Title: Costs and benefits of developing a global language of historical
1Costs and benefits of developing a global
language of historical symbols
- James H. Liu, Dario Paez, Katja Hanke
- (lots of) Friends
- Centre for Applied Cross Cultural Research
- School of Psychology
- Victoria University of Wellington
- New Zealand
2Globalization and the End of History?
- Liberal theorists like Francis Fukuyama declared
the End of History with the Triumph of Liberal
Democracy as the World System in the early 1990s.
Fukuyama based his argument on a philosophical
model of human psychology that argued that LD
filled peoples needs best. - Concurrently, cross-cultural psychology hit the
big time in the USA with the Markus Kitayamas
(1991) paper that made all motivation, cognition,
and emotion contingent on culture-based
self-construal. - We get two very different answers appearing at
the same time about how universal Western models
of self and governance are. - Could it be possible that both Fukuyama and
Markus and Kitayama are correct?
3Universality
- The argument for universality needs little
introduction. Western enlightenment ideals were
not are not qualified by culture, and
mainstream psychology is a tributary of this
stream. - But non-Westerners, especially those who have
been colonized by them, or had their territories
dismembered by them under such enlightenment
ideas as White Mans burden or Social Darwinism
would have reason to question to what extent the
claim of universality is description versus
prescription.
4Cultural Specificity and the Dimensions of
Cultural Variation
- Markus and Kitayama (1991) reduced one the
dimensions of cultural variation identified by
cross-cultural psychologist Geert Hofstede (1980)
in Cultures Consequences to a dichotomy that
could be used as an independent variable in
laboratory experiments IND-COL -gt independent
self interdependent self - Shalom Schwartz (1987, 1990) concurrently
developed a much better psychometric model of the
cross-cultural structure of human values. Values
are considered to be relatively stable and
implicit elements of society that differ in their
degree of emphasis but not structure across
cultures.
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7The Value of Dimensions of Cultural Variation
- Identify points of commonality and points of
difference between different societies, so that
members can know where they are likely to differ
and where they are likely to see eye to eye. - The structure, or associative meaning of values
is fairly consistent across cultures, e.g.,
broadmindedness and curiosity are positively
correlated with each other and negative
correlated with authority and humility in most
cultures. - Facilitate cross-cultural communication and
identify sources of cross-cultural
misunderstandings
8Can Political Culture be characterized as an
Enduring System of Values?
- 1) Culture is Dynamically Constructed through
Communication in Society - Cultural Meanings are embedded within discursive
and representational practices mediated through
institutions and individuals and their families.
Culture is not as static as cross-cultural
psychology implies (e.g., Hofstedes measures are
more than 40 years old) - 2) Universality vs Culture Specificity
- Not all Cultural Meanings can be arrayed on
universal dimensions of variation the Treaty of
Waitangi has symbolic meaning in New Zealand
only, but without it, you cannot understand NZ
intergroup relations. There is a cost to forcing
agreement on the structure/meaning of measures
across cultures
9 History as a Symbolic Reserve
- (1) History encompasses the accumulated wisdom
and knowledge from our ancestors that can be
applied to new situations. History provides
traditions, values, and symbols that are vital to
the functioning of societies. - (2) It is appealing as a tool for political
communications because it offers concrete events
and people with emotional resonance whose
relevance to the current situation is open to
interpretation and public debate. - (3) Representations of History contribute to
aspects of National Political Culture like
Nationalism and Willingness to fight for ones
country
10Most Important Events in World History according
to East Asian Samples (JCCP, 2005)
11World History Survey
- Moving from open-ended nominations to
closed-ended evaluations. - An attempt to derive cross-cultural dimensions of
historical evaluation - Data collected from 30 societies
- Initial analyses focused on the rewards costs
of forcing agreement (or structural equivalence)
on survey items across cultures - Developing a global language of historical
symbols Importance and evaluation of 30
prominent historical events across cultures
12Costs and Benefits of Forcing Agreement on CC Data
- Previous cross-cultural research on dimensions of
cultural variation (Hofstede, Schwartz, House,
Leung Bond, etc.) investigated domains where
universal meaning was presumed (e.g., values,
orientations, social axioms). - There is no reason to expect the meaning of
historical events and figures to be shared across
all cultures. So we need techniques of measuring
rewards and costs of forcing structural
equivalence on events and figures of world history
13Item Selection
- Any event or figure nominated by more than 1
society in either the 2005 or 2009 JCCP papers
were included. - Additional items included for theoretical
purposes (e.g., 30 years war because it was the
most important European event of the 1600s, but
totally forgotten now, topical events like global
warming and recent figures like Bill Gates to
examine recency effects) - Item pool was biased against Africa and Arabic
societies because they were absent from previous
research.
