Cultural Change in Modern World History: Cases, Causes and Consequences 9781350054332, 9781350054349, 9781350054363, 9781350054325

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Cultural Change in Modern World History

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Cultural Change in Modern World History Cases, Causes and Consequences Peter N. Stearns, with Olivia A. O’Neill and Jack Censer

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BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC 1B 3DP , UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY , BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2019 Copyright © Peter N. Stearns, 2019 Peter N. Stearns has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. vii constitute an extension of this copyright page. Cover design by Catherine Wood Cover image: Hong Kong China skyline from water with traditional junk boat against city background. (© Education Images/UIG via Getty Images) All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN :

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978-1-3500-5433-2 978-1-3500-5434-9 978-1-3500-5432-5 978-1-3500-5435-6

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CONTENTS

List of Illustrations vi Acknowledgements vii

1 Introduction: Why Culture Change? 2 Organizing Analysis

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Appendix 1: Evidence 27 Appendix 2: Analytical Sequence 28

3 Culture Change on the Grand Scale

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4 Protest, Revolution, and Culture Change 5 Organizations and Culture Change

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6 Health and the Body: The Impact of Cultural Medicalization 115 7 Emotion, the Family, and Culture Change: A More Personal Scale 143 8 Culture Contacts and Culture Change

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9 Prejudice and Acceptance: Culture Change and Social Hierarchies 197 Conclusion: Where Can We Go from Here?

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Notes 235 Further Reading 263 Index 267

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ILLUSTRATIONS

1.1 3.1 4.1 5.1 6.1 6.2 7.1 7.2 7.3 8.1 8.2

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Image of the horseshoe protecting against witchcraft, 1852. “Our foreign missions—an embarrassment of riches for the heathen.” At the height of the Cultural Revolution. Tea time in the air. Google Ngram chart of “death” in American English, 1800–2000. “Join the Fat and Free Society.” Heart’s Delight, card from 1890. Mother and baby. “Cheer” combined references: US data (“cheer,” “cheerful,” etc. in relation to childhood). Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe: Our Lady of Guadalupe. The Great Ruby.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

A number of people have contributed substantially to this project, particularly through suggested readings. Thanks to George Mason colleagues Seth Kaplan, Kevin Avruch, Lester Kurtz, Joan Bristol, Michael Chang, Samuel Collins, Huseyin Yilmaz, and Brian Platt. Vyta Baselice helped both with research and with manuscript preparation. Thanks to Emma Goode, at Bloomsbury, and several anonymous readers for good ideas and for enthusiasm about the project. Thanks also to the many mostly supportive Mason undergraduates who have been exploring culture change. And a clarification: while there is a principal author of this book, Jack Censer and Olivia O’Neill contributed overall guidance and also authored key portions of Chapters 4 and 5, respectively.

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1 Introduction Why Culture Change?

Culture change, and resistance to change, constitute one of the most important features of human society and, often, individual experience—yet the phenomenon is in some ways understudied. This book focuses on what culture change is all about, in various specific manifestations, and encourages a more systematic approach to the process of change and opposition than is readily available in other current formats. This first chapter intends to illustrate the fundamental importance of culture change; to suggest some of the common problems in dealing with the phenomenon; and to define what culture is all about. A second chapter continues the introduction by highlighting history’s role amid the various disciplines that deal with culture change and, more particularly, by establishing a common analytical framework for dealing with the phenomenon. All of this prepares for the case studies that form the core of the chapters that follow.

The Range and Significance of Culture Change Changes in core ideas and values can cause revolutions, as one of the following chapters explains. While other factors—deteriorating economic or political conditions—are usually involved, widely shared new beliefs often play a predominant role.1 Shifts in basic assumptions can alter a society’s sense of what groups and behaviors can be tolerated. In 200l, 57 per cent of all Americans opposed gay marriage, and only 35 per cent accepted it; commitments seemed to run deep, with many opponents convinced that the idea was reprehensible or sinful. Merely 15 years later, in 2016, 61 per cent of the American population agreed that gay marriage should be permitted, a surprisingly rapid shift that, obviously, had important political and human 1

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consequences. To be sure, this cultural change was not yet written in stone: substantial minorities still vehemently disagreed, and in some other regions of the world—most of Africa, for example, and also Russia—opinions were if anything moving in the opposite direction, toward more vigorous disapproval.2 But there was no question that culture change was in the air. Culture change can alter emotional experience, or at least how emotional experience can be acceptably presented. In the 1870s in the United States, grief was elaborately indulged, with many supportive rituals; girls could even purchase mourning clothes and coffins for their dolls, to prepare them for grief expression. Just fifty years later popularizers were widely, and fairly successfully, urging that elaborate manifestations of grief were inappropriate, a burden to others, and that people who could not get over the emotion fairly quickly needed psychological help—and further, that children should be kept away from grief scenes, lest they be overwhelmed. Grief changed, in other words, and individuals began to need new ways to handle the emotion.3 Culture change affects law and penology, creating vivid contemporary debates: from the late 1960s onward literally the whole of Western Europe turned against the death penalty, but many other regions, including the United States, held back. What causes this kind of alteration, and what explains regional disparities?4 Or an another, related point: before 1961 in the United Kingdom, suicide was a crime (having hitherto been a sin), and people who unsuccessfully attempted suicide could be jailed; but beliefs changed, and so did the legal approach—thereby making the old approach seem not only dated but cruel. Organizations are often challenged to shift their cultures in various ways. In recent years a number of innovators have urged organizations such as American universities to accept “disruption” in order to survive amid new types of students, new technologies, and changing budget models—and disruption, inevitably, challenges established cultures. At the same time, a disruptive climate potentially invites particularly dynamic leaders to introduce (or even compel) explicit culture change in order to get ahead of the pack.5 Yet another set of contemporary organizations faces public scrutiny over their demanding work practices or insensitivity to gender issues, suggesting an urgent need for some complicated adjustments in basic values. Culture change is an active agenda item in many organizational contexts. The historical record is filled with examples of culture change, whether the focus is specific organizations or the wider society. In the sixteenth century, for example, most English people, elites and commoners alike, believed in the power of magic. Magic provided a clear set of rituals and actions that could address a host of problems, such as disease or infertility; people skilled in magic were frequently called upon, as with the so-called “cunning men” who presumably had magical abilities that enabled them to find lost items. By the late seventeenth to early eighteenth century, however, magic was rapidly going out of fashion. Excesses such as the frenzied persecution of witches; new religious opposition to magic, amid quarrels between Catholics and Protestants;

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and the rise of beliefs in science combined to transform a fundamental feature of English culture. The changes in this case took some time, and there were important residuals from older beliefs. The fact remained, however, that by the 1700s, not only in England but in other parts of the Western world, people increasingly began to call upon doctors to deal with disease (even though their knowledge by modern standards remained quite limited) and turned away from cunning men for finding lost items in favor of placing a notice in a weekly newspaper (a new option) or organizing urban lost-and-found centers.6

FIGURE 1.1 Image of the horseshoe protecting against witchcraft, 1852. Illustration by George Cruickshank. Published in The Horse Shoe, the True Legend of St. Funstan, and the Devil (London, 1852). Source: The British Library.

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The history of abolitionism offers a huge example of culture change. Slavery, as a labor system, had been accepted by a wide range of societies, over a long period of time, though not without a few concerns from some of the major religions. But in the eighteenth century growing numbers of people began to turn against the institution, on the grounds that ownership of one person by another was unjust and led to other cruelties. While several other factors helped spur the abolition movement, culture change— increasingly orchestrated but echoed in petitions from tens of thousands of ordinary people—played a central role. The power of new values (though also some of their limitations) shone through clearly. As Japan encountered pressures to reform its political and economic structure during the later nineteenth century in response to Western intrusion, it adjusted by heightening an emphasis on training in science and technology, modifying older Confucian values that had placed primary reliance on traditional learning. But in order to maintain a distinctive identity and political stability, the Japanese people were also encouraged to expand their loyalty to the emperor, who was regarded as a divine being— an idea whose origins dated back over a thousand years, but which had never before received such prominence. Emperor worship intensified, although its depth and extent are not entirely clear, and the government provided substantial support both to religious shrines and to the promotion of the concept in the expanding public school system. As one local scholar put it: “Japan is called the divine land because it is ruled by the descendants of heavenly deities.” Here was an interesting and obviously complicated set of cultural changes, that seemed to function quite well for several decades. Then, however, Japan was defeated in World War II , and the United States, as occupying power, insisted that the emperor renounce his claims to divinity, or face the abolition of the institution altogether. And most Japanese, profoundly affected by their loss in war, seemed to go along without much difficulty. A residuum remained, however, as is so often the case with culture change, and in the past decade some Japanese conservatives have been calling for a revival of the divinity idea as a means of furthering national unity. Still, overall, modern Japan stands as an example of repeated and complex culture changes in the process of adjusting to a dynamic industrial economy and intensifying global relationships.7 Throughout the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth, most leaders of the Roman Catholic Church tried to resist leading forms of culture change, attacking liberalism and socialism alike and excoriating any formal commitment to religious tolerance as opposed to acceptance of the one true faith. Individual Catholics, to be sure, made some accommodations to new ideas, as beliefs about the necessity of practices like birth control gained ground—where important and often painful cultural adjustments seemed essential. Then during the 1960s, in the Second Vatican Council, the Church made a striking about face, without renouncing its formal truth claims; its acceptance of religious pluralism significantly altered the relationship

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between Catholics and other religions. Cultural issues remained for what had long been a conservative institution, but there was a clear movement toward change. The historical list can easily be extended. But culture change is not, finally, merely a historical artifact, though historical examples play a vital role in illustrating the phenomenon. Literally every month, news media unearth another intriguing instance in which culture change is playing out in new ways—whether the issue involves the reasons that auto racing is declining in the United States (almost certainly a cultural shift at least in part) or the effort in several Middle Eastern countries to revise cultural traditions in dealing with rape or the need for several American businesses to address what observers are calling “toxic” work cultures. In the wake of the 2016 American presidential election, experts and amateurs alike devoted a great deal of attention to the role of different patterns of culture change and resistance in explaining the outcome, and especially the surprising level of support for Donald Trump. Even economists noted that some of the regions that particularly backed Trump did not have the nation’s highest poverty levels, but they did evince the greatest amount of cultural distress, the greatest gap between cultural expectations and perceived reality—as evidenced not only by voting patterns, but by rising levels of drug use and suicide. And they noted that cultural solutions, not economic adjustments alone, must be considered in dealing with the issues involved. They pointed, in other words, to the need to consider particular opportunities and challenges for culture change.8 And on another equally contemporary front: when political leaders and academic officials seek to confront the problem of sexual violence on college campuses, they inevitably, and correctly, call for culture change. Many in their audiences, students among them, would agree: a serious issue requires equally serious revision in beliefs and values. But what does this kind of culture change involve, and how can we best find out?9 The point is clear: cultural values can shift, and are shifting, in all sorts of domains, and the results can alter personal life, or political structures and activities, or business policies. Obviously other sources of change demand attention: new technologies, for example, or novel demographic patterns. But even these forces usually interact with values and beliefs—at an extreme, new technologies may be rejected or ignored because they make no cultural sense. And in many important instances, culture change itself stands as the key determinant of new historical patterns—even in the present day, as the rapid evolution of attitudes toward gay marriage suggests. The significance of culture change, then, can be readily established, though the cases explored in the chapters of this book will add evidence and detail. Shifts in beliefs and values constitute one of the most important elements in the human experience, in past and present alike and over a wide range of specific topics. At the same time, however, culture change is usually a challenging process, with elements that are hard to orchestrate or even to predict. Economists are

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often wary of invoking culture: one practitioner, interested in why people in some American counties make particularly unhealthy food choices, admitted in 2018 that different local values must be at play but added that “economists have a problem with the word ‘culture’ ”—presumably because it is so hard to quantify and because it complicates the discipline’s (inaccurate) preference for uniform market rationality. A leading scientist recently noted that the main target in dealing with contemporary environmental issues was not more science—the basic elements here were, he claimed, clearly established—but the need for a fundamental shift in culture, so that more people would recognize the urgency of the topic. But, as he also acknowledged, scientists do not know how to “do” culture change.10 And, as this book will make clear, few people can claim to organize culture change with any certainty, though some have tried. Culture is a slippery topic; it provokes deep and passionate responses; it can clear serve as the basis for resistance to change, or for conflict over change, as often as it stimulates innovation. Another deterrent to focused attention might be a sense that culture change lacks drama, compared to more vivid experiences of war or political upheaval, whether past or present. This is not, in fact, entirely correct. We will see that culture change can be swift and surprising, and that it is intimately wrapped up with revolutionaries in the streets or business leaders pushing their organizations toward new frontiers or even ordinary people reevaluating their definition of what smells bad. But it is also true that some culture change takes a long time, and that some of its most interesting forms are fairly private and personal—not the stuff of battles or riots. Culture change is best seen as something of its own domain, deserving consideration in its own right. All this means that the second point to explore in introduction, along with the sheer importance of culture change, involves its complexity and the gap between significance and widespread understanding. If culture change, and resistance, form such a key determinant of social life, why does the topic often seem so elusive?

Challenges and Responses Practical and Theoretical Issues Here are some common problems in dealing with culture and culture change: a belief that cultures are unusually sluggish, compared to other aspects of human society; some powerful theories that see culture as merely a subordinate expression of a dominant power structure; and the contrast between culture change and more conventional chronologies in survey history. Each of these downsides warrants brief attention, before turning to the strengths of cultural analysis.

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An assumption that cultures simply don’t shift significantly, or that if they do the process is so slow as to be almost imperceptible, is widespread— for example, among many college students. It is true that cultures form part of social and individual identity, and people are often loath to see that identity challenged. When other types of change accelerate—for example, the pace of urbanization or dramatic new technologies—many groups may seek to double down on beliefs and values, in an attempt to preserve some sense of stability. Unquestionably, cultural resistance is an important phenomenon in its own right, easily visible in today’s globalizing environment. Unquestionably as well, many cultures long preserve a characteristic signature, which makes it tempting for scholars to overdo the emphasis on changelessness; this is a common problem, for example, in dealing with Chinese culture from the advent of Confucianism at least until very recent decades, as if once the value system was set it simply persisted with at most minor adjustments. There’s no question, indeed, that cultural tradition plays a vital role in Chinese history; but as many scholars dealing with Chinese beliefs increasingly recognize, it’s the change part that is often underplayed, even before the most recent innovations.11 The fact is, of course, that culture change can demonstrably overwhelm the impulses toward traditionalism—as developments in twentieth- to twenty-first-century China amply demonstrate. But the sluggish components can distract from this process, turning attention to other domains that seem to shift more rapidly. It is essential to develop an analysis that balances continuity—the traditionalist persistence—and change, a point to which we will return; but this requires some explicit effort. A second challenge, less vigorous than it once was, must also be recognized, in theories that see culture, and therefore cultural change, as merely a trivial expression of power relationships, with no power to alter history independently. Marxist analysis—not only with Marx himself, but also with later theorists like Antonio Gramsci—argued that cultural patterns flowed from social elites and were simply designed to maintain existing power structures.12 Thus religion, most famously, was merely the “opiate” of the masses, with no real significance on its own. Cultures would change when power shifted; thus the capitalist bourgeoisie touted a different culture from the old landed aristocracy. But the real transformation centered on the ruling class and the production system that sustained it, and culture could largely be ignored. It was true, as we will see in a later chapter, that when Marxist revolutionaries won out they devoted considerable attention to trying to change culture, to solidify and advance their ideas of progress, but this did not really alter the way they looked at history. Marxist proclivities show up even in more recent, and impressive, theories, like Immanuel Wallerstein’s concept of a world economy in which some regions gain a disproportionate share of the profits of world trade from the sixteenth century onward, relegating other regions to lasting exploitation. In

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Wallerstein’s regional schema, trade patterns, political systems and labor arrangements predominate, over many centuries, and beliefs and values have no real relevance at all.13 Marxist analysis has receded in significance, and it was not always consistently “anti-cultural.”14 And it is true that cultural patterns often do reflect social class structure, with dominant groups trying to promote value systems that will keep the masses in line. Not only aspects of religion but also other cultural systems, like nationalism, lend themselves to this interpretation in part. But cultural change can also unseat the power structure: this is part of what major revolutions are all about. And some cultural changes—like the recent revisions concerning gay marriage—have at most a complicated relationship to social power arrangements. It is important not to overdo the force of culture, as against other factors, but the Marxist putdown is no longer terribly relevant. Shading off from the Marxist approach, several other culture theorists, headed by the French philosopher Michel Foucault, put forth a more vigorous interest in culture change, though still ultimately bounded by the power structure. Foucault explored a variety of changes in prevailing belief systems, including scientific discourses, around topics such as penology, sexuality, and insanity, showing how they altered over time but were always in keeping with the interests of the prevailing social hierarchy. Even these theories, though more directly applicable to culture change, have receded in significance since the end of the twentieth century, in favor of a less systematic but potentially more flexible approach to values and their evolution—but the lure of theory, and a linkage between culture and the interests of elites, continues to play a role in relevant analysis. The question of the independent role of culture is hardly resolved, but most of the restrictive formulas have declined.15 Perhaps most important, as a practical problem, is the obvious fact that cultural change is harder to nail down than some other types of historical development, posing a clear problem particularly in textbook history surveys. Culture change, when it does occur, does not lend itself to convenient dates, like many political events or even technological inventions or scientific discoveries. We know, as suggested above, that belief in magic receded considerably in the UK over a two-century span, but there is no single point at which the decisive turn can be identified—nothing as precise as, say, Newton’s discovery of the law of gravity or the timing of Newcomen’s invention of the first working steam engine or the English Civil War, during the same era. Imprecision, in turn, can lead some scholars to turn away from culture change toward more readily identified categories. It is easy to downplay cultural change when there are so many other convenient (or annoying) specific events to memorize. Here too, the challenge can be met, but many presentations—particularly by some of the more conventional historians—continue to privilege conveniently tidy chronologies.

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Responses: A Surge in Culture Analysis Against these various issues in approach and presentation, it is vital to note that, in recent decades, cultural analysis has gained ground in a number of areas of inquiry—partly, of course, because cultural disputes and changes loom so large in the contemporary world. In the history discipline, for example, what was called the “cultural turn” dominated a good deal of scholarship from the 1980s onward. In France, a group of scholars devoted themselves to trying to ferret out what they called the “mentalities” of past periods, and the idea caught on in some other countries as well.16 In history but also sociology, what was called “cultural construction” gained new attention. Here the focus was on the power of culture to shape key developments that often seemed simply “natural.” Thus many feminists argued persuasively that much of what we think of as gender attributes were in fact products of particular cultures, and could (and should) therefore be changed. Women are not naturally meeker or less assertive than men, though these characteristics may be emphasized by certain cultures. The same applies to race, which should be seen as a cultural construct rather than an artifact of nature. Correspondingly key areas of behavior, like sexuality or emotion, are arguably shaped more by values and beliefs than inherent human characteristics, though the mix is often complicated.17 Even many neuroscientists now agree, for example, that human emotions are defined in large part by criteria provided by particular cultures, and not universal bio-psychological responses. This realization has encouraged some emphasis on cultural comparison—another complicated analytical target—to highlight the different human responses that depend on values systems. Thus contemporary Japanese are far less likely than American to emphasize happiness, not because they are necessarily less contented—the whole issue of defining happiness in a culture-free manner is extremely difficult—but because they place far more importance on fitting into groups and families than in evaluating well-being in terms of individual satisfaction.18 The current liveliness of cultural analysis, in trying to explain why individuals and groups behave as they do, sets an obvious basis for the focus of the following chapters, in trying to carry cultural analysis more fully into assessments of change and resistance. Because cultural patterns determine, or partially determine, so many aspects of life, it is surely important to place greater emphasis on the phenomenon of cultural change—unless one falls back into the mistaken notion that cultures, once established, rarely alter significantly or at most evolve only very slowly. But while culture has advanced as an explanatory tool, attention to change has arguably lagged somewhat, at least as a subject of systematic inquiry. We know a lot about individual instances, much less about the general phenomenon—a problem this book seeks to address.

