of
competition against outside parties and forces. Moreover, a younger brother
could strike out onhis own; if successful, he become a gosemo-the head of
a new familyline.
The balancing of the need for achievement and the blessings of dependency
is closely related to the operationsof trust and thedynamics of personal relationships that provide the linkagesthat make possible social networks. In the
case of Chinese culture, the bonds of family extend outward to the clan and
then on to more general ties of guanxi, or personal connections based on
shared identities. What is most significant about the Chinese practices of
guanxi for economic development is that parties are expected to share mutual obligations even though they may not personally know each other well.
It is enough that they were classmates or schoolmates, came from the same
town or even province, belonged to the same military outfit, or otherwise
had a common element in their backgrounds. The bases of guanxi ties are
thus objective considerations that others can recognize as existing, not primarily the subjective sentiments of the parties involved.
The comparable Japanese ties of kankei are far more subjective and are
based on deep feelingsof indebtedness and obligation-the importance of on
and giri. Outsiders can assume that two Chinese with a shared connection
will have a guanxi relationship, whereas the Japanese ties depend more on
personal experiences.
THE CULTURAL FACTOR IN ECONOMIC BEHAVIOR
As stated earlier, the central hypothesisof this chapter is that the samevalues
will produce different consequences in different circumstances. The key values of reliance on social networks (guanxi), of taking the long-run view, of
seeking market share rather than profits,of delaying gratification, andof aggressively saving for the future all have different consequences according to
the state of the economy and itslevel of development.
The rules of family trust and of guanxi meant thatin the earlier and more
unstable political environment, Chinese enterprises were largely limited
to
family operations. Distrusting outsiders, family firms could not expand
by
having more branches than they had sons to manage them.8 However, as the
political environment in East and Southeast Asia became more stable, networking rapidly expanded along the lines of guanxi connections. Banking
252
CULTURE MATTERS
operations in theregion in particular tendedto be highly personalizedand to

follow the chain of personal connections. Unger makes the interesting argument that the overseas Chinese practices of networking gave them a form of
social capital that was not thebasis for democracy as Robert Putnams social capital is, but rather a form of social capital that can provide the basis
for economic development. Focusing on Thailand, Unger shows how the
Chinese relied upon their connections to facilitate the flow of capital so as to
make Thailand aneconomic rnira~le.~
Guanxi is also fundamental in explaining the astonishingly rapid expansion of overseas Chinese investments in coastal China. With Deng Xiaopings
opening to the outside world, people from Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the Chinese communities in Southeast Asia went back to their ancestral hometowns
and villages in China,and they were instantly accepted and encouraged
to invest in the developmentof the local economies.Hong Kong people went into
Guangdong, Taiwanese into Fujien, and others into Shanghai to set up joint
ventures, usually with the local political leadership,
for manufacturing export items. The result was the spectacular expansion of village and township
enterprises. The deals were made on highly personalized bases, not legalistic
ones. The overseas Chinese investors sought all manner of favored arrangements, from multiple years of tax exemptions tofixed low wages.
Thus for a time the tradition of informal networking worked wonders in
moving capital rapidly into China for setting up new enterprises far faster
than legalistic contractual negotiations could have. Even foreign bankers
were caught up in the spirit of what they took to be Asian values and were
prepared to make loans based on winks and nods from Chineseofficials. Yet
in time the lackof transparency or firm legal understandings led inevitably
to
crony capitalism and widespread corruption. The lack of legal foundations
for business transactions, which may have facilitated deals when conditions
were good, also meant that there were no clear procedures for handling
bankruptcies if things went bad.
The tradition of networking in Japan set the stage for the pattern of close
informal ties among businessmen, bureaucrats, and politicians that came to
be called Japan Inc. The patterns of mutual obligation and particularistic
ties meant that huge amounts of credit could flow with minimum need for
formal accounting or checks on the soundness of the projects. For a time, it
was assumed that just as long as the state guidance got the prices right,
there was little need to worry about insider dealings and the possibilities for
corruption. But then came the shocks: The Japanese
elite were not as upright
as they had been made out tobe. The practice of close cooperation between
government and business meant that when it came time for the state to engage in greater regulating of financial institutions, it seemed powerless ifi
Asian Values
253
dealing with its former partners.

The practices of networking also encouraged the idea that making shortterm checks on the profitabilityof enterprises was unnecessary. Rather, it was
desirable to take a long view and seek to capture an ever larger share of
the market. The supposed virtue of such long-term perspectives was reinforced by the cultural propensity to see great virtue in delayed gratification
and the willingness to suffer in the short run in the expectation that in time
there would be greater rewards for steadfastness. For a time, when
all the
economies were on the rise, there were benefits to be gained from this approach, and the successesof the Japanese made many Westerners
believe that
the Japanese had hit upon a superior strategy for producing wealth. Consequently, many elsewhere inAsia sought to emulate the Japanese drive to capture market share andto postpone worries aboutprofitability.
In time, however, the approach proved disastrous because indebtedness
piled up, and the compulsive drive to capture a greater share of the market
produced gross excesses in capacity. The lack of transparency and legal
norms in bank lending allowed for huge expansions in loans based on unrealistic expectations of what expanding productionmight bring. It turned out
that the approachprovided no effective checks on whether capital wasbeing
allocated rationally. In industry after industry, surplus capacity became the
norm. It was strange that the world did not
recognize that a crisis was in the
making in 1995 when a leading Korean chaebol declared with exuberant
hubris that it planned to
invest $2.5 billion in a new steel complex, at a time
when the world was already awash in more
steel than it coulduse.
The Western accounting practice of quarterly profit-and-loss statements
provides managers and investors with critical feedback as to whether capital
is being efficiently allocatedand thus provides a steering mechanismto guide
the invisible hand of the market. The combinationof a drive for greater market share aboveall else, a fixation ononly the long run, and the notion that it
is heroic to suffer the pains of delayed gratification-all essential Asian values-inspired economically useful behavior during the initial stages of economic development, but the combination led in time to serious problems of
overcapacity and numerous bubble economies.
Indeed, nearly all the East Asian countries havehad major real estate bubbles. In Japan it was said that real estate prices had reached such ridiculous
heights that the Imperial Palace grounds in Tokyo were worth more than all
the real estate in California. It was not just uninformed people whobelieved
such talk; many supposedly serious Japanese bankers also
believed it. In
Shanghai, cranes were everywhere in the Putung district
putting up skyscrapers-some Chinese liked to say that the crane had become the Chinese na-
254
MATTERS
CULTURE
tional bird. But the buildings finished in

1997 have only 15 percent occupancy, and those finished in 1998 have even fewer tenants. Buildings were
still going up as investors felt that they must take the long view and bravely
suffer the pains of delayed gratification.
Another dramatic example of how a cultural value can operate usefully
under some conditions but then become a source
of disaster is the East Asian
propensity to save. The Chinese have oneof the worlds highest savings rates,
some 30 percent in recent years, providing muchof the capital for economic
growth at the startof the reforms. The state bankswelcomed the flow of savings that grew as prosperity spread, for
they provided the funds necessaryfor
bank lending to the state-owned enterprises (SOEs). But the SOEs have now
become huge white elephants and the state banks have no hope of ever recovering their loans. What keeps the system going is the citizens propensity to save. The banks could no more honor the private accounts
of the
savers than theSOEs could honor their debts. However, as long as the people
have nowhere else to puttheir money, the state banks will getit, and an otherwise failed system will manageto stay afloat.
The same propensity to save initially provided bountiful capital for the
postwar Japanese economic recovery, but what was
a virtue is now making it
hard for Japan toget out of its prolonged recession. Japanese officials find
it
frustratingly difficult to generate a rise in demand that might pull the economy out of its stagnation because the Japanese people, with something of a
peasant mentality, believe that if the times are bad, they should postpone
consumption and increase savings. Even if fiscal and monetary policies are
able to putmore money into peoples pockets, they refuse to spend more and
may even try to save more in anticipation of further troubles ahead.
GETTING THE CONTEXT RIGHT IN

CULTURAL ANALYSIS
Although the story is too complex to tell in this chapter, it is clear that the
ups and downsof the Asian economies have created serious problemsfor the
advocates of Asian values. But these developments do not challenge a more
sophisticatedunderstanding of therelationship of culture to economic
growth. Problems arise when an attempt is made to jump all the way from
generalized cultural characterizations to economic outcomes without taking
into account all the intervening variables and the situational contexts. It is
thus unscientific to try to draw up a universal list of positive and negative
cultural values for economic development. What may
be positive in somecircumstances can be quite counterproductive under other conditions.
Asian Values
255
Moreover, our current state of knowledge leaves us with many mysteries

about the dynamics of economic development. Our theories do not provide
us with sharp enough cause-and-effect relationships
to make it possibleto assign definite weights to specific cultural variables. Leaving aside all the generalconsiderationssuchasgeography,climate,resourceendowment,
capacity of the government, and the wisdom
of its public policies, the general
category of economic behavior is so broad as to make impossible
it
to be rigorous in evaluating the significance of any specific cultural value. Some behavior is tied to individual conduct, such as the initiative essential for
entrepreneurship, while other behavior is more collective, defining the character and structureof the general society. We need to be somewhat humble in
ascribing precise weightsto cultural variables. We know that they are important, but exactly how important at any particular time is hard to judge. We
are dealing with clouds, not clocks, with general approximations, not precise
cause-and-effect relationships.'O
Thus, aswe pull these threadsof analysis together, itis clear that the advocates of Asian values have grossly overstated the wonders
of the Asian
economies and the helplessness of the West. Nevertheless, it is true that Asia
will continue to modernize and, in doing so, will produce forms and practices that are distinctive. This should not be surprising, for the West as the
leader in modernization has not produced a homogeneous culture-there are
dynamic differences among all the leading Western societies. Cultural differences will endure,and in most cases thereis little point in trying to
say which
cultures are superior and which ones
inferior. Their strengths andweaknesses
will be in different areasand will involve different practices. Economic development is not a single event but an ongoing process of history, so there will
be many ups and downs in all countries. Organizational forms that were effective in exploiting one stateof technology can turn out tobe liabilities with
newer technologies.
This having been said, it is true that several of the East Asian economies
haverecoveredmorerapidly
thanmanyexpected,andtherecovery
doubtlessly reflects in part the same cultural factors that contributed to the
rapid growth of recent decades.
19
Multiple Modernities:
A Preliminary Inquiry
into the Implications of
East Asian Modernity
TU W E I - M I N G
Modernity is both a historical phenomenon and a conceptual framework.

The idea of multiple modernities is predicated on three interrelated assumptions: the continuous presenceof traditions as an active agent in defining the
modernizing process, the relevance of non-Western civilizations for the selfunderstanding of the modern West, and the global significance of local
knowledge.
In an exploration of economic culture and moral education in Japan and
the four mini-dragons (Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong, and Singapore),
the continuous relevanceof the Confucian traditions in East Asian modernity
is studied from cross-cultural and interdisciplinary perspectives. Each geographic area is greatly varied and each disciplinary approach (philosophical,
religious, historical, sociological, political, or anthropological) is immensely
complex, and the interaction among them layers the picture with ambiguities. A discussion of them together shows that an appreciationof the Confucian elites articulation and the habitsof the heart of the people informed by
Modernities
2s 7
Multiple
Confucian values is crucial for an understanding of the political economy

and the moral fabricof industrial East Asia.
MODERNIZATION
Historically the term modernization was employed to replace westernization in recognition of the universal significance of the modernizing process.
so
Although the modernizing process originated in Western Europe, it has
fundamentally transformed the restof the world that it must
be characterized
by a concept much broader than geography. Including the temporal dimension in the conception reveals modernization as the unfolding
of a global
trend rather than ageographically specific dynamicof change.
The concept of modernization is relatively new in academic thinking. It
was first formulated in North America in the 1950s by sociologists, notably
Talcott Parsons, who believed that the forces unleashed in highly developed
societies, such as industrializationand urbanization, would eventuallyengulf
the whole world. Although these forces could
be defined as westernization
or Americanization, in the spirit of ecumenicalism, the more appropriate
and perhaps scientifically neutral term wouldbe modernization.
It is interesting to note that, probably under the influence of intellectual
discussion in Japan, the Chinese term for modernization, xiundaihua, was
coined in the 1930s in a series of debates to address issues of development
strategies, organized by the most influential newspaper in China,
Shenbao.
The three major debates, which centered on whether agriculture or industry,
socialism or capitalism, or Chinese culture or Western learning should have
priority in Chinas attempt to catch up with imperialist powers (including
Japan), provide a richly textured discourse in modern Chinese intellectual
history.2 Furthermore, a focused investigation of the Chinese case will help
determine the applicability of the concept of modernization to non-Western
societies.
However, the claim that East Asian modernity is relevant to the modern
Wests self-understanding is built on the assumptive reason that if the modernizing process can assume cultural forms substantially differentfrom those
of Western Europe and North America, it clearly indicatesthat neither westernization nor Americanization is adequate in characterizing the phenomenon. Furthermore, East Asian forms of modernization may help scholars of
modernization develop a more differentiated and subtle appreciation of the
modern West as a complex mixture of great possibilities rather than a monolithic entity impregnated with a unilinear trajectory.
If we begin to perceive modernization from multiple civilizational perspectives, the assertion that what the modern West has experienced must be re-
2s 8
MATTERS
CULTURE
peated by the rest of the world is no longer believable. Indeed,upon scrutiny,

the modern West itself exhibits conflictual and contradictory orientations, a
far cry from a coherent modelof development. The difference between European and American approaches to modernization broadly defined gives ample evidence to the argument for diversity within the modern West. Actually,
three exemplifications of Western modernity-Britain, France,
and Germany-are so significantly different from one another in some of the salient
features of the modernizing process that, in essence, noneof the local knowledge is really generalizable. This by no means undermines the strong impression thatvirtually all forms of local knowledge that canbe generalized, if not
universalized, are Western in origin.
Nevertheless, we are at a critical juncture and must move beyond three
prevalent but outmoded exclusive dichotomies: the traditionavmodern, the
Westfthe rest, and the 1ocaUglobal. Our effort to transcend these dichotomies
has far-reaching implicationsfor developing a sophisticated understanding of
the dynamic interplay between globalization and localization. The case
of
East Asia is profoundly meaningful for this kind of inquiry. I will focus my
attention on Confucian humanism as thebasic value system underlying East
Asian political economy. Let us beginwith a historical observation.
Whether or not Hegels philosophy of history signaled a critical turn that
relegated Confucianism, together with other spiritual traditions in the nonWestern world, to the dawn of the Spirit, the common practice in cultural
China of defining the Confucian ethic as feudalis predicated on the strong
thesis of historical inevitability implicit in the Hegelian vision. The irony is
that the wholeEnlightenment project as capturedby the epoch-making Kantian question, Whatis Enlightenment? was actuallyan affirmation thatcultural traditions outside the West, notably Confucian China, had already
developed an ordered society even without the benefit of revelatory religion.
As understood by contemporary thinkers such asJiirgen Habermas, what
happened in the nineteenth century when the dynamics of the modern West
engulfed the world in a restless march toward material progress was definitely not the result of a straightforward working out of the Enlightenment.
O n the contrary, the perceived Enlightenment trajectory of rationality was
thoroughly undermined by the unbound Prometheus, symbolizing an unmitigated quest for complete liberation from the past and thorough mastery
of
nature. The demand for liberation from all boundaries
of authority and
dogma may have been a defining characteristic of Enlightenment thinking;
the aggressiveattitude toward natureis also a constituent partof the Enlightenment mentality. To the rest of the world, the modern
West, informed by the
Enlightenment mentality, has been characterized by conquest, hegemony, and
enslavement as well as by models of human flourishing.
Modernities
Multiple
25 9
Hegel, Marx, and Weber shared the ethos that despiteall its shortcomings,
the modern West was the only arena of progress from which the rest of the
world could learn. The unfolding of the Spirit, the process of historical inevitability, or the iron cageof modernity, was essentially a European Problematik. Confucian East Asia, the Islamic Middle East, Hindu India, and
Buddhist Southeast Asia were on the receiving end of this process. Eventually, modernization as homogenization would make cultural
diversity inoperative, if not totally meaningless. It was inconceivable that Confucianism, or
for that matter any other non-Western spiritual traditions, could exert a
shaping influence on the modernizing process. The development from traditional to modern was irreversible and inevitable.
In the global context, what some
of the most brilliant minds in the modern
West assumed to be self-evidently true turned out tobe parochial. In the rest
of the world, and definitely in Western Europe and North America, the anticipated clear transition from tradition to modernity
never occurred. As a
norm, traditions continue to exert their presence as active agents in shaping
distinctive forms of modernity, and, by implication, the modernizing process
itself has continuously assumed a varietyof cultural forms rooted in specific
traditions. The recognition of the relevance of radical otherness to ones own
self-understanding of the eighteenth century seems more applicable to the
current situation in the global community than the inattention to any challenges to the modern Western mind-setof the nineteenth century and most
of
the twentieth century. In the twenty-first century, the openness of the eighteenth century as contrasted with the exclusivity
of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries may provide a better guide for the dialogue
of civilizations.
The current debate between the end of h i ~ t o r y and
~ the clash of civilization~~
scratches only the surface of the Problematik I wish to explore.
The euphoria produced by the triumph of capitalism and the expectation
that the liberal democratic persuasion will be universally accepted is shortlived. The emergenceof the global village,at best an imagined community,
symbolizes difference, differentiation, and outright discrimination. The hope
that economic globalization engenders equality, eitherof consequence or opportunity, is simple-minded. The world hasnever been so divided in terms of
wealth, power, and accessibilityto information and knowledge. Social disintegration at all levels, from family to nation, is a serious concern throughout
the world. Even if liberal democracy as an ideal is widely accepted as a universal aspiration by the rest of the world, the claim that it
will automatically
become the only dominant discourse in international politics
is wishful
thinking.
Although the clash of civilizations is based on the sound judgment that
cultural pluralism is an enduring feature of the global scene, it is still rooted
2 60
MATTERS
CULTURE
in the obsolete notion of pitting the West against the rest of the world. The
credible proposition that onlyWestern forms of local knowledge are generalizable, even universalizable notwithstanding, the thesisof Western exceptionalism is defensible. If the clash of civilizations is a strategy of enhancing
the persuasive power of cherished Western values, its goal, in the last analysis, is comparable to the end of history, except for the cautionary note
that, as a process, the initial stage may be wearisome for the advocates of
Western liberal democracy.
In a deeper sense, neither the end of history nor the clash of civilizations
captures the profound concern of modern Western intellectuals. Despite all
of the ambiguities of the Enlightenment project, its continuation is both necessary and desirable for human flourishing. The anticipated fruitful interchange between Habermass communicative rationality and
John Rawlss
political liberalism is perhaps the most promising sign of this endeavor. The
challenges to this mode of thinking indiscriminately labeled as postmodernism are formidable, but this is not the place to elaborate on them. Suffice
it now to mention that ecological consciousness, feministsensitivity, religious
pluralism, and communitarian ethics all strongly suggest the centralityof nature and spirituality in human reflexivity. The inability of our contemporary
Enlightenment thinkers to take seriously ultimate concerns and harmony
with nature as constitutive parts of their philosophizing is the main reason
for them to respond creatively to postmodern critique. Lurking behind the
scene is the question of community. We urgently need a global perspectiveon
the human condition that is predicated on our willingness to think in terms
of the global community.
Among the Enlightenment values advocated
by the French Revolution,
fraternity-the functional equivalent
of community-has received scant attention among modern political theorists. The preoccupation with
establishing the relationship between the individual and the state since
Lockes
treatises on government is of course not the full picture of modern political
thought, but it is undeniable that communities, notably the family, have
been relegated to the background asinsignificant in the mainstream of Western political discourse. Georg Hegels fascination with the civil societybeyond the family and below the state was mainly prompted by the dynamics
of the bourgeoisie, a distinct urban phenomenon threatening to
all traditional communities. It was a prophetic gaze into the future rather
than a
critical analysis of the value of community. The transition from gemeinschaft to gesellschaft was thought to have been such arupture that MaxWeber referred t o universal brotherhood as an outmoded medieval myth
unrealizable in the disenchanted modern secular world. In political and ethical terms, strenuous effortis required for thefamily of nations torise above
ities
Multiple
261
the rhetoric of self-interest to recapture the cosmopolitan spirit of interdependence.

The upsurge of interest in recent decades within North America regarding
community may have been stimulated by a sense of crisis that social disintegration is a serious threatto the well-being of the republic, but the local conditions in the United States and Canada, precipitated
by ethnic and linguistic
conflicts, are visible throughout the highly industrialized, if not postmodern,
First World. The conflict between globalizing trends, including trade,
finance, information, migration, and disease, and localism, rooted in ethnicity,
language, land, class, age, and faith, is not easily resolvable. We are compelled by brutal confrontations as well as encouraging reconciliation around
the world, to transcend the either-or epistemology and to perceive the
imagined global community in a varietyof colors and many shadesof meaning. The case of East Asian modernity from a Confucian perspective helpsus
cultivate a new wayof thinking.
CONFUCIAN HUMANISM
The revival of Confucian teaching as political ideology, intellectual discourse,

merchant ethics, family values,or the spiritof protest in industrial East Asia
since the 1960s and socialist East Asia more recently is the combination of
many factors. Despite tension and conflict rooted in primordial
ties (particularly ethnicity, language, cultural nationalism, and life orientation), the overall pattern in East Asia is integration based on values significantly different
from the Enlightenment mentalityof the modern West.
East Asian intellectuals have been devoted students
of Western learning for
more than a century. In the case of Japan the samurai-bureaucrats learned
the superior knowledge of Western science, technology, manufacturing industries, and political institutions from the Dutch, British, French, Germans,
and, in recent decades, Americans.In similar fashion, the Chinese scholar-officials, the Korean forest intellectuals, and Vietnamese literati acquired
knowledge from the Westto build their modern societies. Their commitment
to substantial, comprehensive, or even wholesale westernization enabled
them to thoroughly transform their economy, polity, and society according
to
what they perceived, through firsthand experience, as the superior modus
operandi of the modern way.
This positive identification with the West and active participation in a fundamental restructuring of ones own world accordingto the Western model is
unprecedented in human history. However, East Asias deliberate effort to
relegate its own rich spiritual resources to the background for the sake
of
massive cultural absorption enhanced the need to appeal to the native pat-
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MATTERS
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tern to reshape what they had learned from the West. This modelof creative
adaptation following the end of the Second World War helped them
to strategically position themselves in forging a new synthesis.
The Confucian tradition,having been marginalized as adistant echoof the
feudal past, is forever severed from its imperial institutional base, but it has
kept its grounding in an agriculture-based economy, family-centered social
structure, and paternalistic polity that are reconfigured in a new constellation. Confucian political ideology has been operative in the development
states of Japan and the four mini-dragons. It is also evident in the political
processes of the Peoples Republic of China, North Korea, and Vietnam. As
the demarcation between capitalist and socialist EastAsia begins to blur, the
cultural form that cuts across the great divide becomes distinctively Confucian in character.
Economic culture, family values,and merchant ethics in EastAsia and cultural China have also expressed themselves in Confucian terms. It is too
facile to explain these phenomena as a postmodern justification. Even if we
agree that the Confucian articulation is but an afterthought, the circulation
of terms such as network capitalism, soft authoritarianism, group
spirit, consensus formation, and human relatedness in characterizing salient features
of
the East Asian economy, polity,and society suggests,among otherthings, the
transformative potential of Confucian traditions in East Asian modernity.
Specifically, East Asian modernity under the influence of Confucian traditions suggests a coherent visionfor governance and leadership:
Government leadership in a market economyis not only necessary
but also desirable. The doctrine that governmentis a necessary evil
and that the marketin itself can provide an invisible hand for
ordering society is antithetical to modern experience, West or East.
A government thatis responsive to public needs, responsiblefor the
welfare of the people, and accountable to society at large is vitally
important for the creation and maintenance
of order.
Although law is essential as the minimum requirement for social
stability, organic solidarity can only result from the
implementation of humane rites of interaction. The civilized mode
of conduct can neverbe communicated through coercion.
Exemplary teaching as a standard of inspiration invites voluntary
participation. Law alone cannot generatea sense of shame to guide
civilized behavior. Itis the ritual act thatencourages people to live
up to their own aspirations.
Family, as the basic unitof society, is the locus from which the core
values are transmitted. The dyadic relationships within the
family,
rnities
Multiple
263
differentiated by age, gender, authority, status, and hierarchy, provide

