In this joint article we test the common assumption that a measure of culture developed for the national level can also be used for comparing regions within a country. Three different research projects independently measured culture differences within the Federal Republic of Brazil, all three using a version of Hofstede’s Values Survey Module (VSM). The largest provided separate scores for all of Brazil’s 27 states, the next largest for 17 of the more populous states. Factor analyses of VSM item scores across states in both cases only very partly replicated Hofstede’s cross-national dimension structure; only Individualism versus Collectivism reappeared clearly. We attribute this lack of fit to a restriction of range of VSM item scores among states within a common Brazilian national culture. The item scores did show a cultural clustering of states that fairly closely followed the administrative division of the country into five regions. The culture profiles for these regions show remarkable differences between the Northeast with its Afro-Brazilian roots and the North with its native Indian roots. On the issue of comparing regional cultures, we found the VSM, based on global differences, too coarse a net for catching the finer cultural nuances between Brazilian states. Adding locally defined items would have made the studies more meaningful to Brazilians.
The main focus of this study - the Global Environmental Survey (GOES) - is the impact of cultural influences on environmental attitudes. GOES examines the cultural impact from a basic cross-national perspective, investigating the impact of cultural change and value shifts on environmental concern, attitudes, and behavior in both Western and non-Western societies. This study provides cross-national insights in how mass publics and decision makers in both developed and developing countries frame environmental problems and solutions. In addition, the project has shown how leading environmental decision makers and opinion leaders assess the environmental beliefs and attitudes of the public. Apparently, citizens are not yet ready to translate pro-environmental concerns into acceptance of far-reaching environmental policy measures. Citizens in both developed and developing countries seem to prefer voluntary lifestyle changes. Moving from environmental concern via policy support to actual (reported) environmental behavior, we can conclude that persistent pro-environmental behavior does not describe citizens' environmental involvement and commitment. Our data indicate that environmentally relevant behaviors (e.g., transportation, energy use, recycling, household purchases, political activism) do not form a consistent and coherent pattern. Practice of one type of ecologically conscious behavior does not predict engagement in another. It is not that people reserve a distinctive spot in their mental software for judging the environmental impact of habitual behaviors. Their mental mapping probably consists of manifold decisional heuristics, including comfort, health, safety, price, efficiency, effectiveness, and social responsibility, which are likely to be hierarchically ordered and in competition with environmental heuristics. A focus on specific behaviors, though, reveals that citizens may be deeply involved in "green" behavior. This is related in part to differences in opportunity structures, social situation and, arguably, cultural differences in exposure to green ideas. The policy lesson from this is not to prompt "general" environmentally friendly consumer behavior, but to promote single citizen actions having positive environmental impacts and, certainly, to create appropriate opportunity structures. In addition to the general national sample GOES study, an additional decision makers' module addressed the following questions, among others: Is there a systematic bias in environmental decision makers' estimates of environmental attitudes and environmental policy preferences of the general public? How do decision makers value a number of policies that are direct implementations of international environmental treaties, and how do they judge their own national performance in this respect? The new module enabled us to study differences between environmental decision makers and general public attitudes and policy preferences in the environmental policy arena, and we did find some remarkable and systematic cross-national biases in decision makers' competence of estimating the general public's environmental beliefs and policy support. These biases, interestingly, are related to issues at the core of the sustainability debate.
The new millennium has inspired social observers to contemplate the events that shaped the 20th century. Little is known about how the general public and generations within it interpret the landmark events of this century. If generation theory is correct one may hypothesize that different generations remember and interpret distinct events. Generations share different collective memories and, consequently, intergenerational differences are expected in the time heuristics that generations apply. This hypothesis is tested with the Dutch CentERdata Millennium Survey (N = 1391). It is observed that though generations recall similar events, they interpret these events in distinct ways, based on their formative experiences. KEY WORDS • generations • the Netherlands • social and personal events • time heuristics • the 20th century
At the start of the third millennium social scientists’ preoccupation with the weakening of Gemeinschaft is - particularly in western postmodern societies - again at its peak. Waning social capital is believed to have undermined community, as reflected in widespread feelings of social mistrust, in citizens turning away from prime institutions and political authorities, and even engaging less in informal interactions. This diagnosis of civil society as advanced by especially American scholars would be a very serious account of our present times, if the debate and research in this field were not impaired by a set of equally serious theoretical and methodological problems. This article addresses a number of these basic problems. The main issue is the lack of sensitivity in civil society studies to new, alternative and innovative forms of solidarity, connectedness and civic and political engagement, particularly those facilitated by the Internet. It is time to thoroughly define today’s forms of civil society made by contemporary people with contemporary means, in a contemporary world. This article aims to reframe the civil society research agenda.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.