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The Basics: Defining Culture One final preliminary is essential before we outline the parameters of the core chapters in this book. A definition of culture is vital—and happily it is not too hard to achieve, though inevitably some further issues are attached, for the definitional challenge involves good news and bad. The bad news: culture is harder to define than some other human phenomena, which is why so many students of culture, from various disciplines, feel compelled to offer a definition before they proceed to their own particular study. Repetition correctly suggests a problem, as scholars struggle to distinguish “real” culture from distracting options and admit that key aspects of culture lurk below the surface, challenging any easy delineation. But the good news: regardless of disciplines (history, psychology, conflict analysis, and sociology), most definitions actually align fairly tidily, deriving for the most part from the achievements of cultural anthropology and centering—as has this Introduction—on basic beliefs and values of individuals, groups, and societies. There is a great deal of debate around specifics, but considerable consensus on fundamental aspects of culture but also—less good news here—on why it is often difficult to get at. Here’s the core: culture involves a set of understandings and assumptions— often not explicitly stated—that members of a community share in common. “Understandings and assumptions” may show up in the symbols that a community generates or responds to; in rituals; in customs and traditions and stories about these traditions (whether they are fully accurate or not); in shared expectations (like the idea of the “American dream,” which is so often invoked today in assessing the discontents of key groups in the United States). Some anthropologists focus particularly on what they see as a society’s or an organization’s “rules” for behavior, but their sense of rules is quite broad, and not just formal laws or regulations—for example, we have “rules” that tell most of us that it’s fine to shout at most sporting events (tennis and golf excepted) but not in movie theaters, an aspect of modern culture that took a few decades to work out when movies first became available. Other definitions offer a more general focus on shared beliefs and values, but always with their centrality in helping to define and guide the group in question.19 Several issues arise within this definitional framework. Anthropologists spend a good bit of time debating the tension between ideas (however informal) and behavior or material life. Material conditions—like the contrast between a plush executive suite and the dirt and noise of a factory floor in the same corporation—can certainly express culture, just as much as shared beliefs or assumptions about, say, social mobility. A related issue involves positions in the power structure, in a society or organization—a point already emphasized by Marxist or Foucauldian theorists. Definitions of culture would fully grant that, in many societies,

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men have more power than women, rich than poor, but they would argue that some key aspects of culture may be shared nevertheless.20 Culture and culture change are also group phenomena—though the group may be a social class, a gender, an organization, or a larger society. Individual culture change occurs—for example, when a person converts to a different religion, and the process may be interesting and significant. But real culture change involves larger clusters—lots of individuals changing in the same direction—and this goes beyond any biographical approach. Shared cultures can also embrace disagreements and disputes, including of course political or partisan conflicts. Obviously it is always possible that clashes will become so sweeping that two (or more) different cultures result, but often there are shared assumptions and symbols alongside discord, even if the parties involved are not always aware of what they have in common. Much is made, for example, about the “culture wars” that have truly divided American society since the 1980s, over issues like abortion or feminism or the role of religion. The tensions are very real. But it is possible that many of the Americans involved in one side or another of the culture wars continue to respond to some common symbols (both “sides” for instance may value sports competition) and share some common values such as individualism (a cultural feature explored in Chapter  3).21 Trying to figure out what contemporary American culture consists of, beyond the huge divides, is a valid and interesting challenge, but not necessarily impossible. Cultures often generate some confusion around the issue of uniqueness. On the one hand, participants in a culture often believe that their values and symbols are to some extent distinctive, different from those of other societies and organizations; this belief helps provide cultural cohesion. At the same time, a culture may not be as unique, in fact, as its participants think— which provides an obvious though complicated target for some comparative analysis. But the commitment to the idea of some distinctiveness, not the actual facts, is probably what counts for a culture to help hold a society or a group together.22 Above all: cultures embrace a mixture of explicit and implicit features, and many analyses contend that the latter—values and guidelines that are not formally articulated—are more important than the former. Some definitions of culture invoke the image of the iceberg, with clear-cut statements—like shared stories or laws—forming only the visible part of a cultural package that embraces a far larger component of assumptions and responses that lie below the surface, that can be teased out only by careful observation of language, behaviors, and other symptoms of shared values. This final aspect of culture measurably increases the difficulty of dealing with the phenomenon—which helps explain, as noted above, why many disciplines turn away from culture toward topics that are more easily pinpointed and defined. At the same time, however, cultural analysts insist that their topic—the amalgam of articulated beliefs and underlying assumptions—is a central component—arguably, the central component—

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in explaining both why groups hold together and why they act as they do. In turn, this means that, however difficult to identify fully, cultural features simply have to be dealt with in any examination of the human condition, past or present—and these features require some deep interpretation, not merely superficial analysis. And one additional challenge: in societies that are at all complex, as all modern societies are, people generally participate in a number of cultures. Their political society—today usually a nation-state—will usually project a culture, but so will their individual religions where relevant (unless, as in a few cases, these are coterminous with the nation), their work unit, often their recreational groups. Cultural analysis can and should apply to all these levels—including elements they may broadly share—but obviously, as a practical matter, some decisions are essential to sort out what levels and organizational types are most important. A certain degree of agonizing about what culture is, and how it can be located and explored, is almost inescapable in relevant analysis. The subject is not easy to pin down. At the same time, the wide agreement on some core features—beliefs and values that a community shares—does provide a manageable focus. Different cultures have allowed human beings to adjust to a variety of environments, as well as providing guidance and identity to key groups. The fact that they show up in many different forms—from symbols to formal doctrines—means that there are abundant materials available for interpretation. The success and persuasiveness of many ventures in cultural evaluation demonstrate that the phenomenon can be understood, even if some effort is required. We do know, fundamentally, what we are looking for.23 A grasp of the essentials of a culture, at whatever level, prepares the next step in figuring out how cultures really operate over time: a willingness to tackle the elements of change that help cultures adapt or even actively prepare for wider social innovations. Adding in the factor of change—or resistance to change—undeniably further complicates an already complex topic. But cultures are in fact dynamic, despite some common assumptions of sluggishness, and their development forms a vital part of human adaptation. Figuring out what change involves, and how it can best be understood, is the focus of the chapters that follow, first in sketching a general analytical approach (Chapter 2), then in turning to a variety of actual examples—which ultimately provide the best way to improve the grasp of how the process of cultural adjustment works, and what impacts it can have. Culture change, in sum, is a significant phenomenon, whose understanding is essential in history and contemporary analysis alike. It does involve some challenges, from popular assumptions about cultural sluggishness, to theoretical objections to culture as an independent factor, to the preferences of some conventional historians for tidy names and dates. The challenges can be met, as the brief evocation of some key examples already suggests. Finally, the whole subject benefits from substantial agreement on what

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culture is, as a network of basic beliefs and values—even though there is also agreement that teasing out some facets of culture can be a complicated process. The final task, in this basic introduction, is to lay out the kinds of topics that are addressed in the book’s main chapters, which seek to build on the definition of culture while embracing the experience of change.

The Case Study Approach The bulk of this book explores specific instances of culture change, in a number of different domains. The goal—different from many conventional historical presentations, particularly at the textbook level—is not a systematic survey of cultural developments, from, say, the Renaissance to the present. This might be a desirable task but it is surely premature—there are many aspects of cultural change still to be explored, even in some of the most familiar settings like Western European civilization. More important, if ventured the result would be a volume of detail that might distract from the presentation of culture change as a development that occurs in a number of different contexts, around a variety of specific targets. Varied case studies, but all organized toward the explicit exploration of culture change as a phenomenon, offer a manageable opportunity to advance understanding of the key features of the process while encouraging discussion of what aspects are shared across different settings, what adjustments must be made to acknowledge, for example, the differences between culture change at the societal versus the organizational level, or between change that is clearly orchestrated by a deliberate leadership group (even in rebellion) and the kind of change that seems to well up more spontaneously. Just as this book is not intended as a conventional survey, but rather a sampling of various aspects of a broadly common phenomenon, so also it is not an account of cultural progress. This latter point can be a bit tricky. It is fairly natural to assume that widely accepted aspects of one’s own culture are good, and similarly to believe that changes that have moved away from sometimes strange past beliefs are also good. Culture depends, after all, on wide (if often implicit) acceptance. We will be dealing with a number of cultural changes that, for most readers, will appear to be advances over tradition: this is particularly true in Chapter 9, but it will show up elsewhere as well. What is not so clearly offered, however, is the opportunity to talk about areas where cultures have deteriorated, or where unfortunate traditional holdovers have not been redressed, or indeed where past beliefs and values may actually have been better than what we have today. (Though think, for a moment, about the clear drawbacks of certain modern cultural changes like the rise of violent nationalism, compared to earlier tolerance.) All this is to say that while it is perfectly proper to evaluate cultural change— and I would personally agree that the trends explored in Chapter  9 do constitute progress, whereas those highlighted in Chapters 6 and 7 are much

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harder to categorize—the collection as a whole does not take a stand on the progress angle overall. This important issue must be left to further discussion.24 On a possibly related point, no specific theory is advanced in the collection as a whole. It is important to know the existence of some theoretical approaches, as in the kind of discourse analysis generated by Foucault and his followers. But the following chapters are unified by their commitment to exploring culture change and illustrating its significance, not through establishing any single pattern of causation or social analysis. No single model easily covers the range of situations involved. Without pretending that every category of culture change is offered in the book—and readers are encouraged to think of additional topics, as well as further examples of the topics that are evoked—the wide range is crucial. Culture change can help cause revolutions, it can alter definitions of disease, it can redefine attitudes to minority groups. The sheer diversity of examples pinpoints the challenge and excitement of figuring out what the basic phenomenon is all about. The cases are drawn from several geographical regions, though again without claiming systematic coverage. Culture change is, obviously, a global phenomenon, and the most revealing explorations of several key processes— for example, culture change as a key factor in revolutions—come from outside the United States or indeed any single national framework. All societies generate culture change, even when they are encouraged to think of themselves as highly traditional. And while the role of Western societies in influencing modern culture change must be acknowledged, it is also vital to make it clear many vital societies have developed or maintained their own cultural dynamics, sometimes ignoring or explicitly countering Western examples, often introducing cultural changes of their own. The West is disproportionately featured in several chapters, in some cases because it did take a lead in culture changes that would later influence other societies (though usually in complicated ways), in others quite simply because, to date, the region has been more intensively studied. But this should not distract from culture change as a global and diverse phenomenon, and several chapters include extensive examples from Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The overall global angle can and should be pursued more fully in future, but the following case studies indicate various regional patterns and possibilities, making it clear that the history of modern culture change is not a hymn to Western dominance. Ultimately—just to add one final regional challenge—it may be interesting to consider whether some regions are more open to culture change than others. The comparative assessment might include the West, but also other conundrums—such as the fact Japan, in the later nineteenth century, was more culturally flexible than China for several decades. But analysis of this sort depends on more systematic knowledge of culture change than we have at this point, and this book—which, again, is not a comprehensive survey— offers no position on the issue.

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Finally, the cases disproportionately reflect relatively recent changes—for the most part, over the past 200–300 years, with considerable attention to the past century or even the past several decades alone. Important cultural shifts occurred earlier, and in dealing with the complex role of religion in culture change we will confront a more extended chronology directly, in Chapter  3. But this book has a modern bias, hoping to link historical explorations of culture change to current issues and analytical opportunities. And it is probable—though worth debating—that modern conditions have accelerated the rate and variety of culture change. Key developments like urbanization or the decline of the family as a production unit, new ideas emanating from movements like the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, growing contacts among different regions of the world capped by contemporary levels of globalization—here are some of the components that would explain intensification of culture change, in most if not all of the world’s societies, over the past two centuries plus. And even beyond the emphasis on fairly recent history: the capacity to move from historical examples to ongoing contemporary processes is a crucial element in dealing with culture change. Several of the following chapters explicitly encourage this capacity—in dealing with medicalization, family emotions, global contacts, and prejudice, where change and resistance clearly spill over into current issues. The ability to relate history to contemporary patterns serves as well as an essential element in interdisciplinary collaborations. The claim is explicit: a focus on culture change facilitates greater understanding of the past, but the basic analytical techniques involved can and should be applied to developments that surround us today, and case studies can launch the process.

The Scope of Culture Change: The Range of the Case Studies Most obviously, the cases that inform the following chapters illustrate a variety of types of culture change—not an exhaustive list, but an extensive one, that among other things can touch base with several of the major disciplinary approaches toward the role of culture in human and social behavior. The range also facilitates exploration of a number of crucial debates around culture change, namely: ●

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the relationship between particularly powerful or “hegemonic” groups and other segments of society (a subset of this issue applies to assessing the roles of leadership in organizational culture change); the related question of whether culture change must come from masses of ordinary people—from the bottom up—or whether it can at times be top–down; a variety of problems of causation;

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●

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some comparative issues, where different regional cultures attack similar targets amid considerable mutual influence; and the interaction of culture with other factors in determining some of the key features of modern life.

There must be room as well for some suggestions about the further research and analysis that are needed, in several instances, to improve our current understanding, in a field that offers many opportunities for additional exploration. Seven basic categories are deployed, from radical (though sometimes rather gradual) shifts associated with developments like religious conversion to very personal encounters with family issues or emotional challenges. The variety is obvious: the kinds of society-wide change involved with modern revolution are quite different from the quiet evolution of beliefs and practices associated with death, and these in turn from efforts to redefine an organization’s approach to gender issues. Modes of presentation must vary as well, from elements of historical narrative in dealing with revolution, to the distinctive characterizations that illustrate the impact of a modern medical framework. At the same time, the categories also bleed into each other, at various points: religious patterns, not surprisingly, bear a clear relationship to culture change at the family level or to the culture changes involved in social protest. Culture change in organizations has its own dynamic, but often linked to wider issues such as gender or sexuality. The case studies, and the final concluding section, will deal with some of these linkages even as they illustrate the range of situations in which culture change occurs, and the corresponding range of issues involved in relevant analysis. We begin, in Chapter  3 (after the further exploration of introductory material in the next section), with cases of “big” culture change, including large-scale religious conversions or, in more strictly modern times, efforts by governments to push a culture change agenda. The rise of Western individualism—a major and complex development—is also explored as a somewhat different manifestation of culture change on an extensive level. “Big” culture changes almost always impose some complex analysis in terms of basic causation, and also a host of tensions between continuities and resistance. These “big” changes—beginning with religious shifts—can also suggest the variety of first movers in culture change, from self-proclaimed leaders to a decisive involvement from groups, like women or youth, who see particular opportunities in new values precisely because of their more marginal role in the existing system. The next set of cases, in Chapter 4, highlights the role of culture change in revolution and protest, where existing social hierarchies are attacked along with systematic efforts to generate cultural frameworks that can replace the patterns that had sustained these hierarchies in the past. Culture change is involved here both as a cause—helping to explain why major

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outbursts occur—and as effect, as revolutionary regimes characteristically seek to reshape the values and beliefs that had previously prevailed. Connections with the kinds of “big” change explored in the previous chapter are obvious, but the revolutionary context adds some special elements. Chapter 5 focuses on culture change within organizations, a deliberately more limited setting in which questions of leadership and deliberate manipulation or guidance play a more obvious role than in the widerranging examples explored in the previous cases. This kind of culture change is important in itself—a key focus of many organizational upheavals in our own time—but it also calls upon some distinctive disciplinary approaches. Chapter 6 takes up the “medicalization” of many modern cultures. The rise of science has been a fundamental element in cultural change in the modern period, and attention to the growing reliance on medicine and medical categories links this broader shift directly to personal experience and relevant social policy alike. Cultural change here will be traced concerning: definitions of health and hygiene (including sensory reactions to dirt and odor); disease categories, both physical and mental; and changing attitudes toward death. While change is the dominant theme, patterns of resistance and syncretism will also be assessed. Chapter 7 deals with the complex role of cultural change in personal life and family culture, around key issues such as the decision to limit family size, or the willingness to alter conventional criteria in marriage selection. Tensions between sweeping pressures for change—for example, in the cultural frameworks for raising children—and distinctive regional values loom large in this section. Figuring out the role of beliefs and values, as opposed to other factors such as economic change, is another key challenge. This section will also explicitly examine some of the recent discoveries about the role of culture in emotional experience, and the interactions between culture and innate human characteristics. Chapter 8 explores the role of interregional contacts in promoting culture change, another vital category that has obviously intensified during the past two centuries. Contacts can occur in different ways of course—by violent impositions, as with European colonialism in the Americas, but also by less abrasive influences. They almost always yield complex results—few societies simply accept an external imposition, even when considerable force is involved, without some resistance or reshaping. These complexities must obviously be applied to the contemporary pressure of globalization. This chapter embraces two classic historical cases, both of which created some cultural combinations still visible today, but then turns to an explicitly contemporary pattern centered on globalization. The last main chapter turns to the issue of social tolerance, to cultural changes that have generated reconsiderations of earlier views about certain groups or types of behavior. The scale here is still society-wide, but the focus moves away from some of the sweeping types of culture change reflected in religious conversions or revolutionary enthusiasms. Many of the patterns

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involved, including the resistance generated by this type of cultural change, extend vigorously into contemporary culture debates over issues like gender roles or gay rights. A concluding section, finally, offers some general remarks about the nature of culture change and its role in current global issues, building on and applying some of the key findings from the various cases already presented. We will return, here, to some overall considerations about causation and impact, and the role of culture change in shaping modern societies. And we will deal with the equally important phenomenon of cultural persistence, which looms so large in the early twenty-first century. The goal of the collection is simply to offer a convenient if challenging set of examples that will promote greater familiarity with the process of culture change and some of the core issues involved in its analysis. Case studies establish both the significance and the range of culture change, both past and present. They also provide experience in making sense of the phenomenon and, up to a point, in participating more intelligently in guiding shifts in beliefs and values. Again, there is no effort to suggest a single formula by which culture change can be easily or uniformly understood—patterns and situations vary greatly, as the case studies make clear. Enhanced awareness of culture change certainly does not automatically generate greater ability to orchestrate the process, even at the level of individual organizations. But fuller familiarity with culture change as a phenomenon will improve the capacity to recognize, to interpret, and up to a point to lead or oppose, even as culture change and resistance continue to unfold today. Greater familiarity will also provide a window into one of the most fascinating aspects of the human experience, again today as in the past. When we have a better sense of why people sometimes choose to throw off a traditional cultural pattern—or to refuse to do so, whether the issue is the structure of government or the most appropriate ways to express grief, we tap into one of the most basic connections between past experience and the choices that confront contemporary societies.