a richly texturednatural environment for learning the proper way
of
being human. The principleof reciprocity as a two-waytraffic of
human interaction definesall forms of human relatedness in the
family. Age and gender, potentially two of the most serious gaps in
the primordial environmentof the human habitat, are brought into a
continuous flow of intimate sentiments of human care.
Civil society does not flourish because it is an autonomous arena
above the family and beyond the state. Its inner strength
lies in its
dynamic interplay between family and state. The image
of the family
as a microcosm of the state and the idealof the state as an
enlargement of the family indicatethat family stability is vitally
important for thebody politic, and that avitally important function
of the state is to ensure organic solidarityof the family. Civil society
provides a variety of mediating cultural institutions that allow a
fruitful articulation between family and state. The dynamic interplay
between the private and public enables the civil society to offer
diverse and enriching resources for human flourishing.
Education ought to be the civil religion of society. The primary
purpose of education is character building. Intent on the cultivation
of the full person, school should emphasize ethical as well as
cognitive intelligence. Schools should teach theart of accumulating
"social capital" through communication. In additionto the
acquisition of knowledge and skills, schooling must be congenial to
the development of cultural competence and the appreciation of
spiritual values.
Since self-cultivation is the root for the regulationof family,
governance of state, and peace under heaven, the quality
of life of a
particular society dependson the level of self-cultivation of its
members. A societythat encouragesself-cultivation as a necessary
condition for humanflourishing is a society that cherishes virtuecentered political leadership, mutual exhortation as a communal
way of self-realization, the value of the family as the proper home
for learning tobe human, civility as the normal pattern of human
interaction, and education as character building.
CONFUCIANISM AND MODERNIZATION
It is far-fetched to suggest that these societal ideals are fully realized in East
Asia. Actually, East Asian societies often exhibit behaviors and attitudes just
264
MATTERS
CULTURE
the opposite of the supposed salient featuresof Confucian modernity. Indeed,

having been humiliated by imperialism and colonialism for decades, East
Asia now, on the surface at least, blatantly displays some of the most negative aspects of Western modernism with a vengeance: exploitation, mercantilism, consumerism, materialism, greed, egoism, and brutal competitiveness.
Nevertheless, as the firstnon-Western region to become modernized, the cultural implications of the rise of Confucian East Asia are far-reaching.
The modern West as informed by Enlightenment mentality provided the
initial impetus for worldwide social transformation. The historical reasons
that prompted the modernizing process in Western Europeand North America are not necessarilystructural components of modernity. Surely, Enlightenment values such as instrumental rationality, liberty, rights consciousness,
due process of law, privacy, and individualism are all universalizable modern
values, but as the Confucian example suggests, Asian values such as sympathy, distributive justice, duty consciousness, ritual, public-spiritedness, and
group orientation are also universalizable modernvalue^.^ Just as the former
ought to be incorporated into East Asian modernity, the latter may turn out
to be a critical and timely reference for the American way of life.
If Confucian modernity definitively refutes the strong claim that modernization is, in essence, westernizationor Americanization, does this mean that
the rise of East Asia, whichaugurs the adventof a Pacific century, symbolizes
the replacement of an old paradigm by a new one? The answeris definitely in
the negative. The idea of a kind of reverse convergence, meaning that the
time is ripe for Western Europe and North America to look toward East Asia
for guidance, is ill-advised. Although the need for the West, especially the
United States, to transform itself into a learning as well as a teaching
civilization is obvious, what East Asian modernity signifies is pluralism rather than
alternative monism.
The success of Confucian East Asia in becoming fully modernizedwithout
being thoroughly westernized clearly indicates that modernization may assume different cultural forms. It is thus conceivable that Southeast Asia may
become modernized in its own right, without being either westernized
or
East Asianized.The very factthat ConfucianEast Asia has provided an inspiration for Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia to modernize
signifies that
Buddhist and Islamic and, by implication, Hindu forms of modernity are not
only possible but highly probable. There is no reason to doubt that Latin
America, Central Asia, Africa, and indigenous traditions throughout the
world all have the potential to develop their own alternatives to Western
modernism.
But this neat conclusion, resulting from a commitment to pluralism, may
have been reached prematurely. Any indicationthat this is likely to happen, a
nities
Multiple
265
sort of historical inevitability, smacksof wishful thinking. We do nothave to

be tough-minded realists to recognize the likelihood of this scenario occurring. If the First World insists on its right to overdevelop, if industrial East
Asia forges ahead with its accelerated growth,
if the Peoples Republic of
China immerses itself in the four modernizations at all costs, what shape
will the world be infifty years from now? Is East Asian modernity a promise
or a nightmare? One wonders.
The current financial crisis notwithstanding, the surge in the last four
decades of Confucian East Asia-the most vibrant economy the world has
ever witnessed-has far-reaching geopolitical implications. Japans transformation from an obedient student underAmerican tutelage to the single most
powerful challenger to American economic supremacy compels us to examine the global significance of this particular local knowledge. The reform
and open policy of the Peoples Republic of China since 1979 has propelled
it to become a gigantic development state.
Although the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the disintegration of the former Soviet Union signaled the end
of international communism as a totalitarian experiment, socialist East Asia (mainland China, North Korea, and, for
cultural reasons, Vietnam) seems to be in the process of reinventing itself in
reality, if not in name. With thousands of political dissidents in the West and
a worldwide network in support of Tibets independence, Chinas radical
otherness is widely perceived in the American mass media as a threat. It
seems self-evident that since China has been humiliated by the imperialist
West for more than a century, revenge may be Chinas principal motivation
for restructuring world order, Memories of the Pacific theater of the Second
World War and the Korean War, not to mention the Vietnam War, give credence to the myth of the Yellow Peril. The emigration of wealthy Chinese
from Southeast Asia, Taiwan, and Hong Kong to North America, Australia,
and New Zealand further enhances thesense of crisis that there is a Chinese
conspiracy to rearrange power relationships in the global community.
The rise of Confucian East Asia-Japan, the four mini-dragons, mainland China, Vietnam, and possibly North
Korea-suggests that despite
global trends defined primarily in economic and geopolitical terms, cultural
traditions continue to exert powerful influences in the modernizing process.
Although modernization originated from the West, East Asian modernization
has already assumed cultural forms so significantly different from those in
Western Europe and North America that, empirically, we must entertain alternatives to Western modernism. However, this does not indicate thatWestern modernism is being eroded, let alone replaced, by East Asian modernism.
The claim that Asian values, rather than Western Enlightenment values, are
more congenial to currentAsian conditions and,by implication, to the emer-
2 66
MATTERS
CULTURE
gent global community in the twenty-first century is seriously flawed, if not

totally mistaken. The challenge ahead is the need for global civilizational dialogue as a prerequisite for a peaceful world order. The perceived clash of civilizations makes the dialogue imperative.
The paradox, then, is our willingness and courage to understand radical
otherness as a necessary step toward self-understanding. If the West takes
East Asian modernity as a reference, it will beginto sharpen its vision of the
strengths and weaknesses of its model for the rest of the world. The heightened self-reflexivity of the modern West will enable itto appreciate how primordial ties rooted in concrete living communities have helped to shape
different configurationsof the modern experience.
This is a giant step toward true communication between the West and the
rest, without which basic trust and fruitful mutuality across civilizational
lines can never be established. Actually, from the perspective of the global
community, the dichotomy of the West and the rest is unnecessary and undesirable. It is also empirically untenable. The West, as a hegemonic power,has
been tryingto dominate the restby coercion, and therest has fully penetrated
the West as a resultof multiple migration: labor, capital, talent, and religion.
The time is ripe for a dialogue of civilizations based on the spirit of interdependence.
part seven
PROMOTING CHANGE
20
Changing the
Mind of a Nation:
Elements in a Process for
Creating Prosperity
MICHAEL FAIRBANKS
INTRODUCTION:
BLAME THE COW FOR NO PROSPERITY
The Monitor Company worked for the government and private sectorleaders of Colombia to study and provide recommendations on how the leather
producers in that Andean nation could become more prosperous by exporting to the United States. We began in New York City to find the buyers of
leather handbags from around the world, and we interviewed the representatives of 2,000 retail establishments across the United States. The data were
complex but boiled down to one clear message: The prices of Colombian
handbags were too high and the quality was toolow.
We returned to Colombia to ask the manufacturers what lowered their
quality and forced them to charge high prices. They told us, No es nuestra
culpa. It is not our fault. They said it was the fault of the local tanneries
Changing the Mind of a Nation
269
that supplied them with the hides. The tanneries had a15 percent tariff protection from the Colombian government, which made the priceof competing
hides from Argentina too expensive.
We traveled to the rural areas to find the tannery owners. The tanneries
pollute the nearby ground and water with harsh chemicals. The owners answered our questions happily. It is not our fault, they explained, It is the
fault of the mataderos, the slaughterhouses. They provide a low-quality hide
to the tanneriesbecause they can sell the meat from the cow for more money
with less effort. They havelittle concern for damaging the hides.
We went into the campo and found slaughterhouses with cowhands,
butchers, and managers wielding stopwatches.
We asked them the same
questions and they explained that it was not their fault; it was the ranchers
fault. YOU see, they said, the ranchers overbrand their cows in an effort
to keep the guerrillas, some of whom protect the drug lords, from stealing
them. The large number of brands destroys the hides.
We finally reached the ranches,far away from the regional capital.
We had
reached the end of our search because there wasno one left to interview. The
ranchers spoke in a rapid local accent. They told us that the problems were
not their fault. No es nuestra culpa, they told us. Es la culpa de la vaca.
Its the cows fault. The cows are stupid,
they explained. They rub their hides
against the barbed wireto scratch themselves and to deflect the biting flies of
the region.
We had come a long way, banging our laptop computers over washboardsurfaced roads and exposing our shoes to destruction from the chemicals in
the tanneries and mud. We had learned that Colombian handbag makers
cannot compete for the attractiveU.S. market because their cows are dumb.
Many Interpretations of the Problem

There are many different ways to consider the issues faced by our friends in
Colombia. Imagine a macroeconomists interpretation of the blame the
cow story: He might remove the tariff and let the market find a new equilibrium. The nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) might work to upgrade the barbed wire fence, and a business strategist might study and
segment the consumer market. A sociologist might say that the level of interpersonal trust in the community is too low. An anthropologist might say
that they are simplyat adifferent stage in their economic developmentand
should be left alone to progress naturally.
The different interpretations of our experience in Colombia shed light on
the different interpretations of the impediments to creating prosperity. Prosperity, after all, is hard to define. Just as many people would view the cow
270
MATTERS
CULTURE
story in a differentlight, there are many different views on what prosperity

is
and how to create it. To examine this further, I will break prosperity down
into its broad constituents, explain why prosperityis important, and offer elements in a change processfor creating prosperity.
What Is Prosperity?
Prosperity is the ability of an individual, group, or nation to provideshelter,
nutrition, and other material goods that enable people
to live a good life, according to their own definition. Prosperity helps create space in
peoples
hearts and minds so that they may develop a healthy emotional and spiritual
life, according to their preferences, unfettered by the everyday concern of the
material goods they requireto survive.
We can think of prosperity as both a flow and a stock. Many economists
view it as a flowof income: the abilityof a person to purchase a setof goods,
or capture value created by someone else. We use an upgraded notion of income called purchasing power. For example, the per capita income
of Romania is about $1,350, but the purchasing power is almost $3,500 because
the cost of many things is lower than the world market.
Prosperity is also the enabling environment that improves productivity.
We
can therefore look at prosperity as a set of s t o ~ k s I. ~list here seven kinds of
stock, or capital, thelast four of which constitute social capital:
1. Natural endowments such as location, subsoil assets, forests,

beaches, and climate
2. Financial resources of a nation, such as savings and international
reserves
3. Humanly made capital,such as buildings, bridges, roads, and
telecommunications assets
of tangible and
4. Institutional capital, such as legal protections
intangible property, efficient government departments,and firms that
maximize value to shareholders and compensate and train workers
5. Knowledge resources, such as international patents, and university
and think tankcapacities
6 . Human capital, which represents skills, insights, capabilities
of
7. Culture capital, which means not only the explicit articulations
culture like music, language, and ritualistic tradition but also
attitudes and values that arelinked to innovation
Moving away from a conceptualization
of prosperity as simply a flow
of per
capita income enables usto consider a broader systemand the decisions forin-
the
ChangingNation
Mind of a
=7=
vestment in an enriched and enabling high-productive en~ironment.~

Nobel
laureate Amartya Sen suggests that the advantage of a stock view would be to
give us a better ideaof a nations abilityto produce things in the fut~re.~
Why Does Prosperity Matter?
We know that individuals around the world have vastly different purchasing
power, and countries possess stocks of wealth in different proportions. According to Thomas Sowell, We need to confront the most blatant fact that
has persisted across centuriesof social history-vast differences in productivity among peoples, and the economic and other consequences of such differences.6 Recent reports by the World Bank indicate that the standard of
living in many regions in Africa, Latin America,and Asia is threatened by declining productivity.
There are intimate connections between poverty and malnutrition: muscle
wastage, stunting of growth, increased susceptibility to infections, and the
destruction of cognitive capacity in children. Eighty-four percent of all the
children in the world live in poverty, measured as less than two dollars a day
in income per capita. The vast majority
of all the babies in the world are
born into poverty.Life expectancy, literacy, potable water, and infant mortality are correlated with the productivity and prosperityof a nation. In low-income countries, 607 women out of 100,000 died in childbirth in 1990,
whereas in advanced economies only11 out of 100,000 died.
But poverty is more insidious than statistics indicate. Poverty destroys aspirations, hope, and happiness. Thisis the poverty you cant measure but can
feel. There is a rich literature on correlation between higher incomes and
productive attitudes toward authority, tolerance of others and support of
civil liberties, openness toward foreigners, positive relationships with subordinates, self-esteem, senseof personal competence, the disposition to participate in community and national affairs, interpersonal trust, and satisfaction
with ones own life. As an example, symposium participant Ronald Inglehart
writes that higher rates of self-reporting of both objective and subjective
well-being correlate with higherlevels of national prosperity.*
How S h o u l d W e S p e a kAbout Beliefs and Prosperity?

There are segments of each society that hold different beliefs about what
prosperity is and how it is created. Acknowledging and understanding this is
the basis for creating change. In Plowing the Sea-Nurturing the Hidden
Sources of Growth in the Developing World, Stace Lindsay and I developed
several principles relatedto mental models:
272
MATTERS
CULTURE
A mental model consistsof beliefs, inferences, and goals that are

first-person, concrete, and specific. It is a mental mapof how the
world works.O
There are sets of beliefs and attitudes that are either pro-innovation
and create the conditions forprosperity, or anti-innovation. These
beliefs form a mentalmodel.
A mental model can be defined, informed, and tested around a
specific, well-defined objective. Nobel laureateDouglas North
writes that human beings use both . . . mental models . . . and
institutions to shape the performanceof economies.
Finally, mental models can be changed. Although culture involves
the transmission of meaning from one generationt o a n ~ t h e r it
, is
~
unlikely that it is a genetic process.14
Alex Inkeles suggests that across the world there is a general convergence
of actions and beliefs. He states that there is evidence of a strong tendency
for all nations to move toward increasing utilization of modes of production
based on inanimatepower, resting inturn on moderntechnology and applied
science. He suggests that these new productive arrangements create new
institutional patterns and new roles for the individual and also induce . . .
new attitudes and values.

Joseph Stiglitz, former chief economist for the World Bank, writes
that
development represents a transformation of society, a movement from traditional relations, traditional ways of thinking, traditional ways of dealing
with health and education, traditional methods of productions, to modern
ways.6
If such prominent people are making the case, whyis the action agenda of
governments and international institutions so bereft of mental models research? Why are thereso few formal national or regional change processes in
place to change mind-sets? What positionsdo the worlds foremost development institutions take on this? Are they constrained by lack of awareness,
underdeveloped tools, poor internal consensus, political correctness with
shareholders and the press, governance issues, or their own mind-set? Even
Paul Krugman, oneof the most influential economists in the world today, acknowledges that economics is marked by a startling crudeness in the way it
thinks about individuals and their motivations. . . . Economists are notoriously uninterested in how people actually thinkor feel.
After five decades of, in most cases, frustratingly slow development, mental models may offer the best way to understand and attack the problem of
poverty. Symposium organizer Lawrence Harrison suggests that this type of
change will be hard because it requires the capacity for objective introspec-
the
ChangingNation
Mind of a
273
tion and attribution to internal factors that touch on the most

sensitive questions of self-image and respect.18 Inkeles agreesthat introspection is important: It is the mark of a modern nation that itstresses a continuous process
of self-analysis. . [A modern nation] is self-c~rrecting.~
We as practitioners constantly speculate whether prospective client nations-nations that ask for help in improving their economies-can develop
a greater capacity to be self-correcting. To respond to them, we must make
the first of many steps in a change process and ask, What
is the nations
model for creating prosperity?
..
ELEMENTS OF A CHANGE PROCESS
Change is a sloppy process and will never occur in

an easily described sequence. Despite this, people who want to construct their own change will
have to have a schema that is shared and some senseof the components that
are necessary to promote change, as well as a broad scope of skills and insights across many domains.
Leaders of nations from both private and public sectors invite us to help
them improve their economies, specifically their export competitiveness.We
have learned over the last decadethat macroeconomic prescriptionsdesigned
in the political and intellectual capitals of North America and Europe are insufficient. Although the methodologies are complex and draw inspiration
across a varietyof intellectual domains, I will reduce themto ten critical elements and use illustrations from our work in several countries. I will focus
more in this chapteron the first five steps, since they createthe conditions for
understanding steps six throughten.zo
Decode the Current Strategy for Prosperity

Most nations that are not creating wealth athigh
a rate share much in common. Our evidence suggests that they are over-reliant on natural resources,
including cheap labor, and that they believe in the simple advantages of climate, location, and government favor.21Because of this, they often do not
build the capacity to produce differentiated goods and services that create
greater value for demanding consumers who are willingto pay more money
for these goods.
By focusing on these easily imitated advantages, on these lower forms of
capital, they compete solely on the basis of price, which tends to suppress
wages. Keeping wages low is competing to see which country can stay the
poorest the longest. These are exports based on poverty, not on wealth creation. A nations ability to create both price and non-price value for con-
274
MATTERS
CULTURE
sumers inside and outside the country is what determines its productivity,
and therefore its prosperity.22
Countries that are thought to be rich in natural resources are often really
not rich. Venezuela is a country the size of Texas with vast forests, oil reserves, beautiful beaches, and a mix of indigenous groups and peoples from
Spain, Germany, Italy, and the Middle East. Many people believe Venezuela
to be potentially the richest nation in Latin America. However, the purchasing power of its average citizens has declined since the early 1970s. If you
take the 1997oil-based profits of $14 billion and divide them by its population of 21 million people, you will find that the oil income represents less
than two dollars a day in income per citizen. Moreover, these profits are
never distributed equitably: Venezuela possesses the highest rate of poverty
increase on the continent. More than 90 percent
of the countrys exports consist of unprocessed natural resources. Our research suggests that the more a
nation exports in naturalresources, the less prosperity it creates for its average citizens.
A look at the seven forms of capital mentioned above points to the fact
that Venezuela is rich in natural endowments, and when commodity prices
are high, the country is temporarily cash rich. However, the country has decaying transportation and communications infrastructures that peaked in
quality in the late 1970s, government institutions that are inefficient and corrupt, and university-private sector relationships that do not create knowledge capital. With respectto human capital,Venezuela suffers from some of
the lowest standards for primary and secondary education on the continent.
Finally, someVenezuelanvaluesandattitudesareanti-innovationand
progress resistant. For example, trust and respect for national leaders is the
lowest that we have ever tested. Venezuela has been victimized by its spurious success, its overabundance of natural resources, and its failure to learn
how tomake tough choices and innovate.
Create a Sense of Urgency

Some nations are ready for change and others are not. What would create
enormous urgency for some people does not create enough urgency for others. A sense of urgency is created when there is a gap between expectation
and reality. The expectation is informed and placed in perspective by knowledge of outside events and asense of purpose.
One African country I know is less open to change than it shouldbe. This
nation is one of the highest per capita debtors in the world. It has
been given
or has borrowed $8 billion since 1991, and theper capita standard of living
has declined 4 percent a year over the same time span. Three
out of every ten
Mind
the
ChangingNation
of
27s
people test positive for the H N virus. The traditional export industry lies in
ruins, a victimof under-investment, declining consumer demand,and competition. Seven out of ten people live on less than one dollar aday.
When I discussed their under-funded AIDS prevention program with them
and asked what they need to do about the spread
of HIV, one cabinet member
said, We are telling the people to stophaving sex. When I suggested
that we
look at some of the things that Uganda is accomplishing, they told me that
they were not interested in Uganda for they, not Uganda, had possessed the
third highest standard of living in Africa twenty-five years ago. They suggested that their cabinet had lawyers and accountants in it, and they did not
have to go back to school to learn what other nations were doing. They
criticize the World Bank and IMF in the press, blame their problems on outside
events like legacy of apartheid in the region and the war in Angola. Their plan
is to move into exporting maize, in which they would have a natural advantage, and tocontinue borrowing from the World
Bank. This year they haveto
use more than half their allotmentof almost $400 million to repay old loans.
One might attribute their behavior to fatalism, a
reverence for the past
when things were better, blind pride, and an accompanyinglack of openness
that stands in the way of learning and innovation. One thingis certain: This
country is doomed to more failure until the human crisis grows and forces
them to reflect on the deep-rooted impediments to their
productivity.
Understand the Rangeof Strategic Choices and

Inform Them withAnalyses
Many of the choices available to firms and governments can be reduced to
the following categories:
Micro Choices. Business strategy is based on an integrated set of choices
designed to achieve a specific set of objectives in an informed and timely
manner. In developing nations we see few company strategies that are informed by good research, made explicit,and shared by corporate leaders. We
have found seven patterns of uncompetitive behavior at the microeconomic
level: over-dependence on natural resources and cheap labor; poor understanding of foreign customers buying preferences; lack of knowledge of
competitor activities; poor inter-firm cooperation; lack of forward integration into global markets; a paternalistic relationship between government
and the private sector; and defensiveness in government, the private sector,
the unions, and the media.
These seven patterns are the norm for companies in countries where the
average citizen doesnot have a highand rising standard of living. The results
276
MATTERS
CULTURE
of these seven patterns are simple exports that compete on price-and low
wages-in an increasingly demanding marketplace that provides fewer returns.
To mitigate patterns of uncompetitive behavior requires a set of firm-level
choices around structuring new learning and decisionmaking. Inside such
patterns lies a hidden opportunity for creating
prosperity.
Macro Choices. The second choice is the extent to which government supports the private sector. Some say that government needs to do more for the
private sector, and some say government needs to get out of the way. If we
characterize government choices around thelevel of intervention in the economy, we find a broad range of choices between classic socialism and monetarism. In Cuba, the government has become over-responsible for the welfare
of the average citizen, supplying housing, health care, education, jobs, food,
and even entertainment and news. Ownership is by the state through collectives and is accompanied by centralized planning that uses quantitative targets and administrative prices. Income distribution tends to be even, and
growth tends tobe low.
The monetarist approachis a sparse but rigid social contract between government and the private sector, which in effect says that government will create
stable
a macroeconomic
environment,
and
the
private
sector
entrepreneurs will create growth. This strategy emphasizes stabilizing markets, freeing wagesand currency exchange rates, and allowing marketsto develop. This strategy appears to create more poverty and greater gaps in
income, especially in the near term. It fails to acknowledge that the government has a role in the innovation process.is,It we believe, an overreactionto
the failed policies of government intervention (e.g., the import substitution
that wasso popular in Africa and Latin America in the 1970s and 1980s).
Our view differs from both these national strategies. We believe that government needs to do everything it can to help the private sector succeed, except to impede competition. This means investing, or helping the private
sector to invest, in the higher forms of capital. In poorer countries, government will have to do more than in richer countries. The relationship has to
be specially designed, based on a nation's stage of growth and the capacities
of each sector.
Create a Compelling Vision

A vision servesto create a senseof purpose that encourages people to change
their actions. The following eight core elements of a good mental model
emerged from our work with theleaders of Uganda.
Changing the Mind of a Nation
277
1. A high and rising standard of living for all Ugandans.

costs
2. An understanding that the world has changed dramatically: the
of communications, transportation, and learning are declining
rapidly.
3. An acknowledgment that Ugandais over-dependent on the basic,
highly imitatable advantagesof subsoil assets, climate, government
favors, and cheap labor.
4. An understanding that wealthis based on insight, sophisticated
human capital, and attitudesfocused on competition as a force that
spurs innovation and fosters humaninitiative, learning,
interpersonal trust, and cooperation.
5. An understanding that Ugandas strategies are not a choice between
economic growth and social equity, but that economic growth
facilitates social equity and vice versa. The more we invest in people
the better the chances for growth for a company and the nation.
6. An understanding that productivityis not just competing on the
things with which Uganda is naturally endowed. Competitivenessis
productivity, and productivity involves what product segments we
want tocompete in, where we chooseto compete, and how we
choose to compete.
of Uganda must do
7. An acknowledgment that the government
everything it can toassist the private sector, exceptto impede
competition. It must invest in people, specialized infrastructure,
learning organizations, and a non-defensive dialogue with the
private sector, political opposition, unions, and other nations.
8. An understanding that the privatesector in Uganda needsto invest
more in learning about customer
preferences, knowledge of
competitor activities, new distribution channels, and investingin the
improvement of its people and products.
These core elementsof a vision needto be embraced by developing nations
as they seek to upgrade their economies and create more prosperity for more
people.
Create New Networksof Relationships

