Cultural Evolution

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Why security shapes values, freedom, and backlash

This is a smart, big-picture read for anyone curious why societies swing between openness and authoritarianism. Inglehart connects survival, prosperity, and cultural change in a way that feels both sweeping and grounded in real-world evidence. You come away seeing debates over identity, democracy, and equality not as random chaos, but as part of a deeper pattern.

Note: While we do our best to ensure the accuracy of cover images, ISBNs may at times be reused for different editions of the same title which may hence appear as a different cover.

Cultural Evolution

Regular price RM51.00 MYR
Unit price
per
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ISBN: 9781108489317
Authors: Ronald Inglehart
Date of Publication: 2018-03-22
Format: Hardcover
Related Collections: Sociology, Politics, Science, History
Goodreads rating: 3.88
(rated by 112 readers)

Description

Cultural Evolution argues that people's values and behavior are shaped by the degree to which survival is secure; it was precarious for most of history, which encouraged heavy emphasis on group solidarity, rejection of outsiders, and obedience to strong leaders. For under extreme scarcity, xenophobia is realistic: if there is just enough land to support one tribe and another tribe tries to claim it, survival may literally be a choice between Us and Them. Conversely, high levels of existential security encourage openness to change, diversity, and new ideas. The unprecedented prosperity and security of the postwar era brought cultural change, the environmentalist movement, and the spread of democracy. But in recent decades, diminishing job security and rising inequality have led to an authoritarian reaction. Evidence from more than 100 countries demonstrates that people's motivations and behavior reflect the extent to which they take survival for granted - and that modernization changes them in roughly predictable ways. This book explains the rise of environmentalist parties, gender equality, and same-sex marriage through a new, empirically-tested version of modernization theory.
 

Why security shapes values, freedom, and backlash

This is a smart, big-picture read for anyone curious why societies swing between openness and authoritarianism. Inglehart connects survival, prosperity, and cultural change in a way that feels both sweeping and grounded in real-world evidence. You come away seeing debates over identity, democracy, and equality not as random chaos, but as part of a deeper pattern.

Note: While we do our best to ensure the accuracy of cover images, ISBNs may at times be reused for different editions of the same title which may hence appear as a different cover.