2 Organizing Analysis

This brief chapter extends the Introduction to the basic treatment of culture change in two related ways. First, it briefly suggests some of the disciplinary approaches that deal with culture and, in some instances, culture change. The range here is extensive, clearly establishing the fact that dealing with culture change must be an interdisciplinary endeavor. But it can also be rather confusing, since different disciplines bring distinct perspectives and limitations in addressing the phenomenon. This leads in turn to the second main component of the chapter. At risk of seeming somewhat brash or simplistic, it is possible to sketch a very general analytical framework for dealing with culture change, which can then apply to, and be tested by, the case studies that follow in the subsequent chapters. Some readers may prefer to read some case studies before tackling this model, but others may welcome the chance to have some criteria in place in advance. Any major culture change has a distinctive profile, and any student of culture change will surely seek an appropriate personal approach. But having some sense of certain common basic questions, in some logical sequence, brings a degree of coherence to any inquiry about culture change, whatever the mix of disciplines involved and whatever the specific example. The framework can be applied to existing findings—as in the ensuing case studies—or to new research efforts in a field that offers many opportunities for imaginative additional work.

Interdisciplinarity: A Strength and a Challenge The fact is that a number of solid disciplines lay claims to culture, and while this diversity is a potential source of strength, in providing a variety of perspectives, it can also introduce some undeniable complexity. Many of the humanities disciplines—from English literature to art history to philosophy—clearly deal with culture as a basic topic. For the most part—though there are important exceptions—they focus on what is often called “high” culture, on expressions emanating from a society’s leading 19

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creative figures, often patronized primarily by elites. This is, obviously, not the same definition of culture that was established in the previous chapter. “High culture” may or may not reflect wider cultural values, and many of the disciplines involved are not always very interested in the issue of social resonance, preferring instead to focus on the details of style and content within the artistic or literary genres themselves. On the other hand, many literature programs have moved toward greater interest in popular tastes and ideas, even embracing sub-programs in areas such as folklore; these extensions can link directly to the analysis of culture change. Anthropology, and specifically cultural anthropology, one of the discipline’s main domains, is a fundamental contributor to cultural analysis, deeply interested in widely held beliefs and values. Any examination of culture change owes much to anthropological perspectives and findings. Explorations of relatively primitive societies have been particularly eyecatching, showing how sexual behaviors or emotional configurations can vary widely depending on specific history and context. Thus an anthropologist can highlight the essentially anger-less culture of an Inuit group, or the extreme sexual prudery of a rural community on an Irish island, or the freewheeling sexuality (both before and during marriage) of a Pacific island group. But anthropologists have also explored more complex urban societies, and they have ventured some revealing comparisons of cultural systems. The result is a vital and ongoing set of findings that must factor into any assessment of cultural change.1 In some cases, anthropologists have been more interested in cultural variety and persistence than in dealing with the phenomenon of change—at an extreme, implying that some cultures, once established, alter slowly if at all. Other anthropologists, however, have pioneered in studies of change, for example in the African experience.2 Exploration of global influences on previously primitive societies—the role of Christian missionaries or commercial television culture amid Pacific island groups, for example— offers another obvious interest.3 Here is a crucial component of the interdisciplinary mix vital in sorting out culture change. Psychology, and not only cultural psychology (a fairly small domain), also lays claims to cultural analysis, with particular attention to cultural changes within organizational contexts—one of the channels explored in a later chapter of this book. Many psychologists have offered important contributions to the role of leadership in promoting cultural adjustments within corporations or government agencies—working, for example, to change the cultural approach to hospital safety, or exploring how the military seeks to implement new policies concerning gender in its own organizational culture.4 The sheer size of the psychology discipline, and its considerable research funding, loom large in any assessment of the interactions between culture and human behavior. The discipline faces some limitations, however, on the specific issue of culture change. Many organizational psychologists are more interested in

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probing leadership styles than in exploring the full extent of organizational culture. This is not an inherent barrier to a fruitful interaction with analysis of change, but in practice it creates some tensions. More generally, the field also faces a strong tendency to emphasize human universals, in seeking to explain standard responses, rather than cultural particularities, and this impulse has if anything gained ground with the important findings emanating from related fields like neuroscience. Thus for every social psychologist deeply interested in specific cultural approaches to sexuality or emotion, there are half a dozen eager to explore the universal manifestations of facial expressions in conveying emotions like anger or sorrow.5 As against this impulse, some social psychologists are eagerly open to some of the anthropological findings about culture differences—as in the Japanese– American happiness comparisons—but with rare exceptions they have not yet assimilated, or contributed to, a focused interest in the phenomenon of cultural change. This leaves history, and related work in historical sociology, as a principal contributor to the exploration of culture with the explicit concern for the phenomenon of change. There is no question that a wide variety of historians, from many countries and specific intellectual traditions, have contributed immensely to the exploration of cultural change—even before the vaunted “cultural turn” of the past several decades. Major statements, for example about the decline of spontaneous play amid the constraints of modern, industrial cultures began to emerge as early as the 1920s,6 and they have been steadily accumulating since that point. And historians are unquestionably interested, as one of their distinctive disciplinary contributions, in the experience of change (and the continuities that persist amid change). The discipline not only offers major studies of specific cases of culture change, but also a larger commitment to relevant analysis. Even here, however, there are complications. Some of the best studies are complex and lengthy, which is not a criticism—indeed, full understanding of culture change may require elaborate exploration—but a comment on accessibility. Even more important is the fact that, since the cultural turn, many historians have been fascinated with rather small slices of past cultures, and eager to present them not as part of an examination of the process of change but as somewhat isolated statements of bygone episodes. The historical preoccupation with past cultural manifestations can in fact be analogous to the anthropologists’ examination of separate primitive cultures in the present. They both reflect painstaking analysis and full awareness that current Western cultural standards are not the norm of the human experience—but they do not, directly, provide examples of change. A renewed effort at dealing with culture change, then, clearly requires an interdisciplinary framework, and while the chapters in this book draw heavily from history they directly reflect other approaches and contributions as well. It is also true that an ideal interdisciplinary mix has yet to emerge,

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that the relevant scholars do not communicate with each other as fully as might be desired. This book, dedicated to specific case studies that place culture change front and center, aspires among other things to promote more constructive dialogue.

Analyzing Change: Key Ingredients The range of disciplines relevant to examining culture change, and some of the challenges to culture change analysis discussed in the previous chapter, make it particularly desirable to suggest some standard—if very general— components in studying the phenomenon. This framework can and should be tested in dealing with the cases explored in the subsequent chapters of the book; some may find it over-simple, or over-general. At least for starters, it can be suggested that a common basic approach is preferable to a more random progression of one example after another. For, while dealing with culture change is not a widely familiar analytical assignment—rarely found explicitly, for example, in programs of general education where it should in fact gain a recognized home—laying out the essential elements of a constructive approach can be fairly straightforward. A barebones summary is far simpler, to be sure, than dealing with actual cases, but it provides a structure in advance through which the components for effective evaluation can be identified or, if missing, called out as part of assessment.

The Data Challenge The first issue, before outlining a model for the analytical process, involves data. Whatever discipline approaches a topic in culture change, seeking reliable information is a crucial first step—without solid evidence, claims of culture change are simply speculative. Some components may be fairly straightforward. When a government (as in the example on Turkey, in Chapter  3), or a religious organization, or a corporation seeks to inspire culture change, leaders will typically lay out the characteristics they are seeking, and this material, in turn, constitutes an obvious starting point. Other topics around culture change—see, for example, the material on emotional culture, in Chapter 7—are less straightforward, and here other, often less systematic evidence is required. Scholars have used information from testimonies in legal trials, popular sermons, childrearing or other advice materials, but also data on rituals—for example, around funerals and mourning—to build their descriptions of culture change. Language is a crucial source: new or redefined words often point to fundamental culture change, as we will see around the phenomenon of revolution (Chapter 4) but also with health and emotion (6 and 7).7 When the topic centers on recent decades, polling material may also be very helpful; and newly

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available online compilations allow calculations of word-use frequency, which can be very informative. It is also important to check apparent beliefs against varied evidence. Sometimes leaders claim that their society has accepted a culture change before ordinary people have actually shifted significantly; obviously, it is essential to find data that go beyond self-serving claims—a key issue in some of the big change categories explored in the next chapter. Beliefs must also be checked against behaviors. Sometimes, people will tell an observer that they believe one thing, in trying to seem up to date or simply pleasing; but their actual actions suggest something different. Economists deal with this issue through what they call revealed preference: look at what they do, not what they say. This has been a recurrent data problem in dealing with racial attitudes in the United States, for example, as a classic mid-twentiethcentury study suggested: many Americans were and are eager to look good in the eyes of the pollsters, so they conceal some of their deeper prejudices in order to seem more modern and enlightened.8 But even the behavior check can be complicated. During the 1970s in several countries women with young children, actively engaged in employment outside the home, said that they believed mothers should not work; were they lying, or did their beliefs and behaviors, combined, suggest a real values dilemma? Again, evidence on culture change can be tricky, and it is certainly desirable to evaluate different kinds of sources in assessing culture change. Appendix 1, in this chapter, expands briefly on the opportunities and challenges in the data category. Assuming adequate or at least plausible evidence—and any culture change argument should be tested in this regard—attention can then turn to making sense of a culture change experience. This is where a simple sequence of procedures can be suggested, to help organize analysis and to guide assessments of the arguments of others.

The Components of Analysis Two essentials launch the sketch: the issue of timing (a historian’s staple) plus group parameters; and the somewhat less familiar need to present a baseline against which change can be measured. (See Appendix 2 at the end of this chapter for a checklist outline.) Historians can easily seem too fussy when it comes to dates, and culture change, as noted already, does not usually lend itself to a detailed chronology. But it is important to have a reasonably clear sense of approximately when a shift began—within a decade or two, in most instances; and in some cases even more precisely. Otherwise crucial elements of the analysis cannot be deployed: most obviously, one cannot turn to the explanation of why a change occurred without knowing what time period one is talking about. Collective focus is equally important as a preliminary: is the culture change something that involves a whole regional or national society, or a social

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class or ethnic group, or a more specific organization or set of organizations? Precision here is important, including some sense of whether the target involves considerable cultural homogeneity or greater complexity—for this has direct bearing on several of the next steps in analysis. Step one, then, in exploring culture change centers on establishing when, and about whom, the analysis will focus. Baseline definition is at least as crucial. Some accounts of change, whether in culture or other domains, blithely discuss transformations without carefully describing the situation before the transformations set in. Yet change cannot be assessed without knowing the prior patterns against which it plays out. One of the many beauties of the seminal study of the decline of magic in early modern England, cited in Chapter 1, was its care in showing what the prevailing magical ideas and practices were before change began to take root. Once timing and framework are established and the baseline set, obviously the third task involves characterizing the change itself. In point of fact, a preliminary sense of the nature of change may launch in inquiry—a realization that magic was being replaced, or that American acceptance of gay marriage was increasing—and the delineation of timing and prior baseline come later, as part of projecting a more formal analysis of the process involved. Whatever the order, describing the change, including the sectors that seem first to embrace innovations, lies at the core of any further assessment. This task accomplished, or at least advanced, two subsequent assignments then follow. Exploring causation is vital. If we do not have some sense of why change was occurring, we lack full understanding of the nature of the change and its probable strength and durability. Sometimes, elements of the causation are no-brainers. The Japanese shift away from beliefs in the divinity of the emperor after 1945, though arguably a profound alteration in political culture, clearly derived at large part from defeat in war and pressure from the US occupiers. In other cases however—for example, with the decline of magic in England—causation is much more complicated and harder to determine. And some apparently clear-cut cases harbor unexpected issues. German culture, for example, turned decidedly anti-military after World War II , against a long national tradition.9 Defeat in war and subsequent occupation triggered the change. But why was the reaction different from what happened after World War I, when German culture moved in the opposite direction? And even more important: why has the new culture persisted for decades, rather than wearing off as memories of defeat receded? Explanation, here, has to go beneath the surface. Whatever the level of difficulty, the challenge of figuring out the causes of change must be accepted, even if the results are not always definitive. As part of causation analysis, attention to initial stages in the change process will often help focus the explanation. Deliberate leadership groups

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play a role in some kinds of culture change, though they are rarely fully responsible. In many cases of culture change (but not all, as we will see in several of the following chapters) the new patterns first take hold among young people, gradually gaining ground as part of the progress of the generations involved; this generational approach seems to apply, for example, to the reconsideration of gay rights in the contemporary West. In other instances, culture change hits cities before rural areas (if only because of greater ease of communication), providing another opportunity to zero in on more precise explanation. Analysis of causation must target both the initial types of converts and the longer-run process of dissemination and consolidation, but the task may be facilitated if some key sponsors can be identified. The second follow-up involves assessing continuities amid change. Significant cultural shifts usually involve substantial holdovers from prior patterns. These can involve groups or organizations that continue to resist the change, even though their voice is dimming—as in the obvious if diminishing ongoing opposition to gay rights in the United States and other Western countries. Even the fabled decline of magic left many people—to this day—clinging to some of the older beliefs and practices. But opposition or outright persistence are not the only points about continuity. Some cultural shifts yield efforts to combine new and old beliefs, in a pattern known as syncretism. This kind of combination can ease the pain of transitions and help attract greater support, and it can prove creative in its own right. Attention to the change factor in culture change must not preclude awareness of accompanying continuities and compromises, as well as outright resistance. There is one other element in the change-continuity balance that shows up occasionally, at least in modern history. Some societies, confronted by rapid change, compensate in part by “inventing” traditions, pointing to cultural features that are in fact partly new even though they are presented as deeply historical. A classic example, from late nineteenth-century Japan, involved the emphasis on emperor worship as part of nationalism: government leaders urged this (for example, in schools) as a Japanese tradition even though, in fact, it had never previously enjoyed such intense emphasis. The American celebration of Thanksgiving, formalized in 1863 as a gesture toward national unity during the Civil War, also embodies elements of invented tradition. The idea of a special Highland tradition in Scotland, complete with bagpipes and kilts, is another essentially recent creation. And the list could go on, particularly but not exclusively linked to the claims of modern nationalist cultures. Here is another complexity to keep an eye on as part of the overall treatment of cultural continuities amid change.10 Finally, the consequences of change demand assessment, assuming that the transition does not prove to be simply a false start, a short-lived attempt at cultural adjustment. Here, the potential range of subject matter

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can be considerable. In many cases, as we will see in several of the chapters that follow, the results of culture change must be combined with other factors—such as economic adjustments—in assessing overall outcome; but this need not detract from the primary focus on beliefs and values themselves. Culture change may deeply affect political behaviors and structures. Or it can alter family life or personal habits. For example: from nineteenthcentury Iowa to twenty-first-century Iran, improving women’s access to education invariably changes their sense of goals and options, leading among other things (on average: individuals of course vary) to a reduction in birth rates—a huge if not always widely noted culture shift that produces game-changing social results. Or culture change can show up in economic activities, as in different savings or consumption patterns. Or it can induce a further set of cultural changes. There is no set agenda for connecting culture change to personal and social outcomes, but the invitation to inquiry is obvious. Culture change may well be significant in itself, as suggested above; but more commonly it gains importance through the institutions and behaviors it touches. This is the final basic component of a systematic analysis. There is one further possible step, particularly in the historical domain: figuring out when a new cultural trend itself comes to an end, to be replaced by a subsequent cultural change. Victorian sexuality and gender standards, for example, constituted vital shifts but themselves were supplanted in the twentieth century. And even for contemporary culture change, it is always possible to speculate, at least, on what might supplant a pattern in the future. A checklist for the key components in analyzing culture change risks seeming deceptively simple: timing and focus; baseline; characterization; causation; continuity/resistance; and results. Each element, depending on the particular case, may require a considerable amount of work. Even timing can be a challenge, for often culture change begins well before people are fully aware of its emergence. But the proof of the framework’s service rests in the doing: in determining how helpful the framework is in guiding new research into some aspect of culture change; and in deciding how existing studies can be evaluated through applying the framework, with whatever appropriate flexibility. Given the huge range of domains in which culture change emerges, as well as the multiplicity of disciplinary angles involved, a case can certainly be made that a core checklist is a desirable step toward some shared coherence, even in offering just a first step before diving into the more complex particulars. Teasing out the elements of the framework in the examples that follow and deciding on their utility will allow readers to make their own decisions as they work through the ensuing chapters. The goal, of course, is not simply to highlight the significance and fascination of various aspects of culture change, but to improve our capacity to understand the phenomenon more generally.

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APPENDIX 1 Evidence The chapters in this book are, for the most part, based on scholarly books and articles: they sum up, in other words, the findings of many researchers rather than resting directly on primary data. Footnotes refer to these studies, which is where the direct evidence for culture change can be identified and evaluated. It remains vital, however, to remember that culture change arguments must be empirical, even if they may also refer to some larger theories as well. Available evidence is an essential first step in any assessment. And this evidence can come from a wide range of possibilities, as the scholarship represented in the following chapters suggests. Some types of culture change are initiated or guided by articulate leaders—political figures, missionaries, corporate bosses—who leave explicit evidence about the kinds of values and beliefs they are aiming at. Material that comes at least somewhat more directly from the wider society is also essential. Law codes often help: for example, consider what kinds of culture change are suggested by the introduction of “no fault” divorces in the United States from the 1960s onward, compared to earlier values about marriage. Court testimonies contribute as well, suggesting what beliefs the accused thought would resonate with judges or the wider society.11 Scholars dealing with culture also benefit from artistic evidence of various sorts: changes in styles and themes in painting and architecture can be revealing—a major, though disputed, history of attitudes toward childhood depended heavily on portraiture, for example.12 Historians have disagreed about the validity of using novels and other forms of literature, for they may not accurately reflect broader social values; but on the whole, particularly when combined with other evidence, widely read novels can be very revealing. A major study thus uses the rise of the novel, as a European literary form, to help explain changes in romance and courtship.13 Other kinds of material artifacts may contribute. Toys and games for instance reveal much about values pertaining to children and larger definitions of play.14 Online compilations—by Google books, the New York Times, and other organizations over the past decade—allow scholars and students fairly easily to check the frequency of word use or the timing of the introduction of revealing new terms, sometimes dating back as far as the eighteenth century. Chapter 7, below, in dealing with emotions like boredom, directly takes advantage of these opportunities. For recent topics, polling data (sometimes going back to the 1930s) are extremely revealing. And some disciplines, like psychology, directly organize interviews to get at the recent experience of culture change, particularly in specific organizations.