After twelve years of civil war, Salvadorans are boldly dedicating themselves
to building new networks as part of a national change process between the
producers and foreign consumers within the country, and between themselves and their emigrant cousins in the United States. Ornamental-plant producers have traveled to Florida and the Netherlands to meet with and learn
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about their distribution channels. Honey producers have undertaken surveys

to learn about their German customers.
Even some of the coffee growers, the
oldest exporters and those most entrenched in the old ways of doing things,
show signs of trying new things. They are beginning to work in eco-friendly
coffee and, with other Salvadoran industries, are testing the market for such
innovative products as coffee tourism.
The government has institutionalized the National Competitiveness Program and has trained facilitators to teach small and medium-sized exporters
to develop business strategies. The government is investing in education networks, building an Internet program in rural areas, and providing some
of
their best university students with software training in India. The government and private sector are reaching out with conferences and through the
Internet to the prosperous emigrant community network in the United States,
inviting them t o be business partners who will bring access t o markets,
knowledge, technology, and capital.
The leaders of El Salvador understand that communication-between
rural areas and the capital, between their companies and foreign consumers, and between the nation and the emigrant community-creates
more rapid flows of insight and forms the basis of their competitiveness
and prosperity.
Cornrnmicate the Vision

Nations have to use all available means to change minds: electronicand print
media, billboards, speeches by leaders, conferences, workshops, databases,
and Web sites. The diffusion and adoption of new ways of thinking will take
a predictable course.
We are mindful that the innovators are often not the principal agents of
change. In fact, the early adopters often serve as role models for most of the
rest of the nation. In our work,we look to champions who arehighly receptive to doing things in new ways and can articulate and embody the new
ideas of competitiveness, productivity, and prosperity. We have found that
the people who are mosteffective in thispart of the diffusion process are not
the typical leaders with high status, but thosewho have internalized the ideas
of competitiveness and innovation and can transmit them to domestic networks. We met and trained a coffee grower in El Salvador, who spoke to the
entrenched elites in that sector. We found an imaginative taxi driver in
Bermuda to work within the highly fragmented taxi community to create a
new taxi-touring product. Their main objective was
to demonstrate innovativeness.
the
ChangingNation
Mind of a
279
Build Productive Coalitions

Many social scientists believe that practicing change stimulates the development of a new mental model. We therefore have promoted weekly meetings
to stimulate strategic thinking within clusters
of related industries. We
worked with the group that blamed theCOWin workshops designedto improve interpersonal trust and seek a common strategic vision. By practicing
productive reasoning techniques, we have created some of the conditions
for group problemsolving when difficultand contentious issues arose.23
We have encouraged hotel managers and unionized employees in a hotel
industry to focus on new segments of customers to serve. We have encouraged the purchasers of state-owned enterprises and small vendors to streamline andsharetheformersstrategyplan.Andwehaveworkedwith
government ministries and agricultural producers who had fought aggressively over the nations macroeconomic agenda. These experiments in
productive reasoning have led to pilot programs with specific objectives and
well-thought-out metrics of success.
Develop and Communicate Short-Term Wins

People are more likely to change their attitudes and behavior when they see
demonstrations of success. Politicians understand this well and are particularly attracted to this part of the process. In any change effort, we need
to
find examples in which good things happened because
of the new vision.
Some examples of success might include a newproduct development, a large
overseas saleto new customers, or anagreement between union and management for new investment in training or improvement in working conditions.
Although short-term winsdo notneed to be large, they need to be communicated in the contextof a new wayof doing things.
Institutionalize the Changes

Douglas North writes that institutions are norms.24 Change needsto create
new norms of behavior. We look ilot to creating new institutions but to upgrading existing institutions that have reached their functional limits due to
globalization, changes in how prosperity is created, and worldwide shifts in
values and attitudes. This means everything from improving the rule of law
and building democracy to upgrading schools, private firms, and civic organizations.
For example, we helpedan industry association changeitself from a lobbying group that fights the government to an organization that does manage-
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ment education, fosters research and development, informs small enterprises,

and supports market studiesof foreign customers.
Evaluate and Affirm the Changes

Finally, we need to create the space for nations to be introspective and
to selfcorrect. We need to create national summits and other venues with leaders
of
the public, private, civic, and academic sectors. These venues could allow
leaders to discuss the economic and social results that the nation is experiencing, as well as the strategies, institutional mechanisms,
and mental models
that caused these results. Specific questions could include,What quantitative
metrics can we use? What are our non-quantifiable objectives? What tools
can we improve to evaluate ourselves? What kind of change can happen
soon, and which kinds willbe intergenerational?
Our strategy for change and creating prosperity in nations should meet the
tests of actionable strategy: It should balance the past with the future,be explicit and shared, be informed with analyses, be basedon an integratedset of
choices, and help the people become who they want to be.
CONCLUSION
Most people believe that prosperity is a good thing. They also know that is
it
hard toachieve. Only a handfulof the worlds two hundred nationshave discovered how to do it for the majority of theircitizens. Even if the messages
on how to create prosperity were simple and clear, it would not be for any
outsider to tell nations and peoples to change. Questions of the competence,
moral authority, and intentions of outsiders can justly be raised.zs However,
those of us who are interested and informed on these issues have an obligation to demonstrate to the leaders of nations that prosperity is a choice26
and to clarify what those choices and trade-offs mightbe.
After a half century of focus on economic development, now is the time to
move away from simple normative frameworks, top-down recommendations, a narrow conceptualization of prosperity, and metrics of performance
based almost solely on national quantitative aggregates. Now is the time for
concerted national and regional initiatives that change mental models. Now
is the time to focus on the microeconomic foundations of prosperity and to
diffuse innovativeness.
Howard Gardner makes a distinction in
his writing between the direct
leaders of organizations and people and the indirect leaders who create learning and shape opini~n.~
In the Cultural Values and HumanProgress Symposium we had a board member and a country director from the World Bank
the
Changing
Mind of a Nation
281
and the deputy administrator of USAID. These are leaders who allocate major resources to the problemof development. We also have among us some of
the most eminent thinkers from the domains
of economics, anthropology,
political science, and public policy, who have opined onsuch diverse and relevant topics as trust, firm-level competitiveness, gender equality, and early
childhood development.
We see poverty in the endless stream
of social and economic indicators and
other abstractions that come across our desks and pop onto our computer
screens every day.Then there is the poverty that moves you when you meet a
bright Indian boy from a low caste who will not attend school. There is the
poverty that physically threatens you with a machete against your throat on
the streets of Nairobi. And there is the poverty that sickens you when you
meet an adolescent living on the streets of Bogota who lost her fingers and
toes to hungry rats when she was abandoned as an infantin the ancient dank
system of sewers.
Haunted by these images and inspired by the contributors to this volume,
we wonder if some of the social and political problems in theGreat Lakes region of East and Central Africa, or the Balkans, are linkedto issues of prosperity. Instead, we must consider how the current political and military
solutions in those regions can be supplemented, or even substituted, with a
holistic change process.
Although every contributor shares a commitment to make lives better
around the world, most of us are commenting from a point of view that is
strongly guided by our professional specialty and our job description, as
well
as our own mental model. Our challenge is not unlike that of the experts
who would attempt tofix the blame the cow story: How to merge one set
of insights with another, to begin to create a locally owned process for
change in developing nations that is so thoughtfully integrated, well guided,
and productively discussed that it begins to put nations and peoples on the
path to high and rising prosperity. So far, the world has not seen anything
like it.
21
Culture, Mental Models, and
National Prosperity
STACE LINDSAY
Culture is a significant determinant of a nations ability to prosper because

culture shapes individuals thoughts about risk, reward, and opportunity.
This chapter argues that cultural values do matter in the process of human
progress because they shape the way individuals think
about progress. In
particular, cultural values matter because they form the principles around
whicheconomicactivity
is organized-and withouteconomicactivity,
progress is not possible.
The global economy of the twenty-first century offers both unprecedented
opportunity for the creation
of prosperity throughout the world and a potential threat to centuries of cultural traditions in all parts of the world, a tension that is captured in the following anecdote. AfterI gave a speech recently
on economic competitiveness to a group of government and business leaders
in Ghana, a young man approachedme to ask if my speech implied that his
culture had to change in order for his countryto succeed in the global economy. He pointed out that in his ethnic group, tradition required a high degree of respect for the elders, and many of the elders in his village did not
want the young leaders to become too involved in the affairs of national
business.
His questionbrings to light a compellingissue: Will individuals in developing countries have to change their cultural heritage in order to participate
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more meaningfully in the global economy? Is it possible for a region to preserve its history and integrity-and to honor its local cultures-and still be
globally competitive?
These are questions that many of the contributors to this volume have
asked, questionsto which there areno clear answers. Understanding eitherof
the dominant themes of this volumeculture or human progress-is a difficult challenge. To understand them and to integrate them is difficult in the
extreme.
Contributors David Landes, Michael Porter, and Jeffrey Sachs have raised
important questions about the role of other variables that affect economic
development, such as government policy, geography, and disease. Others
have discussed the importance of culture in shaping attitudes about work,
trust, and authority-all of which influence human progress. Yet a fundamental question remains: How can one help foster the changes necessary to
create steadily rising standards of living in the developing world? Furthermore, as Richard Shweder asked, would doing
so threaten the integrityof the
culture in question? Would it limit our ability to have other cultures illuminate our own?
As consultants, my colleagues at Monitor Company and I have invested
considerable effort in advising business and government leaders on how to
create more competitive economies.We have tried to do so in a manner that
is respectful of local heritages and institutions. Time and again, we have
made strong arguments for the
need to changespecific policies, strategies, actions, or modes of communication. For the most part, the leaders with whom
we have had the privilege of working have acknowledged the validityof our
perspective. We have learned, however, that good answers to the pressing
questions of economic development are not sufficient
to engender the change
needed to reverse the tides of poorly performing economies. Individuals will
often accept intellectual arguments, understand their needto change, and express commitment to changing, but then resort to what is familiar. This tendency to revert to the familiar is not a cultural traitper se, but it is indicative
of some of the deeper challenges faced by those who wish to promote a different, more prosperous visionof the future.
Economic progress depends on changing the way people think about
wealth creation. This means changing the underlying attitudes, beliefs, and
assumptions that have informed the decisions made by leaders that result in
poor economic performance. In his remarks, Howard Gardner referred
to
the tendency of cognitive scientists to try to understand the mental representations that individuals use to make sense of the world. This is where one
must start if one wants to create lasting change. Peter Senge, among others,
hascalledtheserepresentations"mentalmodels,"whichhedefinesas
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deeply ingrained assumptions, generalizations, or even pictures or images

that influence how we understand the world and how we take action.
Many contributors to this volume have pointed out that the unit
of
analysis for the question of cultural values and economic progress is not
clear. Should it be groups of nations with similar religious heritage, individual nations with distinct historical and cultural values, or perhaps different
communities within nations that are bound together
by common beliefs?
Robert Edgerton writes that there can be one economy but many cultures.
Relying on broad attributions about religious beliefs or other broad cultural characteristics to explain economic performance does not help the productive dialogue about culture. As Mariano Grondona remarked, scholars
have used Confucianism to first explain Asias failure, then its success, and
then its crises. Although discussions of the impact of Catholic versus Protestant work ethics may yield interesting observations, they are too abstract to
be of use for creating change. And there are always exceptions-highly productive, successful Catholics in progress-resistant cultures and highly unsuccessful Protestants in progress-prone cultures.We must develop more clarity
about the unitof analysis.
Applying the filter of mental models to the task of understanding cultures
influence on prosperity is a helpful exercise. Mental models are the underlying beliefs that influence the way people behave. Cultureis a broader, macrolevel variable. Mental models are a micro-level variable. Mental models
apply t o individuals and groups of individuals-and are identifiable and
changeable. Culture reflects the aggregation of individual mental models and
in turn influences the types of mental models that individuals have. The two
are linked in a perpetually evolving system.
The real point of leverage in creating change may well be helping
to
change mental modelsat the individual level, beginning with the way individuals think about wealth creation. There
is an important relationshipbetween
mental models and prosperity, one that does notnecessarily forcethe homogenization of global culture. To understand this relationship, it willbe helpful
to present a brief summary of the challenges of national prosperity.
THE CHALLENGE OF NATIONAL PROSPERITY
The Engines of Growth

The broad objective of this volumeis to explore the relationship between cultural values and human progress. In the following discussion, it is assumed
that economic progress is fundamental to human progress. The perspectives
shared relate to challenges that leaders in the developing world face to foster
National
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and
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2 85
economic growth and development. Economic growth

is indispensable because other forms of human progress (e.g., health, education, infrastructure)
depend on productiveeconomic activity. The questionbecomes one of understanding what the engines of economic growth in an economy are and how
they work, and, ultimately, of how best to encourage the productive use of a
nations resources to create the opportunity for human progress.
This leads to a second assumption. I believe that successful businesses are
the engines of growth, for it is at the level of the individual business that
wealth creation occurs. Products are created, services are provided, productivity is enhanced, wealth is generated. Without businesses there will be no
economic progress, and without economic progress there will be no human
progress. These assumptions lead to the following syllogism:
Human progress broadlydefined is not possible without economic
growth.
Successful businesses are the enginesof economic growth.
Therefore, successful businessesare a necessary precondition for
human progress.
Given these assumptions, the focus quickly turns to a discussion of what
makes for successful businesses and how these types of businesses can be
fostered.
Comparative Advantage and Competitive Advantage

Research by Jeffrey Sachs and by the Monitor Company into the economic
performance of nations throughout the world hasrevealed that nations having the greatest abundance of natural resources tend to perform more poorly
than those that do not have an abundance of natural resources.2 Although
comparative-advantage theory would hold that countries with unique comparative advantages should specialize in their areas of strength, nations that
are rich innatural resources and focus on selling those resources in the global
marketplace tend to be the poorest on a per capita basis.
The reason for the relativelypoor performance of natural resource-rich nations is that natural resources tend to be commodity products, and producers
have little control over the prices be
to charged. In fact, commodity prices have
been steadily declining in real terms for the past twenty-five years.
As a result,
many nations are actually exporting a greater volume
of material but are earning less real money for theirefforts. In todays globaleconomy, a comparative
advantage in natural resources doesnot assure economic prosperity.
The same holds true for nationsjockeying to take advantage of their comparative advantage in inexpensive labor. When a nations firms develop ex-
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port strategies based on low labor costs, they create a self-fulfilling cycle. In
order to compete in their chosen segments, they must keep labor costs at a
minimum. It therefore becomes impossible for them
to increase salaries,for if
they do, they will find themselves with uncompetitive products. If this happens, they will eithergo out of business or look to set up operations in neighboring countries thathave even lower wage rates.
Both of these examples-natural resource-based strategies
and inexpensive labor-based strategies-can be characterized as comparative-advantage
strategies. Both have proven themselves incapableof creating high andrising
standards of living.
Clearly there are many other factors that determine the abilityof a nation
to succeed, for example, stable macroeconomic environments, transparent
and efficient government institutions, adequate infrastructure, an educated
workforce, quality health care. Although these themes have received extensive analysis, research on what is necessary to create success at the firmlevel
in the developing world is relatively sparse.
For the past twenty years, Michael Porter has written extensively about
competitive advantage at thelevel of the firm, the region,and the nation, and
his research has provoked a deeper look at the microeconomic variables that
influence success. In the 1998 Global Competitiveness Report, he developed
the microeconomic competitiveness index, which measures the quality of
the competitive environment in a given nation.He notes:
There is a growing consensus that a macroeconomic policy involving prudent
government finances, a moderate cost of government, a limited government role
in the economy and openness to international markets promotes national prosperity. Yet a stable political context and sound macroeconomic policies are necessary but not sufficientto ensure a prosperous economy. As important-or even
more so-are the microeconomic foundations of economic development, rooted
in firm operating practices and strategies as well as inthe business inputs, infrastructure, institutions and policies that constitute the environment in which a
nations firms compete. Unless there is appropriate improvement at the microeconomic level, political and macroeconomic reform will not bearf r ~ i t . ~
Given the growing consensus about the foundations of macroeconomic
management, and the emerging understanding
of the microeconomic foundations of competitiveness, the question arises, Why is creating change so difficultinunder-performingeconomies?
Is it necessary t o haveastable
government, a sound economy, and a strong microeconomic foundation before a nation can experience significant gains? Clearly, that would be ideal.
But economic developmentis often a chicken-and-egg phenomenon.Business
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287
leaders will argue that they cannot develop better strategies until the government gets its act together, and government leaders will argue that they cant
take any significant steps until the business community demonstrates its willingness to compete and notseek protection from competition.
Prosperity requires that the foundationsbe in place but that a competitive
mind-set that fosters innovation and productivity in the national economy
also exist.
The Need for a Competitive Mind-set

Our experience advising businessand government leaders has been that finding answers to the strategic problems they face is not that difficult, even in
environments that are suffering from poor government policies and inadequate infrastructure. The difficulty is in changing the way that people think
about their business problems. There is a legacy of comparative advantage
thinking-often embedded in institutions, laws,
and policies-throughout
much of the developing world, a legacy that has made it very difficult for
leaders to make different choices.
The following list summarizes some of the patterns of thought we have observed in businessand government leaders throughout the developing world.
The column on theleft is a firm-level adaptation of progress-resistant characteristics in the typologies of Mariano Grondona and Lawrence Harrison.
The column on the right represents their corresponding progress-prone
characteristics.
Comparative Advantage and Competitive Advantage
Progress-Resistant Characteristics
Protected markets
Macroeconomic focus
Access to leaders
Focus on physical/financial capital
Hierarchy and rigid organizations

Economies of scale
Dependence on foreign partners
Reactive approach
Government as master strategist
Redistribution of wealth
Paternalism
Progress-Prone Characteristics
Globalization and competition
Microeconomic focus
Firm-level productivity
Focus on humadknowledge
capital
Flexible meritocratic
organizations
Flexibility
Migration strategies
Proactive approach
Shared vision and collaboration
Creation of wealth
Innovation
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To repeat, there are many real political and physical barriers to changing
the way firms compete, such as poor national economic performance, poor
infrastructure, and lack of skilled workers. However, business leaders no
longer have the luxury of waiting for the national infrastructure to improve
before changing the way they think about competition and business strategy.
If they cannot begin to find innovative business solutions to their problems,
there will be no improvement for the nation as a whole. Ideally, both would
work together to create a dynamic
system of mutual improvement.
Economic Growth and Social Equity

The current model of competition throughout much of the developing world
creates a vicious cycle. Firms compete on the basis of inexpensive labor and
abundant natural resources. This traps them in commodity businesses, where
it is very difficult to earnhigh margins. Without high margins, however, they
are unable to make significant investments in human capital; and without
significant investments in human capital, they are unable
to create deeper
sources of innovation.
But there is also a virtuous cycle of economic growth andsocial equity on
a sustainable basis. In this virtuouscircle, firms take the initiativeto develop
more complex business products and more sophisticated business strategies.
These will help create higher-margin businesses, which provide the fuel
to
make more investments in the workforce. A more
highly educated workforce stimulates a higher rate of innovation, and higher rates of innovation
yield the ability to sell increasingly complex goods and services. Seeing the
world in this way makes itpossible to think of developing sustainable competitive advantages and overcoming centuries of static comparative advantage.
Although this model makes intuitive sense, persuading business and government leaders to change the existing patternsof competition has proven to
be quite difficult. Michael Fairbanks and I have spent much
of the past
decade trying to encourage government and business leaders to adopt policies andstrategiesthatpromotethecreation
of sustainablebusiness
growth-to move away from the illusory advantagesof basic-factor thinking
to competitive-advantage thinking. Our experience has led us to the conclusion that business and government leaders consistently fall into strategic and
behavioral patterns that inhibit their ability to create more complexsources
of advantage, and thus sustainable success in the global economy:
Strategic Patterns
Over-dependence on basic factors
Poor understanding of customers
Behavioral Patterns
Lack of cooperation
Defensiveness
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289
Poor
understanding of relative
position
Paternalism
Lack of vertical integration
Efforts to alter these patterns of behavior in nations throughout the
world have convinced us that these microeconomic problems are rooted in
the culture. Although the strategic patterns should be resolvable through
the power of analysis, good business practices, and a commitment to learning, the behavioral patterns are much more difficult see,
to understand, and
change.
These patterns help explain why some firms are unable
to become globally
competitive. What is not clear is why these patterns repeat themselves in
countries of widely differing political, economic, social, and cultural heritages. The macroeconomic variables that affect developing nations are quite
different, but the microeconomic patterns are strikingly similar.
This observation illuminates the link between culture and economic competitiveness. The way people think about business, economics, or competition shapes the qualityof the strategic choices they make.
Understanding the Way

Leaders Think
One approach to understanding why business leaders organize their companies and strategies in the way they do is to understand how they think about
and respond to the pressing issues theyconfront on adaily basis. One way to
do this is to try to understand a nation by how its constituent groups think
about thecritical issues of the day.
National Surveys. Starting in 1992, a small team from the Monitor Company began an ongoing effort to advise business and government leaders
throughout the developing world on how to improve the competitiveness of
their industries. Our efforts to alter these patterns began with initiatives
aimed at government policy andfirm-level strategy.What wecame to realize,
however, was that the prevailing policy environments and the prevailing
strategies-in-use were not so much the cause of the patterns we observed as
the result of the way that people thought about wealth creation. Thisled us
to develop a series of survey instruments to learn how key constituents
thought about wealth creation.We began this effort in Colombia with a survey administered to approximately four hundred government and business
leaders. The survey was designedto measure the way thatleaders in both the
public sector and private sector felt about different dimensions of the political, economic, and social problems they faced in their country.
Our goal was
to identify a number of the critical issues that would enable us to focus on
fostering a broadly shared vision for the nation.
.#
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We began our research by simply measuring differences in attitudes about

key national issues. We developed a survey instrument designed
to show
where there was a shared vision and where there was not.We found, for example, that there was ahigh degree of consensus on issues that many leaders
did not consider to be very important to the nation, such as bilateral trade
agreements and export promotion. We also found a very low degree of consensus on issues that the leaders felt were very important, such as exchange
rates and inflation control. Although this typeof research provided some insight, it did not point toward a path to change. To make this analysis more
likely to facilitate change, we decided to segment our results not by national
issues but by organizational affiliation, with an eye toward using the data to
encourage individual organizations to change.
Since we had observed a high degree of defensiveness in government officials and business leaders, we reasoned that it would be helpful to develop
explicit data that helped inform the national debate. We believed that if we
could identify the critical areas of discord, we could develop a process to
forge a shared vision inthe private and public sectors
to enable them to work
together for a more competitive Colombia.
We found, for example, that contraband control was
very important to the
textile industry, whichwas fighting a surge inillegal imports, but of relatively
little importance to other industries or to governmentleaders. Inflation control was of critical importance to the flower sector but was not ascritical to
the leather industry. We then promoted seminars with these individual leaders to try to get across the
idea that the comparative-advantage paradigms
so
prevalent in their beliefs were actually a critical impediment to their becoming competitive.
This effort resulted in a better understanding
of how different opinions
about key issues inhibitedthe evolution of a shared vision. This demographic
segmentation was useful, but it did not create the insights that would precipitate change. Differing opinions about political and macroeconomic issuesas important asthey are-do not explain firm-level behavior.
We did discover, however, that there were striking differences between
leaders in different cities, not just between leaders in industry and government. This realization led us to an in-depth investigation of the performance
of five of the major cities in Colombia. We then found thateach of these five
cities had its ownperspective, style, and work pattern, aswell as level of economic success.
Geographic Surveys. The leadership in each of the five cities that we

