Tuesday 16th July
Wednesday 17th July
Thursday 18th July
Friday 19th July
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The Impact of Culture and Economy on Values and Attitudes 2 |
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| Convenor | Dr Hermann Duelmer (University of Cologne) |
| Coordinator 1 | Dr Malina Voicu (GESIS) |
Classical works in social sciences point out the impact of economic development and cultural heritage or cultural settings on value change. Although most of the authors agree on an interconnection, there is no consent regarding the direction of causality. Weber emphasizes the impact of culture, which can shape economic behavior. This perspective states that values influence economic and political changes and it is in turn influenced by them. Therefore, the Protestant Ethic helped the development of capitalism, which made possible industrial revolution and the growth of democracy. In the same line, Huntington relates religious culture with development of democracy. Marxist perspective gives priority to economy, pointing out that technological development conduces to transformation in the economic system, which shape cultural and politics and produced a change in individual values and attitudes. According to the Marxist perspective, the 'ideological suprastructure', composed by values and moral standards, mirrors the socio-economic foundation of society and changes when the economic context is changing.
This session welcome contributions which try to disentangle the effect of culture and economy on values and attitudes, employing survey data. We particularly encourage submissions based on broad international comparisons, using cross-sectional comparative survey data such as European Values Study, World Values Survey, European Social Survey, or International Social Survey Program. Substantive contributions, approaching the impact of economic development versus culture on various types of values, as well as innovative methodological approaches, which help disentangling the effect of culture and economy on social values and attitudes, are equality welcome.
This study examines the effect of personal interests and basic human values on the degree of support for a welfare state. Data from the European Social Survey for 29 European countries (total n = 56,752) was used for the study. Results showed that values like collectivism and altruism promote demand for state intervention in welfare, while values like individualism and egoism negatively affect it. Income has the strongest effect on the support for a welfare state among all the factors tested, even more than gender and employment status. Compared to other countries (familiaristic, social-democratic, conservative and liberal), ex-communist countries seem to be more influenced by income, collectivistic values, and individualistic values. In familiaristic countries, altruistic and egoistic values have a crucial impact on the demand for a welfare state while there is little or no effect of personal attributes. In liberal, conservative, and social democratic countries, values do not have much impact. In liberal and conservative countries, the effect of income is also not as strong as in ex-communist countries, while it is completely unobserved in social-democratic countries.
This paper contributes to knowledge about the formation and continuation of family values and family behavior by investigating whether the tendency to express traditional views about family is associated with individuals' adherence to "materialist" or "post-materialist" views (Inglehart R. The Silent Revolution in Europe: Intergenerational. Change in Post-industrial Societies.) . Specifically we ask whether there is a significant relationship between a person's materialist value and his. or her willingness to approve of non-traditional views about family forms anf education of children. Our analysis is based on result of 5 wave of World Values Survey. For analysis of cross-countries differences of family values and family behavior we used the regime of welfare. We divided the countries on four groups: countries with liberal regime of welfare, countries with conservative regime of welfare, countries with social-democratic regime of welfare and post-communist countries. Because we suspect that gendered socialization and social norms influence family values and materialist values, as well as their relationship, we pose our question for separate samples of women and men. The results of research show that process of modernization, which is accompanied by changes in individual's values leads to changes in family values and family behavior. These changes are characterized by variety of family forms and bringing up children emancipatory values. Regimes of welfare have strong association with family values and family behavior.
In this paper, using World Values Survey data we examine a link between attitude towards corruption and sharing post-materialism values at the individual level. We find that the relationship between justification of corruption by individuals and their index of post-materialism has the inverted U-shape form, and pure post-materialists justify bribe-taking significantly more than pure materialists. This challenges a suggestion by cross-country studies that spreading self-expression values may constrain corruption.
Our explanation for this evidence is based on an idea that post-materialist values are often associated with stronger propensity to norm deviations. We show that sharing post-materialism values imply better attitude not only to bribe-taking, but also to such things as cheating on taxes or avoiding a fare on public transport. Controlling for individual propensity to norm deviations in our regressions leads to visible changes in correlations between sharing post-materialist values and attitude towards corruption.
Our findings suggest that expectations of that possible shift from materialist to post-materialist values, which will take place or already taking place in developing and transition countries together with their economic development, will automatically depress corruption are not well-founded. This evolutional way needs to be supported by strict anti-corruption measures.
If certain values and attitudes are more likely than others to promote success and well-being in today's work environments, the question of where they come from becomes important. Research so far has shown contradictory results concerning the effect of social categories and groups on work orientations, and it has rarely addressed the question of effect change over time.
The study presented here approaches the question of work value determination by testing hypotheses derived from (A) class and stratification theory, and from (B) individualization theory. It uses representative time series data for Switzerland, an unusually large set of work-related subjective indicators, and meta-analytical procedures.
The results strongly support individualization theory. In the general overview, this means only small social group effects on work orientations. But among the remaining effects, it means a growing influence of ascribed properties over the last decades, which is critical from the viewpoint of meritocracy. The influence of cultural region turns out to be the strongest and most reliable of effects.
Stratification theory has alerted us to the individual's entrapment in the social classes most typical of Europe's industrial age. Individualization theory seems to grasp the recent past and present age more accurately, particularly alerting us to social risks hidden in ascribed properties such as cultural background or gender. However, as we strive for work markets eventually liberated from all social boundaries, we need a more critical discussion of the generalized race for maximum conformity such markets tend to promote.