The Logic of Differences
May 4, 2000

By TAMAR JACOBY

Often it is just when circumstances seem most dire—when the tide of political correctness threatens to engulf the way we think about the world—that an idea or thinker or book appears that gives the lie to the reigning orthodoxy. "Culture Matters" (Basic Books, 348 pages, $35) is such a book, and though, as a collection of essays, it is an uneven and sometimes a difficult read, it offers hope of an important countercurrent to today's received wisdom about poverty and the fate of ethnic minorities.

The puzzle that confronts the two dozen scholars and journalists represented here is why some nations and ethnic groups do so much better than others, both economically and politically. Why have Ghana and South Korea, whose economies were roughly comparable in 1960, fared so differently in the years since? Why have the ethnic Chinese who have dispersed across Asia and now the West proved so successful wherever they go? And why does the level of corruption differ so radically in Catholic and Protestant countries?

Broadly speaking, there are three possible explanations for such differences. The first, almost universally shunned today, is genetic or racial. The second, politically correct but, as this book argues, often inadequate, has to do with external matters: discrimination or colonialism or differential access to resources like education and capital. The third—and this is the idea that unites the thinkers in this volume—centers on culture: not high culture or folklore or, as one essayist puts it, "the best way to make bagels," but rather the beliefs and values transmitted from one generation to the next within a nation or an ethnic group. Another word for this is "socialization": what parents and teachers and peers and popular culture teach individuals about what matters and how to act.

Cultural explanations for group disparities have a long history, starting with Tocqueville and Max Weber and running through some of this century's most eminent social scientists. But in the 1960s and '70s, the idea fell out of favor: It was seen as a close cousin to racism—a way of blaming the victim.

"Culture Matters" is not the first book to revive the idea: Thomas Sowell, Robert Putnam, David Landes, Francis Fukuyama and this volume's co-editors, Lawrence Harrison and Samuel Huntington, have been making the case for a while now. But the essays here suggest that the notion may be taking off intellectually.

They range widely in both subject and style. The majority are international in focus, trying to account for underdevelopment in Latin America and Africa. Others—the essay by sociologist Orlando Patterson stands out—look at ethnic minorities in the U.S. To the editors' credit, a handful of chapters take a dissenting tack. (Michael Porter, Jeffrey Sachs and Nathan Glazer are somewhat skeptical of the culture thesis.) And the contributions vary considerably in heft and subtlety.

Almost everyone who buys into the culture argument thinks that what matters is attitudes toward work and education, along with an ethos that encourages self-reliance, a focus on the future and the rule of law. Another common theme—and here we begin to move beyond a simple Horatio Alger view—involves what political scientists call a society's "radius of trust."

Countries in which people trust only family and neighbors generally do worse than those where the trust is generalized. The reasons have to do with nepotism and its insidious effects on meritocracy, along with the many ways in which wider trust facilitates both business and government. Several of the more telling chapters in the book list undesirable habits as well as desirable ones. Among the interesting "dont's": Latin American messianism, shown to discourage practicality and worldly responsibility, and the widespread African belief that the community is more important than the individual.

But by far the best essays are those that emphasize how culture works in context. Values matter, but so do circumstances. Consider Japan: That country's frugality was useful when it spurred people to save and invest, but when recession hit, it suddenly became a handicap, suppressing consumer demand. The same can be said of many aspects of Islam and Catholicism and the oppositional culture of black Americans: Cultural traits that are adaptive in one era often turn maladaptive when the world turns.

This is why there can be no absolute ranking of cultures, no timeless list of useful traits. Ideology is not the same thing as culture but can interact with it. So can physical conditions: Geographical isolation, for example, can limit business acumen. And devastating inherited habits, like the single motherhood so common in black America, can be aggravated by circumstances, whether economic (the fact that women no longer need husbands to support them) or pop-cultural (the generally looser morals of the postwar era).

Can culture be changed? Of course it can. Just think of the revolution in attitudes toward sex that has taken place in the U.S. in the past 40 years. Beliefs and values aren't always as malleable as some of the essayists in this volume suggest. But in the long run, pliability is what makes the culture argument so powerful. After all, attitudes -- even ingrained attitudes—are far more changeable than genetic makeup or, often, economic conditions.

How we go about spurring that change is far from clear. But "Culture Matters" makes a strong case that it holds the key for both the underdeveloped world and America's underachieving minorities.

Ms. Jacoby, a senior fellow of the Manhattan Institute, is the author of "Someone Else's House: America's Unfinished Struggle for Integration.

©2000 The Wall Street Journal

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