studied-Baranquilla, Bucaramanga, Cali, Cartagena, and Medellin-held
very distinct views as to what made their city competitive. The leadership
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of the city with the highest level of per capita wealth, Medellin, viewed
that citys advantages as being grounded in assets that would now be described as social capital, relatingto cultural, civic, and human resource assets. The leadershipof the cities with the lowestlevel of per capita income,
Baranquilla and Cartagena, characterized their advantages as being based
on natural resources. These data suggested a strong relationship between
the mind-set of a region and its degree of economic success. Each city
demonstrated a high degree of variability in the way it collectively perceived its sources of competitive advantage. And it was the city with the
most competitive mind-set, Medellin, that had created the highest standard of living in Colombia.
MENTAL MODELS AND CHANGE EFFORTS
The results of our work with leaders in the five cities in Colombia led us to
conclude that it is not culture perse that affects the qualityof choices that regions make but rather the way individual leaders think
about wealth creation.
It is the aggregation of individual beliefs along dimensions suchas wealthcreation, social capital, and action orientation. In a word, the
differences we
found were a functionof the mental modelsof the leaders of these cities.
Comparative-advantage thinking is the result of deeply held assumptions
about how wealth is created. It is a mental model that resists change. The
challenge that most change agents face is that they are promoting solutions
to problems that their constituents do not
fully comprehend. The insights developed through rigorous analysis should be sufficient to motivate individuals to change. Nevertheless, what I have found is also consistent with what
Peter Senge concludes:
New insights fail to get put into practice because they conflict with deeply held
internal images of how the world works, imagesthat limit us to familiar waysof
thinking and acting. That is why the discipline of managing mental modelssurfacing, testing and improving our internal pictures
of how the world workspromises to be a major breakthrough for building learningorgani~ations.~
Changing mental models will be a major breakthrough helping leaders create nations that compete more
effectively inthe globaleconomy. The primary
challenge is to break through the mentalmodels that inhibit thedevelopment
of competitive companies and competitive mind-sets. Cultural change may
inevitably follow, but the task is not to change culture. The task is to create
the conditions that give birth to competitive companies, for these will be the
engines of growth that support humanprogress.
292
MATTERS
CULTURE
Our work with public and private sector leaders at the national
level
helped us identify national issues that inhibit the creation of a shared national vision. Our work with leaders at the regional level helped us identify
local challenges to economic prosperity. But as we beganto try tochange the
status quo, we realized that there is a much more dynamic level of intervention with which to begin, and that is to identify groups of individuals who
share similar patterns of thinking.
In order to createmeaningful change, it is necessary to identify the individuals who will benefit from change. Broad attributions about the government or the members of a certain city are not helpful. What would
be
helpful is to identify people by the way they think about how wealth is created, regardless of their institutional affiliation.
While we were working in Venezuela,and in subsequent work throughout
the world, we developed a survey instrument capable of doing just that. Instead of simply analyzing the divisive issues of the day, we began to study
very carefully the ways in whichgroups of individuals thought about key issues. This approach enabled us to segment a nation not by institutional affiliation or geographic location butby belief system. In Venezuela,for example,
we found five distinct segments that were distinguished by their unique views
about several critical issues. The five Venezuelas were not defined by demographic affiliation nor by geography, but rather by beliefs about individual variables that affect theeconomy,
Results from another national survey of almost four hundred El Salvadoran leaders in 1997 provide evidence that perhaps the most meaningful segmentation for change agents is mental models. Kaia Miller and the Monitor
team developed a survey that measured dozens of individual variables and
then grouped them into eleven factors that were used to create five distinct
visions of El Salvadors competitivep ~ t e n t i a l . ~
The largest group of individuals in the survey was called the frustrateds. They can be identified primarily by their frustration with both the
government and the privatesector. This group has no strong opinions about
what economic and development model would help
El Salvador improve,
yet they are the group most likely to view El Salvador as being at the point
of crisis.
The second largest group was the statists. This group believes that the
only thing El Salvador needs to overcome its current challenges is a small
group of governmental decisionmakers deciding all social, economic, and political issues.
Unlike the statists, the fighters place their faith in the average citizen.
They are confident that with the right support from the government, the
average citizen will leadEl Salvador to a better future.
Prosperity
National
and
Models,
Mental
Culture,
293
The protectionists were the smallest group. Although almost all groups
in El Salvador demonstrate some support for government protectionism, the
protectionists are the most vocal. This group openly endorses policies such as
government subsidies, protective tariffs, and other formsof government protection as strategies for successful competition in the global economy.
The only group that distinguished itself noticeably from the rest of the
groups was the open economy group. This group
believes in the importance of international connections through trade, educational exchanges, and
so on. It is frustrated with the quality of government support of the private
sector, but it has decided to move ahead and succeed without the help of the
government.
It should be noted that this survey was administeredto several distinct demographic groups: business, academic, labor,and government leaders. It was
also administered to several distinct geographic groups: leaders in San Salvador, Sonsonate, Santa Ana, and San Miguel. Similar to the results of the
work done in Colombia five years earlier, some useful insights were gleaned
from this demographic and geographic data. However, each
of the five mental
models described above contained a balanced mixture of each demographic
and geographic group. In other words, the true divisions in the country were
not a function of where people lived or what their vocation was, but of their
fundamental beliefs, assumptions, and attitudes about wealth creation.
Clearly El Salvador has a nationalculture-one grounded in its historic role
as the smallestof the Central American countries, having the highest land density and suffering through a longand bitter civil war throughoutthe late 1970s
and 1980s. Yet our discussions with formerFMLN guerrilla leaders aswell as
the conservative ARENApartys leaders enabledus to understand that, even in
this war-torn country, shared vision is possible if the right segmentation is
used. Political, economic, demographic, or geographic segmentations do not
enable a sufficient understandingof how people are thinking about their reality. On the other hand, mental-model segmentation can highlight differences in
attitudes and beliefs that inhibit the wealth-creation process.
In fact, after we presentedthe results of our mental-model work to a group
of leading Venezuelans, one memberof the audience raised his hand and implored us to make them one Venezuela again. He had seen for the first
time how change couldoccur through the creationof shared vision based on
mental models.
CONCLUDING THOUGHTS
Culture matters. But engendering action at thelevel of culture is a Herculean

task. This chapter has argued that the underlying mental models informing
294
MATTERS
CULTURE
the choices made by individuals provide the real leverage point for creating
change. To return to the question posed by the Ghanaian mentioned at the
beginning of this chapter, Must culture change to accommodate the global
economy? Inevitably, cultures will change.
But the relevant discussion is not a
discussion about culture per se; it is about the distribution of individual belief systems as they relate to the relevant dimensions of change. Marshaling
efforts to identify and understand how specific mental models limit the
wealth-creating process is a significant step in the right direction to ensure
human progress.
I offer the followingfive thoughts as concludingthemes for this discussion.
Successful, growth-oriented businesses are necessary preconditions for
progress. They are the engines ofgrowth.For humans to progress, they must
be capable of creating rising standards of living. Although the political theorists and economists continue to deepen our understanding of how certain
policy frameworks or governance influence economic success, itis becoming
increasingly important to understand that, at the core, it is the individual
business that is the engine of growth. More effort must be spent helping to
foster more competitive business enterprises.
Some strategies are more successful than others. Some businesses are more
prone to success than others. They have developed sustainable business
strategies and have invested in sources of differentiation and competitive advantage. Every business has the potential to dothis, but very few do.
Competitive mind-sets (mental models) shape strategy. The limiting factor
of good business strategy is not education. It is not government policy. It is
not macroeconomic stability. Good business strategy requires a competitive
mind-set-a set of beliefs, attitudes, and assumptions that govern how one
views competition and wealth creation.
Mental models are distributed across demographidgeographic segments.
The absence of competitive mind-sets cannot be blamed on national policies.
Nor can it be blamed on culture writ large or on specific organizations. The
single most important conclusion of our research into mental models is that
they are distributed widely across the population. There are certain mental
models-broadly speaking, comparative-advantage mind-sets-that limit
the
ability of businesses to succeed.
To promote the creationof successful businesses, mental models needto be
reoriented. In order to foster economic growth and human progress, it will
be necessary to alter fundamental mental models that shape the way individuals think about risk, trust, competition, authority, and other critical variables.
In the end, changing mental models may cause dramatic changes in the
culture of a nation or region. But efforts to change culture will not create
Prosperity
National
and
Models,
Mental
Culture,
295
changes in a nations economic performance. The appropriate level of analysis must be at the level of the individual-of the firm. Efforts must be made
to understand which mental models drive the strategic choices that are being
made, and those mental models must then become the focus for change efforts.
22
Promoting Progressive
Cultural Change
L A W R E N C EE .H A R R I S O N
Largely unnoticed in U.S. academic circles, a new paradigm-an inwardlooking theory thatfocuses on culturalvalues and attitudes-is gradually filling the explanatory vacuum left by the collapse of dependency theory. Latin
America has recently taken the lead in articulating this culture-centered
paradigm and in contriving initiatives to translate it into actions designed not
only to accelerate economic growth but to fortify democratic institutions and
promote social justice. The culture paradigm also has adherents
in Africa and
Asia.
Of course, many analysts who have studied the East Asian economic miracles over the past three decades have concludedthat Confucian values like
emphasis on the future, work, achievement, education, merit, and frugality
have played a crucial role in their development. (These Protestant ethic-like
values are rooted not only in Confucianism but also in ancestor worship and
Taoism, among other belief systems.) But just as the success of the East
Asians in the world market-so inconsistent with dependency theory-was
largely ignored by Latin American intellectuals and politicians until recent
years, so was the cultural explanation for thosemiracles. Latin America has
now for the most partaccepted the economic policy lessonsof East Asia and
is now confronting the question, If dependency and imperialism are not responsible for our economic underdevelopment, authoritarian political traditions, and extreme social injustice, whatis?
ChangeCultural
29 7
That question was posed by the Venezuelan writer Carlos Rangel in a

book published in the mid-1970s in French and Spanish with titles that
translate as From the Noble Savage to the Noble Revolutionary, and subsequently in English as The Latin Americans-Their Love-Hate Relationship
with the UnitedStates. Rangel was not thefirst Latin American to conclude
that traditional Ibero-American values and attitudes, and the institutions that
reflected and reinforced them, were the principal cause
of Latin Americas
failure, a word he contrasted with the success of the United States and
Canada. Similar conclusions were recorded by, among others, Bolivar aide
Francisco Miranda in the last years of the eighteenth century; by Bolivar
himself three decades later; by the eminent Argentines Juan Bautista Alberdi
and Doming0 Faustino Sarmiento and the Chilean Francisco Bilbao in the
second half of the nineteenth century; andby the Nicaraguan intellectual Salvador Mendieta early in this century.
The similar analyses of Spaniards JosC Ortega y Gasset, Fernando Diaz
Plaja, Miguel de Unamuno,and Salvador de Madariaga, althoughprincipally
focused on Spains slow (untilrecent decades) modernization, also have clear
relevance for Latin America.
Rangels book, with a foreword by Jean Franqois Revel that underscores
Latin Americas avoidance of self-criticism, earned him the enmity of most
Latin American intellectuals and was mostly ignored by Latin American specialists in North America and Europe. Nevertheless, the book has proven to
be seminal. In 1979, Nobelist Octavio Paz explained the contrast between
the two Americas this way: One, English speaking, is the daughter of the
tradition that has founded the modern world: the Reformation, with its social and political consequences, democracy and capitalism. The other, Spanish and Portuguese speaking, is the daughter of the universal Catholic
monarchy and the Counter-Reformation.2
One finds strong echoes of Rangel in Claudio VClizs 1994 book, The New
World of the Gothic FOX,^ which contrasts the Anglo-Protestant and IberoCatholic legacies in theNew World. VCliz defines the new paradigm with the
words of the celebrated Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa, who asserts
that the economic, educational, and judicial reforms necessary
to Latin
Americas modernization cannot be effected
unless they are precededor accompanied by a reform of our customs and ideas,
of the whole complex system of habits, knowledge, images and forms that we
understand by culture. The culture within which we live and act today in
Latin America is neither liberal nor is it altogether democratic. We have democratic governments, but our institutions, our reflexes and our mentality are very
far from being democratic. They remain populist and oligarchic, or absolutist,
collectivist or dogmatic, flawedby social and racial prejudices, immensely intol-
29 8
MATTERS
CULTURE
erant with respectto political adversaries, and devoted

to the worst monopolyof
all, that of the t r ~ t h . ~
The recent runaway best-seller in Latin America, Guide to the Perfect
Latin American Idiot,S is dedicated to Range1 and Revel by its co-authors,
Colombian Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza, VargasLlosas son Alvaro, and Cuban
exile Carlos Alberto Montaner. The bookcriticizes the Latin American intellectuals of this century who have promoted the view that the region is a victim of imperialism. Among them are Eduardo Galeano, the Uruguayan
author of the hugely popular The Open Veins of Latin America;6Fidel Castro; Che Guevara; Fernando Henrique Cardoso, the current president
of
Brazil; and Gustavo GutiCrrez, founder of liberation theology. Mendoza,
Montaner, and Vargas Llosa strongly imply that the real causes
of Latin
Americas underdevelopment are in the mindsof the Latin Americans.
In their sequel, Manufacturers of Misery, the authors trace the detrimental
influence of traditional culture on the behavior of six elite groups: the politicians, the military, businesspeople, the clergy, the intellectuals, and the revolutionaries (see Chapter 5).
Montaners recent book, Lets Not Lose the Twenty-First Century, TOO,^
underscores the costs Latin America has paid for not heeding the lessons, in
cultural and policy terms,of the success of the advanced democracies. Prominent Argentine intellectual and media celebrity Mariano Grondonas 1999
book, The Cultural Conditions of Economic De~elopment,~
analyzes and
contrasts development-prone (e.g., the United States and Canada) and development-resistant (e.g., Latin America) cultures.
To be sure, Latin American values and attitudes are changing, as the transition to democratic politics and market economics of the past fifteen years
suggests. Several forces are modifying theregions culture, including the new
intellectual current described in this chapter, globalization
of communications and economics, and the surge in evangelicaVPentecosta1 Protestantism
(Protestants now account for more than 30 percent of the population in
Guatemala and about20 percent in Brazil, Chile, andNicaragua).O
The impact of the new-paradigm books and Montaners weekly columns
(he is the most widely read columnist in the Spanish language) in Latin
America has been profound; in the United States, Canada, and Western Europe, on the other hand, they have gone largely unnoticed. A generation of
Latin Americanists nurtured on dependency theory, or the less extreme view
that the solution of Latin Americas problems depends on the United States
being more magnanimous in its dealings with Latin America, finds the cultural explanation indigestible. In separate seminars I have heard one prominent U.S. Latin Americanist label culture a distraction; another assert that
Change
Cultural
culture is irrelevant to Latin Americas evolution; and a third argue that culture is irrelevant to Venezuelas troubled political history. Bolivar would not
have agreed.
I am particularly conscious of the seminal nature of Rangels book because, had I not read it, I doubt that I wouldhave written my first book, Underdevelopment Is a State of Mind-The Latin American Case, which was
published in 1985. My latest book, The Pan-American Dream,12 a Spanish
edition of which was published in 1999, is also dedicated to Rangel.
HOW CULTURE INFLUENCES PROGRESS

The Pan-American Dream identifies ten values, attitudes, or mind-sets that
distinguish progressive cultures from static cultures. This formulation
is
highly relevant to Mariano Grondonas typology in Chapter4.
1. Time orientation: Progressive cultures emphasize the future; static

cultures emphasize the presentor past. Future orientation implies a
progressive worldview-influence over ones destiny, rewards in this
life to virtue, positive-sum economics.
2. Work is central to the goodlife in progressive cultures but is a
burden in static cultures. In the former, work structures daily
life;
diligence, creativity,and achievement are rewarded not only
financially but also with satisfaction and self-respect.
3. Frugality is the mother of investment-and financial security-in
progressive cultures but is a threat to the egalitarian status quo in
static cultures, which often have a zero-sum worldview.
4. Education is the key to progress in progressive cultures but is of
marginal importance except for theelites in static cultures.
5. Merit is central to advancement in progressive cultures; connections
and family are what count in static
cultures.
6 . Community: In progressive cultures, the radiusof identification and
trust extends beyond the familyto the broadersociety. In static
cultures, the family circumscribes community. Societies with a
narrow radius of identification and trust are more prone to
corruption, tax evasion, and nepotism, and they areless likely to
engage in philanthropy.
7. The ethical code tends to be more rigorous in progressive cultures.
Every advanced democracy (except Belgium, Taiwan, Italy, and
South Korea) appears among the twenty-five least corrupt countries
on Transparency Internationals Corruption Perceptions Index. Chile
299
3 00
MATTERS
CULTURE
and Botswana are the only Third World countries that appear
among the toptwenty-five.
8. Justice and fair play are universal impersonal expectations in
progressive cultures. In static cultures,justice, like personal
advancement, is often a functionof who you know or how much
you can pay.
9 . Authority tends toward dispersion and horizontality in progressive
cultures, toward concentration and verticality in static cultures.
Robert Putnams analysis of the differences between thenorth and
the south in Italy in Making Democracy Work is il1~strative.l~
10. Secularism: The influence of religious institution on civic life is small
in progressive cultures; its influence is often substantial in static
cultures. Heterodoxy anddissent are encouraged in the former,
orthodoxy and conformity in thelatter.
These ten factors are obviously generalized
and idealized, and the realityof
cultural variation is not black and white but a spectrum in which colors fuse
into one another. Few countries wouldbe graded 10 on all the factors, just as
few countries would be graded 1. Nonetheless, virtually all of the advanced
democracies-as well as high-achieving ethnicheligious groups like the Mormons, Jews, Sikhs, Basques, and East Asian immigrants in the United States
and elsewhere-would receive substantially higher scores than virtually
all of
the Third World countries.
This conclusion invites the inference that whatis really in play is development, not culture. The same argument could be made about Transparency
Internationals corruption index. There is a complex interplay of cause and
effect between culture and progress, but the power of culture is demonstrable. It is observable in those countries where the economic achievement
of
ethnic minorities far exceeds that of the majorities, as is the case of the Chinese in Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines. It can also be
seen in Costa Rica, where democratic institutions have flourished in a Third
World economy. Putnam concludes that Italys evolution over many centuries
demonstrates that cultural values have had greater influence than economic
development. Grondona concludes in The Cultural Conditions of Economic
Development that culture is more powerful than economicsor politics.
The ten factorsI have suggested are not definitive. Grondonas typologyof
development-prone and development-resistant cultures contains twenty factors, many of which overlap with my ten. But the ten factors do at least suggest what it is in the vastness of culture that may influence the way
societies evolve. Moreover, the new paradigm writers in Latin America (and
at least one writer in Africa) in large measure attribute the slow moderniza-
ChangeCultural
3 01
tion of their countries to just such traditional values and attitudes. Their
views evoke Gunnar Myrdals analysis of South Asia and Bernard Lewiss
analysis of Islamic world, not to mention theviews of such seminal culturalists as Alexis de Tocqueville, Max Weber, and Edward Banfield. Democracy
in America is particularly relevant for those who would adduce geographic
or institutional explanations for democratic development.
Europeans exaggerate the influence of geography
on the lasting powersof democratic institutions. Too much importance is attached to laws and too little to
mores. . . . If in the course of this book I have not succeeded in making the
reader feel the importanceI attach to the practical experience of the Americans,
to their habits, opinions, and, in a word, their mores, in maintaining their laws,
I have failed in the main object of my work.4
CULTURAL INTERPRETATIONS IN OTHER REGIONS
In 1968, Gunnar Myrdal published Asian Drama: An Inquiry into the

of Nations after ten years of study of South Asia.5 He concluded
that cultural factors, profoundlyinfluenced by religion, are the principal obstacles to modernization. It is not just that they get in the way of entrepreneurial activity but that they permeate,
rigidify, and dominate political,
economic, and social behavior. Myrdal notes that the caste system tends to
make the existing inequalities particularly rigid and unyielding and fortifies the prevalent contempt and disgust for manual work.16He believes that
the limited radius of identification and trust breeds corruption and nepotism.
Myrdal criticizes anthropologists and sociologists for failing to provide
the more broadly based systemof theories and conceptsneeded for the scientific study of the problem of development but appreciates that attitudes,
institutions, modes and levels of living, and, broadly, culture . . are so much
more difficult to grasp in systematic analysisthan are theso-called economic
factors. He concludes with a call for cultural change with government taking the lead, particularly through the educationalsystem.
The pace of modernization in most Islamic countries has been
slow. Illiteracy, particularly among women, is still very high in many of them, as are
child mortality and population growth. Its curbs on Kurdish and fundamentalist dissent notwithstanding, Turkeyis the only Islamiccountry-secular, to
besure-that
approachesmodernstandards
of pluralisticgovernance.
Malaysia is relatively prosperous, but its economic gains disproportionately
reflect the economic creativity of its large Chinese (32 percent of the total
population) minority. Oil-producing states like Saudi Arabia, the United
Poverty
3 02
MATTERS
CULTURE
Arab Emirates, and Kuwait are affluent butstill very traditional in many respects, as the fact that more thanhalf of Saudi women are illiterate attests.18
The slow pace of progress in the Islamic world in recent centuries
is in
stark contrast with the progressive force that Islam was for several hundred
years after it was founded by Muhammad early in the seventh century, and
with the dominant power of the Ottoman Empire in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Prominent among those who attributeIslams decline to culturalfactors
is Bernard Lewis, who stressestheconsequencesfor
modernization of Islamic orthodoxy since the closing of the Gate of Ijtihad
(independent analysis) by Islamic scholars between the ninth and eleventh
centuries. The effect, in Lewiss view, has been to suppress enterprise, experiment, and originality and to reinforce a fatalistic w~rldview.~
Daniel Etounga-Manguelles analysis of African culture (Chapter 6 of this
volume) attributes Africas poverty, authoritarianism, and social injustice
principally to traditional cultural values and attitudes such as
the highly centralized and vertical traditions of authority
focus on the past and present, not the future
rejection of the tyrannyof time
distaste for work (the
African works tolive but doesnt live to
work)O
suppression of individual initiative, achievement, and saving (the
corollary is jealousy of success)
a belief in sorcery that nurtures irrationality andfatalism
For those who see institution building as the way to solve the problems
of the Third World, particularly in the international development community, Etounga-Manguelle offers an insight that evokes Tocqueville: Culture is
the mother; institutions are the children.
A decade ago, Salvatore Teresi, a founder
of the European Institute of
Business Administration (the French acronymis INSEAD), initiated a survey
of Sicilys private and public sectors aimed, in the first instance, at a better
understanding of the factors behind the islands underdevelopment. The results of the survey were strikingly similarto Edward Banfields findings in his
1958 study of a southern Italianvillage, The Moral Basis of a Backward Society: Sicilian culture was dominated by an exasperating individualism,
mistrust, and suspicion. As in Etounga-Manguelles analysis of African culture, the Sicilian value system suppressed cooperation, but it did not encourage competition, which was viewed as aggression. Collusion, particularly
between the public and private sectors, substituted for cooperation and com-
Change
Promoting
Cultural
Progressive
3 03
petition, much as it does in the Latin American mercantilism describedby

