Cultural Theory interprets social-cultural change as a continuous, dynamic interplay between the adherents of the four perspectives (Thompson 1992, 1997; Vries 2023). Individuals alter their perspective when it is no longer reconcilable with their experience. Collective, institutional change happens whenever larger groups of people start to doubt the correctness and adequateness of the dominant perspective (Janssen and De Vries 1998). Such change may be triggered by surprise experiences, new information, a desire for balance and by other, for instance demographic, changes. Extreme positions are thus counteracted by reactions from one or more of the other perspectives. As a result, societal development unfolds dialectically. Excessive hierarchism leads to bureaucratization and at some point the system collapses and liberalization and privatization processes take over. Excessive individualism leads to marginalization of the less successful people who then resort to fatalism, which in turn feeds egalitarian movements in a process of radicalization. It is illustrated in the Figure below. The social-cultural dynamics cause societal oscillations in which excessive swings to either side are corrected.

Figure 1a-b Two mechanism in social-cultural change: a) the interactions between hierarchist (king, state) and individualist (merchant, market) and b) the interactions between egalitarian (sect) and fatalist (commoner) (based on Thompson 1992).

There is a story about Mr. López the entrepreneur that illustrates the shift in prevailing perspective. One way to sustain an egalitarian regime is with ceremonies in which those who accumulate inordinate amounts of land or other property are compelled to give it away. However, a smart individual can always bypass such a system. In the 1890s Mr. Lopez subverted the old mechanism of wealth levelling in the Mexican village of San Juan Guelavía. Traditionally, only rich people would be designated as major-domo, that is, the one who has to sponsor for the village fiestas and festivals and gains prestige from it. However, with help of the clergy Mr. López forced the village council to designate less wealthy people – who then could not refuse – and offered the insolvent sponsors a loan with their land put up for collateral. By the eve of the Mexican revolution, Mr. López owned most of the community’s best land: by 1915 his Big Family owned 92.2% of the arable land and an even larger part of the irrigated land. With the support of the church, they strongly opposed any censure. Thus, equal access to strategic resources had disappeared by the perversion of a ritual regulatory mechanism – it points at the vulnerability of egalitarian co-operative regimes to individualist interference (§14.3).

Like the worldview approach, it permits a particular reading of history. The excessive hierarchism in the former Soviet-Union ended with the collapse of the collectivist state in 1989-91 and was followed by privatization, acceleration of financial deregulation and (selective) abolishment of trade barriers: the individualist perspective. In combination with the ICT-revolution, opposition against the unfairness of global capitalism culminated in the Seattle and Genoa revolts and the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York in 2001. Millions of less successful, excluded and marginalized individuals shed their fatalism and resort to radicalism and reform in environmentalist or fundamentalist-(ultra)nationalist movements. The tensions between hierarchy and individualism and the connections between fatalism and egalitarianism are a recurrent theme in the political-economic history of Europe and its offshoots. Cultural Theory points at the necessity of building alliances that bridge different values and beliefs and at the merits of pragmatism: The challenge is to avoid a battle between ‘utopians’ defending one and only one view on sustainable development. CLUMSY SOLUTIONS

 Literature:

Thompson, M., Ellis, R. and A. Wildavsky (1990). Cultural Theory. Westview Press, Boulder Colo.

Romans, J., and B. de Vries (eds.)(2013). Perspectives on Global Change: The TARGETS approach. Cambridge University Press