comparative value priorities of chinese and new zealand

Human Industries or Arts” in the Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution. This
article identified eighteen American Indian culture areas. The concept is that tribal
entities were grouped on an ethnographic map and related to a geographical aspect of
the environment. The culture area concept was refined by Holmes (1914). In 1939, this
same culture area concept was used by A. L. Kroeber in Cultural and Natural Areas
(Harris 1968: 374). The concept defined by culture area is supported in research and
theory in sociology. Societal cultures can differ and regions within a society can vary,
especially in large and complex societies such as China (Robertson, 1993) and in small
countries such as Belgium or New Zealand.
Today and for at least 2000 years Eberhard (1965) and Rickett (1985, 1998) report
Chinese have identified cultural areas by distinct regional behavioural stereotypes in
regions (e.g., North, South), provinces, counties, and cities; see Cartier (2003) and
Swanson (1995). Swanson (1989: 83-84) reminds us that, “One of the major
shortcomings in understanding the Chinese has been the tendency of Westerners and
other outsiders to overlook the ethnic and sub-ethnic diversity among the enormous
population of China.” The majority Han ethnic group (95 percent of the population)
speak different oral languages, have different traditions, cuisines, life styles, attitudes,
and regionally stereotypical personal characteristics. For 2000 years or more the
Chinese have been stereotyping each other, with remarkably little change since the Song
Dynasty (c. 1200 A.D.). Eberhard (1965) supports these stereotypes since 400 B.C.
Swanson identifies several nations, each with a capital, its own web of influence,
particular economy, national poets and heroes, and traits and dialects. Few of their
boundaries match current political boundaries. Swanson (2000) identifies twelve
Chinese nations; the capital of the Yue nation in southern China is Guangzhou City in
Guangdong Province. Sun Yat-Sen, revolutionary to the Qing Dynasty to 1911 and
leader of the Nationalist government thereafter is a national hero. Those outside Yue
characterise the people as “clannish, localistic, excitable, food loving, quarrelsome,
proud of culture, embracers of new ideas and novel things, impulsive, stubborn,
unyielding, egalitarian in attitude, personally aggressive, diligent, aloof, self-centred;
pretentious, revolutionaries, curt, contemptuous of authority, hot-tempered, and selfconfident”,
(Swanson, 2000: 95). As all the nations’ judgements of one another’s
character are relative, we really do not have a baseline for comparison. Hot-tempered in
the Yue Nation may be mild in the Southwestern Mandarin Nation.
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