Hernando de Soto inThe Other Path.22
The survey illuminated other cultural factors that have a familiar ring: focus on the present, difficulties with strategic planning, absence of entrepreneurship, and authoritarian patron-client relationships. The surveys results,
which shook the Sicilian elite, have led to a continuing program aimed at
changing values and attitudes as well as strengthening management, planning, coordination, and entrepreneurship.
CHANGING THE TRADITIONAL CULTURE
In part because of the influence of the new-paradigm writers, but in some

cases because of life experiences that have brought them to the same conclusions, a growing number of Latin Americans and others have initiatedactivities that promote progressive values and attitudes.
Octavio Mavila was for three decades the Honda distributor in Peru. A
self-made man well into his seventies, Mavila has visited Japan numerous
times over the years. About ten years ago, he came
to theconclusion that the
only really significant difference between Japan and Peru was that Japanese
children learned progressive values whereas Peruvian children did not. In
1990, he established the Institute
of Human Development (the Spanish
acronym is INDEHU) in Limato promote his Ten Commandments of Development: order, cleanliness, punctuality, responsibility, achievement, honesty,
respect for the rights of others, respect for the law, work ethic, and frugality.
In the past decade, more than 2 million Peruvian students have participated
in courses sponsored by INDEHU, which has mobilized virtually
all of its resources within Peru.
The Ten Commandments of Development are being preached outside of
Peru too. Humberto Belli, Nicaraguas minister of education in two administrations, viewed them as central to his program of educational reform, and
Ram6n de la Peiia, directorof the Monterrey campusof Mexicos prestigious
Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Studies (the Spanish acronym
is ITESM), has promoted their use throughout the far-flung ITESM system.
The effectiveness of the evangelizing approach to cultural changeneeds to
be evaluated. As Luis Ugalde, a Jesuit who is the rector of the Catholic University of Caracas, has observed, if children learn a progressive ethic in
school and find it irrelevant to their lives outside of school, the impact may
be scant. This is why Ugalde, who is convinced that values and attitudes
count, is calling for anti-corruption, pro-merit campaigns in government,
business, and the professions.
3 04
CULTURE MATTERS
Corruption is in significant part a cultural phenomenon, linked, I believe,

to factors such as limited radius of identification and trust, which translates
into a limited sense of community, and an elastic ethical code. This conclusion is underscored by the findings of Seymour Martin Lipset and Gabriel
Salman Lenz in Chapter 9. Corruption has become a high-profile issue in
Latin America. O n 3 March 1998, the Organization of American States
adopted the Inter-American Convention Against Corruption, a fourteen-page
document that by the end of that year had been ratifiedby thirteen countries.
Few expect that the convention in and of itself is going to dramatically reduce the incidence of corruption. Among the ratifiers are four of the five
Latin American countries that appear among Transparency Internationals
ten most corrupt countries: Paraguay, Honduras, Venezuela, and Ecuador
(the fifth is Colombia, which has not yet ratified). Nevertheless, it
is clear
that corruption is receiving far more attention than it once did, asis further
attested by the growing attention paid to it by the World Bank and other development-assistance institutions.
The gender issue has also come to the fore, challenging the traditional culture of machismo, as Mala Htun makes clear in Chapter 14. Latin American
women are increasingly awareof the gender democratizationthat hasoccurred
in recent decades, particularly in First World countries, and they are increasingly organizing and taking initiatives to rectify the sexism that has traditionally kept them in second-class status. In several countries, laws concerning
parental and property rights and divorce have been liberalized in favor of
women, and nine countries have established obligatory
quotas forwomen candidates in elections. Although these electoral laws are not uniformly effective,
they are a reminder that the gender revolution, and all that it implies with respect to transformation of traditional values,is reaching Latin America.
Other organizations that have progressive cultural change as at least one
of their goals have emerged spontaneously in Latin America in recent years.
Examples include the following:
ENLACE (the Spanish acronym for Encounter in the Community), a
womens organization in Mexico with broad membership but few
financial resources that has focused on curriculum changes in the
public education system. ENLACE promotes parent, teacher, and
student involvement in curricula that emphasize values and
character, family stability, upward mobility, and the importance of
education.
The Regional Central Cooperative organization inBarquisimeto,
Venezuela, the leaders of which are convinced that real progress in
Change
Cultural Progressive
Promoting
305
rural Venezuela is impossible without a change in traditional

campesino values and attitudes.
Organizations in Colombia, Costa Rica, and Mexico that are
promoting the idea and practiceof philanthropy. Philanthropic
activity has been notably absent in Latin America, reflecting the
short radius of identification and trust characteristicof the
traditional culture.
Citizen Power, a group of Argentine professionals, chiefly lawyers,
whose principal goals are the promotionof civic responsibilityand
participation and the suppressionof corruption.
Other professionals are also addressing cultural change. Costa Rican psychiatrist Luis Diego Herrerais focused on personality formation and cultural
transmission in childhood. A network of political scientists and sociologists
linked to theWorld Values Surveyis tracking changes in values and attitudes.
Among them are Miguel Basiiiiez, a Mexican who is president of Marketing
and Opinion Research International (MORI) USA, and Marita Carballo, director of the Gallup office in Argentina.
Many of these practitioners and several of the theorists, including Montaner, Grondona, and Ugalde, know one another,chiefly becauseof two symposia dedicated to the role of cultural values and attitudes in Latin
Americas
development, the first at the CentralAmerican Business AdministrationInstitute in Costa Rica in 1996, the second at the
World Bank in Washington,
D.C., in 1998. Among the panelists at the Harvard symposium on which this
book is based were several peoplewho had participatedin one or bothof the
earlier symposia: Montaner, Grondona, Daniel Etounga-Manguelle, Michael
Fairbanks, Ronald Inglehart, Stace Lindsay, and
myself.
Michael Porter established the Monitor Company, a consulting organization, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1983. Monitor has grown rapidly and
has become an influential source of advice on competitiveness, particularly in
the Third World. Monitors Country Competitiveness Practice was founded
by Michael Fairbanks and Stace Lindsay, who are the authors
of chapters 20
and 21, respectively, and of the 1997 book Plowing the Seaz3Its title is
drawn from Bolivars last will and testament, written in 1830: Whosoever
works for a revolution [along the lines of the American Revolution, but in
Latin America] is plowing the sea.
BothFairbanksandLindsayhavepracticalexperienceintheThird
World-Fairbanks in Africa, Lindsay in Central America and the Caribbean.
In their consulting activities, they soon sensed that traditional approachesto
competitiveness, which emphasize such areas as market analysis, niche iden-
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MATTERS
CULTURE
tification, and productivity and management,were not enough to assure that

Third World companies would compete successfully. They concluded that
invisible factors rooted in cultural values and attitudes were the chief obstacles, and they developed a consulting approach that addresses mental
models. Their goal is to change traditional mental models that impede the
creativity and efficiency necessaryfor competitiveness and economic growth.
Changing mental models is also Lionel Sosas goal; his target
group is
Latin Americans who have migrated to the United States. In his 1998 book,
The Americuno Dreum,24 Sosa, a Mexican American, catalogues a series of
values and attitudes that present obstacles to access to the upward mobility
of mainstream America. They will sound familiar.
Resignation of the poor: To be poor is to deserve heaven. To be
rich is to deserve hell. It is good to suffer in this life because in the
next life you will find eternal reward.2S
Low priority of education: The girls dont really need it-theyll get
married anyway. And the boys?Its better that theygo to work-to
help the family.26 I might mention here
that the Hispanichigh
school dropout ratein the United Statesis about 30 percent, vastly
higher than that of white and black Americans.
Fatalism: Individual initiative, achievement, self-reliance, ambition,
aggressiveness-all these are useless in the face of an attitude that
says, We must not challenge the will of God. . , . The virtues so
essential to business success in the United States are looked
upon as
sins by the Latino chur~h.~ The
below-average rate of selfemployment by Hispanics comes to mind.
Mistrust of those outside the family, which contributes to the
generally small sizeof Hispanic businesses.
Sosa goes on to present a program for success based on the twelve traits
of successful Latinos.* Their thrust is similar to Octavio Mavilas Ten Commandments of Development.
IN SUM
An important and promising intellectual currentfocused on culture and cultural changes is flowing throughout the world that has relevance for both
poor countries and poor minorities in rich countries. is
It not really new. Its
source goes back through Banfield,Weber, and Tocqueville to atleast Montesquieu. It offers an important insight into why some countries and ethnic/religious groups have done better than others, not just
in economic
Change
Cultural
terms but also with respect to consolidation of democratic institutions and

social justice. And those lessons of experience, which are increasingly finding practical application, particularly in Latin America, may help to illuminate the path to progress for that substantial majority
of the worlds people
for whom prosperity, democracy, and social justice have remained out of
reach.
307
NOTES
INTRODUCTION
1. The following data are drawn from the World Bank, "Selected World Development Indicators," World Development Report 1998/99 (New York: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 1999).

2. The 1993 edition of Social Panorama of Latin America, by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, reported that
"two out of every five urban residents are poor, and the ratio in rural areas is three out of every five" (p. 35).
This means that 46 percent of Latin America's population was below the poverty line
in 1990; 22 percent was below theindigence line. The 70 percent high school dropout
World Development Report1997,
figure is an estimate drawn from the World Bank's
table 7.
3. David Landes, The Wealth and Poverty o f Nations (New York: Norton, 1998),
p. 516.
4.For an early account of Basque success in what would become Venezuela, see
FranGois Depons, Viaje a la parte oriental de la tierra firme en la Ambica meridional
(1806; reprint, Caracas: Banco Central de Venezuela,
1960).
5. The Greenspan quotes appear in William Pfaff, "Economists Hatch a Disaster,"
Boston Globe, 30 August 1999, p. A17.
6. See Chapter 10 of this book.
7. Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel (New York: Norton, 1997),p. 405.
8. Ibid., pp. 417419.
9. Robert D. Putnam, Making Democracy Work (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1993).
10. Douglas C. North, Institutions, Institutional Change, and Economic Performance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1990),p. 37.
11. Ibid., p. 117.
12. Quoted in the Guatemalan newspaperLa Prensa Libre, 14 December 1999.
13. Orlando Patterson, The Ordeal of Integration: Progress and Resentment in
America's "Racial" Crisis (Washington, D.C.: Perseus Counterpoint, 1997),p. 213.
14. Ibid., p. 109.
Notes
3I O
CHAPTER 1
This chapter is drawn from David Landes, The Wealth and Povertyof Nations (New
York: Norton, 1998).
1. Nicholas Shumway,The Inventionof Argentina (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991),p. 156 n. 3.
2. Juan Bautista Alberdi,
Bases e puntos departida para la organizacidn politica de
la Republica Argentina (1852),cited by Shumway, Invention o f Argentina, p. 149.
3. Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Enzo Faletto, Dependency and Development
in Latin America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), p. 216. In all fairness, the text may read better in Spanish.
4.Matt Moffett, Foreign Investors Help Brazils Leader Tame Its Raging Inflation, Wall Street Journal, 15 December 1995, p. A l .
5. The West and the Middle East,Foreign Affairs, January-February 1997, p. 121.
6. Sidney D. Brown, Okubo Toshimichi: His Political and Economic Policies in
Early Meiji Japan,Journal ofAsian Studies 21 (1961-1962): 183-197.
7. Haruhiro Fukui, The Japanese State and Economic Development:
ProfileAof a
Nationalist-Paternalist Capitalist State, in States and Development in the Asian Pacific Rim, ed. Richard P. Applebaum and Jeffrey Henderson (Newbury Park, Calif.:
Sage, 1992),p. 205
CHAPTER 2
The author is grateful to Michael Fairbanks and Kaia Miller for their thoughtful
comments, as well as to the other participantsof the symposium.
1. Michael E. Porter, The Competitive Advantage of Nations (New York: Free
Press, 1990).
2. See, for example, Michael E. Porter and Mariko Sakakibara, Competing at
Home to Win Abroad: Evidence from Japanese Industry, Harvard Business School
Working Paper 99-036, September 1998.
3. See, for example, Jack M. Potter, May N. Diaz, and George M. Foster, eds.,
Peasant Society-A Reader (Boston: Little, Brown,1967).
4.A good example is the case of Chile in Ani1 Hira, Ideas in Economic Policy in
Latin America: Regional, National, and Organizational Case Studies (Westport,
Conn.: Praeger, 1998).
CHAPTER 4
1. Talcott Parsons,The Social System (New York: Free Press,1959),chap. 1.
2. Lawrence E. Harrison, Underdevelopment Is a State o f Mind (Cambridge: Cen-
ter for International Affairs, Harvard University; Lanham, Md.: University Press of
America, 1985).
3 . This definition of the view of wealth in poor countries is close to the zero-sum
worldview that George Foster and others have emphasized as central
to universal
peasant culture.
Notes
3 II
CHAPTER 5
1.The term mercantilist in the sense
that it is used here was popularized by Hernando de Soto in The Other Path (Lima: Instituto Libertady Democracia, 1986).
2. Neoliberalism is the pejorative term used by critics, most of them ex-adher-
ents of various formsof socialism, to describe free market capitalism.

3. Gutitrrezs best-known book is Una Teologia de la Liberaci6n (Lima: CEP, 1971).
CHAPTER 6
1. All data are from World Bank, World Development Report 1998/99 (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1999).
2. Hervt Bourges and Claude Wauthier,Les 45 Afriques (Paris: Le Seuil, 1979).
3. Frank Tenaille, Les 50 Afriques (Paris: Petite Collection Masptro,1979).
4. Cited by Alassane Ndaw, La Pensee Africaine-Research on the Foundations of
Negro-African Thought (Paris: Nouvelles Editions Africaines,1983), p. 233.
5. D. Bollinger and G. Hofstede, Les differences culturelles dans le management
(Paris: Les Editions Organisation, 1987).
6. Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber,Lart du temps (Paris: Fayard,1985).
7. Ibid.
8. Jean-Franqois Revel,La connaissance inutile (Paris: Grasset,1988),p. 99.
9. Ibid.
CHAPTER 7
This chapter draws on material from Ronald lnglehart and Wayne Baker, Modernization, Cultural Change, m d the Persistence of Traditional Values, American Sociological Review, February 2000.
CHAPTER 8
Francis Fukuyama is Omer L. and Nancy Hirst Professor of Public Policy at George
Mason University. This chapter is drawn from his book The Great Disruption: Human Nature and the Reconstitutionof Social Order (New York: Free Press, 1999).
1. Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia: Tl7e Business of Private Protection (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993),p. 35.
2. See, for example, Edward C. Banfield, The Moral Basis o f a Backward Society
(Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1958); and Robert D. Putnam, Making Democracy Work:
Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (Princeton: Princeton University Press,1993).
3. See the discussionof civil society in Larry Diamond, Toward Democratic Consolidation, Journal of Dernocracy 5 (1994):4-17.
4. Lyda Judson Hanifan, The Rural School Community Center, Annals of the
Arnerican Academy of Political and Social Science67 (1916):130-138.
5.Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (New York: Vintage,
1961),p. 138.
3 I2
Notes
6. Glenn Loury, A Dynamic Theory of Racial Income Differences, in
Women,
Minorities, and Employment Discrimination,ed. P.A. Wallace and A. LeMund (Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books,1977); Ivan H. Light, Ethnic Enterprise in America
(Berkeley: University of California Press,1972).
7. James S. Coleman, Social Capital in the Creation of Human Capital, American Journal of Sociology supplement 94 (1988):S95-Sl20; Coleman, The Creation
and Destruction of Social Capital: Implications for the Law,
Journal of Law, Ethics,
and Public Policy 3 (1988): 375-404; Putnam, Making Democracy Work, 1993;
Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone: Americas Declining Social Capital, Journal of
Democracy 6 (1995):65-78.
8. Everett C. Ladd, The Data Just Dont Show Erosionof Americas Social Capital, Public Perspective (1996):4-22; Michael Schudson, What If CivicLife
Didnt Die? American Prospect (1996):17-20; John Clark, Shifting Engagements:
Lessons from the Bowling Alone Debate, Hudson Briefing Papers, no. 196, October 1996.
of social capi9. How, then, canwe get a handle on whether a given societys stock
tal is increasing or decreasing? One solution isto rely more heavily on the second of
the two data sources-survey data on trust and values.
10. Friedrich A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit: TheErrors of Socialism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), p. 5; see also Hayek, Law, Legislation, and Liberty
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976).
11. Ronald A. Heiner, The Origin of Predictable Behavior, American Economic
Review 73 (1983): 560-595; and Heiner, Origin of Predictable Behavior: Further
Modeling and Applications,American Economic Review 75 (1985): 391-396.
12. Douglas C. North, Institutions, Institutional Change, and Economic Performance (New York: Cambridge University Press,1990).
13. For an overview,seeKarl-Dieter Opp, Emergence and Effects of Social
Norms-Confrontation of Some Hypotheses of Sociology and Economics, Kyklos
32 (1979):775-801.
14. Garrett Hardin, The Tragedyof theCommons, Science 162(1968):
1243-1248.
15. Strictly speaking, Coase himself did not postulate a Coase theorem. Ronald
H. Coase, The Problem of Social Cost, Journal of Law and Economics 3 (1960):
1-44.This article is the single most commonly cited article in the legal literature today.
16. Robert Sugden, Spontaneous Order, Journal of Economic Perspectives 3
(1989): 85-97; Sugden, The Economics of Rights, Co-operation, and Welfare (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986).
17. Ellicksons own detailed field research shows that ranchers and farmers in
Shasta County, California, have in fact established a series
of informal norms to protect their respective interests, just as Coase predicted they would. Robert Ellickson,
Order Without Law (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,1991, pp. 143ff., 192.
18. Elinor Ostrom, Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for
Collective Action (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1990).
Notes
3 13
CHAPTER 9
Many thanks for the research work of Yang Zhang and Meredith Rucker. We are
deeply indebted to Robert K. Merton for stimulating this chapter and offering concrete advice.
1. Arnold J. Heidenheimer,Political Corruption: Readings in Comparative Analysis (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction,1978), p. 3.
2. Transparency International, TI Press Release:1998 Corruption Perceptions Index, Berlin, 22 September 1998.
3. World Values Study Group, World Values Survey Code Book, ICPSR
6160
(Ann Arbor, Mich., August1994).
4. Paolo Mauro, The Effects of Corruption on Growth, Investment, and Government Expenditure: A Cross-Country Analysis, inCorruption and the Global Economy, ed.KimberlyAnnElliot(Washington,D.C.:Institutefor
International
Economics, 1997), p. 91. See also Paolo Mauro, Corruption and Growth, Quarterly Journal of Economics 110, no. 3 (1995). For a more comprehensive review of
the literature, see Albert0 Ades and Rafael Di Tella, The Causes and Consequences
of Corruption, IDS Bulletin 27, no. 2 (1996):6-10.
5. Mauro, Effects, p. 94.
6. Andrei Shleifer and Robert W. Vishny, Corruption, Quarterly ]ournal ofEconomics 109, no. 3 (1993): 599-617.
7. Sanjeev Gupta, Hamid Davoodi, Rosa Alonso-Terme, Does Corruption Affect
98/76 (Washington, D.C.: InIncome Inequality and Poverty? IMF Working Papers
ternational Monetary Fund, 1998).
8. Daniel Treisman,T17e Causes of Corruption: A Cross-National Study(forthcoming, 1998), pp. 22-23.
9. For evidence on the relationship between democracy and economic development, see Seymour Martin Lipset, Political Man (Garden City, N.Y: Doubleday,
1960);and Treisman,Causes of Corruption.
10. Treisman, Causes of Corruption, p. 6.
11. Harry Ekstein, Division and Cohesion in Democracy: Study of Norway
(Princeton: Princeton University Press,1966), p. 265.
12. Robert K. Merton, Social Theory and Social Structure (1957; reprint, New
York: Free Press, 1968), pp. 246-248.
13. Edward Banfield, The Moral Basis of a Backward Society (Chicago: Free Press,
1958).
14. Daniel Bell, Crime As an American Way of Life, Antioch Review, Summer
1953, pp. 131-154.
15. Ronald Inglehart, The Silent Revolution: Changing Values and Political Styles
Among Western Publics (Princeton: Princeton University Press,1977); and Inglehart,
Modernization and Postmodernization (Princeton: Princeton University Press,1997).
16. Plato Republic (trans. G. M. Grube, rev. C. D. C. Reeve [Indianapolis: Hackett,
19921, chap. 5).
17. Max Weber, The Religion of China (New York: Macmillan, 19-51),p. 237.
Notes
3 14
18. LawrenceE. Harrison, Underdevelopment Is a State of Mind: The Latin American Case (Cambridge: Center for International Affairs, Harvard University; Lanham,
Md.: University Press of America, 1985),p. 7.
19. Banfield, Moral Basis, p. 85.
20. A Message for Europe, Economist, 20 March 1999, p. 15. The Economist
expressed hope that in reform, the European Union will exploit the Unions more
northern balance and mores.
21. Earthquake in Europe, Financial Times, 20 March 1999, p. 10.
22. Freedom House, Freedom in the World: The AnnualSurvey of Political Rights
and Civil Liberties, 1996-1 997 (New York: Freedom House,1997).
CHAPTER 1 1
1.Etounga-Manguelle identifies several such features (he deliberately emphasizes
the negative in orderto make his case): the importanceof hierarchical distance inso-
cial relations; the attemptto control uncertainty through religion and immutable destiny set by nature and religion; a time orientation
that does not focuson the future; a
passivity in the face of power and a willingness to accept such power; subordination
of the individual to the community and a rejection of any view of the individual as
6 in this volume);
an autonomous and responsible being (Etounga-Manguelle, Chap.
conviviality to excess along with rejection of open conflict and an attempt to create
personal friendship rather than openly discuss differences; emphasis on current consumption rather than saving for the future; irrational beliefs (e.g., witchcraft); totalitarian polities without collective trust and goals. I have suggested others specific to
childhood, such as socially distributed support and care for others; relative gender
segregation; strong emphasis on achievement goals and status attainment (having
ones name known) without overt boasting; diffusion
of affective ties.
CHAPTER 12
1. Among the many fascinating remarks heardat the conference were several indigenous testimonials from cosmopolitan intellectuals
out of Africa and Latin America. These representatives from the Third World played the
part of disgruntled
insiders, bearing witnessto the impoverishmentof their own native cultures, telling
us how bad things can be in the home country.
That role has become increasingly
complex, even dubious, in our postmodern world, where the outside is in and the inside is all over the place (think
of CNN, VISA, and theBig Mac). For most globe-hopping managers of the world system, including cosmopolitan intellectuals fromout of
the Third World, travel plans now matter more than ancestry. Consequently, one
feels inclined to raise doubts about any claimsto authority based on an equation of
citizenship (or national origin) with indigenous voice. After all, whose voice is
more indigenous? The voice of a Western-educatedM.B.A. or Ph.D. from Dakar
or Delhi, who looks down on his or her own cultural traditions and looks up to the
United States for intellectual and moral guidance and material
aid? Orthe voice of a
Notes
3 I5
Western scholar who does yearsof fieldwork in rural villages in Africaor Asia and
understands and sees value in the traditionsof others?
One of the other noteworthy (and for me eyebrow-raising) remarks heard at the
conference was the general equation
of goodness and progress with Protestantism and
the explicit suggestionthat successful Protestant missionary efforts (the more converts
the better) might enhance economic growth.
2 . Many peoples in the southern world are bound by their own varieties
of deep
ethnocentrism, just as we are. Consequently, others often fail to understand us,
precisely because they are ignorant of our meanings, dont know what we are up to,
and find many aspectsof our way of life, especially our family life practices and sexual ideals, incomprehensible from their moral point
of view. They are just as blindto
our moral decencies and rationality as we areto theirs.
3. This news is apparently lateto arrive outside the academy, where the stereotype
persists that most anthropologists are radical relativists. The press indulges this
stereotype.
4. For an exhaustive review of medical research on the health consequences of female genital surgeries and an important critique
of the advocacy literature against
female genital mutilation, see Obermeyer 1999; Obiora 1997. Obermeyer concludes that the powerful discourse that depicts these practices as inevitably causing
death and serious ill health, and as unequivocally destroying sexual pleasure, is not
sufficiently supported by the evidence(1999, 79).
5. There is also the problematicof defining a self-monitoring group. A nationality, for example, is not necessarily a culturally relevant self-monitoring group.Nor is
a civilization. The relevant communities for cultural analysis are probably not going
to correspond to political or bureaucratic or census categories such as Asian or
Hispanic or black or Native American or what have you. In the law and order context of Western liberal democracies, however, it remains an open question
whether the informal normsof particular cultural communities (such as the Amish or
the Satmar Hasidim) can survive without formal legal definition and protection (see
for example, Stolzenberg1997).
6 . One can be a pluralist and still grant that there are true and universally binding
values and undeniable moral principles, for example, cruelty is evil
and you
should treat like cases alike and different cases differently. One
of the claims of pluralism, however, is that values and principles are fully objective only to the extent
they are kept quite abstract and devoidof content. A related claim is
that no abstract
value or principle, in andof itself, can provide definitive guidance in concrete cases
of
moral dispute. In other words, it is possible for morally decent and fully rational peoples to look at each other andat each others practices and say, Yuck!
I call that the mutual yuck response. There is plentyof mutual yucking going
on in the world today. Circumcising and non-circumcising peoples, for example, almost always have a mutual yuck responseto each other. The mutual yuck response is
possible because objective values cannot in andof themselves determine whether it is
right or wrong to arrange a marriage; whether it is good or bad to sacrifice and/or
butcher large mammals such as goats or sheep; whether it is savory or unsavory to
put your parents in an old age home; whether it is vicious
or virtuous to have a large
Notes
3x6
family; whether it is moralor immoral to abort a fetus; whether itis commendable or

contemptible to encourage girls as well as boysto enter into a covenant with God(or
to become full membersof their society)by means of a ritual initiation involving genital modifications. Morally decent and fully rational people can disagree about such
things, even in the faceof a plentitude of shared objective values.
7. It is not entirely clear to me whether this prediction presupposes only a limited
form of globalization, for example, free tradeat the border, or whether it allows that
globalization might entail the deep penetration into other societies
of Western ways of
running banks, encouraging investment, enforcing contracts, and
so on. Of course, if
the idea of globalization is expanded beyond the economic realm (the linking of national economies) to include other realms as well (e.g., social, political, ethical, religious), thenby definition globalization and westernization must
go hand in hand.
COMMENTS OF DANIEL ETOUNGA-MANGUELLE,
CARLOS ALBERT0 MONTANER, AND MARIANO GRONDONA ON NOTE 1,
WITH FURTHER COMMENTS BY RICHARD SHWEDER
Carlos Albert0 Montaner
Richard Shweders comment is typical of those who expect

