British travellers in the early 19th century also found the Germans dishonest – ‘the tradesman and the shopkeeper take advantage of you wherever they can, and to the smallest imaginable amount rather than not take advantage of you at all … This knavery is universal’, observed Sir Arthur Brooke Faulkner, a physician serving in the British army.[17]
Finally, the British thought the Germans to be overly emotional. Today many British seem to think that Germans have an almost genetic emotional deficiency. Yet talking about excessive German emotion, Sir Arthur observed that ‘some will laugh all sorrows away and others will always indulge in melancholy’.[18] Sir Arthur was an Irishman, so his calling the Germans emotional would be akin to a Finn calling the Jamaicans a gloomy lot, according to the cultural stereotypes prevailing now.
So there you are. A century ago, the Japanese were lazy rather than hardworking; excessively independent-minded (even for a British socialist!) rather than loyal ‘worker ants’; emotional rather than inscrutable; light-hearted rather than serious; living for today instead of considering the future (as manifested in their sky-high savings rates). A century and half ago, the Germans were indolent rather than efficient; individualistic rather than co-operative; emotional rather than rational; stupid rather than clever; dishonest and thieving rather than law-abiding; easy-going rather than disciplined.
These characterizations are puzzling for two reasons. First, if the Japanese and the Germans had such ‘bad’ cultures, how have they become so rich? Second, why were the Japanese and the Germans then so different from their descendants today? How could they have so completely changed their ‘habits of national heritage’?
I will answer these questions in due course. But before I do, I need first to clear up some widespread misunderstandings about the relationship between culture and economic development.
The view that cultural differences explain the variations in economic development across societies has been around for a long time. The underlying insight is obvious. Different cultures produce people with different values, which manifest themselves in different forms of behaviour. As some of these forms of behaviour are more helpful for economic development than others, those countries with a culture that produces more pro-developmental forms of behaviour will do better than others economically.
Samuel Huntington, the veteran American political scientist and author of the controversial book, The Clash of Civilizations, put this idea succinctly. In explaining the economic divergence between South Korea and Ghana, two countries that were at similar levels of economic development in the 1960s, he argued: ‘Undoubtedly, many factors played a role, but … culture had to be a large part of the explanation. South Koreans valued thrift, investment, hard work, education, organization, and discipline. Ghanaians had different values. In short, cultures count’.[19]
Few of us would dispute that people who display forms of behaviour like ‘thrift, investment, hard work, education, organization, and discipline’will be economically successful. Cultural theorists, however, say more than that. They argue that these forms of behaviour are largely, or even entirely, fixed because they are determined by culture. If economic success is really determined by ‘habits of national heritage’, some people are destined to be more successful than others, and there is not much that can be done about it. Some poor countries will just have to stay that way.
Culture-based explanations for economic development were popular right up to the 1960s. But in the era of civil rights and de-colonization, people began to feel that these explanations had cultural-supremacist (if not necessarily racist) overtones. They fell into disrepute as a result. Such explanations have, however, made a comeback in the past decade or so. They have come back into fashion just as the more dominant cultures (narrowly Anglo-American, more broadly European) have started to feel ‘threatened’ by other cultures – Confucianism in the economic sphere; Islam in the realm of politics and international relations.[20] They also offered a very convenient excuse to the Bad Samaritans – neo-liberal policies have not worked very well, not because of some inherent problems but because the people practising them had ‘wrong’ values that diminished their effectiveness.
In the current renaissance of such views, some cultural theorists do not actually talk about culture per se. Recognising that culture is too broad and amorphous a concept, they try to isolate only those components that they think are most closely related to economic development. For example, in his 1995 book, Trust, Francis Fukuyama, the neo-con American political commentator, argues that the existence or otherwise of trust extending beyond family members critically affects economic development. He argues that the absence of such trust in the cultures of countries like China, France, Italy and (to some extent) Korea makes it difficult for them to run large firms effectively, which are key to modern economic development. This is, according to Fukuyama, why high-trust societies, such as Japan, Germany and the US, are economically more developed.
But whether or not the word ‘culture’ is used, the essence of the argument is the same – different cultures make people behave differently, with resulting differences in economic development across different societies.David Landes, the distinguished American economic historian and a leader in the renaissance of culturalist theories, claims that ‘culture makes all the difference.’[21]
Different cultures produce peoples with different attitudes towards work, saving, education, cooperation, trust, authority and countless other things that affect a society’s economic progress. But this proposition does not get us very far. As we shall see in a moment, it is very difficult to define cultures precisely. Even if we can, it is not possible to establish clearly whether a particular culture is inherently good or bad for economic development. Let me explain.
Many westerners mistake me for a Chinese or Japanese. It is understandable. With ‘slanted’ eyes, straight black hair and prominent cheekbones, East Asians all ‘look the same’ – at least to a westerner who does not understand all the subtle differences in facial features, mannerisms and dress sense among people from different East Asian countries. To westerners who apologise for mistaking me for a Chinese or Japanese, I tell them it’s OK, because most Koreans call all westerners ‘Americans’ – a notion that some Europeans might find disagreeable. To the uninitiated Korean, I tell them, all westerners look the same, with their big noses, round eyes and excessive facial hair.
This experience warns against excessively broad categorization of people. Of course, what is ‘excessively broad’ depends on the purpose of the categorisation. If we are comparing the human brain with that of, say, the dolphin, even the over-arching category of Homo sapiens may be good enough. But if we are studying how culture makes a difference to economic development, even the relatively narrow category ‘Korean’ may be problematic. Broader categories, like ‘Christian’ or ‘Muslim’, obscure much more than they reveal.
In most culturalist arguments, however, cultures are defined very loosely.We are often offered incredibly coarse categories, such as East-West, which I am not even going to bother to criticize. Very often, we are offered broad ‘religious’ categories, like Christian (which from time to time is lumped together with Judaism into Judaeo-Christian, and which is regularly divided into Catholic and Protestant), Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu and Confucian (this latter category is particularly controversial, because it is not a religion).*
17
Sir Arthur Brooke Faulkner (1833),
19
S. Huntington (2000), ‘Foreword: Cultures Count’ in L. Harrison & S. Huntington (eds.),
20
Representative works include the following. F. Fukuyama (1995),
*
Confucianism is named after Confucius, the Latinized name of the great Chinese political philosopher, Kong Zi, who lived in the 6th century BC. Confucianism is