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It is also important to look at behavioral evidence, at least alongside more explicitly cultural materials. As noted, this kind of control data is vital in politically sensitive areas, where people may try to please an interviewer despite actions that suggest different values. Controls may also help identify tipping points of change: families, for example, may shift behaviors, in personal domains such as birth rates, before they openly express new ideas about children or parenting roles. Here, combined evidence is preferable to surveys of professed beliefs alone. Sources of potential materials on culture change and its major features are both rich and diverse. They do need to be evaluated, as part of the overall assessment of research in this field. And almost always, there are some challenging questions attached. Leaders, for example, may be quite clear about the culture change they are seeking, but evidence about the impact of their programs, on the beliefs and values of more ordinary people is often harder to find. Cases where cultures combine influences—studied particularly in Chapter  8—form another challenge: many people become adept at seeming to accept a new set of beliefs while also, in fact, quietly combining them with older notions. There are many cases where different kinds of evidence must be evaluated, and where legitimate question remains about how much we know about what a certain group “really” believes— even in contemporary societies—as opposed to what they think their audience wants to hear. Not surprisingly, it is typically far easier to get at a culture change that involves upper- or middle-class elements, that are relatively articulate and often disproportionately literate, than where other social groups are involved—yet developments in these groups may be particularly significant in assessing the real dimensions of change and resistance. Scholars have been impressively imaginative in coming up with evidence concerning culture change, even for groups that are less obviously articulate, but questions and limitations deserve attention as part of any overall evaluation of a culture change claim.

APPENDIX 2 Analytical Sequence Historians value diversity and individuality, so research presentations vary greatly. Any pretense at a precise analytical formula risks oversimplification—risks indeed offending historians’ vital sensibilities. But, as suggested above, assessing culture change must touch base with a number of facets, lest essential components be neglected; and to the extent that culture change offers an interdisciplinary target—not the purview of

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historians alone—a tentative template may be particularly desirable. Finally, since the goal of these case studies is to improve student exposure to culture change, clarifying what components are essential—not only in doing research on culture change, but even in assessing this research, will surely benefit from a flexible and definable formula. The suggestion, then, is a six-step process, though the sequence of the steps may vary considerably. 1 Clarify the timing of the change, and also the scope involved—a whole society, an organization, a particular social group. In other words, pinpoint the analytical target. 2 Carefully delineate the prevalent patterns before the change. Neglecting this baseline is one of the most frequent omissions in culture change analysis, yet it is essential in defining the change itself. If the pre-change patterns are unclear (including their probable complexities), then change will almost certainly be misconstrued. 3 Characterize the change itself—a decline of magic, a new commitment to nationalism, the spread of a new religion, or simply a new level of tolerance for a previously-scorned group. This lies at the heart of the descriptive aspect of culture change analysis— including explicit contrasts with the baseline patterns. 4 Assess the causes of the change—recognizing that usually several factors will be involved and that pinning the elements down precisely is often impossible. Causation can be tricky, often generating probable rather than definitive conclusions. But its analysis contributes greatly to a grasp of what the change is all about. This is also the category that allows assessment of formal leadership initiatives in spurring culture change, compared to other factors. 5 Deal with resistance and with partial continuities that combine elements of the new and the old. The scholarly term for combination is syncretism, and it will loom large in the cases in this collection. 6 Explore the major consequences of culture change, often beyond the cultural realm itself, and the overall significance of the transformation. This may require consideration of other factors, besides culture change itself, in assessing overall impacts. Good cultural analysis does not necessarily follow these six steps explicitly or in sequence. Different scholars and different cultural situations will produce their own dynamic. But it can be suggested that evaluating presentations of culture change—as in the case studies that follow—may usefully employ something like this schema, to sort out the basic components and to facilitate comparison of one type of culture change with another. Grasping a common set of analytical essentials can help compensate for the undeniable complexity of culture itself.

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3 Culture Change on the Grand Scale Very occasionally, but decisively in human history, a society—or a major segment of a society—experiences a truly dramatic transformation in its basic cultural framework. Previous assumptions and values are widely challenged, and a new belief system emerges to provide sweeping alternatives. This kind of transformation is understandably rare, but it is obviously extremely important when it does occur. The process also raises some crucial issues in the analysis of culture change—some unique to this level of change, but others applicable to some of the other types of culture change that will be taken up in later sections of this book. This chapter explores three examples of sweeping transformation. We turn first to the most obvious, and arguably most important, kind of cultural shift in the human experience: the conversion of large groups of people to a new religion, usually shifting away from a previous commitment to polytheism and toward one of the great missionary religions: Buddhism, Christianity, or Islam. These types of cultural conversion spread widely, in many parts of Asia, Europe, and Africa, in the centuries after the fall of the great classical empires; but they have also occurred more recently, for example with Christian conversions in the Americas and, in our own time, with massive movements toward Islam and Christianity in sub-Saharan Africa or the rise of Evangelical Protestantism in parts of Latin America. The change seems easy enough to state: large numbers of people shifted from their previous beliefs and practices to become Muslim, Christian, or Buddhist. But the process, and the significance, are not so easily captured, which is where the real analysis comes in. We turn then to a different kind of sweeping change, harder to pinpoint but with similar broad implications: the movement toward greater cultural individualism in Western society, particularly from the eighteenth century onward. Cultural individualism became something of a Western hallmark, differentiating this society—on both sides of the Atlantic—from many other major regional cultures. There is no question that major culture change was involved, though there can certainly be debates over precisely when it first took shape. Explaining what was involved, and what some of the 31

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consequences have been, is a taller order, worth comparing to religious conversions but without such clear-cut markers. Large populations, after all, may well claim a new religious affiliation; they do not offer similar formal declarations about individualism. Finally, the chapter offers a narrower case study: a society that, seeking to adjust to changes in the world around it, seeks to organize major culture change from the top. Turkey, a new nation state that replaced part of the old Ottoman Empire in the wake of World War I, was led by reformers who thought that traditional beliefs were holding the country back. They sought to use government power to transform a number of basic values—a kind of cultural experiment that a number of countries undertook in the twentieth century. The focus, then, is on examples of what might be called “big” culture change, when some significant forces—religious missionaries, governments, other influences—worked to persuade or compel large population groups to rethink their beliefs. While some key examples must be drawn from earlier periods in the human experience, the basic phenomenon of big change very much applies to contemporary world history as well. The sketches that follow are relatively brief, outlining the patterns involved but then turning to the two major analytical issues that particularly attach to such sweeping developments: first, what causes might persuade people to alter their cultural allegiances; and second, how people would seek to cushion their adjustments by quiet resistance or by insisting on incorporation of older values. Unsurprisingly, while big culture change may seem to occur quickly—as in a royal proclamation that a region suddenly becomes Christian—in fact the process is inherently prolonged, and unanticipated combinations are often part of the process.

Accepting a Major Religion The First Challenge: Causation Explaining big religious conversions is complicated by one obvious factor: many of the people involved in the process—urging it, or evaluating it historically—believe that the change is ultimately guided by God or Allah or the divine spirit. This belief does not have to be denied, but it can be supplemented, at least, by additional historical explanations. Some kind of polytheism seems to be the “natural” religion of the human species, moving out from worshipping spirits of nature to more complex structures. Many societies, from hunting and gathering days on to the development of agriculture, fostered beliefs in a series of gods and goddesses, often closely associated with forces of nature but also linked to more abstract concepts, such as fertility or creation itself, or to activities such as war and peace. Specifics varied widely, as most polytheistic systems were local or

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regional. With agriculture, support for priests and ritual leaders typically expanded. Polytheistic religions provided explanations of why nature worked as it did. It offered ceremonies to assure people that they were appropriately honoring the gods and observing the practices that would best promote reasonable prosperity and health and also deal suitably with death and the spirits of the dead. Many polytheistic systems proved flexible over time, incorporating additional gods, for example, when one society came into contact with the cultural systems of another people. Polytheistic systems arguably worked well, in providing assurance and explanation: they were supported by powerful local figures; and they were deeply rooted in regional traditions. Yet, as we all know, at some point (in most parts of the world, during the last 1,500 years) polytheism was challenged and usually displaced by a different religious system, rooted in belief in a single god or the complex spiritual system associated with Buddhism or some aspects of Hinduism. And the first question, predictably, is how this could happen? What causes were involved? A specific African example, recent enough to be remembered by a mid-twentieth-century writer but remote enough to offer a wider perspective, can get the process of explanation started, before we turn to larger waves of conversion in earlier periods

A Nigerian Story In the final decades of the nineteenth century, the British, initially through what was called the Royal Niger Company, gained increasing colonial control over the region now known as Nigeria—contemporary Africa’s most populous nation. The colony took shape particularly between about 1885 and 1914, and would last until 1960, when national independence was achieved. Under British rule European commercial activity expanded, and there was also a surge of Christian missionary effort, directed at populations among whom regional polytheistic beliefs and practices were well established. Northern Nigeria was, and is, largely Muslim, so attention focused on southern peoples, such as the Igbo, who over a span of several decades were converted to Christianity. The Nigerian novelist, Chinua Achebe, in his book Things Fall Apart (1959), describes the process. The account is technically fictional, but it captures many of the elements involved in explaining how and why this culture change took shape—focusing on a single village. Several British missionaries arrive, accompanied by an African interpreter. They gain an audience with the village elders, who agree without too much difficulty to give them a small amount of land on which they can build a small church. The plot is located in the local “evil forest,” in which people who died of particularly horrible diseases (like leprosy) have long been buried and which is presumably controlled by the gods. Everyone knows that any human activity in the forest is doomed, so the elders congratulate

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FIGURE 3.1 “Our foreign missions—an embarrassment of riches for the heathen.” Illustration by Louis Dalrymple in Puck, 1900. NY: J. Ottmann Lith. Co. Source: Library of Congress.

themselves on an arrangement which avoids outright conflict with the intruders but which will quickly lead to the missionaries’ death. “They boast about victory over death. Let us give them a real battlefield in which to show their victory.” The bet is that they will all die within four days, or at most a few weeks.1 But in fact they don’t die, which provides the first wedge into local commitments to the old gods and the larger religious system. A few villagers begin to show a bit of interest. The missionaries do not initially attempt to convert the leadership segments—adult men who have a clear stake in the existing order, including of course the priests themselves. Rather, they appeal to some youths, who might be reached by the missionary message and who might be attracted to a belief system that provides some separation from their powerful fathers. And they draw in some women—another group that is out of power, and among whom some have suffered particularly from the downsides of traditional beliefs. One initial convert, for example, is a woman who had given birth to several pairs of twins, traditionally seen as the product of evil spirits and quickly put to death; again pregnant, and viewed with suspicion by her relatives, the woman finds comfort in the new church. More is involved. The missionaries realize that they cannot initially focus on trying to attack traditional values head on, but must offer some attractive programs that will win favor more indirectly. So they set up some medical services that quickly prove effective compared to prior practices; and they

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establish a school, urging that graduates will have access to jobs in colonial administration or in expanding businesses—another successful appeal. They benefit of course from the obvious fact that, under British rule, new kinds of government positions were gaining ground. The British have also introduced a trading store, bringing new money into the village. Even some adult men had to admit that while the Europeans were preaching a “lunatic religion,” they were also offering some commercial opportunities. Culture change, in other words, was furthered by a combination of factors: the power of missionary words and example; the links with economic and political change; the appeal to individuals not part of the local power structure, who could find support in new cultural opportunities; and finally, the connection to new kinds of health care. Even with all this, widespread conversion took several decades, with much resistance from local leaders, whose position of power was in jeopardy and who sincerely believed that the real gods, whom they and their ancestors had worshipped for so long, were being shamed and dishonored. “All our gods are weeping”; village cultural unity is being shattered; and of course the novelist Achebe framed the whole development with his novel’s title, that “things,” meaning established beliefs and identities, were falling apart. But over time, as the younger generation gained fuller authority, the direction of culture change was confirmed. The Igbo people became largely Christian, and often fervent in their beliefs—as many are still today. Achebe’s account is cogent, but some scholars would be concerned about overemphasis on the practical gains that moved some people toward conversion. Research on another Nigerian region, dominated by the Yoruba people, paints a slightly different picture. Here, Christian missionaries in the late nineteenth century vied not only with the powerful local religion and its priests, but also with Muslim advocates undertaking their own conversion efforts. Social pressures to remain true to the polytheistic faith were intense, with groups threatening to disown members who strayed; as one result, in this instance women, more vulnerable to family influence, converted more hesitantly than men, and the whole process of change was slow and incomplete. But some people did start attending church. A variety of factors were involved, but specific material gain—like eagerness for a government job—was less significant than the ability to see in Christianity a better version of the advantages that had long been sought from the traditional faith—and particularly, protection from harm. Larger missionary efforts to invoke doctrines about Christ’s love or salvation from sin had little impact, but when the new religion seemed to offer greater power over daily problems it might win attention. As one person put it, “If God continues to help restore me to health, I shall then start going to church.” Or in another case: a man sacrificed a goat in hopes his wife would become pregnant, but when that manifestly did not work he started talking about seeing what Christianity could offer. It was not a new cultural mindset, but the willingness to test Christianity for its ability to fit into existing expectations about what

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religion was for, that opened some room for conversion. Figuring out what conversion means, in terms of culture change, is a complex assignment.2

The Broader Process Colonial situations, like that in late nineteenth-century Nigeria, obviously involved some specific features, when culture change was encouraged by shifts in larger power relationships. But the mix of factors involved—links to apparent economic or health benefits, for example, as well as a complex interaction with existing beliefs—is not atypical. Nor is the fact that this kind of culture change may first take shape among people somewhat on the margins of local structures, rather than spinning out from the top down. But while the Nigerian examples correctly highlight the need for multiple factors in explaining the huge and often painful shift away from polytheism, other combinations could contribute as well. And this turns attention to the great wave of culture change that took shape in much of Asia, Europe and parts of Africa from about 300 to about 1400 CE , when the biggest overall movement away from polytheism occurred.

The Great Surge in Afro-Eurasia The three principal missionary religions—Buddhism and Islam, as well as Christianity—shared a number of features. They all disputed polytheism, though this was particularly true with Islam and Christianity with their emphasis on a single God. They all claimed to have a final truth about the nature of divinity, the duties of humankind, and possibilities of spiritual advancement after death—a truth that applied to all people, regardless of location or cultural tradition. They all, in principle, proclaimed the spiritual equality of all believers, regardless of class or gender: everyone had a soul or a spark of the divine essence. And they all actively sponsored efforts at conversion, ultimately extending over a wide territory. Buddhism, the earliest of these faiths, spread from its initial center in India to China and then to Korea and Japan, and through much of southeast Asia. Christianity gained converts gradually during its first centuries, mainly within the vast Roman Empire, but then accelerated thereafter, ultimately reaching most of Europe both east and west, Armenia, Ethiopia, and scattered populations in the Middle East and Egypt. Islam, the newest arrival, quickly won allegiance from Arab peoples, and followed their military conquests through the Middle East (including Persia) and North Africa and Spain. It would draw a substantial minority on the Indian subcontinent, reached into central Asia, expanded into key parts of Southeast Asia including present-day Indonesia, and spread into several sections of sub-Saharan Africa. These extraordinary missionary expansions did not occur overnight, but they did make the centuries after 600 a time of unusually extensive culture change—the time in which millions of people moved from polytheism into acceptance of one of the great faiths.

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The sheer extent of this shift—again, after many centuries of reliance on some version of polytheism—obviously highlights sweeping questions about causation. A number of factors combined to generate this breadth and speed of change—there is no single explanation. As with the Igbo conversions more recently, the power of the doctrines involved, not to mention the conviction and often the sacrifice of the missionaries who brought the message, clearly contributed to this kind of fundamental change. And there are other overlaps as well. But three additional points stand out, that had not been involved in the Nigerian conversion. First, in several cases, interest in a powerful new belief system, that would call attention to divine strength and otherworldly reward, was encouraged by deteriorations in life on earth. Many Chinese were drawn to Buddhism because, for several centuries, their central government collapsed, leading to internal strife and waves of invasion. Christianity spread in the Mediterranean partly because Roman institutions faltered. Here and in China, early centuries of conversion were also times of new and deadly plagues—most likely, bubonic plague—that created obvious fear and suffering. Culture change, not surprisingly, can respond to growing problems in ordinary life. Beyond this, and again in contrast to the later Nigerian example, these massive culture changes were sometimes promoted by outright violence, through torture and executions. Further, even when compulsion was absent, they were frequently spurred by government sponsorship. Both these factors add complexity to the explanations of massive culture change. Outright force was not a major factor for Buddhism, or for Christianity in the first centuries when it won over only a minority of the Roman population. Muhammed, the prophet of Islam, eschewed violence as well, so long as non-Muslims did not actively threaten the true faith: The Quran explicitly stated that “there is no compulsion in religion” and, where nonbelievers seemed to persist: “turn away from them and say ‘Peace’, for they shall come to know. . .” Christian and Jewish minorities were usually tolerated with some restrictions, including payment of an extra tax. But there was no question that Islam spread along with Arab conquests, and this could involve at least a threat of force. Military action was also involved in West Africa, below the Sahara, and in some episodes in India. Polytheists, held in particular contempt because their practices seemed not only false, but offensive to God, were particularly likely victims. The same pattern could support the spread of Christianity. European groups sponsored what was called the Northern Crusades, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, using force to attack particularly persistent polytheism in places like Lithuania; it has been estimated that over 150,000 people were killed. The so-called “reconquest” of Spain, from Muslim control, ultimately involved compulsion as well: in 1492 the newly unified Christian government ordered Muslims either to leave (which many did) or convert. Violence could work. Death or death threats might force a population into cultural

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submission, abandoning the old religion, however reluctantly, and accepting the new—and later generations would maintain the new faith with little question. Most historians now urge against exaggerating the role of outright force, particularly because the great religions themselves placed a premium on more active and voluntary conversion. Successful armies might call attention to the power of a new faith—as with Islam under Arab expansion—without outright violence. But compulsion deserves consideration, in this and other cases of culture change. The role of government support looms larger. Many missionaries formally or informally pressed kings and princes as their first and most obvious entry point with a new population. Islamic missionaries thus worked to convert many rulers in Indonesia, not only urging the truth of their beliefs but also promising other gains—such as relief from a serious illness. The Emperor Constantine, in fourth-century Rome, converted for several possible reasons (including his mother’s Christian faith), but most obviously because his prayers seemed to be answered by victory in battle and because he hoped that Christianity might provide cultural support for his regime. Military victory also helped persuade King Vladimir, in tenth-century Russia, to convert (though another story claimed that Christian baptism helped cure the king’s blindness)—after prior missionary work had won some popular support; and he also was able to win an alliance with the powerful Byzantine state by persuading its emperor to give his Christian daughter in marriage. Government backing could count for a lot, not surprisingly, even without overt force. Vladimir pressed the Russian people to join him in accepting his new religion, and many in Kiev, his capital city, did agree to a mass baptism if only to avoid “the Prince’s displeasure”—though a faithful chronicler put a different spin on the shift, claiming that the citizens “wept for joy and exclaimed in their enthusiasm, ‘If this were not good, the Prince and his nobles would not have accepted it’.”3 Constantine used the prestige of the Roman state to promote his new faith and to help settle disputes within it, and unquestionably official acceptance helps explain why the pace of Christian conversion accelerated markedly. Many rulers—Constantine and later Vladimir among them—saw this kind of culture change as a means of demonstrating their power but also a means of winning fuller popular support, assuming that newly minted Christians would naturally intensify their allegiance to the ruler who had guided their path. Government support for Islam factored in from the outset, as the Prophet used city-states to help further the new faith; and Islamic regimes in India, at various points, as well as Indonesia helped sponsor wider conversions (though in the Indian case, never winning majority support away from Hinduism). Not just the example and urging of rulers, but financial backing for building religious shrines and schools and funding further missionary activity clearly suggest the linkage between states and this kind of culture change.