Third World reactions
from Latin Americans. He simply doesnt understand that Latin America is an extension of the West.I dont understand why Shweder thinksthat we ought to resign ourselves to authoritarian governments and economic models that condemn halfof our
people to misery when the entire world-beginning with the Japanese-believes
that
it was admirable when Japan copied the production techniques and social organization of the West. Perhaps the Brazilian favelas, with their infinite, barbaric misery,
seem picturesque to him. I cannot accept those subhuman conditions. I believe that
they must be eradicated and that the people living in them must have a chance for a
better, more human life.
How do I know what Latin Americanswant? Its very simple: by following migration trends. Surveys demonstrate that half or more of the populations of Mexico,
Colombia, and Guatemala, among others, would abandon their countries for the
United States. Why? Because the United States offers them what they dont find in
their own countries.
What Shweder says of these representatives from the Third World play[ing] the
part of disgruntled insiders could also be applied to the Americans who are concerned about improving subhuman conditions in the black and Puerto Rican ghettos.
If he is to be consistently uncritical of the values and attitudes of a culture, then he
should haveno problem with the Sicilianomertu.
Daniel Etounga-Manguelle
As a disgruntled insider and cosmopolitan intellectual from Africa, I appreciate

the opportunityto comment on Richard Shweders note.I do so with some diffidence.
Notes
3I7
After all, I am responding to a Western scholar who identifies himself as more indigenous than I am because he has done years of fieldwork in rural villages in . . .
Asia and understands and sees value inthe traditionsof others.
I have to confess that I failed to receive the intellectual and moral guidance and
material aid I expected at the Harvard symposium, so I am going to tell the truth:
We Africans really enjoy living in shantytowns where there isnt enough food, health
care, or education forour children. Furthermore, our corrupt chieftaincy politicalsystems are really marvelous and have permitted countries like Mobutus Zaire to earn
us international prestige and respect.
Moreover, surely it would be terribly boring if free, democratic elections were organized all over Africa. Werethat to happen, we would no longer be real Africans,and
by losing our identity-and our authoritarianism, our bloody civil wars,our illiteracy,
our forty-five-year life expectancy-we would be letting down not only ourselves but
also those Western anthropologists who study us so sympathetically and understand
that we cant be expectedto behave like human beingswho seek dignity on the eve of
the third millennium.We are Africans, and our identity matters!
So let us fight for it with the full support of those Western scholars who have the
wisdom and courageto acknowledge that Africans belong to a different world.
Mariano Grondona
There is a methodological difference between Richard Shwederand Latin Americans
like Carlos Alberto Montaner and myself. Shweders goal, were he focused on Latin
America, would be to understand it. We want to change it. Anthropologists need the
societies they study to remain relatively static and predictable, like an entomologist
studying bees or ants. Montaner and I, on the other hand, have an existential approach to our region: It is our world-where we come from-which we love. Because of our commitment to it, we want it to advance to new levels of human
fulfillment, closer to those in the developed world.
One must ask who represents Latin America better, Shweder and other foreignsocial scientists or Montaner and myself? We belong to our region. We feel it. The fact
that millions of Latin Americans are voting with their feet as they migrate to the
developed countries and that the overwhelming electoral majorities are supporting
progressive governments throughout our region eloquently testifies that our views
and concerns are widely shared.
To be sure, we travel back andforth between Latin Americaand the developed countries. But these experiencesdo not alienate us from Latin America. Rather, they both increase our concern about conditions, particularly for poor people, in Latin America and
focus us on what needsto be done to change those conditions. Like the vast majority of
our countrymen, we wantour nations to have the democratic stability, justice, opportunity for advancement, and prosperitythat we find inthe advanced countries.
Notes
3 I8
Richard A. Shweders Reply to Montaner,

Etounga-Manguelle, and Grondona
As far as I can tell nothing in note 1 (or in my chapter) recommends authoritarian

rule, a life of squalor, or death at an early age. In authoritarian power orders, those in
power act in such a way
that only their own interests are served, and
no one can stop
them from doing so. I think the world would be a far better place if there were no
such ordersof power. And nothing suggests that we must be uncriticalor accepting of
the received ideas, attitudes, and practices of any cultural tradition, including our
own. As I state in my chapter, Pluralists do make critical judgments. Indeed, the
stance of justification isso central to my style of cultural analysisthat I would define
a genuine culture, a culture deserving of appreciation, as a way
of life that is defensible in the face of criticism from abroad.
If one truly caresto achieve some appreciation of a cultural tradition, one mustusually engage in some participant observation and in a process of sympathetic understanding. One initially tries to bracket all ethnocentric reactions and discover what is
good, true, beautiful, or efficient in the ideas, attitudes, and practices of others. There
is no guarantee that appreciation will be achieved. There is no guarantee that everything that is, is okayor genuine. Ideas, attitudes, and practicesthat are demonstrably
bad, false, ugly, or inefficient should be criticized and perhaps even changed. So much
of
for red herrings and the bogeyman of radical relativism. My essay is in fact a critique
both radical relativism (whatever is, isokay) and ethnocentric monism (there is only
one way to lead a morally decent, rational and fulfilling life, and its our way), although by my lightsI did not see many radical relativistsat the conference.
In a moment I will respond to one or two other points raised by Carlos Albert0
Montaner, Daniel Etounga-Manguelle, and Mariano Grondona. First, however, I
want to focus on what was actually said in note 1, namely, that in the postmodern
world, one should be skepticalof all claims to authority based on the equationof citizenship (or national origin) with indigenous voice. And I want to tell you a story,
which illustratesthat point.
Rabindranath Tagore is modern Indias most acclaimed poet.
He was a recipient of
the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913, a spokesman for the India nationalist movement, and an admirer, interpreter, and literary beneficiary of the classical Sanskrit literatures of India. In 1877, Tagore visited England for the first time. He was sixteen
years old. He went thereto study law. In his bookIndia and Europe: An Essay in Unclerstanding, Wilhelm Halbfass quotes Tagores impressions:
I had thought that theisland of England was so small and the inhabitants so dedicated to
learning that, before I arrived there, I expected the country from one end to the other
would echo and re-echo with the lyrical essays of Tennyson; and I also thought that wherever I might be in this narrow island, I would hear constantly Gladstones oratory, the explanation of the Vedas by Max Mueller, the scientific truth of Tindall, the profound
thoughts of Carlyle and the philosophy of Bain. I was under the impression that wherever
I would go I would find the old and the young drunk with the pleasure of intellectual
enjoyment. But I have been very disappointed in this.
Notes
3I 9
Apparently, the young Tagore, a political and civic outsider to the British Isles,
was culturally more Englishand spoke the English language far better than most Englishmen. His reference to Max Mueller is highly pertinent to note 1 because it was
Max Mueller, a German philologist and orientalist who taught at Oxford, to
whom Hindu Brahmans turned to learn about Sanskrit and their own classical literary traditions.
This situation of outsiders and insiders trading places and keepingeach
others valuable cultural heritages in play isnot unusual, especially in the contemporary world.We live in a world where Afro-Caribbean scholars translate ancient Greek
texts, where scholars from Africa, Asia,
and Europe write perceptive booksabout the
United States, and wherethe Max Mueller effect is aliveand well. For example, Gusii
intellectuals from Kenya, some of whom are quite expert in Western philosophy and
science, read Robert LeVines work (conducted from the 1950s through 1990s) to
learn about the meaning, value, and history of Gusii norms and folkways. The main
point of this observation is a simple one: Statements
about the prosand cons of a cultural traditiondo not gain authority and should not be granted authorityon the basis
of claims to ancestry, membership,or national origin.
Note 1 was an aside, a parenthetical remark about my fascination with one aspect of the structural organization of the conference. The conference was choreographed in such a waythat there was one sessionin which all the speakers from the
Third World participated, and they spoke pretty much with one voice, supporting the idea that Western civilization is superior to all the rest. Now, of course,
this idea is not unpopular in many capitals of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. It is
especially popular among those Western, westernized, or westernizing elites who
tend to view the received beliefs, attitudes, and everyday practices of non-Western
peoples, even their own countrymen, as unenlightened, superstitious, magical, authoritarian, corrupt, or otherwise unworthy or embarrassing. But that type of
wholesale acceptance of Western modernity over non-Western traditionalisms
of various kinds has never been the only voice in town in either the West or the
East, the North or the South, the developed or the underdeveloped
world. Had there been other types of voices in the session, the voice of Third
World intellectuals who might speak with pride and admiration about indigenous ideas, attitudes, and practices, the session would perhaps have been less fascinating. Perhaps I would not have been led to wonder about the use of insider
testimonials from the Third World to lend authority to the idea that the Protestant First World really got it right.
Carlos Albert0 Montaner and Mariano Grondona are impressed by migration patterns, by the fact that millions of Latin Americans are voting with their feet in favor of the developed world. The first time I ever heard the voting with your feet
argument was in the 1960s, when a famous conservative made the argument that
black migration patterns into South Africa far exceeded black migration patterns
out
of South Africa. He interpreted this as evidence that black Africans were voting with
their feet in favor of the apartheid government of South Africa over other African
states! I suspect they were not voting or expressing their moral and cultural preferences at all-just going where there were higher-paying jobs.
Notes
320
Daniel Etounga-Manguelle seems to imply that one cannot live a dignified life and
a life that is distinctively Africanat the same time.As I stated in my essay, I am not a
fan of broad categories such as Latin American
or African as waysof identifying
cultural communities-Bahia is not San Paolo, the Yoruba are not the Masai. Nevertheless, I do believe, as did Edward Sapir, that the societies in which different societieslivearedistinctworlds,
not merelythesameworldwithdifferentlabels
attached. For a pluralist, distinctness or difference is not a term of disparagement. With complete respect for all three ofmy critics, whose sincerity I never
doubted, whose company and conversationI much enjoyed, and whose testimonials
and argumentsI found fascinating,I fully confessto rejecting the ideathat the only or
very best way to be dignified, decent, rational, and fully human is
to live the life of a
North American or a northern European.
CHAPTER 14
1. Lawrence Harrison, The Pan-American Dream (New York: Basic, 1997), p. 18.
2. Linda Kerber, N o Constitutional Right to Be Ladies: Women and the Obligations of Citizenship (New York: Hill & Wang, 1998), p. 307 n. 6.
3. Howard Wiarda, Introduction: Social Change, Political Development, and the
Latin American Tradition, in Politics and Social Change in Latin America: Still a
Distinct Tradition? (Boulder: Westview, 1992), p. 14.
4. Elsa Chaney, Supermadre: Women in Politics in Latin America (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1979), p. 32.
5. Ronald Inglehart and Marita Carballo, Does Latin America Exist? A Global
Analysis of Cross-Cultural Differences, PS: Political Science and Politics 30, no. 1
(1997);see also Ingleharts chapter in this volume.
6. Data on women in government can be found at Interparliamentary Union
<http://www.ipu.org/wmn-e/classif.htm>;and theU.N.Womenwatch<http://
www.un.org/womenwatch>. For other aggregate data, see FLACSO, Mujeres Latinoamericanas en Cifras (Santiago: FLACSO, 1995); Statistical Division of the U.N.
<http://www.un.org/Depts/
Secretariat and International LaborOrganization
unsd/gender>; and the U.N. Development Program <http://www.undp.org/hdro/
child.htm>. The statistics used in this chapter all come from these sources.
7. Mala Htun, Women in Latin America: Unequal Progress Toward Equality,
Current History 98, no. 626 (1999); Htun, Womens Rights and Opportunities in
Latin America: Problems and Prospects, in Civil Society and the Summit of the
Americas, ed. R. E. Feinberg and R. L. Rosenberg (Miami: North-South Center Press,
1999).
8. Mary Ann Glendon, Abortion and Divorce in Western Law (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987); Glendon, The Transformation of Family Law: State,
Law, and theFamily in the United States and Western Europe (Chicago: Universityof
Chicago Press, 1989).
0 judiciririo e a Viol2ncia con9. Jacqueline Hermann and Leila Linhares Barsted,
tra a Mulher: A Ordem Legal e a (Des)ordem Familiar (Rio de Janeiro: CEPIA,
1995), p. 63.
Notes
321
10. Giulia Tamayo L e h , Delegaciones Policiales de Mujeres y Secciones Especializadas, Acceso a la Justicia (Lima: Poder Judicial, 1996); Centro Legal para Derechos Reproductivos y Politicas P6blicas y Grupo de Informaci6n en
Reproduccih
Elegida (CRLWGIRE), Derechos Reproductivos de la Mujer en Mkxico: Un Reporte
Sombra, December 1997; Sara Nelson, Constructing and Negotiating Gender in
Womens Police Stations in Brazil, Latin American Perspectives 23, no. 1 (1996);
OASDACHR, Report of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights on the
Status of Women in theAmericas, Annual Report 1997 (Washington, D.C.: Organization of American States.
11. U.S. Department of State, Peru Country Report on HumanRights Practices for
1997. Released by the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, 30 January
1998.
CHAPTER 1 5
1. On which see James Davison Hunter, Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define
America (New York: Basic, 1991), p. 291.
2. For recent reviews of the studyof culture in the social sciences, see Diana Crane,
ed., The Sociology of Culture: Emerging Theoretical Perspectives (Oxford: Blackwell,
1994); Jeffrey Alexander and Steven Seidman, eds., Culture and Society: Contemporary Debates (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991); Richard Munch and
Neil J. Smelser, eds., Theory of Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1992), pt. 1; Robert Wuthnow and Marsha Witten, New Directions in the Study of
Culture, Annual Review of Sociology 14 (1988):49-67; and Adam Kuper, Culture:
The Anthropologists Account (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,1999).
in
of Culture,
3. Mabel Berezin, Fissured Terrain: Culture and Politics, Sociology
p. 94.
4. Ann Swidier, Culture in Action: Symbols and Strategies, American Sociological Review 51 (1986): 273-286.
5. Orlando Patterson, Ethnic Chauvinism: The Reactionary Impulse (Briarcliff
Manor, N.Y.: Stein & Day, 1977), pp. 177-185. Adam Kuper also emphasized this
point in his Culture, pp. xii-xiv.
6. Walter Benn Michaels, Our America: Nativism, Modernism, and Pluralism
(Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1995), p. 15. Cited in Kuper, Culture, pp.
240-241.
7. Robert Blauner, Black Culture: Myth or Reality? in Afro-American Anthropology: Contemporary Perspectives, ed. Norman E. Whitten Jr. and John F. Szwed
(New York: Free Press, 1970), pp. 347-366.
8. Meredith Phillips et al., Family Background, Parenting Practices,
and the
Black-White Test Score Gap, in The Black- White Test Score Gap, ed. Christopher
Jencks and Meredith Phillips (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 1998),
chap. 4.
322
Notes
9. Howard Gardner, Cracking Open the IQ Box, in The Bell Curve Wars: Race,
Intelligence, and the Future of America, ed. Steven Fraser (New York: Basic, 1995),
pp. 30-31.
10. Arthur R. Jensen, Differential Psychology: Towards Consensus, in
Arthur
Jensen: Consensusand Controversy, ed. S. Modgil and C. Modgil (New York: Falmer,
1987), p. 376. Cited in Nathan Brody, Intelligence (San Diego: Academic Press,
1992), p. 297.
11. Brody, Intelligence, p. 309.
12. Ibid., p. 41.
13. Ibid.
14. Margaret Archer, Culture and Agency: The Place of Culture in Social Theory
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1981), p. 1.
15. Ward Goodenough, Culture: Concept and Phenomenon, inThe Relevance of
Culture, ed. Morris Freilich (New York Bergin & Garvey, 1989), p. 97.
16. Ibid., pp. 94-95.
17. Eugene Hunn, Ethnoecology: The Relevance of Cognitive Anthropology for
Human Ecology, inRelevance of Culture, p. 145.
18. Robert Boyd and Peter Richerson, Culture and the Evolutionary Process
(Chicago: Universityof Chicago Press, 1985), pp. 33-37.
19. Roger Keesing, Theories of Culture, Annual Review of Anthropology 3
(1974):73-97.
20. Roy DAndrade, The Development of Cognitive Anthropology (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 247.
21. Roger Keesing, Models, Folk and Cultural: Paradigms Regained, in Cultural Models in Language and Thought, ed. Dorothy Holland and Naomi Quinn
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1987), pp. 369-393.
22. Ann Swidler, Culture in Action:Symbols and Strategies,American Sociological Review 51 (1986): 273-288.
23. Naomi Quinn and Dorothy Holland, Culture and Cognition, in Cultural
Models, pp. 6-7.
24. Boyd and Richerson, Culture, p. 40. They admit that these models have much
in common with their conceptionof culture, but they confine the cultural
to stable so-
cial transmission because only such transmission gives it an evolutionary dynamic

different from ordinary learning and its analogs
(p. 34).
25. Ibid., p. 36. Cf. David Lewontin, S. Rose, and L. J. Kamin, Not in Our Genes
(New York: Pantheon, 1984), chap. 5.
26. For detailed references and a review of the historiography on this subject as
well as an anti-revisionist interpretationof the evidence, see Orlando Patterson,
Rituals of Blood: Consequences of Slavery in Two American Centuries (New York: Basic
Civitas, 1998), pp. 25-53.
27. Richard Sutch, The Breeding of Slaves for Sale and the Westward Expansion
of Slavery, 1850-1860, in Race and Slavery in the Western Hemisphere: Quantitative Studies, ed. Stanley Engerman and Eugene Genovese (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975), pp. 173-210.
Notes
3 23
28. Cheryl1 Ann Cody, Naming, Kinship, and Estate Dispersal: Notes on Slave
Family Life ona South Carolina Plantation, 1786 to 1833, William and Mary Quarterly, series 3, 39 (1982):192-211.
29. Stewart Tolnay, Black Family Formation and Tenancy in the Farm South,
1900, AmericanJournal of Sociology 90 (1984): 310.
30. Anita Washington, A Cultural and Historical Perspective on Pregnancy-Related Activity Among U.S. Teenagers, Journal of Black Psychology 9, no. 1 (1982):
16.
31. See, for example, Center for the Study of Social Policy, The Flip Side of
Black Families Headed by Women: The Economic
Status of Black Men (Washington,
D.C.: Center for the Studyof Social Policy, 1984);William Julius Wilson and Kathryn
M. Neckerman, Poverty and Family Structure: The Widening Gap Between Evidence
and Public Policy Issues, inFighting Poverty: What Works and WhatDoesnt, ed. S.
H. Danziger and Daniel H. Weinberg (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986),
pp. 232-259.
32. See especially Neil G. Bennett, David Bloom, and Patricia Craig, The Divergence of Black and White Marriage Patterns,American Journalof Sociology 95, no.
3 (1989): 692-722.
33. KatherineS. Newman, N o Shame in MyGame: The WorkingPoor in the Inner
City (New York: Knopf, 1999), pp. 198-203.
34. Christopher Jencks,Rethinking Social Policy (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1992); R. G. Wood, Marriage Rates and Marriageable Men: A Test of the
Wilson Hypothesis,Journal of Human Resources 30 (1995):163-193.
35. George A. Akerlof, Men Without Children,EconomicJournal, March 1998,
pp. 287-309.
36. Lee Rainwater, The Problemof Lower-class Culture and Poverty-War Strategy,in O n Understanding Poverty, ed.Daniel P. Moynihan (New York:Basic,
1969),229-259.
37. Ibid., p. 248.
38. Ibid., p. 247.
39. See Roger Waldinger,Still the Promised City? Afro-Americans andNew Immigrants in Post-Industrial New York (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,1996).
40. Rainwater, Lower-Class Culture, pp. 234-235.
41. Anderson, Streetwise, chap. 5. See also Richard Majors and Janet Billson,
Cool
Pose (Lexington, Mass.: Heath,1992), chaps. 2-3; Carl Nightingale, O n the Edge: A
History of Poor Black Children and Their American Dreams (New York: Basic,
1993).
CHAPTER 16
1.John Wong, Promoting Confucianism for Socioeconomic Development: The
Case of Singapore, inConfucian Traditions in East Asian Modernity: MoralEducation and Economic Culture in Japan and the Four Mini-Dragons, ed. Tu Wei-ming
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press,1996),p. 281.
Notes
324
2. John Kuo Wei Chen, Pluralism and Hierarchy: Whiz Kids, the Chinese Question, and Relationsof Power in New York City, in Beyond Pluralism: The Conception of Groups and Group
Identities in America,ed. Wend F. Katkin, Ned Landsman,
and Andrea Tyree (Champaign: University of Illinois Press,
1998), pp. 126-129.
CHAPTER 17
1. There are by now a great many studiesof the nature and causesof the Asian fiGlobalEconomic
nancialcrisis of 1997-1999. See, forexample,WorldBank,
Prospects 2998-99: Beyond Financial Crisis (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 1998),
esp. chap. 2.
2. The best-known work in the 1950s was written by the sociologist MarionLevy.
See Marion J. Levy and Kuo-heng Shih, The Rise of the Modern Chinese Business
Class: Two Introductory Essays (New York: Institute of Pacific Relations,1949).
3. An exception is the early work of G. William Skinner on the overseas Chinese
community in Thailand: Leadership and Power in the Chinese Community in Thailand, 2 vols. (Ithaca: Cornel1 University Press,1959, 1961).Volume 2 focuses on the
nature of the networks linking different business interests in the Bangkok Chinese
community.
4.State Statistical Bureau, China statistical Yearbook 2998 (Beijing: Statistics
Press, 1998), pp. 639-641.
CHAPTER 18
1.Needless to say, many other factors were important in causing the Asian eco-
nomic crises, including mistakes by the IMF and the U.S. Treasury, as well as the actions of Western investors. For our purposes, however, we shall address only the
cultural factor.
2. The numbers are from Nayan Chanda, Surges of Depression, Far Eastern
Economic Review, 31 December 1998, p. 22.
3. Economist, 2 January 1999, p. 56.
4. Max Weber, translated and edited by Hans H. Gerth, in The Religion of China:
Confucianism and Taoism (Glencoe: Free Press,1951), p. 235.
5. Ibid., p. 248. Italics added. Contrary to Weber, Robert Bellah has demonstrated
that the Japanesedo have some cultural traditionsthat match the Protestant ethic.
See
his Tokugawa Religion: The Values of Pre-Industrial lapan (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press,
1957).
6. Francis Fukuyama suggests that a key to Chinas slow economic development
was precisely this lack of trust for non-family members, in contrast

to the Japanese,
who learned that they would have to deal with non-family actors. See Fukuyama,
Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation o f Prosperity (New York: Free Press,1995).
7. For a comparison of the influences of family patterns on East Asian developments, see LucianW. Pye, Asian Power and Politics: The Cultural Dimensions of Authority (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,1985)chap. 3.
Notes
3 25
8. The advantages and limitations of family firms are not limited to Chinese cultural practices but were also central to the successes
of the Rothschild family, with the
five brothers operating at the five bases in London, Paris, Frankfurt, Vienna,
and
Naples. See Niall Ferguson, The Worlds Banker (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson,
1998).
9. Danny Unger, Building Social Capital in Thailand (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998),esp. chap. 1.
10. For a sophisticated examinationof culture and economic development, see
Peter Berger and Hsian-Huang Michael Hsiao, eds., In Search of an East Asian Model
(New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction,1988).
CHAPTER 19
1. See Tu Wei-ming, ed.,Confucian Traditions in East Asian Modernity: Moral Education and Economic Culture in Japan and the Four Mini-Dragons (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1996).
2. Lo Rongqu, ed., Xihua yu xiandaihua (Westernization and modernization) (Beijing: Beijing University Press, 1985).
3 . Francis Fukuyama, The End o f History and the Last Man (New York: Free
Press, 1992).
4. Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996).
5. For a recent discussion on this issue, see William T. de Bary, Asian Values and
Human Rights: A Confucian Communitarian Perspective (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998).
CHAPTER 20
The authorwishes to acknowledge the supportof Abraham Sofaer and ]oel Hyatt of
the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. Special thanks to Jonathan Donner,
Jeffrey Wetzler, Josh Ruxin, David Rabkin, Ethan Berg, and Assen Vassilev for substantive comments. Thetitle of this chapter is also the title of a forthcoming bookcoauthored with Kaia Miller and Joseph Babiec.
1. Debraj Ray, Development Economics (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1998),p. 9.
2. Ibid., p. 12.
3. Amartya Sen discusses the difference betweena stock and flow in The Concept
of Wealth, in The Wealth of Nations in the Twentieth Century: ThePolicies and Institutional Determinants of Economic Development, ed. Ramon Myers (Stanford:
Hoover Institution Press, 1996).
4. For the best practical exampleof this view of prosperity, look at James Wolfensohns internal but now widely accessible memorandum
on the Comprehensive Development Framework (CDF), spring 1999. The president
of the World Bank has begun
to implement a holistic approach to development around the concept of a social
balance sheet.
5. Sen, Concept of Wealth, p. 7.
326
Notes
6. Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures (New York: Basic,1998), p. 329.
7. Alex Inkeles, One World Emerging (Boulder: Westview,1998), p. 316.
8. Ronald Inglehart, Modernization and Postmodernization: Cultural, Economic,
and Political Change in Forty-Three Societies (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1997), chap. 1.
9. Michael Fairbanks and Stace Lindsay,Plowing the Sea-Nurturing the Hidden
Sources of Growth in the Developing World (Boston: Harvard Business School Press,
1997).
10. We adapted this concept from the domain
of cognitive psychology, first coined
in 1948 by Kenneth Craik, to enrich our setof economic development tools. See also
Chris Argyris, Reasoning, Learning, and Action: Individual and Organizational (San
Francisco: Jossey-Bass,1982); and Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline (New York: Doubleday Currency, 1990),chap. 10, Mental Models.
11. Symposium participants Mariano Grondona and Lawrence Harrison have de-
veloped this rich conceptof pro- and anti-innovation value systems.

