Rating: 
Summary: Extremist
Review: The introductory chapters of this book by the editors rely on an dangerously racist argument that confuses causality with correlation. The basic premise is that cultures matter because some "cultures' have had higher rates of economic growth than others. It is yet another contribution to the spurious, simplistic and sometimes inflamatory social science that seems to regularly emerge from the Harvard Political Science department, and from the likes of Prof. Fukuyama of John Hopkins. Culture may matter, but the book's editors argue that one can "fix" cultures -- get cultures "right", just as one can get "prices right." This then gives powerful countries and organizations the justification to spread the Protestant faith, or inclulcate good ol' American values, or fiddle with people's brains, to make them the colored equivalents of Harrison and Huntington. This is not egalitarian - it is arrogant and has very dangerous consequences. Have people forgotten the lessons of Nazi Germany or Apartheid South Africa? You dont target people because they are different from you. You achieve economic growth and equality by improving opportunity, inculcating respect for difference, while benefitting from the gains of comparative advantage in trade. Instituting democratic institutions may help as well - but this is because strong democracies are very good at coping with cultural diversity. Homogenizing diversity is not democratic - it is hegemonic. Get with it guys - dont read this crap!
Rating: 
Summary: Denying that culture matters is bad for everyone
Review: The main premise of this book is, as far as I can tell, obviously true: a group's cultural values can make a difference in that group's success, prosperity and competitiveness. Is it really controversial to claim that cultural features of Western Civ have contributed to its success? It seems clear to me, e.g., that values associated with scientific rationality contribute to progress in technology, medicine, etc., and while not everyone has to admit that these are desirable things, the majority of the world thinks that they are. I mean, we couldn't have discovered a polio vaccine without the scientific method, and the scientific method is a cultural practice, so to the extent that everyone can agree that a polio vaccine is "progress," then it seems impossible to claim that culture doesn't matter. Critics, including one of the volume's contribuers (Shweder) often say "but there's no such thing as objective progress." And they are correct in a sense - but so what? If you're determined to think that the polio vaccine is an awful thing, then ultimately no one can prove that you shouldn't feel this way - you can believe what you want. But the point of this book is NOT to arrive at some universal consensus about how to define "progress." That would be a waste of time, not just because it would be impossible, but because the authors are already assuming that many people in the world already agree about what progress is. This book is simply about how people can apply knowledge in order to achieve their ideas of progress. The message is: "if you decide that vaccines are good things, here's what you have to do to in order to discover more of them." It may be politically incorrect to say that culture matters, but it may also be true. And if it is true, the costs of denying this could be high. It's not just a matter of political posturing to deny that culture matters - the more disadvantaged countries deny this, the more they will fall behind and the more their people will suffer. And the more advantaged countries deny this, the more their own cultures (and advantages) will decay. This is an important book because it admits that culture matters and it begins the task of adressing how and why it matters. This is no easy task - every group's culture is a tangled bundle of traits, some "adaptive," some non-adaptive, some relevant to progress, some irrelevant, some detrimental. Discovering which traits are important to success is not easy - it requires careful thought and analysis, and explicit hypothesis testing whenever possible (this book is short, unfortunately, on hypothesis-testing). But just because the task is daunting, difficult, and, as one contributer (Glazer) fears, politically "dangerous," that does not make it less crucial or unavoidable.
Rating: 
Summary: Where are all the other reviews
Review: The other reviews appear to have been taken out of this page. Why?
Rating:
Summary: Helps to answer 'Why?'...
Review: The U.S. intelligence system in low intensity operations needs to be properly integrated into the new world order. September 11 was the impetus for an awareness of world order-or disorder-depending on where you stand.
To argue that fighting terrorism perpetrated by a handful of Islamic fundamentalists equates to all Muslims as potential enemies is absurd. Nevertheless, ideologically based terrorism that includes religious terrorism, is hard to eliminate due to holding appeal to a wider section of the population. If there really is a specifically Islamic challenge to the West that repudiates its values, often resorts to violence and appears to be growing in strength, then the intelligence system had better adapt.
