Culture Matters: How Values Shape Human Progress [Paperback]

Lawrence E. Harrison (Author), Samuel P. Huntington (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 5, 2001 | ISBN-10: 0465031765 | ISBN-13: 978-0465031764

Prominent scholars and journalists ponder the question of why, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, the world is more divided than ever between the rich and the poor, between those living in freedom and those under oppression.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

This collection of essays addresses a difficult question: Are some cultures better than others at creating freedom, prosperity, and justice? Although Culture Matters offers varying responses to this politically incorrect question, its editors, Lawrence E. Harrison and Samuel P. Huntington, as well as the bulk of its contributors, answer in some form of the affirmative. In an introduction, Harrison (author of Underdevelopment Is a State of Mind) writes in the third person of the movement he helps lead: "They are the intellectual heirs of Alexis de Tocqueville, who concluded that what made the American political system work was a culture congenial to democracy; Max Weber, who explained the rise of capitalism as essentially a cultural phenomenon rooted in religion; and Edward Banfield, who illuminated the cultural roots of poverty and authoritarianism in southern Italy, a case with universal applications." (The book, moreover, is dedicated to Banfield, "who has illuminated the path for so many of us.") For readers loath to make value judgments about cultures, Culture Matters may be tough going. But admirers of Trust by Francis Fukuyama, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations by David Landes, and any number of books by Thomas Sowell will find much to admire on these pages. Fukuyama and Landes, in fact, have written chapters--along with Barbara Crossette, Robert Edgerton, Nathan Glazer, Seymour Martin Lipset, Orlando Patterson, Lucian Pye, Jeffrey Sachs, and many others. In an especially compelling essay on Africa's continuing plight, Daniel Etounga-Manguelle asks, "What cultural reorientation is necessary so that in the concert of nations we [Africans] are no longer playing out of tune?"

And this is the point of the book: not to denigrate any particular culture, but to figure out how all people can improve their quality of life. In the words of Harrison, who pens the book's concluding essay, "It offers an important insight into why some countries and ethnic/religious groups have done better than others, not just in economic 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 world's people for whom prosperity, democracy, and social justice have remained out of reach." --John J. Miller --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Why do some cultures achieve economic success while others languish? Why do some countries develop successful democracies while others continue to undergo political upheavals? Are these discrepancies because of the cultural values of a people and their country? How important are these values, and can they be modified? These questions and others are discussed within the wide-ranging, thought-provoking, and sometimes quite controversial essays presented here. Drawn from a symposium sponsored by the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies, essays by David Landes, Lucien Pye, Barbara Crossette, and others cover a wide variety of topics, from the effect of culture on various countries throughout the world to a discussion of culture and its role in gender issues. Also of interest are essays on how cultural issues may be the root cause of African American underachievement in the United States. Those interested in economics, cultural studies, international studies, and political science will find much to think about in this challenging collection. For academic libraries.
-Danna Bell-Russel, Library of Congress
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books (April 5, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0465031765
• ISBN-13: 978-0465031764
• Product Dimensions: 5.3 x 0.9 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (33 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #118,770 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

50 of 63 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Islam and Western Culture February 22, 2006

By Certiori

Format:Paperback

Multiculturalism is a lie. It is a lie not because it says we should tolerate minorities (we should), but because it says every culture presents an equally valid way of looking at the world (they don't). This lie has consequences. The most significant being that educators in America and Canada have abandoned teaching Western culture for fear of offending minority cultures. Policy makers in the West take our culture for granted. They don't recognize that rational thinking is not natural, and it took a 1500 year battle with the Catholic Church, culminating in the Reformation and the Enlightenment, before rational thinking became a fixture in Western culture. In the Arab world today, that battle is still waiting to be fought.

Consider the following thought pattern

1. a terrorist attack kills scores of people

2. muslims would never kill innocent people

3. therefore, the killers could not have been muslim

4. since they were not muslim, they must have been CIA or Mossad.

A person schooled in Western culture - the language of Aristotle and Socrates - will recognize the fallacies in this thought pattern: the false premise (#2), circular reasoning and logical quadruped (#2->#3), and non sequitur (#3->#4). And even Westerners without a classical education will almost instinctively recognize those fallacies, even though they don't know the technical terms of logic. Yet to a person in the Arab world, the above thought pattern seems eminently reasonable. (See http://news.bbc.co.uk, search for "Iraq shrine blast: Your reaction"). Rational thinking, then, is an important difference between Western culture and Arab culture. Not because Westerners are inherently smarter than Arabs, but because Western education has taught European history and philosophy (Aristotle, Socrates, Kant, and Mill, among others) and in doing so given students the tools of logic.

There is currently a movement among "multiculturalist" educators to take the European classics out of North American education. Their motive is good - exposing a multiethnic student body to a multiethnic curriculum - but the result would be disastrous. A whole generation of students will come up using the same flawed thinking patterns so common in the Arab world today, and the society those students build will likely come to resemble the violent, repressive theocracies of the Middle East. Indeed, by denying Western culture to our students, we are doing a grave disservice to immigrants who come here precisely because they want a better life for their children. That better life includes a Western education.

This book is therefore quite right to say culture matters. If we want to preserve our way of life, then we have to preserve our way of thinking, and the way we think is a direct product of our education in European history and philosophy.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars A good starting point for the topic May 25, 2002

By A Customer

Format:Paperback

Culture Matters is a good starting point to familiarize yourself with the arguments relating cultural factors to development. The high quality of most of the authors and the variety of topics provides a solid exposure to the several angles of the issue.

However, the book falls short of a) offering a structured and compelling argument for the relationship between cultural factors and development and b) offering enough evidence that it is not only relevant, but relevant enough to be in the mainstream debate.

It seems to be a reflection of the stage of development of this "school of thought". One finishs the book with the feeling that this school has yet to accomplish two things a) reach a much stronger logical and factual explanation of the causal relations between a society's culture and its level of development; and b) show how much culture matter compared to other variables, such as geography, natural resources, educational system, etc.

15 of 18 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Awesome MindBlowing Book! January 14, 2004

By Athar S Siddiqui

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

I just started reading the book and I finished the Culture and Economics section. This book is a collection of essays by prominent sociologists and economists written in an easy to understand language (except for some sections in one essay where the authors wants to foist technical terms on you to impress or cajole you into seeing things their way but you will know and identify such people and make your own judgements about what they have to say) and it presents both point of views (the extremes as well as the middle ground).

Although there is one bad thing about the book (you cannot tell clearly which author will argue which side until you are in the middle of the essay : this is particularly the case with people who wish to state that Culture Does NOT Matter. They almost sneak up their arguments on you and beat around the bush for pages before getting there; which probably reflects on their essays).

If anything, reading this book has told me A LOT about every manner of culture including African and Latin American cultures. These are deep insights that only an observant student of that culture can deduce. It is enlightening to read them at times while at other times you go "Ok, so these people have problems, maybe I can do something about it, maybe I may not, but I would like to know more about the culture good and bad, and particularly the parts that every culture tries to hide or gloss over".

This book is a good read for all future politicians, economists, businessmen and anyone who is curious about how to interact with various cultures and what are the motivations behind the actions of various cultures. Fabulous, simply fabulous. What is amazing is the media attention a book like Guns, Germs and Steel received as opposed to this book which is simply sublime. I read passages of it to everyone I know.