12. Douglass North, Institutional and Economic Change, Distinguished Lecture
Series 12, The Egyptian Center for Economic Studies, February
1998.
13. Clifford Geertz,The Interpretationof Cultures (New York: Basic,1973), p. 89.
14. Edward 0. Wilson, From Genes to Culture, Consilience (New York: Knopf,
1998), chap. 7.
15. Inkeles, One World Emerging, p. 24; italics added.
16. Joseph Stiglitz, Toward a New Paradigm for Development: Strategies, Policies, and Processesn (The Prebisch Lecture
at UNCTAD, Geneva, 18 October 1998).
17. Paul Krugman, Does Third World Growth Hurt First World Prosperity?
Harvard Business Review, June-August 1994, pp. 113-121.
18. Lawrence Harrison, The Pun-American Dream (New York: Basic, 1997), p.
261.
19. Inkeles, One World Emerging, p. 83.
by the work primarilyof Roger Martin, a
20. This schema for change was inspired
director of Monitor Company and deanof the Schoolof Business at the Universityof
Toronto, and by John Kotter at the Harvard Business School. The schema has been
practiced, shaped, and improved by Monitor Country competitiveness advisers Joe
Babiec in Bermuda, Jim Vesterman in Colombia, Kaia Miller in El Salvador, Jeff
Glueck in Venezuela, Ethan Berg in the Republic of Tatarstan, Randall Kempner in
Peru, Matt Eyring in Bolivia, and Josh Ruxin in Uganda.
21. This conclusion is sharedby Jeffrey Sachs and Andrew Warner. See theirNatural Resource Abundance and Economic Growth, National Bureau
of Economic Research, Cambridge, Working Paper5398, December 1995.
22. See Paul Krugman, Does Third World GrowthHurt First World Prosperity?
Harvard Business Review, June-August 1994, pp. 113-121.
Har-at
23. The founder and leader in this field is Chris Argyris, professor emeritus
vard and directorof the MonitorCompany. His flagship bookon this subject isOvercoming Organizational Defenses (New York: Prentice-Hall,1990).
24. Douglass North, Structure and Change in Economic History (New York: Norton, 1981), p. 201.
Notes
327
25. The debateon cultural relativism is outside the scope of this chapter but will be
developed in detail in our book-length format. For now, look at both sides of the argument in Daniel Boorstin, The Seekers (New York: Random House, 1998), p. 195,
and symposium participant Richard Shweders chapter in this volume,
Moral Maps,
First World Conceits, andthe New Evangelists.
26. The phrase prosperity is a choice is language shared with
me by Michael
Porter.
27. Howard Gardner, Leading Minds: An Anatomy of Leadership (New York: Basic, 1995), p. 293
CHAPTER 21
1. Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline (New York: Doubleday, 1990), p. 8.
2. See Jeffrey Sachs and Andrew Warner, Natural Resource Abundance and Eco-
nomic Growth, National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, Mass., Working Paper 5398, December 1995; see also Michael Fairbanks and Stace Lindsay,
Plowing the Sea: Nurturing the Hidden Sources of Growth in the Developing World
(Boston: Harvard Business School Press,1997), chap. 1.
3. Michael Porter, The Microeconomic Foundations of Competitiveness, in the
World Competitiveness Report (Geneva: World Economic Forum,1999).
4. Senge, Fifth Discipline, p. 174.
5. Special thanks to Jonathan Donner, who both designed the surveys and performed the analysis to generate this data. A more detailed discussion can
be found in
his forthcoming article, Making Mental Models Explicit: Quantitative Techniques
for Encouraging Change.
CHAPTER 22
1. Carlos Rangel, The Latin Americans-Their Love-Hate Relationship with the
United States (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich,1977). The French edition was
published in 1976 by kditions Robert Laffont,S.A., Paris.
2. Octavio Paz, El Ogro Filantrdpico (Mexico City: Joaquin Mortiz, 1979), p. 55.
3. Claudio VCliz, The New World of the Gothic Fox-Ctrlture and Economy in
English and Spanish America (Berkeley: University of California Press,1994).
4. Ibid., pp. 190-191.
5. Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza, Carlos Alberto Montaner,
and Alvaro Vargas Llosa,
Manual del Perfecto Idiota Latinoamericano (Barcelona: Plaza y Jan& Editores,
1996). Madison Books is planningto publish the English edition in2000.
6. Eduardo Galeano, Las Venas Abiertas de America Latina (Mexico City: Siglo
XXI Editores, 1979). This is the twenty-sixth edition. The first edition was published
in 1971.
7. Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza, Carlos Alberto Montaner, and Alvaro Vargas Llosa,
Fabrixcantes de Miseria (Barcelona: Plaza y Jan& Editores, 1998).
Notes
328
8. Carlos Albert0 Montaner,N o Perdamos Tambien el Siglo X X I (Barcelona: Plaza

y Janb Editores, 1997).
9. Mariano Grondona, Las Condiciones Culturales del Desarrollo Econdmico

(Buenos Aires: Editorial Planeta/Ariel,1999).
10. For an analysis of the Protestantization phenomenon, see David
Martin,
Tongues of Fire (London: Basil Blackwell,1990).
11. Lawrence E. Harrison, Underdevelopment Is a State of Mind-The Latin
American Case (Cambridge: Center for International Affairs, Harvard University;
Lanham, Md.: University Pressof America, 1985).
12. LawrenceE. Harrison, The Pan-American Dream (New York: Basic, 1997).
13. Robert D. Putnam, Making Democracy Work-Civic Traditions in Modern
Italy (Princeton: Princeton University Press,1993).
14. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (1966; reprint, New York: Doubleday Anchor, 1969),pp. 308-309.
15. Gunnar Myrdal,Asian Drama-An Inquiry into the Poverty of Nations (New
York: Pantheon, 1968).
16. Ibid., p. 104.
17. Ibid., pp. 27-28.
18. World Bank, World Development Report 1998/99: Knowledge for Development (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999).
19. See, for example, Bernard Lewis, The
West and the Middle East,Foreign Affairs 76 (January-February 1997).
20. Ibid., p. 45.
21. Edward C. Banfield,The Moral Basis of a Backward Society(Glencoe,Ill.: Free
Press, 1958).
22. Hernando de Soto, El Otro Sendero (Lima: Instituto Libertad y Democracia,
1986).
23. Michael Fairbanks and Stace Lindsay,Plowing the Sea-Nurturing the Hidden
Sources of Growth in the Developing World (Cambridge: Harvard Business School
Press, 1997).
Success in
24. Lionel Sosa, The American0 Dream-How Latinos Can Achieve
Business and Life (New York: Penguin,1998).
25. Ibid., p. 2.
26. Ibid.
27. Ibid., p. 7.
28. Ibid., title of chap. 4, pp. 47-68.
BIOGRAPHICAL
SKETCHES
OF CONTRIBUTORS
Barbara Crossette is U.N. Bureau Chief for the New York Times. Formerly a correspondent in Southeast Asia and South Asia, she is the author of India Facing the
Twenty-First Century; So Close to Heaven: The Vanishing Buddhist Kingdoms of the
Himalayas; and The Great Hill Stations of Asia.
Robert Edgerton is professor of anthropology in the Departments of Anthropology
and Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciencesat the University of California in Los Angeles. Although his writings range across topics as diverse as mental retardation, social order, deviant behavior, and warfare, the central theme in all his work is social
adaptation with a focus on the roleof culture. Among his recent books is Sick Societies, which views human maladaptation in a cross-cultural setting.
Daniel Etounga-Manguelle, a Cameroonian, is the president and founder of the Soci6t6 Africaine dEtude, dExploitation et de Gestion (SADEG), which is currently involved in more than fifty development projects in west, central, and southern Africa.
A former member of the World Banks Councilof African Advisors, he is the author
of LAfrique-A-t-elle Besoin dun Programme dAjustement Culturel?
Michael Fairbanks is the leaderof the Monitor Companys Country Competitiveness
Practice. Over the past decade, he has advised government and private sector leaders
in Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America. Co-authoy with Stace Lindsay, of
Plowing the Sea: Nurturing the Hidden Sources of Growth in theDeveloping World,
he is a visiting scholar at the Hoover Institution at Stanford and is a member of the
World Banks Committee on Social Development.
330
Contributors of
Sketches
Biographical
Francis Fukuyama is Omer L. and Nancy Hirst Professor

of Public Policyat the Institute of Public Policy at George Mason University and consultant to the RAND Corporation. He is the author of the prize-winning The End of History and the Last
Man; Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation o f Prosperity; and The Great Disruption: Human Nature and the Reconstitution of Social Order. He served as deputy
director of the State Departments Policy Planning Staff1989.
in
Nathan Glazer is Professorof Education and Sociology Emeritusat Harvard University and co-editor of The Public Interest. He has authored, among other books, Beyond the Melting Pot(with DanielP. Moynihan); Affirmative Discrimination; Ethnic
Dilemmas; The Limitsof Social Policy; and most recently, We Are All Multiculturalists Now.
Mariano Grondona is the host of the weekly television public affairs program Hora
Clave in Argentina. He writes a column for the Buenos Aires newspaper La Naci6n
and is a professor of government at the Law Faculty of the National University of
Buenos Aires. He is the author of twelve books, including the recently published Las
Condiciones Culturales del Desarrollo Econ6mico.
Lawrence E. Harrison directed USAID missions in five Latin American countries between 1965 and 1981. He is the author of Underdevelopment Is a State of Mind;
Who Prospers? and The Pan-American Dream. He is currently a senior fellowat the
Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies.
Mala N. Htun is assistant professor of political science at the New School University
in New York. She has conducted research on state policy regarding gender issues,
womens rights, and political participation in Brazil and the Southern Cone, Mexico,
Peru, and Central America.
Samuel I?.Huntington is AlbertJ. Weatherhead I11 University Professor as well as director of the John M. Olin Institute for Strategic Studies and chairman
of the Academy for International and Area Studies at Harvard University, where he was also
director of the Center for International Affairs for eleven years. He is the author of
numerous books, most recently The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of
World Order.During 1977-1978 he served in the Carter White House as coordinator
of security planning for the National Security Council.
Ronald Inglehart is professorof political science and program directorat the Institute
for Social Researchat the University of Michigan. He helped foundthe Euro-Barometer surveys and is chair of the steering committee of the World Values Survey. His
most recent books are Modernization and Postmodernization: Cultural, Economic
and Political Change in Forty-Three Societies; and, with Miguel Basiiiez and Alejandro Moreno, Human Values and Beliefs: A Cross-Cultural Sourcebook.
David S . Landes, economic historian, is Coolidge Professor of History and Professor
of Economics, Emeritus, at Harvard University. He is the author of Bankers and
Sketches
Biographical
of
Contributors
331
Pashas: International Finance and Imperialism in Egypt; The Unbound Prometheus:

Technological Change,1750 to the Present; Revolution in Time:Clocks and the Making of the Modern World;and The Wealthand Poverty of Nations: WhySome Are So
Rich and Some So Poor. He is currently workingon the role and historyof families in
business enterprise.
Gabriel Salman Lenz is a recent graduate of Reed College in political science and is
currently a researcher for Seymour Martin Lipset
at George Mason University and the
Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
Stace Lindsay isa founderof Monitor Companys Country Competitiveness Practice in
Latin America. He is co-author with Michael Fairbanks
of Plowing the Sea: Nurturing
the Hidden Sources o f Growth in theDeveloping World and is an adjunct professorat
the Georgetown University School
of Business. He is currently advising Technoserve,
a
non-profit organization that works with the rural poor in Africa and Latin America,
and Atlantic BioPharmaceuticals, a Cambridge-based biotechnology company.
Seymour Martin Lipset is the Hazel Professor of Public Policy
at George Mason University. Previously he servedas the CarolineMunro Professor of Political Science and
Sociology at Stanford and as the George Markham Professor
of Governmental SociolContinental
ogy at Harvard. Heis the authorof many books, including most recently
Divide; Jewsand the American Scene; American Exceptionalism;and I t Didnt Happen Here: The Failure o f Socialism in the United States (forthcoming). He is a past
president of the American Political Science Association
and the American Sociological
Association.
Carlos Albert0 Montaner is the mast widely read columnist in the Spanish language.
Among his recent books are the best-sellingManual del Perfecto Zdiota Latinoamericano; Fabricantes de Miseria (both co-authored with Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza and
Alvaro Vargas Llosa); andN o Perdamos Tambien el Siglo Veintiuno.
Orlando Patterson, John Cowles Professorof Sociology at Harvard University, is the
author of eight books, including Freedom in the Making of Western Culture, which
won a National Book Award in 1991; The Ordeal of Integration: Progress and Resentment in Americas Racial Crisis; and, most recently, Rituals of Blood: Consequences of Slavery in Two American Centuries. In the 1970s, he served as special
adviser to Jamaican prime minister Michael Manley.
Dwight H. Perkins is the Harold Hitchings Burbank Professor of Political Economy
at Harvard University. He directed the Harvard Institute for International Development from 1980 to 1995. He has authored or edited twelve books on economic history and economic development, with particular emphasis
on China, Korea, Vietnam,
and other nationsof East and Southeast Asia.
Michael Porter is the C. Roland Christensen Professor of Business Administrationat
Harvard University. He is a strategic adviser to the governments of many countries,
332
Contributors
of
Sketches
Biographical
including the United States, and to major corporations. He created the Competition
and Strategy Groupat the HarvardBusiness Schooland is the authoror editor of numerous books, including Competitive Strategy; The Competitive Advantage of Nutions; and, most recently, On competition.
Lucian W. Pye is Ford Professorof Political Science Emeritusat the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a specialist in comparative politics and the political cultures
and psychologyof Asia. A former president of the American Political Science Association, he has edited or authored twenty-seven books, most recently
Asian Power and
Politics and The Spirit of Chinese Politics.
Jeffrey Sachs, Galen L. Stone Professor of International Trade at Harvard University,
is the directorof the Center for International Development. He serves as an economic
adviser to governments in Latin America, Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union,
Africa, and Asia, and he has been instrumental in their adoption
of open economic
policies. His articles have appeared in several
of the most widely read newspapers and
journals.
Richard A. Shweder, a cultural anthropologist, is professorof human development at
the University of Chicago. He is the author or editor of several books, including
Thinking Through Cultures: Expeditions in Cultural Psychology; Culture Theory: Essays on Mind, Self and Emotion (with Robert A. LeVine); and Welcome to Middle
Age! (and Other Cultural Fictions). He is a past president of the Society for Psychological Anthropology and is currently co-chair of the Social Science Research CouncilRussel1 Sage Foundation Working Group on Ethnic Customs, Assimilation, and
American Law.
Tu Wei-ming is professor of Chinese history
and philosophy at Harvard University

and director of the Harvard-Yenching Institute. He has also taught at Princeton and
the University of California. He is the author of Neo-Confucian Thought: Wang
Yang-Mings Youth, Centrality and Commonality, Humanity and Self-Cultivation;
Confucian Thought: Selfhood As Creative Transformation; and Way, Learning, and
Politics: Essays on the Confucian Intellectual.
Thomas Weisner is professorof anthropology at UCLA. His work has focused on culture and human development, and he has done fieldwork in Kenya, in Hawaii, with
countercultural families in California, and with families of children who have developmental disabilities. Recent publications include African Families and the Crisis of
Social Change and chapters inEthnography and Human Development and Welcome
to Middle Age!
INDEX
Abortion, 194-195
Achievement motivation
and Confucianism, 250-251
and corruption, 117-1 18
Adaptiveness, cultural
and traditional beliefs, 127, 129-131,
137,138
Adultery
and gender equality, 195-197
Advantage
external sources of, 15-17
internal sources of, 17-20
See also Comparative advantage;
Competitive advantage
Affirmative action
and gender quality, 194-195
Afghanistan
female genital mutilation in, 184-185
Africa, 65-66
authority in, 70
cannibalism in, 74-75
and certainty, control over, 68-69
and conviviality, 72
culture in, preservation of, 75-77
diversity in, 66-67
economics in, 77
education in, 76-77
and future savings, 72-73
hierarchical distance in, 68
and the individual, suppression of,
71-72
individual responsibility in,71
irrationalism in, 73-74
language in,67
modernization in, 302
open conflict in,72
politics in, 77
and prosperity, strategy for, 274-275

religion in, 67, 69, 70, 73
social life in,77
subcultures in, 67
time in, 69-70
totalitarian society in, 74-75
tribalism in, 71-72
witchcraft in, 73-74
women in, 76
See also East Africa; Sub-Saharan
Africa
African Americans
and social capital,100
Afro-Americans
and economic failure, cultural
explanation for, 203-208
and IQ controversy, 205-207
and social problems, 210-217,218
and sports industry,217
Agriculture
and economic growth, 32
Alberdi, Juan Bautista,5, 53,297
Albright, Madeleine, 185
Alger, Horatio, 250
American Associationof Retired People
(AARP), 102
Americans
and rationality, 135
Anthropology
and culture, conceptof, 161-162,
315(n3)
relativism in, 162,315(n3)
and social norms,105
and traditional beliefs, 127-128
Anti-economic values,45
A-rational norms, 103-104
Argaiia, Luis Mari6,57
Index
334
Belief systems, 294

and prosperity, 21-22,271-273
See also Traditional beliefs
Bellamy, Carol, 185
Bell curve controversy,205,206
Belli, Humberto, 303
Benedict, Ruth
Patterns of Culture, 221
Bhutan
cultural enforcement in,185-1 86
ethnic cleansing in, 186
242-243,244, 324(n1)
human rights in,185-1 85
economic development in,239-241,
244-245,324(nl)
Bilbao, Francisco, 297
economies in, cultural analysisof,
Black pride, 204
254-255
Boas, Franz, 204,221
and familism, 120
Bonino, Emma, 185
family business system in,237-239,
Boundaries, group membership
241-243
and spontaneous order, 109
government-business relations in,
Brainwashing, 50
240-241,242-243
Brazil, 6
Westernization in, 261-262
gender equality in,195-197
See also East Asia; Miracle economies; Bucaram, Abdala, 56
Southeast Asia
Business
and economic growth,285,294
Asian Americans
and social capital, 100
Business environment, 18-19
Asians
Business-government relations
and financial crisis,232-233
success of, explanation for, 227-228
Asian values, 244-245,245-246,252,
Businessmen
254-255,264
in Latin America, 60-61
Attitudes
Business strategy
and economic progress, 299
and prosperity, 275-276
Business transactions
progressive, promotion of, 303-306
in China, 252
Authority
in Africa, 70
Calvinism, 11-12
and economic development,51-52
Cannibalism
and economic progress,300
in Africa, 74-75
Capital, culture, 270
Balaguer, Joaquin, 58
Capital, human, 270
Banking system
Capital, humanly made, 270
in Asia, 242-243
Capital, institutional, 270
Basiiiez, Miguel, 305
Capitalism, 11-12, 34, 119,259
Basic support
Chinese vs. Western, 250
in childhood, 148-149
and Confucianism, 248
Behavior
diffusion of, patterns in,35-39
and cultural models, 210,212-217
Japanese model of,246
and political authority, 34
and social structure, 210-217
and Protestant ethic, 47,247-248
uncompetitive, patterns of, 275-276
Carballo, Marito, 305
Argentina
and dependency theory,4-6
Arias, Arnulfo, 60
Ariel (Rodb), 50-51
Aron, Raymond, 48
Asia
banking system in, 242-243
economic behavior in,253-254
economic crisis in,232-233,
Index
Cardoso, Fernando Henrique, 6,57,298

Dependency and Development in
Latin America, 6
Cardozo High School,228
Castro, Fidel, 60, 298
Catholic Church
and abortion, 194
and corruption, 120-122
Catholic countries
and economic development,55
Catholicism, 47
and gender equality, 190, 191-192
and interpersonal trust, 91
and salvation, 52
Catholics
and literacy, 12
Catholic University (Caracas), 303
Caudillo, 59, 60
Central America, 289-293

and globalization,26
Central American Business
Administration Institute, 305
Change
in cultural models,218
evaluating and affirming, 280
and global economy, 282-283
institutionalizing, 279-280
in mental models,280, 291-295
potentials for, and cultural values,
147-148
and progressive values, promotion of,

303-307
and prosperity, 273-280,283-284

resistance to, 136-137
Chavez, Hugo, 56
Child care
and parenting, 154-155
Childhood
basic support in, 148-149
socialization, and parenting,,
149-154
sustainable daily lives in,148-149

well-being in, 148-149
Child rearing
in East Africa, 143-144, 154-155
in sub-Saharan Africa, 144-146
See also Parenting
China, 2-3,94
335
business transactions in, 252

and commerce, securityof,
234-235
commercial laws in,235-237

economic behavior in,25 1-254
economic development in,55, 147,
324(n6)
family business system in,237-239,

251, 325(n8)
family norms in,250-251, 324(n6)

modernization in, 257
overseas investments in,252
reform and open policyof, 265
social capital in, 252
See also Confucianism
Chinese Communist Party, 235-236
Choice, bad
and spontaneousorder, 110-1 11
Christianity
Citizen Power, 305
Civilizations
and modernization, 8 1
Civilizations, clash of, 259-260
Civil Rights Act of1964
Title VII, 191
Civil society
and social capital, 99-100
Clergy
Climatic zones
See also Temperate regions; Tropical
regions
Clinton, Hillary Rodham, 185
Clusters, 19-20
Coalitions
and prosperity, 279
Colombia, 268-269
leadership in, and economic
prosperity, 289-291,293
Colonialization
and traditional values, 86
Colonial societies
and political authority, 34-35
Commerce, security of, 232-235
Commercial laws
in China, 235-237
Index
336
Common culture
and spontaneous order, 109-110
Common pool resources
and rules, 107-1 11
Communication
and prosperity, 278
Communism
and corruption, 122
and interpersonal trust, 89-90
Community
and economic progress,299,304
renewed interest in,261
Company operations, 18-19
Comparative advantage, 15-17
See also Advantage
Compensatory sexuality, 212-213,
216-217
Competition
and behavior, patterns of, 275-276
and prosperity,283,287-288,289,
294
Competitive advantage, 15-17
See also Advantage
Competitiveness
microeconomic, 18-19
Conference on Population and
Development (1994), 180
Conflict
open, in Africa, 72
Conformists, 117
Confucianism, 258,261-263
and capitalism, 248
and economic behavior, 248-251
and economic development,225,234,
237
and family values, 233-234,237
and modernization, 258,263-266
vs. Puritanism, 248
See also China
Confucian modernity, 263-266
Confucianism, 164
Conviviality
in Africa, 72
Cooperative norms
Corruption
and achievement motivation, 117-118
and Communism, 122
definition of, 112-114
and democracy, 115-116,122-123
and deviant behavior, 117
and economic development, 114-116
and economic freedom,118
and economic resources,118
and education, 115
and European Parliament,122
and European Union,122
and familism, 119-120,123-124
and income, 115,118
and institutions, 116
and markets, 117-1 18
and means-ends schema,116-1 18
and norm violations, 116-118
and opportunity, 117-1 18
and religion, 120-122
and values, 114
Costa Rica
progressive values in, promotion of,
305
Coverture, 190-191
Cronyism
and Asian crisis, 232-233
Cross-cultural variation
and values, 82-84
Cuba, 5
and prosperity, strategy for,276
Cubas, Rad, 57
Cultural developmentalism, 160-161,
162
Cultural diversity, 163
and modernization, 259
Cultural enforcement
in Bhutan, 185-186
Cultural identity, 178
Cultural models
and behavior, 210,212-217
changing, 218
and socialization, 209-210
transmitted, 215-217
Cultural norms
Cultural pluralism.See Pluralism,
cultural
Index
Cultural relativism, 204-205

and traditional beliefs, 127,
131-133
See also Relativism
Cultural sensitivity, 184-185
and human rights, 188
and women's rights, 181
Cultural values
and change, potential for, 147-148
Cultural Values and Human Progress
Symposium, 280-281
Cultural zones, 81-91
and modernization, 81-82
Culture
definition of, 163
See also Economic culture; Political
culture
Culture, concept of, 208-209
and anthropology, 161-162,315(n3)
and socialization, 208-209
and social problems, 202-208
Culture of poverty, 161
Cyclothymic culture,56
Democracy
and corruption, 115-116,122-123
and interpersonal trust, 89, 90-91
liberal, 259-260
and political culture, 91-95
and progressive values, 296, 307
and Soviet Union, former, 94
Democratic institutions,81
Deng, 55
Denmark
and achievement motivation,117
Dependency
Dependency and Developmentin Latin
America (Cardoso), 6
Dependency theory,296,298
and Argentina,4-6
Development
Deviant behavior
and corruption, 117
Diaz Plaja, Fernando,297
Diego Herrera, Luis, 305
337
Differentiated goods
Domestic violence, 193
Dress codes
and men, dominance of, 181-182
Durkheim, fimile, 107
East Africa
fertility rates in, 143
modernity in, 154
and new groups, affiliation with,154
parenting and childhood socialization
in, 149-154
parenting in, 143-144, 149-154,
154-155
social connectedness in,154
See also Africa; Sub-Saharan Africa
East Asia, 232-234
economic growth, 31
family business system in, origins of,
233-235
modernization in,257
Western modernism in, 264,265-266
See also Asia; Southeast Asia
East Timor
human rights in, 186-187
Econometrics, 40-42
Economic behavior
in Asia, 253-254
in China, 251-254
in Japan, 252-254
Economic convergence,31
Economic culture
definition of, 14
and social policy, 24
of unproductivity, 25-28
Economic development
in Asia, 239-241,244-245, 324(n1)
and authority, 51-52
and brainwashing, 50
in China, 147, 324(n6)
and competition,49
and Confucianism,225,234,237
cultural analysis of, 254-255
Index
338
and cultural zones,88-89