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But even the role of rulers should not be exaggerated. Acceptance of one of the three missionary religions also called on additional support of the sort that would be involved in the Nigerian Christian conversions some centuries later. The great culture changes often began outside the halls of the powerful or even the sway of armies, as missionaries worked first with ordinary people and touched base with their motivations. This was obviously the pattern with Christianity before Constantine; with many Islamic conversions outside the Arab world; with the surge of Buddhism in places like China. What was involved when ordinary people decided to change their cultural stripes? Beyond the spiritual message itself, several factors could intertwine. The appeal of spiritual equality, and new opportunities for worship, could win attention from the poor, or from women, as at least a partial antidote to their powerlessness. In Buddhism and Christianity, a minority of women found alternatives to marriage and direct male control, in the convents that provided a religious life. In Islam particularly, many slaves also turned away from polytheism, expecting (and often finding) better treatment from Muslim owners as a result. Many people, including merchants, could be drawn to the linkage between religion and growing commercial opportunities. Islam, particularly, spread in places such as sub-Saharan Africa and southeast Asia as part of the expansion of trade; venturesome Arab merchants served also as missionaries, their own faith seemingly connected with their economic success. It is impossible to prioritize the various factors that promoted these great changes in culture with any precision. The new ideas themselves could prove persuasive; compulsion deserves attention; government support in a number of cases was crucial, perhaps particularly in accelerating the speed of change; but the combination of spiritual power with issues in ordinary life—a desire for greater respect, a hope for connections to a more prosperous commercial system—contributed as well, most obviously in cases where the first moves preceded the backing of the local power structure. Though specific combinations varied—each case of big culture change has its own story— the overall message is clear and unsurprising: major changes in belief systems involve a multitude of factors, including but not confined to the specific concepts involved, and they normally bear close relationship to real or imagined practical advantages in other aspects of life.

The Second Challenge: Consequence and Comparisons The complexity of causation in big culture change relates directly to a second and in some ways less predictable issue: figuring out what difference the new system made, and how much continuity persisted beneath the surface as people managed to bend new doctrines toward older rituals and beliefs. Particularly where people were prodded into culture change, by

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force or merely royal encouragement, their capacity to maintain their earlier values, with just a tweak or two to reflect surface accommodation, was often impressive. There is a tension. Religious change, and particularly the shift away from polytheism, did matter. Many individuals were moved to a new kind of spiritual life, apart from specific new rituals. Early Christianity inspired a number of people to renounce worldly affairs, ultimately flocking to the new monasteries or convents. Artistic expressions also shifted, to express and promote the new systems: the great missionary religions all dominated architecture and other expressions for several centuries. Consequences reached beyond religion itself. The nature and extent of charity changed, most obviously in Islam. All the missionary faiths attacked old practices like infanticide, where young children were killed as a means of population control; Muhammad was particularly explicit in effort to protect young life as part of the universality of souls. And infanticide did drop off in all the societies affected. Christianity also cut into another practice that had been common in the upper classes of the Mediterranean world, homosexual relationships between men of different ages, which were increasingly anathematized and, at the least, driven underground.4 Big culture change, in sum, reshapes life, not just in the most obvious areas—in this case, religion and its expressions—but in additional domains. This, of course, is exactly what one would expect, a key reason indeed to pay attention to culture change in the first place. But along with real impact comes durable complexity, in the many instances of persistence just beneath the surface, where change was not exactly what it seemed. A certain degree of persistence was built into the conversion process itself, providing yet another factor that explains why a seemingly new religion would be accepted. Many of the new religious shrines, for example, were built on the sites of older polytheistic temples, partly to take advantage of the building supplies but even more to associate the new faith with the power of older beliefs. When the Christian leader in Western Europe, Pope Julius I, chose December 25 as part of promoting celebration of the birth of Christ (in the fourth century), he picked a date that was not in fact when Jesus had been born (there is some debate about this), but which coincided with a longstanding Roman celebration of the winter solstice. The result unquestionably promoted growing attention to this holiday. And even Easter, the most characteristic traditional Christian marker, was quickly intertwined with earlier polytheistic traditions—such as a use of decorated eggs to herald the arrival of spring, or (among Germanic peoples) the symbolic importance of rabbits in highlighting fertility. Buddhism was even more flexible in combining its beliefs with previous local religions, such as Shintoism in Japan. Syncretism, whether intentional or not, joined religious change to existing beliefs and practices in many ways, helping to mediate change.

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But persistence could go further still, reducing the impact of novelty. The new religions, for example, preached the spiritual equality of men and women but uniformly maintained women’s subordination even within the faith. Women could not serve as priests or imams. Buddha, agreeing to the logic of convents for spiritual women somewhat reluctantly, carefully placed them under the supervision of male monks. Change, clearly, mixed with established ideas and arrangements. Big culture change, while by definition generating a range of results, does not always push through to all logical conclusions: concessions to established realities encourage compromise in key areas.5 In many cases, groups accept a major shift in culture while insisting on a certain amount of selectivity: real change combines with local modifications. Thus as Islam spread in parts of West Africa, by the fifteenth century, it was modified in several key respects. The great Moroccan traveler, Ibn Battuta, praised West African converts for their interest in Islamic doctrines, rituals, and educational practices: the shift away from earlier polytheism was easy to document. But he noted that, when it came to the behaviors of women, many African Muslims simply maintained earlier customs, allowing less structured interactions between men and women and more varied styles of dress. Battuta was duly shocked, but the compromise was not unusual. Big culture change can often only be successful if it allows some flexibility.6 More interesting still are situations in which religious conversion does not fully alter polytheism itself, despite popular acceptance of new labels. Big change—as one historian put it, “from an earlier form of piety to another, a consciousness . . . that the old was wrong and the new is right”7—did not initially materialize, at least for the majority of the population. The transformation itself was long superficial, quite apart from specific areas of selectivity such as gender. New beliefs were accepted as “supplements” rather than alternatives to traditional piety, as older ideas persisted. Thus in many parts of West Africa, again as Islam began to win new influence, ordinary people added bits and pieces from Islamic belief and practice, while retaining polytheistic assumptions for the most part. The innovations were real but modest—enough to please Muslim authorities from other regions, enough to provide additional safeguards to placate divine authority—but not a real overhaul. This rather conservative amalgam was encouraged, in the African case, because the region’s polytheism had earlier developed the idea of a supreme being, while insisting that a host of lesser spirits actually guided the workings of the natural environment (often including the notion of an earth goddess who deserved particular attention). The Islamic God would thus be combined with continued efforts to propitiate the wider array of divine forces. The result was a distinctive and creative pluralism—but far less initial change than the appearance of conversion would usually suggest.8 The de facto combination of new with old shows through clearly in West European Christianity, where—some scholars argue—real popular

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commitment to the new religion, real abandonment of old assumptions, would occur only many centuries after apparent acceptance. The apparatus of church and priest, and the genuine spiritual transformation of some individuals, coexisted with deep-seated polytheism. Outright polytheistic resistance to Christianity was real but usually shortlived, as genuine popular conversions plus military force compelled acceptance. In Italy polytheists struggled on for a few decades in the fourth century but then gave up; one leader actually committed suicide because he had failed to win tolerance from Christian authorities. In parts of Germany, where conversions had also been achieved through military pressure, worship of forces of nature—the sun, moon, birds, even toads—persisted for a while after Christianity had technically won out. The same applied in Norway, where funeral rituals continued to include burning not only the body of the deceased but also a number of possessions, on the (quite nonChristian) assumption that the individual would have use of all these goods in an afterlife. Here too, conversion was slower work than appeared on the surface.9 But the really interesting persistence was more subtle. Large numbers of Europeans—probably particularly in the rural areas that were illiterate and farther from church authority—continued to believe that life was governed not only by God but also by a host of demons, witches and good spirits that must still be reckoned with. Here the issue was not pagan persistence separate from Christianity, but a real blending of the two—a vivid example of syncretism. People would apply worship of the saints and deeply Christian ceremonies such as the Eucharist both to their devotion to God and to their efforts to battle the demons. At the same time they would continue to use more purely pagan rituals, including (in some cases) animal sacrifice, wearing amulets, using entrails to try to predict the future, various invocations of magic as well as many traditional herbal remedies. Sometimes prayer to Mother Earth and Father God combined. Christian stories of healing, as when Jesus cured a disciple’s toothache, were conjoined with non-Christian rituals in dealing with illness. Saints themselves might be evaluated for their effectiveness in dealing with daily problems, rather than pointing the way to salvation: thus peasant women in France, as late as the sixteenth century, sometimes threw saints’ statues in the river when their prayers for health or fertility were not answered.10 Ceremonies for the dead also combined Christian and pagan beliefs: there was a sincere hope to encourage passage to heaven but also an ongoing belief that the souls of the dead were hovering near the local village or town, as were the souls of enemies and strangers. They needed to be conciliated or opposed accordingly. The blended result also showed clearly in the evolution of the celebration of Halloween. There is some debate about precise origins, but in all probability Halloween started among the Celtic peoples of northern Europe as a harvest celebration that also reflected the transition from summer to

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winter. The change in seasons was seen as a particularly challenging time, when the boundary between this world and an Other world was unusually porous. Evil spirits and fairies became more active, and the souls of those who had recently died were restive: all needed to be propitiated by ceremonies and also through gifts or sacrifices of food and drink. Other rituals, like bobbing for apples, were associated with predicting the future. Into this mix came Christianity, with its new interests in encouraging popular celebration of the lives of the holy saints as another means of supporting the souls of the dead and encouraging their entry into heaven. This kind of ceremony, All Hallows’ Day, was initially set in the spring, but in the ninth century the pope shifted the date to November 1. The result: a durable opportunity to pursue both the older ceremonies, on the evening before the Day, and the Day itself—a combination that echoes even into our own time.11 Church leaders, from the top down to many local priests, were usually quite aware that popular beliefs and activities were hardly aligned with Christian doctrine. But they hesitated to interfere: after all, genuinely Christian elements were also present; change had occurred; and too much pressure might unravel the achievement. So, amid grumbling, what amounted to partial Christianity persisted for many centuries, yielding to a more systematic purification only a thousand years later, and even then with a few remaining residues. Full Christianization awaited the sixteenth century, when the big culture change was more completely realized—even as additional changes, in the division of Western Christianity between Protestant and Catholic, brought new complexities. Approaching big culture change in terms of selectivity, compromise, and blending unquestionably adds an unexpected dimension to any analysis. Transformations must not only be explained, amid many contributing causes, but they must also be explored beneath the surface—to find out how much, in fact, was really altered. But this additional task modifies the idea of big change; it does not erase it. The major religious conversions—including African versions of Islam or West European popular Christianity—still added up to significant transformations. Many individuals—including, of course, those who became local religious leaders—were genuinely altered: they did not see the world in the same way their ancestors had. The new beliefs were powerful enough to generate wider consequences, like the clear reduction in earlier practices such as infanticide. Most important, the initial compromises that described wider popular reactions introduced some new elements from the outset and provided a basis for more systematic change over time. West African Muslims would gradually relinquish earlier polytheistic assumptions. European Christians would gradually reduce their reliance on what Christian leaders had long called magic and superstition. Big culture change was real: it simply was more complex, requiring a longer period of adjustment, than official labeling sometimes suggests.

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The Turn to Individualism in Western Culture A leading anthropologist characterizes the Western commitment to individualism as “a rather peculiar idea in the context of the world cultures”12 and this is a comparative point to which we must return. However, this section examines the rise of individualism as another form of major culture change—in this case, primarily within a single, though obviously important, civilization. For individualism was not established at the outset of the Western experience, but rather resulted from another kind of transformation, arguably equal in significance to the conversion to a major religion. The focus here is less easy to chart than the major cases of religious conversion, if only because there was no official doctrine—no single Quran or Bible—or explicit missionary organization involved. But the emergence of a novel cultural framework, that would reach into a variety of beliefs and behaviors in Western civilization, generates some of the same issues that attach to big culture change more generally, benefitting from the same kind of basic analysis. As a big culture change, we would expect—based on the religion example—that Western individualism would result from a complex and many-faceted causation. We would also plan to allow for continuities and complexities while tracing the consequences of change. But in this case, where the change involved lacks the convenient label of religious conversion, we can expect some additional challenges as well: the baseline before change cannot be as easily identified as polytheism was; debates over precise timing are inevitably more uncertain than when a missionary onset is involved; and then there is the wider global comparative context. The rise of cultural individualism is one of the big stories of modern history—Western, but given the West’s influence in the wider world international as well. But it is still being explored, and this summary must reflect a number of loose ends and contestations. Here’s what we’re looking for. Most societies place a great deal of emphasis on making sure people, beginning with children, locate their identity primarily as part of a group—usually an extended family, but sometimes other kinds of local communities as well. A variety of lessons, both positive and negative, drive home the importance of obedience and loyalty. Where religion enters in as well, urging humility before a powerful God, it plays a supporting role in the process. Characteristically, conformity is actively supported through shaming, again from childhood onward. Deviant individuals, who defy group norms in their sexual or economic behaviors, are singled out for public disapproval, and the results are sufficiently painful and visible that most people shy away from any defiance in the first place.13 To be sure, groupcentered societies will nevertheless generate some vibrant and flamboyant individuals, for example as creative artists, or military leaders, or business

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pioneers; the picture should not be overdrawn. But the pressure to adhere to group norms is strong and usually successful. For example, many traditional societies, from China into the eighteenth century, or the West as late as the fifteenth century, maintained what were called “sumptuary” laws, that sought to ban any conspicuous individual consumption, in favor of preserving the standards appropriate to existing social groups—and those who refused to conform could actually be put to death. This type of pattern describes the baseline before big culture change occurs. But in the West, by the outset of modern times, these traditions began to loosen. More attention was paid to identifying and supporting the individual, less to insisting on group identities and loyalties. People began to measure the quality of their societies more in terms of what opportunities and rewards an individual could achieve, as the older standards receded in part. The nature of this crucial transition will emerge more clearly as we explore the issues around this big culture change in greater detail.

The Issue of Timing The first point—fundamental in dealing with culture change, but inherently more complicated than identifying the beginnings of Islam or Christianity— involves chronology. And here there is some healthy disagreement. A recent study finds the basic components of Western individualism in medieval Christianity, in the new attention provided to the cultivation of individual souls, in the emphasis on individual salvation, and in the beliefs in the moral equality of all. Christian thinkers, in this view, like Peter Abelard in the twelfth century, paid growing attention to the power of individual reason. The very use of the word “individual” in Western languages like English and French, began to accelerate by the fifteenth century. This approach accepts the distinctive significance of Western individualism, but it locates the basic components relatively early in time and developing steadily though gradually under the influence of the new religion.14 A second approach, rather more familiar in terms of survey history, would emphasize the importance of the Renaissance and Reformation in the emergence of a new kind of individualism. Renaissance figures, like the Italian poet Petrarch, were often unabashed boasters, celebrating their intellectual prowess and even distinctive activities like mountain climbing. A similar individual confidence would describe some of the early European explorers. Protestantism, though intensely conscious of God’s power over individual lives, placed new emphasis on the individual’s beliefs and actions, but less on the community structures of church and priesthood. These new elements might be supplemented by the advent of a more effective printing press and the growth of literacy, which could highlight individual opportunities to think and learn, and by a reduction in the importance of extended as opposed to nuclear families.15

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But a third approach locates the real advent of Western individualism in the eighteenth century—in one study, erupting rather suddenly in the later part of the century, at least in the case of Britain. The contrast with tradition is striking: earlier Western beliefs, even into the early 1700s, had seen “personal identity as changeable, diffuse,” but now the self was redefined as uniquely individual, to be cherished and fulfilled.16 What is agreed is that, at some point from the Middle Ages to the early modern centuries, Western culture did change rather dramatically, and unusually. Debate among the various options will surely continue, and this includes the issue of whether the big shift was gradual or more abrupt. The real tension centers on whether individualism emerged from a particular West-European version of Christianity (after all, other Christian regions did not move so clearly in this direction) then furthered by developments like Renaissance and Reformation; or whether these earlier components merely set a context in which the real changes, the more dramatic shifts, could emerge during the eighteenth century.

The Case for the Eighteenth Century Substantial evidence supports the focus on the eighteenth century, not in capping an earlier evolution but in introducing decisive shifts. Take naming, for example. Until the 1700s, most Europeans named their children either for Christian saints or family ancestors (including richer relatives who might be attracted by the re-use of the name); and children were often given the names of siblings who had died, presumably on grounds that there was no reason to go to the trouble of choosing something new. But in the eighteenth century, among large segments of the population, naming practices changed: more novel names began to be preferred, particularly over family precedents, and strikingly, the habit of reusing names of the family’s past children ceased altogether. If a young child died, his or her name was buried with her, a tribute to fleeting individuality; and the identity of a newcomer should not be burdened with association with a dead sibling.17 Shaming—that classic emotional approach toward promoting conformity— began to be reconsidered. Practices that had been accepted for centuries, such as the use of public stocks to identify adulterers or fraudulent shopkeepers to be scorned by the village or neighborhood, began now to be condemned. An American revolutionary, Benjamin Rush, went so far as to label public shaming, and the indignity it imposed on individuals, as worse than death. Indeed, shaming was increasingly reevaluated as one of the cruel and unusual punishments that Western liberals sought to abolish; and, beginning in 1804 in Massachusetts, use of the public stocks was increasingly eliminated, a transformation that swept through Western Europe in the same time frame.18

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More widely still older disciplinary practices, that had emphasized what many Protestant leaders approvingly referred to as “breaking the will” of an unruly child, were increasingly criticized. Children should be encouraged, their self-confidence promoted, rather than suppressed.19 On another front: the idea of individual social mobility—moving up in society—began to gain new traction. The phenomenon itself was not new: clever or fortunate individuals had advanced themselves before. But the wider notion that opportunity was a good thing, to be explicitly encouraged, was essentially novel: previous signals had urged remaining in the social position of one’s birth. Now, however, writers like Ben Franklin in North America began touting habits an individual could usefully adopt to better himself, and this notion would be echoed in most Western countries at least by the early nineteenth century. Education systems, as in Prussia, that had previously stressed conformity now began to promote schooling as a means of advancement (to the benefit of individual and society alike).20 Diary-keeping began to become more popular. Here, some change dates back to the seventeenth century, when a Western interest in personal diaries first emerged. Diary-keeping signaled a belief that individual records were valid and important, and that a person should not be open to charges of pride or willfulness when they chose to record their personal experiences.21 Growing individualism was also linked, as a final example, to the notion of happiness. The association was not perhaps inevitable, but it definitely took shape in the eighteenth-century West. Previous Western norms, particularly under Protestantism, had stressed the desirability of a certain level of melancholy, and into the early 1700s many people would note, in letters or diaries, their sense of embarrassment when they had been too jovial, too prone to laugh. But now standards shifted—people were increasingly urged to present a cheerful demeanor, with individual happiness seen as a perfectly legitimate, even desirable goal.22 Whether the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries capped a somewhat longer evolution toward individualism, or whether as much of the evidence suggests a more novel transformation was taking shape within this period, there seems little question that individualism was becoming a dominant cultural theme, on both sides of the Atlantic. And this in turn was a clear case of big culture change, that would leave its mark on the region involved for many decades to come.