The objective as described in detail within Culture Matters, is to achieve containment by limiting the appeal of the extremists to their likely sympathizers, as total elimination is neither practical nor desirable.
This volume is comprised of individual works by esteemed social scientists, journalists, and practitioners from around the world on such issues as the `Moral Imperative'.
"There are three basic levels of morality...The lowest is criminal-disregard for the rights of others and the law...In development-favorable cultures, there is widespread compliance with laws and norms that are totally exigent and are therefore realizable. Moral law and social reality virtually coincide. In development-resistant cultures, on the other hand, there are two worlds that are out of touch with each other. One is the exalted world of the highest standards and the other is the real world of furtive immorality and generalized hypocrisy. The law is a remote, utopian ideal that does little more than express what people might in theory prefer, whereas the real world, effectively out of touch with all law, operates under the law of the jungle, the law of the cleverest or the strongest, a world of foxes and lions disguised as lambs." P 48.
"The challenge ahead is the need for global civizational dialogue as a prerequisite for a peaceful world order. The preceived clash of civilizations makes the dialogue imperative...The paradox, then, is our willingness and courage to understand radical otherness as a necessary step toward self-understanding." P. 266.
Get it, read it, learn.
Rating: 
Summary: White racism making a come back using Liberal language
Review: These so-called modernization theorists talk about billions of non-white peoples as if we are a homogenous group of barbarians on the outskirts of White City. Gee, some of them know next to nothing about my experiences and yet they label themselves as "regional specialists?" Please, they're acting like teenagers saying, "I'm a so-and-so." Next issue: these writers talk about "black poverty" as something that has nothing to do with "white wealth." Hello? Modern European nations were built on (and are maintained with) the blood and toil of peoples in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. One might ask: where did Europeans find land and money for education/infrastructure/social developments, changes important to modern nation building, in the past 300 years? It came from killing, slaving, stealing, and using racism to rationalize economic joint ventures with corrupt dictators in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, AND EUROPE (the ethically questionable multinational CEOs), who all have been selling people out for profits. One only needs to look around the world today to see the evidence SCREAMING. What groups are doing most of the work and which groups are mostly kicking back? Sounds too unbearably ugly? The book asks: why do many peoples in Asia, Africa, and Latin America are not motivated to participate in modern life? Duh! They got no money to go to the "voting booth" because somebody took their "bus fare!" Being responsible for colonialism does not mean producing racist scholarship to justify Eurocentric condescension, race-based sweatshops, and inane "civilizing crusades." Well-intentioned Westerners can help a lot simply by seeing themselves as more than a `white person' and recognize the consequences of racism in the modern era.
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Summary: How this book creates value...
Review: This book creates value because never before have so many leaders of so many different intellectual and practical domains come together (the weekend of April 29th, 1999) to discuss culture's impact on human progress. Imagine a conversation between one of the world's most influential economists(Sachs) and one of the 20th century's most important sociologists(Lipset), and pepper it with the views on globalization of the most cited strategy and management professor of all time (Porter) and cross tab with the reflections of leading thinkers from Africa, Latin America and Asia. Well, now you don't have to just imagine it anymore. This isn't a "rediscovery" as the following reviewer erroneously reports(not a surprise, since the book was not yet available to that reviewer by the time of his writing); this is an act of integration across those many domains that pays hommage to the brave and original thinkers that reviewer mentions, and then updates and sometimes improves those messages with current illustrations and new approaches. Perhaps the most important topic facing the world is the vast differences in productivity between peoples, and the accompanying social differences. This book brings the arguments, both pro and con, concerning the roles of human values and beliefs on those "vast differences", into the 21st century. [Full disclosure: I was a contributor to the symposium of 4/29/99, and to the volume.}
Rating:
Summary: Hard Truths Are Preferable to Easy Lies