and democracy, 53,92-95
and economic policy,20-21
and education, 50
and ethnic groups,222-228
and heresy, 50
and immigrants,222-228
and justice,49
and life view, 52
and morality,48
and new world order, 169-170
and optimism, 53
and Protestant ethic,226
and race, 220-221,222-228
and rationality, 51
and religion,47, 284
and salvation, 52
sources of, and econometric evidence,
40-42
and time, 51
and trust, 47-48
and utilitarianism, 50-51
and utopianism, 52-53
and value systems,44-47
and virtues, lesser,51
and wealth, 49, 310(n3)
and work, value of, 50
and worldview, 52
Economic failure
cultural explanation for, 203-208
Economic freedom
and corruption,118
Economic growth
and exports, 41
and geography, 31-33,40,41
and increasing returnsto scale, 39
and politics,34-35,40,41
and progressive values,296,307
and prosperity,284-285,294
and religion,42
and social equity,288-289
and social systems,33-35
sustained, 29-3 1
Economic inequality, 21 8
Economic opportunity
and gender equality,193
Economic policy
and economic development,
20-21
Economic progress
cultural influences on,299-301,304
and parenting, 144-146
and pluralism, cultural,165-167
Economic resources
and corruption,118
Economics
in Africa, 77
and gender equality, 192
Economists
and social norms, 104-107
Education
in Africa, 76-77
and Confucianism,263
and corruption, 115
and gender equality, 192,193
and progressive values,306
Educational achievement
differences, in ethnic groups,228-230
Egypt
female genital mutilation in,183-1 85
Egyptian Society for the Preventionof
Practices Harmfulto Women and
Children, 183-1 84
Elites
in Latin America,56-64
El Salvador, 292-293
Employment system
in Japan, 24
Encounter in the Community,304
Engels
and capitalism, 35
England, 8
ENLACE, 304
Enlightenment values,258,260,264
Environment
Environmentalists
and ethnic difference,205, 206
Equal Pay Actof 1963,191
Essentialism, 205
Ethical code
and economic progress,299-300,
3 04
Ethics, 46
Ethnic cleansing
in Bhutan, 186
Index
Ethnic difference
and intellectual socialization,207
Ethnic groups
differences among, and educational
and occupational achievement,
228-230
Ethnicity, thick, 163
Ethnic nationalism, 204
Ethnocentrism, 161,315(n2)
EU. See European Union
Euro-Americans
and IQ controversy, 205-207
Europe
economic growth, 31
gender equality in, 194-195
European Instituteof Business
Administration, 302
European Parliament
and corruption, 122
European Union (EU),116,185
and corruption, 122
Exports
and economic growth,41
Fair play
Familism
and corruption, 119-120,123-124
and religion, 122
Family
Family bonds
Family business system
in Asia, 237-239,241-243
in China, 251, 325(n8)
in East Asia, origins of, 233-235
Family norms
in China, 250-251, 324(n6)
in Japan, 250-251,324(n6)
See also Norms
Family values
and Confucianism, 233-234,237,
262
Fatalism, 275, 306
Feedback, positive
339
Female circumcision.See Female genital

mutilation
Female genital mutilation, 162,
315(n4)
in Afghanistan, 184-185
in Egypt, 183-185
Female independence, modelof, 212
Feminism, monocultural, 162
Feminist movements,191
Fertility rates
in East Africa, 143
Financial resources
and prosperity, 270
Folk societies
Fortune, good
Foster, George, 310(n3)
Freedom House, 186
Frugality
Gandhi, Indira, 185
Gandhi, Rajiv, 187
Gender
Gender equality, 189-190
and adultery, 195-197
advancement of, 194-195
in Brazil, 195-197
and Catholicism, 190, 191-192
and domestic violence, 197-198
in Europe, 194-195
in Latin America, 189-190, 191-194,
194-1 99
and law and behavior, 195
and law enforcement, 198
and laws, 191,192-193
and legitimate defenseof honor,
195-1 97
and presidential leadership,199
and Protestantism, 189, 190, 191
and sexual violence, 197-198
and Supreme Court,189,191
in the United States, 189, 190-191,
193,194
See also Human rights;Women's
rights
Gender neutrality, 212
Index
3 40
Genetic determinists
and ethnic difference, 205, 206
Genital mutilation.See Female genital
mutilation
Geography
and economic growth, 30, 31-33,40,
41
Germany, 8-9
Global economy
and change, 282-283
Globalization, 258,259,316(n7)
and productivity, 25-28
Global village, 259
Gorbechev, Mikhail, 122
Government
and productivity,20
Government-business relations
in Asia, 240-241,242-243
Government leadership
Great Britain
and Argentina,4,5
Great tradition, 223-224
Group membership
and
social
capital,
101-102
.
Groups, affiliation with
in East Africa, 154
Guevara, Che, 64,298
GutiCrrez, Gustavo, 62, 298
Habermas, Jiirgen, 258,260
Harvard Institute for International
Development, 242
Health
Hegel, Georg, 258-259,260
Heresy
Herrnstein, Richard, 205
Hierarchical distance
in Africa, 68
Hierarchy
Hip-hop culture, 217
History, end of, 259-260
Human progress, 282
Human rights, 178-179,179-180
in Bhutan, 185-185
and cultural sensitivity,188

in East Timor, 186-187
and female genital mutilation,
183-185
in Kashmir, 186-187
and men, dominance of, 181-183
in Tamil, 186-187
See also Gender equality;Womens
rights
Human Rights Watch,196
Hussein, Aziza, 183-184
Identification
IMF. See International Monetary Fund
Immigrants
Income
and corruption, 115,118
Income, world, 39
INDEHU, 303
India
women in, 182-1 83
Individual, suppressionof
in Africa, 71-72
Individualism, 169
Individualistic autonomy
in sub-Saharan Africa, 145
Individual responsibility
in Africa, 71
Innovation
and wealth, 49
INSEAD, 302
Institute of Human Development, 303
Institutions
and corruption, 116
Instruction
and Protestantism, 12
Instrumental values, 45
Intellectuals
Intellectual socialization
and ethnic difference,207
Interaction, repeated group
Inter-American Conventionon Violence
Against Women,193
Interdependence
in sub-Saharan Africa, 145
Index
International human rights

cultural exceptions to, 180
See also Human rights
International Monetary Fund (IMF),
324(n1)
Interpersonal trust
and democracy, 89-91
Intra-family violence
Intrinsic values, 45
Investments, overseas
Chinese, 252
IQ controversy, 205-207
Iran
economic development in,54
Irrationalism
in Africa, 73-74
Irrationality
and traditional beliefs,134-135
Islamic countries
modernization in, 301-302
Italy, 19, 81
and familism, 119-120
and social capital, 98, 101
ITESM, 303
JalC
and cultural adaptiveness,
129
Japan
capitalism in, 246
economic behavior in, 252-254
family norms in,250-251,324(n6)
lifetime employment system,24
Meiji Restoration, 7-10
networking in, 252-253
progressive values in, promotionof,
303
Jewish immigrants, 224

Jews
success of, explanation for,
227
Jim Crow, culture of, 218

John Paul 11,53
Justice
341
Kashmir
King George 111,246
Knowledge resources
and prosperity, 270
Korean War, 265
Ku Klux Klan
Labor-based strategies
Labor unions
Language
in Africa, 67
Latin America
businessmen in, 60-61
clergy in, 61-62
elites in, 56-64
gender equality in, 189-190,
191-194,194-199
intellectuals in,62-63
labor unions in,63-64
the Left in, 63-64
military in, 59-60
politicians in, 58-59
progressive values in, promotionof,
303-307
revolutionaries in,63-64
universities in, 63
Law
Law and behavior
Law enforcement
and gender equality,193,198
Laws
and gender equality, 191,192-193
Leadership
Left, the
Legal position
Legal values
and cross-cultural variation, 82-84
Index
34 2
Legitimate defenseof honor

Lele, 134
Lewis, Bernard, 7
Lewis, Oscar, 203
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, 187
Life view
Literacy
Little traditions, 223-224
Localization, 258
Locke, John, 53,260
Loyalty, 119-120
Luther, Martin, 50
Macroeconomics, 17-1 8
Madariaga, Salvador de, 297
Madison, James, 53
Mafia
and familism, 120
and social capital, 98-99, 100
Maine, Henry, 107
Maladaptiveness, cultural
and traditional beliefs, 128-129,
133-134,137
Malaysia, 232
Marital power, 192
Marital privacy, 191, 194-195
Marital rape, 197
Marketing and Opinion Research
International (MORI)USA, 305
Market pricing
and social relations and mental life,
147
Markets
and loyalty, 119
Marriage
Married Womens Property Acts,
190-191
Marx, Karl, 259
and capitalism, 35
and morality, 48
Materialism, 169
Materialist values, 84
Matrifocality, model of, 212
Mavila, Octavio
Ten Commandmentsof Development,

303,306
McClelland, David, 250
Mead, Margaret, 221
Means-ends schema
and corruption,116-1 18
Meiji Restoration, 7-10
Men, dominance of
and dress codes,181-1 82
and human rights, 181-183
and religion, 182
and social rules,182
Menchu, Rigoberta, 188
Mendieta, Salvador, 297
Mental life
and market pricing, 147
Mental models
changing, 280,291-295
of prosperity, 271-273
Mercantilist businessmen, 60, 311(nl)
Merchant ethics
Merit
Merton, Robert K., 11
Mexico, 6, 94
Michigan Militia
Microeconomics
Military
Mind-sets
Mineral resources
Miracle economies, 244,244-245,
245-247
Miranda, Francisco,297
Modernity, 256-257
in East Africa,154
Modernization, 169,257-261
in China, 257
and Confucianism, 258,263-266
and cultural diversity, 259
and cultural zones, 81-82
in East Asia,257
Index
European vs. American approaches

to, 258
obstacles to, 301-303
and tradition, 258-259,265,
301-303
Monetarist approach, 276
Monitor Company,283,285,289,305
Monterrey Institute of Technologyand
Higher Studies, 303
Montesquieu, Baron de, 53
Morality
Moral mapping, 165-166
Morals, 46
Moynihan, Daniel Patrick, 205
Multi-culturalism, 167
and racism, 205
Murray, Charles, 205
NAFTA, 116
Narcotraffickers, 57
National character, 163
National Commission on Civic Renewal,
102
National Competitiveness Program, 278
Nation of Islam
Nation-states, 168
Natural endowments
and prosperity, 270
Natural resource-based strategies
and prosperity, 285
Natural resources
and women, 179
Navahos
and cultural adaptiveness,130
Navigation Acts, 8
Negative externalities
and social capital, 100,102
Neoclassical economic theory, 30-31
Neoliberalism, 61-62, 311(n2)
Nepotism, 119,234
Networking
in Japan, 252-253
New world order, 167-171
prophecies, 169-171
Non-economic values,45
343
Nonproductivity, 25-28
See also Productivity
Noreiga, Manuel Antonio,60
Norms
and social capital, 98-99, 104-111
See also Family norms
Norm violations
North America. See United States
Norway
Occupational achievement
differences, in ethnic groups, 228-230
Opportunity
Optimism
Organic solidarity
Organization of American States, 193
Ortega y Gassett, JosC, 297
Overpopulation, 179
Oviedo, General,57
Parenting
and child care, 154-155
and childhood socialization, 149-154
in East Africa, 143-144, 149-154,
154-155
and economic progress, 144-146
socially distributed, 149-151
in sub-Saharan Africa, 141-142,
144-146
See also Child rearing
Parenting practices
Parsonian theoryof values, 203
Parsons, Talcott,257
Particularism, 119
Paternal abandonment, 211,215-217
Paternity, unsecured, 212, 214,215-217
Patterns of Culture (Benedict),221
Pefia, Ramon de la, 303
Perh, Juan Domingo,59,60
Personality systems, 163-1 64
Peru
progressive values in, promotion of,
303
Index
344
Pharisaic religion,47
Philippine Ordinances, 196
Planned Parenthood v. Cusey, 191
Pluralism
and Confucian modernity, 264-265
Pluralism, cultural, 164,259, 315(n6)
and economic progress, 165-167
Police stations
womens, 198
Political authority, 34-35
Political culture
Political ideology
and Confucianism,262
Political representation
Politicians
Politics
in Africa, 77
and economic growth,34-35,40,41
Population
and climactic zones,40
and economic growth, 32-33
Postmaterialist values, 84
Poverty, 204,271,281, 306
cures for, 12
Power
Prebisch, Rad, 4
Precapitalism, 34
Presidential leadership
Privacy, individual
Productivity, 15-17
and globalization, 25-28
government role in,20
and prosperity, 270,271
Pro-economic values,45
Profit-and-loss statements,253
Progressive cultures
vs. static cultures, 299-301
Progressive values
promotion of, and change,
303-307
Property, control of, 212
Prosperity, 282-284
basis for, 21-22
and beliefs, 271-273
and business strategy, 275-276
challenges of, 284-291
how to create, 269-270,280-281
importance of, 271
mental models of, 271-273
and microeconomics, 17-20
and progressive values, 296,
307
sources of, 15-17
strategy for, and change, 273-280
Protestant countries
Protestant ethic, 11
and capitalism, 247-248
and economic development, 226
Protestantism, 11-12
and capitalism, 47,119
and gender equality, 189, 190,191
and interpersonal trust, 91
and salvation, 52
Protestant Reformation, 54
Publican religion,47
Puerto Rico
Pupils Mothers Associations, 179
Pure value systems, 46
Puritanism
vs. Confucianism, 248
Qianlong, Emperor, 246
Quota laws
and gender quality,195
Race
in Africa, 67
and economic development, 220-221,
222-228
Racism
and multi-culturalism,205
Radius of trust
and social capital, 99,101-102
See also Trust
Rape
Index
Rational choice
Rational decisions, 133
Rationality
and Americans, 135
and traditional beliefs, 134-1 35,
136-137
Rational values
and cross-cultural variation,
82-84
Rawlings, Jerry,71
Rawls, John, 260
Real value systems,46-47
Redfield, Robert, 223
Regional Central Cooperative, 304-305
Relationships, networksof
Relativism
in anthropology, 162,315(n3)
See also Cultural relativism
Religion
in Africa, 67,69, 70
and economic development,47,284
and familism, 122
and interpersonal trust, 90-91
and men, dominance of, 182
Religious traditions
and modernization, 81
Reproduction
Reproductive rights,181
Revolutionaries
in Latin America,63-64
Risk, 133
Rod& JosC Enrique
Ariel, 50-51
Rothschild family,325(n8)
Rules
and common pool resources,
107-1 11
Russia, 311
345
Salvador
Salvation
Sarmiento, Doming0 Faustino,297
Savings, future
in Africa, 72-73
Scandinavia
and familism, 120
Secularism
Secular-rational authority
and cultural zones, 84-85
Security of Commerce, 232-235
Seko, Mobutu Sese, 182
Self-cultivation
Self-determination
Self-expression values, 81, 84, 92-93
and cross-cultural variation,82-84
Self-improvement
Self-monitoring group,163,315(n5)
Sex crimes
Sexuality
Sexual violence
and gender equality,197-198
Sharecropping system, 211,
213-214
Short-term wins
and prosperity, 279
Sicily
Singer, Milton, 223
Size, group
Slave system,2 12-2 15
Slave unions,211
Social capital, 98-100
in China, 252
how to measure,101-102,312(n9)
and morals, 102-104
and norms, 104-111
and prosperity,270
Social collapse,35
index
346
Social connectedness
in East Africa, 154
Social disintegration, 259
Social distribution
of parenting, 149-151
Social dysfunction
Social equity
and economic growth,288-289
Socialist societies
and political authority,35
Socialization
and cultural models, 209-210
and culture, concept of,208-209
Social justice
and progressive values,296, 307
Social life
in Africa, 77
Social norms. See Norms
Social order
Social policy
and economic culture, 24
Social problems
and Afro-Americans,210-217,
21 8
cultural explanations for,202-208

and parenting practices,206-207
Social relations
and market pricing,147
Social rules
and men, dominance of, 182
Social structure
and behavior, 210-217
Social systems
and economic growth, 30,33-35
Social trust, 81
Societies, folk
Sociologists
. and socialnorms, 104
Somoza, Anastasio,60
South America. See Latin America
Southeast Asia
and commerce, security of,232-235
commercial laws in,236
and Confucian modernity,264-265
See also Asia; East Asia
South Korea,232
and achievement motivation,1 17

Soviet Union, former
and democracy, 94
Spontaneous order
and bad choices, persistence of,
110-111
and boundaries, group membership,

109
and common culture, 109-110

and cooperative norms,109-110
and group size,109
and interaction, repeated group,109
and power and justice,110
and social capital, 103, 107-111
Sports industry
and Afro-Americans,21 7
State Department, 180
State of the Worlds Children 1999
report (UNICEF), 179,183
Static cultures
vs. progressive cultures,299-301
Stroessner, Alfredo,60
Subcultures
in Africa, 67
Sub-Saharan Africa
child rearing in,144-146
economic problems in, 146-147
individualistic autonomy in,145
interdependence in, 145
parenting in, 141-142, 144-146
See also Africa; East Africa
Subversive groups
in Latin America,63
Suharto, President,237,241
Supreme Court
and gender equality, 189,191
Supreme Tribunal da Justisa,196
Survival values,81, 84-85,92-93
and cross-cultural variation,82-84
See also Values
Sustainable daily lives
Sweden
and achievement motivation,1 17
Taiwan
Taliban, 184-1 85
Index
Tamil
Taoism, 249
Technological innovation
and increasing returnsto scale, 39
Temperate regions
and economic growth, 31,32
Temptation
and values, 44-46
Ten Commandments of Development,
303,306
Teresi, Salvatore, 302
Test-score gap, 206
Thailand, 3, 232
Time
in Africa,69-70
Time orientation
Tiruchelvam, Neelan,187
Title VI1 of the Civil Rights Act of 1964,
191
Tocqueville, 101
Todology, 62
Tokugawa dynasty, 7, 8
Tonnies, Ferdinand, 107
Toshimichi, Okubo, 8-9
Totalitarianism
in Africa, 74-75
Tradition
and modernization, 258-259,265,
301-303
Traditional authority
Traditional beliefs
and adaptiveness, cultural, 127,
129-131,137,138
and anthropology, 127-128
and cultural relativism, 127, 131-133
and environment, 137-138
identifying problems of, 135-138
and irrationality, 134-135
and maladaptiveness, cultural,
128-129,133-134,137
and rationality, 134-135, 136-137
and societies, folkvs. urban, 127-129
See also Belief systems
347
Traditional values
changing, 303-307
and cross-cultural variation, 82-86
See also Values
Transaction costs, 108
Transparency International, 300, 304
Tribalism
in Africa, 71-72
Tropical regions
and economic growth, 31,32,41
Trujillo, Rafael Leonidas,60
Trust, 306
and economic development,47-48
See also Radius of trust
Turkey
and achievement motivation, 117
Ugalde, Luis, 303
Uganda
and cultural adaptiveness,129
U.N. Convention on the Eliminationof
Discrimination AgainstWomen
(CEDAW),193
U.N. Declaration of Human Rights, 188
U.N. Fourth World Conference on
Women (1995), 180
Unamuno, Miguel de,297
Underdevelopment
UNICEF (United Nations Childrens
Fund), 179,183
United Malay National Organization
(UMNO),237
United Nations, 187
United States
gender equality in, 189, 190-191,
193,194
and social capital, 101,102
Universalism, 119
Universal peasant culture, 310(n3)
Universities
in Latin America,63
Unsecured paternity, 212, 214,215-217
Urban societies
348
Index
Urgency, senseof
U.S. Congress
U.S. Treasury
and Asian economic crisis, 324(n1)
Utilitarianism
Utopianism
Values
and corruption, 114
and gender equality, 194-1 95
intrinsic and instrumental, 45
Parsonian theory of,203
progressive, promotion of, 303-306
and social problems, 204
See also Cultural values; Survival
values; Traditional values
Value systems
and economic development, 4 6 4 7
Vargas, Getulio, 59, 60
Velasco, Ibarra, JosC Maria, 58
Venezuela, 292,293
and prosperity, strategy for,274
Vietnam War, 265
Violence
against women, 191
Violence Against Women Act (VAWA),
191,193
Virtues, lesser
Vision
and prosperity, 276-277,278
Wage gap
Wangchuck, Jigme Singye,185
Wealth
and economic development, 49,
310(n3)
Wealth creation, 283,285,294

Weber, Max, 11-13,107,247-248,259,
260-261
Well-being, 84-85
Westernization, 257-258
in Asia, 261-262
See also Western modernism
Western modernism
and East Asia, 264,265-266
See also Westernization
Western values, 258-260
Westinghouse Science Talent Search,227
Witchcraft
in Africa, 73-74
and cultural adaptiveness, 130
Women
in Africa, 76
in India, 182-1 83
and natural resources, 179
violence against, 191. See also
Domestic violence; Sexual violence
Womens police stations, 198
Womens rights, 179, 180-1 81
and cultural sensitivity,18 1
See also Gender equality; human
rights
Work
Work, value of
Work ethnic
and Confucianism, 149,250
World Bank, 305
and Africa,66
World GDP, 39
World population, 39
World science,39
World Values Survey, 305
Worldview
World War 11,265
Xiaoping, Deng, 252
Yellow Peril,265
Yrigoyen, Hipdito, 60
Zaire, 134
Zedong, Mao, 235

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How Values Shape

A Member of the Perseus Books Group

Copyright 0 2000 by Lawrence E. Harrison and Samuel P. Huntington

In memory of Edward Banfield,

This Page Intentionally Left Blank

Table and Illustrations

Cultureand Economic Development

LANDES-CUltUre Makes Almost All the Difference, 2

7 RONALD INGLEHART-culture and Democracy, 80

Corruption, Culture, and Markets, 1 1 2

Childhood, and Progress in

SHWEDER-Moral Maps, First World Conceits,

Culture and Gender

13 BARBARA CROSSETTE-culture, Gender, and Human Rights, 178

Culture andAmerican Minorities

The Asian Crisis

Family Ties, and

FAIRBANKS-changing the Mind of a Nation:

8.1 A continuum of norms

8.3 The universe of norms I1

This Page Intentionally Left Blank

This book appears under the sponsorship

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as a crucial element in understanding societies, analyzing differences among

one Confucian society-Singapore-ranks

The top 10 percent in Chile, Colombia, Guatemala, and Paraguay claims

If colonialism and dependency are unsatisfactory explanations for poverty

and also described several homegrown initiatives in Latin America whose

The presentations anddiscussions gravitated around five major issues, which

the link between values and progress

The Link Between Values and Progress

Education is better than ignorance.

Geography and Culture

The Relationship Between Culture and Institutions

In the former, an institutional framework has evolvedthat permits the complex

Bernard0 ArCvalo made an apt observation: We have the hardware

preferring what might be termed an ethnographic approach-one that

INTEGRATING VALUE AND ATTITUDE CHANGE INTO

1. A value/attitude typology: The objectives are(1)to identify the

Other initiatives, for example, property-titling programs, may have

courage rather than suppresseconomic development, the imbalance between

Dependency theory was a comforting alternative to cultural explanations of

In the nineteenth century, a distinguished Argentine, Juan Bautista Alberdi,

JAPANS MElJl RESTORATIONCOUNTERPOISE TO DEPENDENCY THEORY

another paradox of this revolution-restoration. The leaders thought they

tion of economic inferiority, and look how

The Japanese determined to go beyond consumer goods. If they were to

Attitudes, values, and beliefs that are sometimes collectively referred

A nations prosperity,or standardof living, is determined by the productivity

favorable endowments. In the modern global economy, however, firms can

firm, on anindustry, and on the natureof competition within local industries

middle income to high income. In early-stage development, firms compete

This discussion of the microeconomic foundations of competitiveness reveals

pie, a preoccupation that almost inevitably saps productivity. This zero-sum

fact, this short-term behavior often can

system? Similarly, it is dangerous today, in a global economy with access to

Historically, world political and economic circumstances offered scope for

ternational dissemination of business knowledge was far more costly

of international specialization, as nations increasingly produce those goods