14Evaluation of Most Imp Events in WH
15Data Samples 30 societies, N5800
16Multi-Dimensional-Scaling to detect Dimensions of
Meaning
- Non-metric MDS on Euclidean distances using
standardized z-scores between the 40 events and
figures separately (MDS between variables) across
all countries using individual-level data. This
procedure is useful to detect underlying
dimensions of meaning. - We conducted 31 MDS analyses, 1 for each society
and 1 for the overall data from all societies - Generalized Procrustes Analysis (GPA Borg
Groenen, 1997 Commandeur, 1991), which is to MDS
what Procrustean Target Rotation is for Factor
Analysis it assesses agreement between
configurations from different societies. GPA
rotates the coordinates of all configurations in
such a way that they maximally correspond to one
another - This is done simultaneously with all
configurations (here 31). Very poor fit.
17Initial 2 Dimensional Solution
18Only First Dimension Stable
- Correlations between coordinates for individual
societies and the overall solution were very high
for the first (vertical) dim - But the second (horizontal dimension) produced
low correlation coefficients. The second
dimension was uninterpretable. - So we eliminated items that fit the overall
solution poorly using the ratio between sum of
squares fit per item divided by sum of squares
total. - Fit did not improve.
- So we aggregated countries into clusters, and
used MDS and GPA on the clusters to achieve
better fitting dimensional solutions
19PosNeg by Modernization (Western)
20PosNeg by Western Hegemony (non-Western1)
21No Stable Cross-cultural Dimensions of Variation
in the Historical Evaluation of Events
- Only the first dimension, positive-negative is
stable - The second dimension, which comes close to
Progress according to Western standards versus
Resistance to Westernization, is unstable. - The best we can do is come up with clusters of
meaningful events.
22A cross-culturally reliable historical events
scale Calamities
23Less Agreement on Progress and Resistance to
Oppression
24The tragedy of humanity at the outset of the 21st
century is that
- We know what we want freedom from. Universally,
we know understand the historical meaning
calamity. - We do not know what we want freedom for. There
is much less agreement about what constitutes
historical progress. - Human history is a story of great things coming
out of great suffering, because it is often only
in suffering that we are united.
25Impact on Willingness to Fight, a critical aspect
of Political Culture
26Country level Data Western countries dont want
to fight and see Calamities as horrific
27Conclusion
- The Symbolic Landscape of Shared Meaning about
World History is Limited. - It is possible to force agreement, but crucial
culture specific information is lost. - There are significant differences between Western
and non-Western representations, with certain
items completely switching places in terms of
nomological meaning Womens Emancipation,
Terrorism, Colonization, etc - But both Historical Calamities and Progress
contribute independently to Willingness to Fight,
and important aspect of Political Culture
28Conclusion
- As the different peoples of the world rub
shoulders within the political framework of the
nation-state, the need to manage cultural
diversity within and between states is becoming
paramount. Social science knowledge that
reflects both universals and culture specifics
are needed. - Future research on the meaning of WWII and World
History using descriptive items rather than by
association. - A marriage between content and process provides
an important avenue for the export of social
psychological research to larger issues of
globalization and the emergence of global
consciousness vital to the 21st century.