Culture Matters: How Values Shape Human Progress [Paperback]

Of course, there are unnecessary footnotes right at the end of the book. One would like to see that they are minimized and prefer on the text page. I cannot see why the available technology cannot be used to improve the quality of book production.

The majority of essays defend the idea that culture directly affects the ways economic development and prosperity operate in human societies. Although some essays present counter agruments, these serve primarily to provide a framework for the debate.

First, some thoughts on criticisms of this book. The book is Eurocentric - no. The book is academic and focuses on economic development. While economic strategies vary from country to country, there are fairly well understood strategies that are common to all countries that prosper in a global economy.

Cultural values can't be changed without being destroyed. What idiocy! Cultures, including Western cultures, change all the time. England is no longer feudal, Sweden is no longer Lutheran, Germany is no longer militaristic and I can and do vote even though I am female.

All cultures deserve equal appreciation. Even though some cultures promote values (like female genital mutalation) that appear "bad" to outsiders, these values are good for "insiders". No. Just because a value or practice has been around a long time doesn't make it good (although it may become tolerable). Female illiteracy is widely tolerated but it's not good.

One of the things this book does well to point out the incongruous attitudes prosperous people hold about non-prosperous people. The flip-side of cultural relativism is frankly evil. It states that it's perfectly okay for people with "traditional" values to starve, multilate, rape and kill each other if "it's right for them".

Another great thing these essays show is that cultural values that promote human well-being can be found in many cultures. Confucian values that underly the success of Chinese immigrants are similar to the Protestant values that propelled Northern Europe (and the USA, Australia, etc.) into prosperity. The Japanese and immigrant Sikhs both know more than a little about how work ethics shape material success.

Read this book to balance out the current bias toward cultural romanticism. The world is getting too small to let some people fall out of the lifeboat just because "it's right for them".

Westerners who have the option of 'choice' accuse Huntington et al of cultural imperialism and racism. Let the periphery-dwellers speak out - for the thesis that culture values progress is reasonably debated in this collection of essays.

Don't get caught up in the romanticism of the 'other':
"a society in which magic and witchcraft flourism today is a sick society ruled by tension, fear, and moral disorder" (Daniel Etounga-Manguelle, Culture Matters, p73).