Culture Shift in Advanced Industrial Society

Front Cover
Princeton University Press, 1990 - Business & Economics - 484 pages

Economic, technological, and sociopolitical changes have been transforming the cultures of advanced industrial societies in profoundly important ways during the past few decades. This ambitious work examines changes in religious beliefs, in motives for work, in the issues that give rise to political conflict, in the importance people attach to having children and families, and in attitudes toward divorce, abortion, and homosexuality. Ronald Inglehart's earlier book, The Silent Revolution (Princeton, 1977), broke new ground by discovering a major intergenerational shift in the values of the populations of advanced industrial societies. This new volume demonstrates that this value shift is part of a much broader process of cultural change that is gradually transforming political, economic, and social life in these societies.


Inglehart uses a massive body of time-series survey data from twenty-six nations, gathered from 1970 through 1988, to analyze the cultural changes that are occurring as younger generations gradually replace older ones in the adult population. These changes have far-reaching political implications, and they seem to be transforming the economic growth rates of societies and the kind of economic development that is pursued.

 

Contents

Culture Stable Democracy and Economic Development
13
The Rise of Postmaterialist Values
64
Stability and Change in Mass Belief Systems
102
Structure in Mass Value Systems The MaterialistPostmaterialist Dimension
128
Values Social Class and Economic Achievement
160
Changing Religious Orientations Gender Roles and Sexual Norms
175
Subjective WellBeing and Value Change Aspirations Adapt to Situations
210
The Diminishing Marginal Utility of Economic Determinism The Decline of Marxism
246
From EliteDirected to EliteDirecting Politics The Role of Cognitive Mobilization Changing Gender Roles and Changing Values
333
New Social Movements Values Ideology and Cognitive Mobilization
369
Cultural Change and the Atlantic Alliance
391
The Role of Culture in Social Change Conclusion
420
Appendix
433
References
459
Index
475
Copyright

The Impact of Values on Ideology and Political Behavior
287

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