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Title: Culture Matters: How Values Shape Human Progress by Lawrence E. Harrison, Samuel P. Huntington ISBN: 0-465-03176-5 Publisher: HarperCollins Pub. Date: 03 April, 2001 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $19.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.59 (39 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Denying that culture matters is bad for everyone
Comment: The main premise of this book is, as far as I can tell, obviously true: a group's cultural values can make a difference in that group's success, prosperity and competitiveness. Is it really controversial to claim that cultural features of Western Civ have contributed to its success? It seems clear to me, e.g., that values associated with scientific rationality contribute to progress in technology, medicine, etc., and while not everyone has to admit that these are desirable things, the majority of the world thinks that they are. I mean, we couldn't have discovered a polio vaccine without the scientific method, and the scientific method is a cultural practice, so to the extent that everyone can agree that a polio vaccine is "progress," then it seems impossible to claim that culture doesn't matter.
Critics, including one of the volume's contribuers (Shweder) often say "but there's no such thing as objective progress." And they are correct in a sense - but so what? If you're determined to think that the polio vaccine is an awful thing, then ultimately no one can prove that you shouldn't feel this way - you can believe what you want. But the point of this book is NOT to arrive at some universal consensus about how to define "progress." That would be a waste of time, not just because it would be impossible, but because the authors are already assuming that many people in the world already agree about what progress is. This book is simply about how people can apply knowledge in order to achieve their ideas of progress. The message is: "if you decide that vaccines are good things, here's what you have to do to in order to discover more of them."
It may be politically incorrect to say that culture matters, but it may also be true. And if it is true, the costs of denying this could be high. It's not just a matter of political posturing to deny that culture matters - the more disadvantaged countries deny this, the more they will fall behind and the more their people will suffer. And the more advantaged countries deny this, the more their own cultures (and advantages) will decay.
This is an important book because it admits that culture matters and it begins the task of adressing how and why it matters. This is no easy task - every group's culture is a tangled bundle of traits, some "adaptive," some non-adaptive, some relevant to progress, some irrelevant, some detrimental. Discovering which traits are important to success is not easy - it requires careful thought and analysis, and explicit hypothesis testing whenever possible (this book is short, unfortunately, on hypothesis-testing). But just because the task is daunting, difficult, and, as one contributer (Glazer) fears, politically "dangerous," that does not make it less crucial or unavoidable.
Rating: 5
Summary: GOOD COMPILATION OF OF ARTICLES ON THE INFLUENCE OF CULTURE
Comment: This book is a very good compilation of article on the role of culture in development. The compilation includes articles by a large number of premier authors on the subject, including the editors, Michael Porter, David Landes, Jeffrey Sachs, Francis Fukuyama, among others.
The articles deal with many different topics, though the common theme is how culture affect the success of a certain aspect of society, such as health, education, institutions, justice, etc. It does focus on blaming certain cultures for lack of success, but rather it tries to understand the themes that allow certain cultures to outperform others. The lessons do not blame a culture, but rather suggests somewhat modest (and often drastic) change that is necessary to permit a well functioning capitalist economy to exist.
As an economist, I found this book extremely useful in demonstrating the "transaction costs" that a culture may impose on a country, hence reducing its opporutnities for growth. In economics, this is usually studied in theory, but this book provides lively examples of how this is truly the case. However, I do believe that this book would be useful for practitioners in other disciplines.
Rating: 3
Summary: Needs a wiser production editor
Comment: My comments are at tangent with the rest (with most of which I agree) because I think the publishers have ruined the readability of this book by printing on cheap paper, poor quality binding and most importantly by selecting the smallest sized font. Publishers should know that the bulk of the readership for this type of book is above 50s and this book is hard to read unless your eyesight is as good as that of a 10 year old!
Of course, there are unnecessary footnotes right at the end of the book. One would like to see that they are minimized and prefer on the text page. I cannot see why the available technology cannot be used to improve the quality of book production.
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Title: The CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS AND THE REMAKING OF WORLD ORDER by Samuel P. Huntington ISBN: 0684844419 Publisher: Touchstone Books Pub. Date: 28 January, 1998 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else by Hernando Desoto, Hernando de Soto, Hernando de Soto ISBN: 0465016154 Publisher: Basic Books Pub. Date: 08 July, 2003 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor by David S. Landes ISBN: 0393318885 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: 01 May, 1999 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: Underdevelopment Is a State of Mind by Lawrence E. Harrison ISBN: 1568331479 Publisher: Madison Books Pub. Date: March, 2000 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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Title: Development as Freedom by Amartya Sen ISBN: 0385720270 Publisher: Anchor Pub. Date: 15 August, 2000 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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