Causes Figuring out what prompted the transformation involves several ingredients, that can be usefully compared to the analysis applied to religious conversion earlier in this chapter. There are some obvious differences. Government pressure, and particularly military compulsion, were less involved than had been the case in supporting missionary religions. Some government role

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emerged particularly when public education systems began to place new emphasis on individual achievement; and arguably the armies of revolutionary France, after 1789, played some role in spreading new doctrines. But the balance favored other components. In contrast, we have seen that Western society may have been prepared by earlier changes—such as the evolving Western version of Christianity itself, in contrast to the more sudden advent of most of the missionary religions. Here is another causation element to consider. But the clearest explanations for the rise of individualism combine larger cultural factors with shifts in economic and social structure—a combination not totally different (save in specifics) from the components of earlier religious change. New ideas about the individual that began to emerge in the later seventeenth century were clearly if broadly associated with Europe’s scientific revolution. As scientists were discovering that old concepts could be disproved by reason and experiment, they indirectly stimulated beliefs that individuals were capable of new learning. John Locke, the British political theorist, put forth the notion that children were born as “blank slates,” rather than tainted by original sin; they were capable of improvement if they were properly educated. This breakthrough was carried further by educational writers in the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, who argued more explicitly that individuals were by nature good, that children should be considered in light of their educational potential—that society would advance, in fact, by opening wider doors to individual achievement. Here was a set of general beliefs that could promote something equivalent to religious conversion, prompting some people to rethink their older values.23 And the ideas had their missionaries, though they did not use the name. Popularizers like Ben Franklin worked to reach a wide public. Enlightenment writers in Western Europe gained a broad audience,24 benefiting from growing literacy and from group readings, particularly in urban centers, that could even persuade some of the illiterate. Popularization was both a goal and an achievement, and helps explain the big change. The change was also furthered, however, by shifts in the economic and social context that contributed another set of factors—again, analogous to links to the commercial and social advantages that promoted the religious conversions. European markets were expanding, linked in part to the growth of colonial trade. Growing commerce does not assure individualism— several Asian societies rivaled European prosperity without the same cultural effects—but in the Western context it played a role. Advocates of the new ideas pointed to their role in personal success. Social relationships were being widely disrupted, not only by market forces but, by the eighteenth century, by rapid population growth. Old markers of social status became less reliable: with population growth, for example, many young adults could no longer be as confident that their parents would have enough property for them to share in inheritance. More and more families saw an unexpected

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number of children surviving to adulthood, which inevitably put pressure on family ties and larger beliefs alike. Social disruption, in turn, could make old ideas—including traditional emphasis on family cohesion—less palatable, opening toward a new interest in signs of individual identity and achievement as an alternative.25 Culture change, in this setting, was particularly appealing to younger people, who would see the applicability of the new ideas about human nature and who were particularly affected by social disruption. So—as with religious conversion—a generational effect would further the transformation over time. Here is another case in which big culture change responded to a mix of factors—though with specifics that were rather different from the earlier religious conversions. And the combination would point to increasing acceptance over time, both because of generational change and because some governments began to promote elements of the new message particularly in their growing commitment to mass education.

Persistence and syncretism Big culture change always generates complexity, as some groups resist outright, others seek to combine new elements with old. This aspect of the shift to Western individualism has not been examined as carefully as in the religious conversions—again, we have a way to go in developing a more systematic approach to big culture change—but some suggestions seem clear. Outright resistance included political conservatives who worried about the corrosive effects of individualism on older institutions. European conservatism, in particular, long included promotion of more traditional religious views as well as opposition to individual rights. In the United States, evangelical Protestantism maintained considerable strength, urging the importance of obedience and family authority—though many Evangelicals ultimately combined these emphases with considerable pleasure in individual economic success. Many immigrants in the United States sought to protect their families against undue individualism, stressing loyalty and cohesion as well as their prior religion, though the effort was rarely entirely successful save for groups that established a whole set of alternative institutions. Individualism generated new opponents as well. A series of utopian socialist movements in the nineteenth century were eager to restore older kinds of economic communities and provide an alternative to individual goals and competition. Marxism, with its emphasis on class loyalties, provided another new option, not dependent on traditional religion. The Marxist vision ultimately urged a freedom of individuals from economic and political compulsion alike, but the movement clearly rejected the most popular kinds of Western individualism on grounds that they simply encouraged capitalist exploitation.

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And just for the record: the debate over Western individualism continues even today, not only amid societies that have not converted to this value system, but within the West itself. A number of observers believe that, at least by the twenty-first century, Western individualism has gone too far, creating too much isolation and selfishness. The discussion is important, but it also highlights the significance of the cultural shift that began 250 years ago. Even in the eighteenth century itself, new levels of individualism generated some other innovations aimed at avoiding undue isolation. Thus the rise of Western individualism was accompanied by a clear emphasis on the importance of the family and the centrality of wives and mothers in sustaining family structures. We will return to this aspect of Western culture in a later chapter, but for the moment it deserves note as a clear effort to combine older values with elements of the new emphasis. Successful families were now seen not as an alternative to individualism, but as a means by which individualism could be fused with older loyalties. And a gender differentiation was crucial. Women, regarded now as the natural agents of family cohesion, were not initially seen in the same individualistic terms as men were. New gender ideas linked to the more traditional values as part of a syncretic effort to accommodate family and individualism alike. Only gradually, with key aspects of the feminist movement, would this compromise be subject to further examination.26 Even beyond the family emphasis, growing individualism may have been accompanied by a new attention to loneliness. Recent research suggests that the word “lonely” long applied mainly to isolated locations—a lonely cave, for example. Only around 1800 did the second meaning of the term— sadness because of a lack of company—begin to gain prominence, and concerns about this kind of loneliness have been an important part of Western culture ever since, with growing emphasis by the early twenty-first century. Again, the very fact that individualism was so novel helps explain why it also generated other new compensations and concerns.27 Exploring Western individualism as a big culture change opens new opportunities to evaluate resistances and combinations in Europe and the United States through the nineteenth century and beyond. It is already clear that the kinds of complexities that emerge from other cultural transformations can guide this inquiry as well.

Consequences Big culture change, by definition, has a sweeping impact along with the hesitations it generates, and this is surely true with Western individualism. As ever more people internalized some of the new values, the wider ramifications of the transformation would become increasingly clear. Even in the eighteenth century itself, new kinds of individual consumerism emerged, as a means of using even modest prosperity to express personal

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identities in novel ways. Interest in new clothing styles, and more colorful clothing, was the most obvious connection. While some elements of the population were still too poor to indulge in these purchases, a booming second-hand market and even higher rates of clothing thefts showed that the interest in using clothes to highlight one’s individuality was spreading widely. New individualism here links to significant shifts in personal goals and behaviors, which would only increase with time.28 Most famously, the new commitment to individualism increasingly affected politics. Leading political movements began to press for protection of the individual from state authority, and this indeed became one of the hallmarks of Western liberalism. Revolutions at the end of the century issued new proclamations of individual rights, in areas like religion or selfexpression, a point further explored in the next chapter; people were now seen as having “inalienable” rights to—in the American phrase—life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The whole Western concept of rights—later reframed in terms of human rights—was anchored in individualism from the outset, and has maintained this flavor ever since.29 Further, as with other examples of big culture change, additional results would accumulate over time. In the later nineteenth century, for instance, a growing number of families in Western societies decided to review traditional sleeping arrangements. Popular authorities increasingly urged that babies should, wherever possible, be placed in their own rooms, rather than with their parents, and that older children should have accommodations separate from each other. This was a quietly revolutionary move—and a debatable one, in terms of emotional impact—that both reflected the intensification of beliefs in individual identity, and promoted this identity in turn. The commitment, in terms of family relationships and resources, could be considerable.30 Equally interesting was the rise of the birthday as a common celebration in Western families. Birthdays were not entirely new: some powerful men— and particularly kings—had celebrated them before, in many societies. But the notion that ordinary people, including children, deserved this kind of individual attention was a striking change. Birthday celebrations began to gain ground in the eighteenth century (the first birthday party in North America seems to have been for a twelve-year-old girl in Boston, in 1772), but became common only from about the 1850s onward. Not surprisingly, they were resisted a little at first, by people who worried about this temptation toward personal pride, but opposition faded steadily with time—partly of course because birthdays highlighted family affection as well as individualism. Culture change, as with individualism, can reach deeply into personal life.31

The Comparative Angle The rise of Western individualism opens one other analytical door. With the world religions, culture change could be seen as widely shared despite

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important specific differences among the faiths themselves. Western individualism is different, in that while it would influence other cultures it would also be explicitly, and successfully, resisted. And it turned out that alternative cultural combinations could not only survive, but thrive. Japan, for example, as it began to imitate elements of Western institutions and values after 1868, briefly experimented with foreign educational leadership in the 1870s, and this involved promoting more individualistic values in the schools. Leaders quickly decided that this degree of change was undesirable, and moved to firm up more collective loyalties from the 1880s onward—through nationalism and emperor worship at the political level, through emphasis on family cohesion in the more personal domain. Even by the early twenty-first century, as Japan continued to change as a highly successful industrial society, group loyalty overshadows individualism or any wide commitment to Western definitions of happiness.32 Russia, another society long influenced by the West, frequently criticized Western individualism, praising its own political loyalty and community values in contrast to Western selfishness and isolation. Communist leadership after 1917 brought many changes but confirmed the wide distaste for individualism, and post-communist leaders like Vladimir Putin have also emphasized this kind of distinction between Russian and Western culture. By the late twentieth century, African feminists—eager to protect women—offered their own criticism of the individualistic Western version of feminism, arguing that it risked depriving women of valuable traditional forms of family and community support.33 More broadly several East Asian nations, also around 2000, criticized the cultural limitations of Western ideas of human rights, urging instead a more community-focused alternative that would place social values first.34 Western individualism, despite some global influence as in the human rights domain, still stands as a largely distinctive cultural framework.35 Many other societies have generated high levels of commercialism and literacy without the individualizing impact these had in the West. Assessing the comparative issues around modern Western patterns of culture change, and particularly the ongoing consequences and controversies, is a vital element in analyzing contemporary global interactions. A final comparative issue involves the West itself. Most elements involved in the rise of cultural individualism apply across national boundaries within Western society writ large—including for example the turn against shame or the use of new forms of consumerism to express identity. But some differences apply as well. Enthusiasm for individual social mobility, for example, went farther in the United States than in Western Europe, from the early nineteenth century onward; Americans were and are much more likely, for example, to exaggerate the possibility of rising from rags to riches, in contrast to Europeans who emphasize the social barriers to individual advancement (despite the fact that actual mobility rates are about the same on both sides of the Atlantic). Americans also went further in emphasizing the importance

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of cheerfulness, insisting on wide smiles—as several European travelers noted by the early 1800s. Assessing the causes and consequences of these types of distinctions within the Western cultural framework remains a challenge for comparative analysis.36

Big Culture Change: the National Level: Modern Turkey By the twentieth century, big culture change could be ventured on a largely national basis, with an ambitious government the principal moving force. Turkey, as a specific case in point, provides a final example of the big culture change phenomenon, with some familiar as well as more distinctive analytical complexities. Governments were involved in promoting culture change in many traditional societies. We have assessed their role in explaining religious conversions, which was the most common target. Here, however, governments were not defining the cultural goals by themselves, and could combine their pressures with the spiritual benefits their faith promised. During the past 250 years, several individual national governments have on occasion moved to organize culture change, or at least attempt to organize it, on their own account. This is a common consequence of modern revolutions, as we will suggest more fully in Chapter  4. Japan’s reform regime, during the 1870s and 1880s, successfully pushed for some elements of culture change, though with traditional overtones. Big culture change is not a standard agenda for modern governments, but it does emerge in certain instances and warrants assessment as a modern example of the phenomenon.37 The new nation of Turkey emerged after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire following its defeat in World War I and on the strength of a successful military effort that pushed back European intervention and also expelled much of a large Greek minority. The country’s leadership—spearheaded by a combination of successful generals and a number of Western-oriented intellectuals—quickly turned to an effort to recast the national culture. The population, newly purged, was largely Muslim, but the Turkish leaders— headed by the new president, Kemal Ataturk—believed that they must use the resources of a modern state to create a systematically secular public culture, while modifying a number of Islamic beliefs and practices in the process. Only through big culture change could a modern Turkey reverse the weakness of the older Ottoman regime and gain a proud place among other successful states, particularly in the neighboring West. The effort was not entirely novel. During the nineteenth century several reform attempts under the Ottoman empire had sought cultural changes that would create greater loyalty for this multi-national state, and coordinate

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better with Western patterns, for example in matters of time-keeping (the regime thus accepted international standards for time zones, in a 1913 conference). But efforts were in fact modest, and in the final decades of the regime the enthusiasm for reform waned, and a focus on Islamic values intensified.38 The Ataturk regime, in contrast, pressed for sweeping change. The big goal was to replace Islamic public culture, creating an officially secular state, with primary emphasis on a new Turkish nationalism and the importance of modern science—all in a society in which religion had previously defined many aspects of public life, from styles of dress to calendars and legal codes. Personal religion was not attacked, but even here the new regime promoted values, such as greater gender equality, that could promote significant adjustment.39 A host of specific measures defined the effort at big culture change, particularly from the mid–1920s through the 1930s. The Islamic caliphate was abolished outright, emphasizing the exclusive leadership of the secular Turkish state. Ataturk proclaimed, even more sweepingly, that “the state will be ruled by positivism, not superstition.” The Western calendar was introduced, with Sunday as the weekly holiday rather than Friday. The Latin alphabet was adopted, and for a time Arabic was forbidden in Islamic religious services—with Turkish required instead. (The goal here was to “cleanse the Turkish mind” from earlier cultural traditions.) In 1925 the government banned the traditional male headcovering, the fez, insisting on hats instead; a decade later, the veil and the turban were also outlawed. Turks were required to adopt family names, in the Western pattern, replacing earlier kinship arrangements—again, big culture change reached deeply into personal life. Polygamy was outlawed, and men and women were entitled to equal inheritance. Again Ataturk: “If henceforward women do not share in the social life of the nation, we shall never attain to our full potential.”40 A variety of initiatives pushed the new cultural values and practices. The public school system expanded rapidly—with a 224 per cent increase in primary school attendance in the fifteen years after 1923. Additional institutions were established to promote modern beliefs. Village Institutes primarily addressed technical training in what was still a predominantly rural society, while also seeking to train a new teaching corps. Some tensions arose between a nationalist effort to praise traditional Turkish culture and the modernizing effort, particularly among intellectuals who in fact knew little about peasant life. Another set of organizations, the People’s Houses, reached out to youth, again promoting explicitly secular values. The professed goal was to allow discussion of “all the nation’s problems, especially the cultural ones”—but in fact the tolerance for diversity was limited.41 Little outright force was used, but all these changes operated in a political system dominated by a single Republican Party, and pressures to conform were considerable. There is little mystery about the basic causes of this example of big culture change—the effort came from the top, from leaders

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convinced that a transformation was essential to preserve Turkish independence and advance the nation internationally. But a number of familiar factors promoted popular acceptance, including an interest in access to government jobs—impossible for outright traditionalists, if only because of the new official dress codes—and to the major educational institutions including the universities. And state control over Islamic religious officials, including oversight of their training which was to include instruction in science as well as theology and law, further limited opportunities for dissent. Predictably, official goals did not seek a full cultural Westernization, even apart from the acceptance of Islam in personal religious practice. Individualism was not emphasized, in a movement that stressed the primacy of nationalism and loyalty to the state. And even Ataturk’s commitment to gender change included some interesting hesitations: women gained educational access and the vote, for example, but were long still required to obtain their husbands’ permission to travel abroad. The result was an intriguing balancing act. There was no question that big change was the goal. But continued opportunities for traditional beliefs in personal life—even if some expressions were banned, as in styles of dress—created a complicated mixture that continues to describe Turkish cultural life. There were even moments of outright resistance, particularly early on: a regional rebellion in 1925 was spurred particularly by discontent at attacks on religious tradition.

A TEACHER’S EXPERIENCE

O

ne of the fascinating sources to come out of the culture change effort in Turkey was a 1950s commentary by a village teacher, Mahmut Makal. Assigned to a village in central Turkey, Makal worked hard to bring what he saw a modern knowledge to his charges, but faced significant opposition from peasants and local leaders whose view of education was quite different. The village elders came along and said to me: “that’s enough learning for to-day. . . . Let the boys off a little ahead of time, at mid-day and in the afternoon, so that they can say their prayers.” “But what is a small child to make of the prayers?” I ask. “God knows. He accepts it. It’s the other world that we really need. You’re concerned with this world, with all its nonsense and its modern ideas. It’s all humbug.” . . . . (At a local meeting a visitor talks about the teacher in another town who is “crazy”: “What good can you expect from these sons of asses?”)

