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 4 |
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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.
Many theories of value change and empirical studies concentrate on the interplay of economic and cultural factors (Inglehart & Welzel 2005; Guiso et al. 2006). The theory of postmaterialism (Inglehart 1977) and theory of human development (Welzel et el. 2003) hold that economic welfare spurs self-expression and autonomy in people, who also become more altruist in wide-circle solidarity (Welzel 2009). The aim of this paper is to compare the effects of welfare, politics and religion on the values of social solidarity in post-communist Europe, where the economic decline in the 1990s coincided with the growth of democracy and traditional religiosity. The "cultural trauma" (Alexander 2004) and "sellout" of morals (Swader 2012) in this process have been described, while social solidarity as a coping mechanism has been understudied. I analyze the EVS 2008 data that cover all the post-communist Europe in 2-level models with two indicators for social solidarity, individualism in family and concern about the underprivileged in society.
The results show that individualism in family is stimulated by economic welfare but even more by adherence to religious Protestant believers. Central European post-communist countries demonstrate higher family collectivism. The welfare effect on the sympathy with the underprivileged is less clear. Religious Protestants score lower everywhere, predominantly Orthodox countries score higher. Postmaterialist values add to both indicators. No common "post-communist pattern" of solidarity with the underprivileged was detected, but regional and religious factors decrease individualism and compensate for the "transition trauma".
The proposed paper addresses the classical concept of anomie in terms of Durkheim and anomia, a concept of individual anomie proposed by Srole (1956) and implemented in further research (as Legge at al. 2008) which enables us to reveal the character of misbalance of values and norms and attitudes about them (Seeman 1959) within a society. Different scales of measurement of anomie, anomia as well as both anomie and alienation have been analyzed. A model of conceptualization and operationalization of anomie and anomia is proposed based upon the model of Seeman (1959), modified by Dean (1961) and Olsen (1965). The original model of Seeman has been considerably changed in order to exclude the measurement of alienation and to strengthen the measurement of anomie and anomia. The concept of meaninglessness and normlessness become the key measurement at two levels: of individuals and of the society. Two - level random intercept models (Hox 2010, Skrondal&Rabe-Hesketh 2004) are used in order to find out predictors of anomia at the individual level and anomie at the social level. Data base of EVS is applied, as well as statistical aggregated data measuring anomie at the country level (such as suicide and crime rates, etc). Of central interest will be economical, political, cultural and religious predictors of anomie and anomia which are supposed to be able to discriminate between the two phenomena.
Why more people in some countries feel free, than in others? Why there is even a more pronounced variation in subjective feeling of freedom within each country? These questions became important since the link between subjective freedom, or feeling of agency, and subjective well-being has been established in the paradigm of the human development theory. Quantitative estimates of the proportionate strength of subjective freedom's influence on the nation's well-being only reinforce the importance of studying predictors of the subjective freedom itself. According to one estimate, 30% in the change of the subjective well-being is explained by the sense of freedom of choice and control. In this study a multi-level modeling approach is used to examine predictors of the subjective sense of freedom both at the individual level and at the country level, as well as the between-level interaction effects. Data from 1999-2004 wave of World Values Survey and European Values Study was used to test the hypothesis, the data sample includes 60,740 respondents from 62 countries. It has been established that relationship between postmaterialist priorities and the subjective sense of freedom differ depending on the countries' degree of economic development. In more affluent countries subjective freedom is positively associated with postmaterialist priorities, while in less affluent countries this association is negative. Among other results it is worth mentioning that household income and both being married and having acquired higher education have a positive effect on the sense of subjective freedom.
The mainstream media suggest that the Great Recession is the cause of a growing antiliberal feeling. First we use the data from the European Values Survey to show that liberal preferences concerning economy have sharply decreased since 1990 in the European Union. Then we examine interventionism and equality, which appear to be two salient dimensions of economic attitudes within EU countries.
The first hypothesis tested is whether the growing demands for State and for equality observed at an aggregated level, are mirrored among EU countries. Multi-level regression models confirm that most of EU countries have moved in parallel along these two dimensions between 1990 and 2008, when sociodemographic characteristics are controlled for.
But are the global trends also reflected among different subpublics? The hypothesis of parallel publics is fairly well supported by the EVS. Our results indicate that between 1990 and 2008, gender, income, educational and ideological groups all have shifted in the same direction as for statist and egalitarian positions.
We finally disentangle the statistical effects of macro-indicators regarding economic development and inequality. These indicators indeed have a contrasted impact: whereas the demand for State is more pronounced among people who live in poorest (in terms of GDP) and in most unequal countries (according to the Gini index), egalitarian attitudes tend on the opposite to be less developed in countries with a low GDP and a high Gini coefficient. Everything goes as if statist and egalitarian attitudes were not connected the same way in every EU country.