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| View Larger Image | Culture Matters: How Values Shape Human Progress
by Lawrence E. Harrison, Samuel P. Huntington
| | List Price: | $19.00 | | Price: | $12.92 | | You Save: | $6.08 (32%) |  | | Available: | Usually ships in 24 hours | | | | | Sales Rank: | 10979 | | Studio: | Basic Books | | | Binding: | Paperback | | Number Of Pages: | 384 | | Publication Date: | December 31, 1969 | | Publisher: | Basic Books |
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EDITORIAL REVIEWS |
Product Description
Prominent scholars and journalists ponder the question of why, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, the world is more divided than ever between the rich and the poor, between those living in freedom and those under oppression. |
Amazon.com
This collection of essays addresses a difficult question: Are some cultures better than others at creating freedom, prosperity, and justice? Although Culture Matters offers varying responses to this politically incorrect question, its editors, Lawrence E. Harrison and Samuel P. Huntington, as well as the bulk of its contributors, answer in some form of the affirmative. In an introduction, Harrison (author of Underdevelopment Is a State of Mind) writes in the third person of the movement he helps lead: "They are the intellectual heirs of Alexis de Tocqueville, who concluded that what made the American political system work was a culture congenial to democracy; Max Weber, who explained the rise of capitalism as essentially a cultural phenomenon rooted in religion; and Edward Banfield, who illuminated the cultural roots of poverty and authoritarianism in southern Italy, a case with universal applications." (The book, moreover, is dedicated to Banfield, "who has illuminated the path for so many of us.") For readers loath to make value judgments about cultures, Culture Matters may be tough going. But admirers of Trust by Francis Fukuyama, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations by David Landes, and any number of books by Thomas Sowell will find much to admire on these pages. Fukuyama and Landes, in fact, have written chapters--along with Barbara Crossette, Robert Edgerton, Nathan Glazer, Seymour Martin Lipset, Orlando Patterson, Lucian Pye, Jeffrey Sachs, and many others. In an especially compelling essay on Africa's continuing plight, Daniel Etounga-Manguelle asks, "What cultural reorientation is necessary so that in the concert of nations we [Africans] are no longer playing out of tune?" And this is the point of the book: not to denigrate any particular culture, but to figure out how all people can improve their quality of life. In the words of Harrison, who pens the book's concluding essay, "It offers an important insight into why some countries and ethnic/religious groups have done better than others, not just in economic terms but also with respect to consolidation of democratic institutions and social justice. And those lessons of experience, which are increasingly finding practical application, particularly in Latin America, may help to illuminate the path to progress for that substantial majority of the world's people for whom prosperity, democracy, and social justice have remained out of reach." --John J. Miller |
CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 3.5 based on 51 reviews)
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Worth a read -- find out what academics think! 
Well, we are very carefully approaching a point of actually *applying objective standards* to how well cultures allow their populations to self-actualize. As we shrink in horror from the idea, let's just have a peek inside this book.
Lawrence Harrison has the requisite progressive pedigree to pull this off.
A few interesting give-and-takes in the book.
A few VERY OBVIOUS cultural issues left out.
The book could have been much, much worse. For the most part, these folks kept their post-modernism under control and wrote in a comprehensible manner.
Not entertaining, but not horrid.
September 11, 2007 | |
Culture Matters 
This book was well put together. it reflects the work of a number of intellectual authors and gives multiple opinions on this huge subject of culture in politics and world order.
March 09, 2007 | |
Tedious academic compilation
There were a few good nuggets of information in the varied chapters; however, most of the content of this book is hopelessly dry and academic. Seemingly written by professors and wonks for other professors and wonks, I cannot raise the appraisal of Culture Matters above two stars. Yes culture most certainly matters. The value sets of peoples around the world determine if they develop and thrive, or collapse into mediocrity.
August 28, 2006 | |
it really does matter
For those who wonder why some people are doing well and some aren't, this is a good book. Particularly excellent is the section on why Africa is such a mess by Daniel Entounga-Manguelle.
July 04, 2006 | |
Some very good chapters 
Richard A. Shweder's "Moral maps, first world conceits, and the new evangelists", Samuel P. Huntington's "Cultures count", and Jeffrey Sachs' "Notes on a new sociology of economic development" are the best chapters to read, stimilating, and full of wits of multiple culturalism. Sachs' chapter points to a direction of the marginal explanation power of institutional analysis (though he might not realize it when he saw the relevance of geography determinism). In any case, you don't want to miss Shweder's chapter.
June 18, 2006 | |
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