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I was sitting next to him. Everyone looked at me: it was quite obvious that I was the teacher. . . . That’s how it is in this place. It’s impossible to have a sane discussion, and to justify oneself with reason and logic and soft words; it’s worse than trying to get a camel to jump over a ditch. . . . Don’t sit down under an insult like that. Here, in this village, it is you who are the representative of the Revolution of Ataturk. It is up to you to give a lesson to those who insult the glorious army of teachers . . . What sort of language would such men understand. I thought hard, but there was no solution that I could discover. I was eating my heart out. . . . (The villagers told me) “You look like an honest fellow; for the sake of your father and mother, give up all that ridiculous new teaching and teach the children religion.” I tried to explain that the government had now ordered some religious teaching, but beginning in the fourth year. In any case I teach them these things already: Honor thy father and mother. Do not depart from the truth. Be clean: do not steal.” “Do you call that a religious lesson? You have read well, and explained the textbook all well. But what good is it to us? That book of yours doesn’t even tell us the correct way of saying prayers to God.”42

More important, however, was a blended adaptation to new values along with insistence on key expressions from the past. From 1950 onward Turkey experimented with greater democracy, for a variety of reasons, and this modified the uniform enforcement of the new culture and permitted some voices in defense of Islamic traditions. (Periodic military coups, however, interrupted this process in briefly seeking a return to fiercer secularism.) Some of the dress code restrictions were progressively relaxed, and religious instruction was reintroduced to the public schools in 1982. By the early twenty-first century, leading political movements openly urged a fuller acceptance of the role of Islam. The new pattern did not dismantle the secular cultural trends. It did of course allow greater comfort for outright traditionalists, particularly in the countryside. But the most interesting modification involved a clear effort at a syncretism that would combine revival and change. From the mid–1980s onward, taking advantage of relaxations in the dress-code rules, a number of female university students openly urged a return to Islamic dress, and particularly the burqa and the veil, which they saw as essential expressions of a distinctive, and decidedly nonwestern, identity. They persevered even though universities continued to outlaw these practices on campus, until a further modification in the early twenty-first century. But the goal was decidedly not a gendered traditionalism. The students made it very clear that they sought access to scientific training and a full range of careers. They

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bitterly criticized traditional peasant women who continued to accept male dominance and confinement to a role as housewives. And in fact they did not wear the older costumes at home, even when men were present—the goal was a different kind of public expression, neither customary nor fully secular.43 Consequences of the Turkish effort at big culture change were varied. Turkey did not break through to rapid industrialization as quickly as reformers had hoped. But by the late twentieth/early twenty-first centuries, the nation did achieve what foreign experts termed a “new industrial” status, ranking about seventeenth in the world in terms of Gross National Product (reflecting alike rising manufacturing and urban services but also more commercial agriculture), with an average income above that of China or Russia, though below Western or other East Asian levels. To the extent culture change contributed to this outcome, including of course the new opportunities for advanced training in technology and science, it might be regarded as a success. But the effort did not lead to the range of transformation that initial leaders surely hoped. It provoked ongoing dispute and the intriguing amalgams that so often respond to big culture change. And the debate about the precise contours of modern Turkish culture is ongoing. * * * Big culture change is by definition an unusual phenomenon, linked most clearly, in world history terms, either with conversions to one of the major religions or to more modern transitions such as Western individualism or national reform. Some of the patterns suggested by big culture change may, however, apply in part to more focused culture changes of the sort taken up in subsequent chapters. It is usually not too hard to determine the basic timing of big culture change, at least in its initial phases: it is often announced by missionaries or others who seek to push the movement along, usually with fairly precise dates attached. And the question of baseline is often clear-cut: Christianity contrasts with polytheism, Western individualism (despite some preliminary adjustments) with more traditional emphases on community identities, Turkish secular culture with the older emphases in Islamic public life. At the same time, big culture change, while following no single script, suggests several characteristic analytical issues that are usually less straightforward. There is the question of causation—of why people could be willing to reconsider a range of basic beliefs. Usually, of course, the answers involve a combination of factors, not a single prod, but in some cases the role of governments deserves special attention. In some instances, big culture change also requires consideration of the use of force against cultural resistance. The issue of persistence and syncretism looms large, suggesting—not surprisingly—that big culture change sometimes takes longer than may appear

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on the surface, and may involve a number of incomplete transformations. Limits on the power of government to effect deep change enter into this pattern as well. Certainly, trying to figure out what innovations people are willing to accept, what older beliefs they are particularly eager to preserve, forms a vital aspect in assessing big changes. At the same time, sweeping cultural changes often generate frameworks that last for many centuries, generating further refinements and adjustments as the basic directions of change are more fully assimilated. This durability was obviously the case with the great religious conversions, and it has held true for Western individualism as well over the past three centuries. Recent efforts in national cultures, as with Turkey, are still in process, and durability remains to be fully tested. But the overall proposition, that impact over time will further justify the idea of big change, remains true, and adds to the opportunities for evaluation. Finally, in terms of issues beyond the obvious, big culture change readily incites a wide range of consequences, beyond the beliefs and values most narrowly involved. It can set the basis for innovations in business or technology. It can spill over, for example, to gender relationships, or the ways children or newborns are treated—reaching deep into personal as well as social life. Big culture change, in fact, commands attention precisely because it illustrates so vividly the power of culture to reshape basic features of human experience—in the past, but potentially in present and future as well.

4 Protest, Revolution, and Culture Change (written with Jack Censer)

Protests have been a major part of modern history, in virtually every corner of the inhabited world. Many regions, over the past 250 years, have experienced at least one, sometimes several revolutions—the granddaddy of all protest forms. We do not know how much formal protest will shape the world’s future—it turns out that it is very difficult to predict uprisings. The last major attempt at revolution, the Arab Spring movements that began in 2010, have largely failed, which could be a warning sign. At the least, however, dealing with protest and revolution pinpoints a major element in the recent past—with revolutionary legacies still being sorted out in several major societies, as we will see. Figuring out the role of culture in the general pattern of protest thus adds another important dimension to the inquiry into the components and impacts of change. For culture change plays a considerable role in modern protest and revolution. It helps explain why major movements develop in the first place. Indeed, as the ensuing discussion of the great French revolution clearly illustrates, historians have on the whole upgraded their attention to the significance of culture change in causing major upheavals, after a period in which greater weight was given to more objective social and economic factors. At the same time, revolutions typically cause further culture change; this facet became more important with the great revolutions of the twentieth century, particularly those—like Russia’s and China’s—that ultimately came under predominant Marxist influence. The basic proposition is simple: major protest movements almost always depend on culture change to get started, and they will promote further change if they are successful. The formula is very general: culture change plays a greater role in some cases than others, and the cultural legacy of revolutions often falls short of full transformation. 59

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This chapter will explore two major revolutionary cases—the French in the late eighteenth century, and then the Chinese in the twentieth century, and particularly the communist phase that won out by 1949. But the chapter also offers some comment on a few other instances—the American revolution that preceded the French, the great Russian rising of 1917, the Iranian Revolution of 1979, and the modern cultural framework for protest more generally. This is not, it must be emphasized, a full survey of revolution and protest, but a sampling that provides key illustrations of this aspect of culture change. Even the focus on the French and Chinese cases introduces considerable complexity, and it is vital to realize that revolutions and other major protest surges merit far more detailed exploration than these brief synopses can claim, whether the interest is in protest as a general phenomenon or even the more limited topic of culture change. Each revolution in fact has its own profile, which pushes against larger generalizations. Quite apart from the somewhat different beliefs involved, France and China will present distinct pictures of the relationship between pre- and postrevolutionary culture change, and also the kinds of resistances and syncretic compromises that ultimately emerge. France thus offers more opportunities to explore culture change as cause for revolution than does China, where revolution was entangled with other kinds of internal conflict and the Japanese invasion before and during World War II . China, in return, generates a somewhat clearer picture of how revolution, once installed, would lead to further culture change—though France offers instructive examples here as well. What both cases do demonstrate is the importance of figuring out the culture change component in modern protest, which though related to big culture change more generally has important features of its own. To be sure, particularly when revolutionary regimes undertake systematic culture change, attacking earlier systems and seeking to replace them with new beliefs and values, the relationship between culture change in protest and other instances of big culture change is undeniably strong. Indeed, Turkey’s reform effort in the 1920s is sometimes called a “revolution from above,” and has much in common with the cultural remodeling efforts undertaken in the same period by the Russian Revolution, and later by the Chinese. But the culture change associated with major protest also presents a few distinctive complexities that warrant separate attention. In the first place, as we will see in the following case studies, while culture change is essential in provoking major upheavals—in some cases, at least, arguably the most important single ingredient—it never stands alone. Changes in economic conditions—for example, a significant downturn followed by a halting recovery—often play a great role, along of course with basic political and social structures. Sorting out the cultural component requires careful focus. And again there is no single formula, as the contrasts between French and Chinese cases will make abundantly clear.

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Several additions features attach to mixture of culture change and other factors. It is not always easy to paint the “baseline”—the cultural framework that preceded the changes that in turn led to the protest surge. Some elements are clear enough—many modern revolutions, for example, depend on some prior changes in prevailing religious beliefs—but protest may utilize elements of more traditional culture, while disputing other aspects. Assessing the kinds of culture change that generate major risings also suggests some differentiation between leadership groups and the larger masses of participants without whom major protest is impossible. Leadership—including seminal individuals like Jefferson, or Robespierre, or Lenin, or Mao Zedong—depends very clearly on culture change. The leaders are deeply inspired by new beliefs and values, which both guide their efforts and provide vital motivation. Here is the most direct reason that protest depends on prior cultural ferment. But some of the people who join in—the peasants who storm the castles of their landlords, or the artisans or factory workers who fight in the city streets—may have a somewhat different or more varied cultural approach. Many ordinary people, inspired to take to the streets, may share fully in the culture change that inspires the leaders, but some may have other motivations as well and yet others, though eager to attack existing structures, may actually maintain quite traditional values. This often complicated combination helps explain why major protests, and particularly definable revolutions, always attempt further change once they start gaining traction. The most committed revolutionaries almost always believe that they need to purify prerevolutionary cultural values as part of creating a new society and (they hope) converting or constraining any opposition. Dealing with culture change as a cause of revolutionary protest thus requires facing up to some challenging tasks, in defining the pre-change patterns; at least briefly acknowledging the varying roles and beliefs of key categories of participants; and then dealing with further, more organized attempts at culture change. Not surprisingly, major protest, and the changing values that accompany it, typically inspire significant resistance. All major modern revolutions thus grapple with counterrevolutionary currents, which reflect established interests—landlords, for example, are often reluctant to accept major property reforms—but also a sincere attempt to defend earlier, prerevolutionary beliefs. The contest between protesters and their opponents shapes the upheaval itself, often leading to harsh repressive measures. It also conditions the culture change that results, which in some cases reflects some unexpected compromises, at least after the heat of battle eases. Finally, the kinds of culture change that result from revolutions are typically complex. Protest leaders may seek significant culture change, or at least come to seek it after the scope of their efforts becomes clearer. But they are also involved with trying to defend their leadership positions and political gains. They sometimes have to deal with foreign interference. So

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their efforts may not be entirely consistent, and here too some important compromises may result. This is a familiar complexity in big culture change situations, as Chapter  3 suggested, but it has particular bearing amid attempts to establish new political or economic regimes. At the same time, some unexpected culture changes often result from revolutionary situations— for example, in family or even leisure or business life—that add further spice to the attempt to calculate the revolutionary impact on beliefs and values. Major protest movements, and particularly revolutions, take decades to unfold fully. Often, the most obvious drama focuses on a few action-filled years. In Russia, revolutionaries attacked the tsarist regime in 1917; within months communist leadership had won out over other revolutionary elements; within a few years, by 1923, serious counterrevolutionary efforts and also some halfhearted foreign interventions had been beaten back, and the new Soviet regime was fully established. But this tumultuous launch only began the interactions with culture, which arguably would extend to the collapse of the Soviet system in 1989, and then the attempts to define a different cultural system—neither fully revolutionary nor fully traditional— that actually extend to our own day. The duration of the interaction between culture change and protest is another element that requires attention, while also extending the significance of cultural analysis well beyond the initial surge.

The Cultural Framework for Modern Protest Major social protest is hardly a modern invention. Periodically, in Chinese history, a peasant leader would emerge to mount an attack on a decaying dynasty and on upper-class greed, often leading to a new dynasty in turn. In the later Middle Ages in Europe, peasants frequently rose against their landlords, while artisan journeymen lashed out against demanding masters. The rate of protest, in premodern societies, may have been lower than in more recent centuries, but there is no question about recurrent effort. In the main, however, premodern protest involved an application of older cultural values—not the inspiration of explicit culture change. It was, as several students of protest have urged, largely reactive, contending that traditional conditions and standards were being violated. Thus Chinese peasants commonly invoked the established values of Confucianism, which urged that hierarchy was a vital part of the social order but must be conditioned by upper-class, or gentry, concern for the well-being of the masses. When landlords began taking over more land, reducing peasants to mere laborers, the Confucian bargain was being broken, the upper classes were violating the standards that justified their power, and protest was fully warranted. The argument was important, clearly recurrently powerful, but it did not require a new belief system—simply the application of older values to deteriorating political and social conditions.

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Similarly in Europe, including Russia, peasant risings typically contended that landlords were encroaching on traditional village rights to the land. The belief could spur major action, with landlord records seized, landlords themselves sometimes attacked or killed, but it focused on claims of older rights applied to what seemed to be worsening circumstances.1 Other protests had similar features. In premodern Europe (and into the early nineteenth century), bread or grain riots typically pitted peasants and urban workers against bakers and grain merchants, accused of raising prices unfairly. A clear sense of justice was involved, sometimes extending to an argument that proper governments must assure adequate food supply at fair prices. But the focus was on how existing conditions contradicted prior standards. Even many responses to early industrialization featured a similar reactive quality. In one of the most noteworthy responses, Luddism, traditional craft workers sought to destroy modern machinery with a plea to return to previous systems of labor.2 Luddism first burst forth in Britain in the decade between 1810 and 1820, as industrialization gained ground; the movement’s name came from a fictional leader of the movement, Ned Ludd. But Luddite outbreaks would occur in other early industrial situations as well, highlighting the importance of applying traditional values even to very new technological settings. In contrast to this important and varied protest tradition, modern protest has tended to emphasize claims to new rights, more than simply demands based on traditional values. It is, again to use a common term in protest history, proactive more than reactive.3 Thus revolutionary leaders in the eighteenth century, and many of their followers, argued in terms of innovation and progress—as we will see in dealing with the French revolution in the next section. Labor movements in the nineteenth century, particularly as the first shock of industrialization wore off, took a broadly similar approach, though they were not usually overtly revolutionary. Thus they contended that workers had the right to more leisure time—striving for ten-hour, then eight-hour days. They claimed a right to higher wages than ever before. Beginning around 1850 in several countries, skilled workers turned from trying to defend traditional working conditions to arguing that their labor should produce better conditions off the job—and so they increasingly sought to use protest to win higher wages than ever before; we return to this culture change, around the concept of a more instrumental approach to the job, in Chapter  5. Even further, many labor protesters frequently urged that workers, through their trade union representatives, should have an established right to bargain regularly with management in setting some of the basic job conditions. Not only labor leaders but also feminists would apply the same kind of thinking to the political sphere, contending that in an equitable modern society their groups should gain the right to vote—again, a new claim, not a function of prior tradition.4

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Proactive protest—arguably the typical modern form, again whether overtly revolutionary or not—requires some kind of prior culture change. Not only leaders but significant elements of the rank-and-file must come to a belief that new claims, and not just action against deterioration, are justified. They must be convinced that some kinds of progress are not only possible, but essential to social justice. The French Revolution constitutes a key example of the cultural transition to progressive claims and arguments, and the image of the Revolution (bolstered as well by the example of its American counterpart) would contribute greatly to spreading the new ideas to other parts of Europe and indeed the world. Relevant leaders included advocates for democratic voting rights, trade union officials urging workers to think big in demanding changes like a full weekend off (a key demand at the end of the nineteenth century), nationalists rousing support for a reformed as well as independent nation as against imperialist controls—the list of contributors is a long one, over the past 200 years. But ultimately it was not only leadership, but new thinking in among many ordinary people, juxtaposed with the conditions they saw around them, that would move protest culture in effectively new directions. Reactive protest themes did not disappear. Some revolutionary action, as in France in 1789, would still be motivated by older values, as in many of the peasant risings that accompanied the new political claims being ventured in Paris. A striking feature of the Iranian Revolution of 1979, though not the only element, involved the insistence on the application of older Islamic social and political values against a corrupt, secular regime.5 The outburst of protests against globalization, in Western Europe and the United States in 2016, highlighted claims about the need to return to older economic conditions and cultural values, while attacking high levels of immigration in the name of previous white ethnic dominance.6 The assertiveness was new, but explicit culture change was not required. Even Chinese political protest, of the sort that burst out in 1989 only to be brutally repressed by the communist regime, continued to harbor important Confucian values about the importance of holding hierarchy to account. Part of the full history of modern protest involves the interplay between older motivations, adapted to fit industrial and global conditions, and the kinds of culture change that could fuel an insistence on proactive gains. But the rise of new claims and ideas about new rights remains the dominant element, the really distinguishing feature, in most modern protest. Not only leaders but many followers were both guided and inspired by beliefs in new measures of justice, whether in the workplace, the political arena, or even (with many feminists) in family life. And while this new current, and the culture change that birthed it, emerged first in Western Europe and North America, it would ultimately have global impact. Specific revolutionary movements would vary widely, particularly as Marxism surged to challenge more liberal agendas, but they had the claim to progress in common. And this meant, in turn, that their movements were intimately

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dependent on culture change, along with promoting further change in the future.7 Protest, whether reactive or proactive or some mixture, is not a normal human activity. It may appeal more to some people than others: the young are more likely to engage; we know also that in most protest surges the poorest and most marginal are not able to be actively involved. But for all participants, it involves risks and displacement—possible loss of job or income, clashes with authority, physical harm. Thus, while is it easy enough to write or read about revolutions or strike waves, attention to motivation is crucial. What drives people out of normal behavior, and into a serious protest mode? Passions of the moment play a role, but so do more basic beliefs and values. This, ultimately, is why, particularly for modern protest, attention to culture change is so crucial.

The French Revolution The French Revolution was one of the great risings in human history, taking shape in what at the time was one of the most powerful and influential nations in the world. The Revolution, passing through several stages from its launch in 1789, would ultimately replace monarchy with a republic (though later developments would restore monarchy for a few more decades); it reduced the power of the aristocracy and installed the principle of equality under the law; it redistributed considerable amounts of land to the peasantry; it destroyed other older institutions, like guilds, and opened the door to fuller capitalism; it protected new individual rights, against not only the state but also the Church, and reduced the role of religion in public life. All of this was accompanied by recurrent violence and considerable resistance, and it launched recurrent turmoil in France that was fully ended only in the 1870s (or, some would argue, only with the defeat of extreme conservatism in the mid–1940s). The Revolution also provides a critical opportunity to study the role of culture change in inspiring modern uprisings in the first place, and then guiding part of their unfolding. There were a few precedents, beyond the tradition of recurrent, largely reactive, popular protest. In Britain in the seventeenth century, associated with the Civil War, a few groups had emerged to claim new rights, even democracy; but they were minority currents, and the big result of the British risings was a great expansion of the power of parliament vis-à-vis the king, an important development but arguably short of revolutionary.8 Over a decade before 1789, Americans had risen against control by the British king, reflecting new beliefs similar to those that would spur French rebels, and their example and success obviously helped inspire the French.9 But the French Revolution stood apart for its particularly sweeping attack on a long-entrenched old regime of king, aristocracy, and church.

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The Revolution was studied at the time, and by historians almost as soon as it ended (in 1799, when Napoleon took over; or perhaps in 1815 when the radical emperor was himself defeated). Scholars and political commentators have been deeply drawn toward efforts to explain such a huge upheaval. A major element in the pattern of analysis has always involved attempts to pinpoint the role of new beliefs, both at leadership and popular levels. The historical tradition indeed presents a literally textbook case of how the emphasis on culture change came to displace other explanations—without eliminating the need to look for supporting factors. Ultimately, it is the actual assessment of the nature and impact of culture change that explains the reasons for expanding on the French revolutionary case as particularly important illustration of the more general phenomenon, but we can begin with a summary of the revealing evolution of historical scholarship itself.