Review: This book is a collection of essays authored by economists, anthropologists, journalists and others who participated in a symposium on culture and economics sponsored by Harvard University's Academy for International and Area Studies. The majority of essays defend the idea that culture directly affects the ways economic development and prosperity operate in human societies. Although some essays present counter agruments, these serve primarily to provide a framework for the debate. First, some thoughts on criticisms of this book. The book is Eurocentric - no. The book is academic and focuses on economic development. While economic strategies vary from country to country, there are fairly well understood strategies that are common to all countries that prosper in a global economy. Cultural values can't be changed without being destroyed. What idiocy! Cultures, including Western cultures, change all the time. England is no longer feudal, Sweden is no longer Lutheran, Germany is no longer militaristic and I can and do vote even though I am female. All cultures deserve equal appreciation. Even though some cultures promote values (like female genital mutalation) that appear "bad" to outsiders, these values are good for "insiders". No. Just because a value or practice has been around a long time doesn't make it good (although it may become tolerable). Female illiteracy is widely tolerated but it's not good. One of the things this book does well to point out the incongruous attitudes prosperous people hold about non-prosperous people. The flip-side of cultural relativism is frankly evil. It states that it's perfectly okay for people with "traditional" values to starve, multilate, rape and kill each other if "it's right for them". Another great thing these essays show is that cultural values that promote human well-being can be found in many cultures. Confucian values that underly the success of Chinese immigrants are similar to the Protestant values that propelled Northern Europe (and the USA, Australia, etc.) into prosperity. The Japanese and immigrant Sikhs both know more than a little about how work ethics shape material success. Read this book to balance out the current bias toward cultural romanticism. The world is getting too small to let some people fall out of the lifeboat just because "it's right for them".
Rating:
Summary: Interesting idea in concept
Review: This book is a collection of papers from a symposium organized by Harrison and Huntington on the question "Does culture affect economic development?". The papers are organized into 7 sections, which may reflect how they were presented at the symposium: Culture and Economic Development; Culture and Political Development; The Anthropological Debate; Culture and Gender; Culture and American Minorities; The Asian Crisis; and Promoting Change. Some of the articles contain citations to other works through endnotes, which appear together at the end of the volume. The book also includes an index as well as short biographical sketches of the authors of each article. In general, with one notable exception, the authors agree with the hypothesis that some countries or regions are worse off economically because culture factors limit their economic development in some way.
I was intrigued by the title of the book, and was quite interested in learning what the experts have to say on the topic. However, I found the book rather disappointing. For the most part, the articles are very general, and wander willy-nilly around the world, making broad swipes at major topics, but presenting few detailed points. For the most part, the authors tend to come across as ranting, rather than building firm arguments based on measurable data. Many of them claim that there must be some sort of cause and effect relationship between culture, values, and economic development. But they all speak in terms of generalities, observations, rather than pointing to formal surveys. Only two authors in the entire volume mention statistics; one of these finds correlations between growth and geography, but no statistically significant correlations between growth and cultural factors such as religion. The other plots cultural factors against economic measures to identify zones of development that seem to be culturally determined. (He uses a sample of 43 societies for his work, and does not describe how this sample was selected. Noticeably absent from his study are any Arabic countries, which would be extremely problematic for his analyses.)
The general statements, combined with the lack of well-founded support for the authors' claims makes many of them sound like they are blaming the victim. This is rather unfortunate, because I do believe that there is a strong connection between cultural and development, and that proof of this connection could readily be found (by the right people). In five years of living overseas in a cosmopolitan community comprised of people from many, many cultures, I have witnessed a number of factors that could potentially affect development. When I first went overseas, I went with the firm conviction, based on many years of anthropological reading, that all cultures have equal potential for development. Customs and beliefs differ around the world, but no culture or traditional practice can be said to be "better" or "worse" than another. Or so I thought. But after learning of young women who were "disappeared" in the desert by their brothers because they were suspected to have spoken to men, and hearing how this was treated as an honorable act by the culture, or teaching a young woman at a university for five years, only to hear that upon graduation she would be forbidden to accept a job offer at a laboratory because her salary would be higher than her lesser-qualified brother's, I've learned that some cultural practices are simply bad, and objectively so. When anthropologists preach that cultures differ, but that's OK, they must be referring to such simple topics as aesthetics, like which colors are considered appropriate for wedding or funeral attire. Or perhaps they're referring to typologies of names for relatives. But cultural practices that harm people, animals, or the environment are just plain bad, and societies where these practices are common are bad as well, and should be encouraged to change, even if such a change would disturb the observations of anthropologists.
