A World of Three Cultures

In this book, Miguel Basanez presents a provocative look at the impact of culture on global development. Drawing on data from governments, NGOs, the World Values Survey and more addressing over one hundred countries, he argues that values, as the "building blocks" of culture, are directly related to the speed with which social, cultural and economic development occurs. Basanez utilizes quantitative survey data to delineate three cultural hyperclusters across the globe: cultures of honor, which prioritize political authority; cultures of achievement, which emphasize economic advancement; and cultures of joy, which focus on social interactions. According to Basanez, these cultures evolved chronologically, mirroring the development of agrarian, industrial and service societies. He argues that a country's developmental path is profoundly influenced by its people's values and culture, as crystallized through its formal and informal governing institutions. Culture is passed down over generations through families, schools, the media, religious institutions, leadership, and the law. Although culture and values are in a permanent state of evolution, leaders and policymakers can also push cultural change in order to promote desirable goals such as economic growth, democratization, and equality. Over the course of the book, Basanez introduces two new measures of development: the Objective Development Index (which blends rubrics such as health, education, income, gender equality, political rights and civil liberties, and economic inequality) and the Subjective Development Index (which uses responses to the World Values Survey to classify countries according to their values). "Miguel Basanez has married his personal confrontations with cultural diversity with objective evidence to craft an original scheme of categories for societies that will provoke experts and those interested in the importance of a society's values to reflect on their current understanding. Every reader concerned with the inequalities among the world's nations will profit from this synthesis of fact and speculation." -Jerome Kagan, Professor of Psychology, Emeritus, Harvard University "By making exceptional use of Inglehart's World Values Survey, Basanez has very skillfully reasoned the impact of values on development. The three cultures he outlines - honor, achievement and joy - represent Atlantic culture, East Asian culture and Latin American culture. The book shows persuasively that the three cultures bloom each in their own way, vindicating the claim that the world experiences multiple modernities. Its beauty also lies in how well Basanez exemplifies the three cultures!" -Takashi Inoguchi, Professor Emeritus, University of Tokyo "In this very readable book Miguel Basa?ez presents a cross-cultural world view influenced by the data analysis and interpretation of the three founding fathers of the discipline: a European management researcher, an American sociologist, and an Israeli psychologist, but this he does from his own Latin-American point of view. Compared to us he is quite original in adding to his two main axes of Power and Achievement a third axis of Joy. It is a joy to read his work." -Geert Hofstede, author of Culture's Consequences "A World of Three Cultures is a book to be recommended in a time of cultural wars, because it helps the reader to give meaning to such conflicts through the use of statistical data and to give hope to global public opinion in a possible convergence scenario." -Matteo B. Marini, Professor of Development Economics, Universita della Calabria "