capitalism

Culture 109
Hayek, F. A. Law, Legislation, and Liberty: Vol. 3. Mirage of Social
Justice. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978.
Miller, David. On Nationality. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995.
Mises, Ludwig von. Liberalism: The Classical Tradition.
Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 2005.
Palmer, Tom G. Globalization and Culture: Homogeneity, Diversity,
Identity, Liberty. Berlin: Liberales Institut, 2004.
Schlereth, Thomas J. The Cosmopolitan Ideal in Enlightenment
Thought. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1977.
Tierney, Brian. The Idea of Natural Rights. Atlanta: Scholars Press,
1998.
Waldron, Jeremy. “Minority Cultures and the Cosmopolitan
Alternative.” The Rights of Minority Cultures. Will Kymlicka,
ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. 93–119.
CRIME
See RESTITUTION FOR CRIME; RETRIBUTION FOR CRIME
CULTURE
Culture contains so many elements that the term gives rise
to many possible definitions. Most would stress the idea of
a body of customary beliefs, social forms, and material
traits constituting a distinct complex of traditions belonging
to a racial, religious, or social group. Others focus on
beliefs, morals, laws, customary opinions, religion, superstition,
and expressions of art.
Culture is a system of meaning that plays a primary role
in organizing society, from kinship groups to schools and
states, and that extends from generation to generation.
However, the relationship between what is taught and what
is learned varies with different people, times, and environments.
Thus, there arise negotiated agreements among
members about the meanings of a word, behavior, or other
symbol.
The ancient Latin word cultura carried the meaning of
“cultivation,” which focused on human improvement of
some product or plant. Later on, according to the Oxford
English Dictionary, culture took the meaning of “the training,
development, and refinement of mind, tastes, and manners”
or what we today call high culture. More recently, the
influence of cultural anthropology and sociology has
affected the way we understand the term. For example, the
British anthropologist Edward Tylor defined culture as a
complex whole that includes knowledge, belief, art, morals,
law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired
by man as a member of society. American anthropologists
A. L. Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn cited no less than 164
definitions of the word. Despite these differences, however,
culture has been regarded as a socially patterned style of
human thought and behavior.
This emphasis on the organized repetitive responses of
society’s members and social heredity suggests that culture
is static. This characteristic might be due, in part, to the
fact that anthropologists were in the habit of paying attention
to comparatively stable primitive cultures and prestate
societies and did not usually examine modern
cultures that have been rapidly changing. In addition, these
same anthropologists tended to focus on general culture,
rather than on specific cultures, notably Western culture, or
those of Europe and the United States. As a result, many
important questions have remained unanswered. For
instance, the question of why only Western culture provided
the necessary conditions for the rise of modern capitalism
has yet to be satisfactorily answered. Although
Max Weber attributed the rise of capitalism to a cultural
phenomenon—the rise of Calvinist Protestantism—
Edward Banfield discussed the roots of poverty and
authoritarianism in southern Italy in cultural terms.
Similarly, recent rapid economic growth in East Asia has
been attributed to the culture of Confucianism. Recently,
Samuel P. Huntington at Harvard has written two monographs
illuminating the universal application of cultural
analysis to political and economic development. All those
theorists suggest that there are intrinsic cultural values that
are linked to crucial civil values, prosperity, democracy,
and a regime of justice. They believe that, because cultural
values are a powerful force in shaping nations and the
political, economic, and social performances of people, the
primary reason that some countries and ethnic groups are
better off than others is their culture, and the best way to
achieve progress in these areas is to promote positive cultural
values. From this view, it follows that governments
can best promote prosperity by changing people’s values.
But why are the same Chinese people economically better
off now than 20 years ago? What cultural change has
occurred that accounts for this economic growth? The
notion that cultural change is ultimately responsible for
economic prosperity fails to tell us why Taiwan and Hong
Kong are doing so much better than their counterparts in
China, although they are culturally similar.
Because culture is usually difficult to alter, it may
appear that the fate of the developing countries is sealed.
Yet although culture and tradition do matter, culture and
tradition do sometimes change. Why and how does such
change occur? What is the origin of the change initiated by
some and, over time, adopted by an ever-increasing number
of other people? According to F. A. Hayek, the evolution of
culture may come as a result of competition among traditions.
The traditions, practices, and rules that make up the
culture of a society were not deliberately chosen, he argued,
but became established as the norm because they were the
ones that most enhanced prosperity. This insight into the