Does culture affect economic development? Consider the case of Country X (a real place), where the current cultural practice of expressing political opposition involves violent nationwide strikes that are called every few weeks. These strikes shut down all transportation, shops, manufacturing, and economic activity throughout the entire country for an entire day, or even days at a time. The lowliest rickshaw driver doesn't venture out on the road during the strikes for fear of his life. Potential investors are shocked when they realize the challenges of trying to work in such an environment. This is only one small example of how cultural practices directly affect economic activity- -there must be many others like this around the world, but the authors of this volume didn't cite any. An interested researcher could survey people from different cultures about their values and practices, and see if statistically significant correlations could be found between culture and development. But this group of authors didn't do it here. To be fair to the organizers and participants, the goal of the symposium was more likely to draw these people together so that they could hear what each other has to say, and for others to have the chance to learn from a collection of experts on the subject. However, it's too bad that the authors didn't take the time to put more substantial material into their articles.
Rating:
Summary: GOOD COMPILATION OF OF ARTICLES ON THE INFLUENCE OF CULTURE
Review: This book is a very good compilation of article on the role of culture in development. The compilation includes articles by a large number of premier authors on the subject, including the editors, Michael Porter, David Landes, Jeffrey Sachs, Francis Fukuyama, among others. The articles deal with many different topics, though the common theme is how culture affect the success of a certain aspect of society, such as health, education, institutions, justice, etc. It does focus on blaming certain cultures for lack of success, but rather it tries to understand the themes that allow certain cultures to outperform others. The lessons do not blame a culture, but rather suggests somewhat modest (and often drastic) change that is necessary to permit a well functioning capitalist economy to exist. As an economist, I found this book extremely useful in demonstrating the "transaction costs" that a culture may impose on a country, hence reducing its opporutnities for growth. In economics, this is usually studied in theory, but this book provides lively examples of how this is truly the case. However, I do believe that this book would be useful for practitioners in other disciplines.
Rating: 
Summary: Reviewers should address the book's substance; some haven't.
Review: This is a plea by one of the editors of "Culture Matters" that reviewers address the substance of the book, not their own erudition, their biases, or even their rancors. Four of the reviewers--Barron Laycock, Hamilton Bowdon, "a reader from Berkeley," and Mr. Parthasarathy from India--are so wide of the mark that one wonders whether they have actually read the book. Mr. Laycock acknowledged to me in a recent e-mail that he had not read the book when he wrote his "review." Hamilton Bowdon's "review" is filled with errors: At one point he calls me "Hamilton," at another "Jordon." (My name is Lawrence Harrison.) He describes the U.S. Agency for International Development, for which I worked, as a "front for the CIA," which it is not. (I have never worked for the CIA.) He places me incorrectly at the Harvard Business School (I am at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies) and awards me a DBA, which I do not hold. All of these errors become understandable at the end of the "review." Hamilton Bowdon is a pseudonym, and the "reviewer" is really Dan Quayle. How do I know this? Because he spells the word potato "potatoe." The sociologist from Berkeley is concerned chiefly with attacking Seymour Martin Lipset, whom he considers a second-rate professional. He makes no comment on the substance of Lipset's chapter in the book, not to mention the other 21 chapters. We know nothing of the reviewer's credentials. We do know that Lipset has been the president of both the American Sociological Association and the American Political Science Association. I think that most readers will agree with me that Mr. Parthasarathy's comment is incoherent. I hope that all four of these people will take the opportunity to read "Culture Matters" and address its substance in another review.
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