The Historiographic Tradition Scarcely a year after the French Revolution broke out, various observers began to try to figure out what had caused it. Such a profound upheaval, in Europe’s largest nation, cried out for explanation. Some conservatives pointed to conspiracies or the evil side of human nature, or to the base passions of the masses. Later, a more radical historian (Jules Michelet) claimed simply that the Revolution resulted from the misery of the French people. But while this may have contained an element of truth, it was clearly unsatisfactory, both because the poorest of the poor did not participate actively in the rising and because equal or greater misery has not proved capable of generating revolutions in other places. Another set of explanations, popular during much of the nineteenth century, centered on political issues, the undeniable problems of the French monarchy, badly led and overdrawn financially, or the ambitions of revolutionary leaders to create a stronger state. By the middle of the twentieth century, after many oscillations in the most accepted kinds of analysis, an essentially Marxist approach held sway—particularly in France itself. Social class structure was the key ingredient. A rising middle class, or bourgeoisie, fed by growing commercial success, worked to unseat the dominant land-holding aristocracy. Workers might join in the fray, as allies of the revolutionaries, but their fortunes pointed more toward the future, when they would contest bourgeois dominance in turn. The explanation had considerable merit: middle-class numbers and wealth were expanding; the aristocracy was reluctant to cede power. But, like the misery explanation, it begged the question of why this kind of social conflict did not generate comparable revolutions in other cases. And—for historians are hardly immune to the politics of their own day—too much emphasis on class conflict worried scholars who were fearful of communist power during the height of the Cold War. In France, but also in the United States, where Marxism seemed particularly heinous, scholars

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began to cast about for alternative explanations. Finally, quarrels among sub-specialties in the history discipline might play a role: intellectual historians, whose bread and butter rested in tracing the evolution of ideas, were hardly content with the emphasis on faceless social forces. The result of this mix was a gradual, ultimately quite self-conscious turn first to the role of formal ideas, but then to culture change more broadly, In 1978 the French historian François Furet issued a call to pay more attention to the sweeping intellectual ferment of the Enlightenment—and particularly, the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who had railed against the injustice of the prerevolutionary regimes and called for rule by the general will of the people (a plea that implied democracy, though it could also be used to justify new kinds of authoritarianism).10 Furet dismissed the Marxist approach as sheer imagination, designed to bolster communist agitation in contemporary society. It was Rousseau’s focus on popular sovereignty that really explained the Revolution and particularly its most radical and brutal phase. While this essentially intellectual approach won wide attention, it was not entirely satisfactory. Was the idea of the general will the most widely popular aspect of Rousseau’s thought? How did his arguments win such sweeping attention? Several historians, including a number of Americans, began to broaden the explanation. It was not a single intellectual, or even a handful, who held the keys to revolution, but rather the emergence, during the eighteenth century, of broader discussions—among intellectuals but also other educated people—about the nature of justice and the power of human reason. Changes in the wider culture, in other words, constituted the new element that made Revolution possible and that guided its evolution in the years after 1789.11 Marxist explanations, though not entirely discounted, were increasingly cast aside. Historians began exploring more fully how new beliefs had spread before 1789, and how culture change worked into the early years of the Revolution itself. Debate continued. It proved particularly difficult to gauge how widely new ideas had spread. Many of the crowds who pressed for change after the Revolution started—forcing the king, for example, to move from his Versailles palace back to Paris where ordinary people had a better chance of keeping an eye on him—were not necessarily converted to new beliefs, as opposed to more traditional values. Opportunities to use new research methods, particularly toward the quantitative analysis of revolutionary rhetoric, provided a further spur to the culture change approach. Now forty years after the initial claims, culture change approaches continue to reign supreme in explaining this huge event in French, and ultimately world, history.

The Cultural Baseline, and Paths of Change While we cannot claim to know what most French people believed in the early eighteenth century with absolute certainty—though considerable

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research is available—some broad outlines are plausible, and certainly set the stage for evaluating subsequent change. Most of the population was conventionally Catholic, with varying degrees of piety and sometimes with elements of magic worked in as well. Most maintained traditional loyalty to the monarchy, sometimes with real attachment to the royal house and a belief that the king had the interests of the people at heart. Most accepted the idea that society was divided into different classes of people, with different roles and opportunities. This was a society of orders, with the aristocracy on top. How actively ordinary people believed this, as opposed to simply accepting the status quo, we cannot know; and acceptance did not prevent intense grievances or even outright protest, for example about specific land taxes or other issues. But there was no sense that any large group of people had any active commitment to an alternative social system.12 During the course of the eighteenth century, and primarily from the intellectuals and popularizers of the Enlightenment, an alternative set of beliefs was developed and widely disseminated.13 It had a number of emphases. It included the heightened valuation of individualism, part of the wider movement in Western society as discussed in the previous chapter; this would lead to specific claims about the importance of protecting the individual’s right to religious choice or free expression, and to safeguards against cruel or demeaning punishments. It included sweeping claims about the importance and desirability of change. From the 1690s onward, Enlightenment intellectuals (in France and elsewhere) began to insist that old beliefs were not valid simply because of their antiquity, that new ideas might well be far more important. It included a range of attacks on the power and intolerance of the Catholic church and what the new intellectuals saw as the superstitious aspects of traditional Catholic faith. Few Enlightenment figures claimed to be atheists, but many urged revisions of key assumptions (Rousseau for example urged that religion should “rid itself of mysteries”) along with a reduced role for Catholicism in education and political life. And many made it clear that rational philosophy and science, not faith, was where the action centered. Above all, Enlightenment thinkers began to push the idea that society rested on the people, however vaguely defined, and not a division into separate orders, powers, and functions. People in general had the power to reason. They had virtue; they had common sense. In their wisdom and with their hard work, they might even be superior to social groups—aristocrats at their head—that claimed predominance despite their parasitic dependence on special privilege. Gradually, the idea emerged that people in general should be thought of as “citizens” rather than subjects, that is, as active participants in the functions of society as a whole. Certainly, in this view, unequal rights in law or taxation—which flowed easily from an older belief in a society of orders—made no sense: aristocrats, most obviously, should pay taxes just like everyone else.

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Finally, many writers also urged the importance of passion, on “authentic” emotion as a legitimate force in public life. Artificial manners should be cast aside in favor of the purity of the heart; justice could be legitimately defended by popular wrath. While the Enlightenment, broadly construed, generated clearly cultural alternatives to more traditional political, social and religious ideas, it also mounted a considerable campaign of popularization. It benefited, unquestionably, from the steady growth of commerce and what we would call a middle class, potentially open to new ideas. It seized as well on a steady rise in popular literacy—with about 40 per cent of all French men, and 20 per cent of women, seemingly able to read by mid-century. Widely disseminated books, pamphlets, and posters helped spread new ideas, enabling a few Enlightenment writers to make a living from their sales, for the first time. A literature emerged for even the most basic of readers. Clubs and meetings served to disseminate as well—providing opportunities even for those who could not read. At the upper levels of society, formal salons, Masonic lodges, and other groups fostered often fervent discussion. The increasingly popular coffee houses served as a setting for some other sectors of the urban population. Thus by 1789, when the Revolution burst forth, significant numbers of French people had changed their beliefs about how society and the state should be ordered, at least in part. This included a certain number of aristocrats, who were entranced by some of the new ideas even though these undercut their social position. It certainly included some business and professional people, and also some literate urban artisans. The notion that the primary audience for culture change centered on literate commoners is probably correct, but this class was not rigidly defined and some of the ideas spread more widely. What we do not know—and what continues to be debated—is how widely. Some women were undoubtedly affected—at the upper social levels, individual women often took the lead in organizing the salons where ideas where explicitly and eagerly discussed. If some skilled craftsmen imbibed the new beliefs, which could confirm their sense of the virtue attached to hard work and also (somewhat ironically) allow them to express concerns about competition from more capitalistic business interests, many urban workers were largely unaffected. And the majority of the French, still peasants, may have had little contact with the new beliefs in any meaningful way. For their part, some Enlightenment intellectuals, periodically exposed to ordinary people, were fully capable of seeing them as “dimwitted” and backward—for all their theoretical hymns to popular common sense. There are a few other straws in the wind, besides the growth of discussion groups and the rise in book sales. Catholic fervor undoubtedly declined in eighteenth-century France, in advance of the Revolution. More people began giving charitable gifts outside the church, hoping to reach the poor and

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needy more directly; contributions to the Church itself also declined. But there is no way to measure this or other changes in popular culture with full precision.14

Culture Change and Revolutionary Outbreak By 1788 the French monarchy was in desperate straits, if only because its expenses (including the earlier cost of supporting the American revolution against Britain) had outstripped its resources. It needed to find some source of new revenue. This in turn prompted a need to call a national parliament, something that had not been done beyond a regional level for over a century, and this forced the further move of allowing the French people—traditionally grouped into separate orders, nobility, clergy, and “third estate’ (all the rest)—to voice their grievances and concerns in advance of convening the body. At the same time, censorship was eliminated, allowing an explosion of writing and discussion that might further contribute to popular acceptance of some of the new ideas. Culture change did not cause this crisis— government finance did—but new beliefs and values would prove essential in turning crisis into revolution and guiding the direction of revolution once launched.15 For the next step in the unfolding drama was the production of “grievance notebooks,” the Cahiers de doléances, from the French populace, presumably to help guide the national parliament when it assembled. And the result, in turn, was an unprecedented opportunity to express both traditional dissatisfactions and new beliefs, both of which might feed into a willingness to support outright revolution.16 Thus many peasant cahiers focused on customary grievances: the Church or aristocracy controlled too much land, that by rights belonged to the peasants themselves; remaining manorial dues were too high; the local grain mill was not located conveniently or charged too much. Revealingly, the Cahiers in general displayed genuine respect for the monarchy and royal family—Enlightenment ideas had not generated an immediate insistence on a republican form of government; this would come only two or three years later, when the king seemed to be resisting revolutionary change. While the Cahiers have been elaborately studied, there is no avoiding the same conclusion that has already been suggested: the French people were culturally divided, and many had not been touched by culture change. And by the same token, some of the crowd actions that would mark the onset of actual revolt—peasant risings; the Parisian mobs that forced the royal family out of Versailles—almost surely had more to do with traditional beliefs, a sense that older values must be restored against grasping landlords or corrupt courtiers, than with any new value system.17 But the value system was there, and the language of many Cahiers— particularly, of course, from the Third Estate—spells this out quite clearly.

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Thus from the small town of Dourdan, in northern France, an insistence “that the subjects of the Third Estate, equal by such status to all other citizens, present themselves . . . without other distinctions that might degrade them.” “That all the orders, already united by duty and a common desire to contribute equally to the needs of the State, also deliberate in common concerning its needs.” And later in the document: henceforward government officials should be chosen not by birth but through “rigorous tests”; courts of law must include personnel drawn from the third estate, and of course no social group should be exempt from taxation. And for good measure: people should be allowed to express themselves freely. The idea of the third estate as the core of French political society was pushed particularly vigorously in a widely read pamphlet in 1788, written by a French priest, which both inspired and reflected many of the sentiments against the traditional social order expressed in the Cahiers.18 Significant numbers of French people, in other words, came to reject the old idea of a society based on separate and unequal orders, in favor of a society composed of a common citizenry, equal under the law. This could include insistence that representatives be drawn from the same whole people (though rarely with any precise claim to a fully democratic system of voting). It could certainly include support for individual rights against state power, and some specific claims against the Church. Thus a cultural map for the making of a real revolution was already present—though not uniformly accepted—in advance of revolution itself, awaiting only the unusual opportunity for expression that the government (perhaps foolishly) felt it had to grant in the circumstances of 1788–89.19 Political and financial factors, including massive hesitation on the king’s part, triggered the events that followed; but it was culture change that converted circumstance into revolution, either before 1788 or as new values spread rapidly in the excitement of the moment. And it was culture change (along with the popular pressure, and particularly a rebellion in the countryside) that guided the initial actions of the revolutionary assembly. And these actions included: the Declaration of Rights of Man and the Citizen, that expressed the new beliefs in individual rights, even in the religious domain; the abolition of the aristocracy and establishment of equality under the law; significant reductions in the power of the Church; the establishment of a parliament elected by propertied segments of the population (not democracy, but also not the old division by orders); ultimately, the abolition of the monarchy; and a more general sense that the old should yield to the new. In 1788, even well into 1789, most French people, whatever their beliefs, were not calling for revolution—this would contrast with later situations, in places like China or Russia, where partly because of the French precedent some leaders knew that this was exactly what they wanted. There was, however, an insistence on such sweeping adjustments that some kind of revolution had become unavoidable.

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Revolution and Culture Change: The Further Interaction Once launched, the Revolution quickly turned from reflecting important culture change, to active promotion of further, and wide-ranging, cultural transformations. Some of these proved transitory, like an effort to generate a substitute religion when it turned out that Catholic leaders, in the main, found the early phases of the Revolution unpalatable. But others became a permanent part of French life, with significant implications for other societies as well—and involving a surprising range of institutions and behaviors. Motivations for culture change intensified as well, at least for some. The enthusiasm of the revolutionary leaders could spill over, and opportunities for political advancement could attract some converts. Outright compulsion was also a factor: while the revolutionary “Terror” was far less extensive than would be the case in more recent outbursts, a number of revolutionary opponents were put to death or exiled, and the threat of exposure was very real. The Revolution unquestionably introduced a frenzy of cultural activity, particularly into the mid–1790s, some of it sponsored by the new government, others escaping its control. While the term “cultural revolution” was not used at the time (in contrast to a period in twentieth-century China), that was exactly what occurred—spurred, of course, by the wider set of cultural changes that had already occurred.20 Thus writers of all sorts took advantage of new opportunities for selfexpression, often explicitly seeking to reach ordinary people through a simpler style or even proclamations on public posters. For example, the Parisian Olympe de Gouges, ultimately author of one of the first clearly feminist tracts in world history, on the rights of women, blanketed her city with pamphlets and posters, emanating from “the voice of just a sensible woman.” (Women, in other words, could share in the claim that ordinary people were a source of wisdom and virtue.) Another set of intellectuals established a “Village Newssheet,” in 1790, trying to reach the countryside with some of the new ideas. Theater was revolutionized.21 The revolutionary government took over or closed older venues, that had been patronized by the aristocracy, but a host of new ventures emerged in their stead. Government-sponsored plays pushed the idea of “civic virtue and republican habits”—in other words, loyalty to the new regime, along with an interesting prudish streak against any sign of sexual license. But revolutionary values were promoted in the process, as in a play about peasants that intoned, “Men are equal; there are no more lords, there are no more vassals.” Music was turned to the cause. It was no accident that the French Revolution, attacked by neighboring monarchies fearful of contagion, generated the world’s first national anthem (a rather bloody one, but expressing the idea of a united citizenry in support of the state). Art was

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transformed, with representations of the republic and the virtues of ordinary people. The painter David, most particularly, led in the use of paintings to celebrate revolutionary values. The regime was desperate for a new set of symbols that would replace the old. New holidays were created, including the iconic Bastille Day to celebrate the Revolution itself. Great debate went into decisions about a new national flag. There was much discussion as well of other national symbols: for a time, Hercules was promoted as a suitable figure to express the citizenry, but ultimately the choice went to the heroic female figure of Marianne. Other new emblems were adopted, like a national seal that proclaimed, “The people alone is sovereign.”22 A few ventures proved particularly transitory. The regime, at its most radical, sponsored a Festival of Reason at Notre Dame in 1793, with invocations including “Thou, holy Liberty, come dwell in this temple, Be the goddess of the French.” The event would not be widely repeated.23 Cultural fervor was also destructive—prefiguring patterns that would become even more widespread in twentieth-century revolutions. Sometimes spontaneously, sometimes directed by increasingly radical revolutionary leaders, crowds attacked many churches, pulling down a variety of statues and representations. A whole series of royal figures in the cathedral of Notre Dame was taken down. A number of palaces were also attacked. Most royal statues in Paris were ultimately torn down, the metal ones melted down for use in weaponry; only King Henry IV survived on the possibly erroneous assumption that he had been unusually responsive to the needs of the people during his own reign. In contrast to twentieth-century revolutionary efforts, the French uprising did not generate a systematic educational system. The role of the Church in the schools was cut back for a time, and a more secular curriculum was introduced at the secondary level. But there was no commitment to a universal requirement, which surely limited the pace of culture change at least in the countryside. On the other hand, despite proclamations of freedom of expression, the revolutionary regime introduced various forms of intimidation against unpopular views, along with arrests or other forms of attack on those deemed enemies of the cause. Efforts to insist that priests profess loyalty to the Revolution had some effect, though they also generated important resistance. Catholic religious processions were banned, as part of a major de-Christianization campaign during the Revolution’s most radical phase. Even beyond the attempts to limit traditional religion, the regime moved against many customary festivals, viewed as superstitious and a waste of valuable productive time. Language itself was purged for a few years: radicals insisted that customary forms of address, like “Monsieur,” which smacked of old formality and inequality, be replaced by “Citizen.”24 On the more positive side, two sweeping revolutionary ventures proved particularly interesting—besides the more formal political and social reforms introduced earlier on. Considerable attention was devoted to appropriate forms of dress. After all, the old society of orders had depended on strong

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differentiations here, particularly with the bright colors, wigs, and silk kneebreeches of the aristocracy (and most particularly, male aristocrats). On the other hand, while there was some move to praise the dress of the most ordinary folks, the sans-culottes, or “without breeches,” many leaders did not want to go quite this far. The ultimate result, for men, was a fairly uniform commitment to wear full trousers, whatever the social class—a habit that has largely persisted; social distinctions by dress obviously continued, but they were far less systematic than had been the case before.25 Even the king—not yet on the chopping block— wore humble long pants on the first commemoration of Bastille Day.26 A second innovation, reflecting revolutionary rationalism rather than egalitarianism, attacked the issue of weights and measures. Prerevolutionary France, like most traditional societies, had been marked by an amazing array of local systems of measurement for weights, volumes, distances, and currencies. From 1792 onward, this was now largely swept away in favor of the rational uniformity of metric measurements—liters, meters, grams and, in currency, the equally metric franc. An effort to metricize the annual calendar led to ten-day weeks, which proved extremely unpopular and were quickly abandoned in favor of more frequent and traditional weekends. And some of the metric measurements were dropped when the Revolution ended, only to be restored by the mid-nineteenth century. But the whole effort, ultimately with global implications, was a fascinating instance of deep culture change under the spur of revolution—for huge shifts and dislocations in popular habits were involved, which only a literally revolutionary commitment to innovation could override.27

A Balance Sheet: Resistance, Compromise, and Change On the whole, most of the culture changes that had spurred the Revolution were largely confirmed by the Revolution itself; some other innovations proved durable as well. But the Revolution was also marked by important resistance, and this in turn ultimately generated some compromises, and the abandonment of some of the most extreme initiatives of the movement’s radical phase. Revolutionary culture was also marked by some blind spots, by our contemporary standards, which would only be addressed much later. Most obviously, while women played a role in the cultural ferment of the early revolutionary years, and in the revolutionary crowds, the Revolution did nothing for women’s rights, and may even have set them back through law codes that confirmed the family dominance of husbands and fathers. New opportunities for divorce were introduced, though later scaled back. Other interesting attempts to instantiate social equality, like a move to give illegitimate children the same rights as others (under the dramatic slogan,

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“there are no more bastards in France”),28 also proved transitory. Revolutionary values would ultimately help generate further movements, such as feminism, but at the time some obvious limitations on consistency went largely unchallenged. Likewise a revolutionary move against slavery, in the French Empire, proved half-hearted particularly before a major rising in Haiti forced greater change. Revolutions also inspire cultural overreach, and France offers a prime example. During the excitement of the moment, and often amid a welter of attacks on the revolutionary achievement, leaders sometimes assume they can orchestrate sweeping changes, often in a short period of time, only to be disappointed. We will see a similar moment in China’s more recent revolution, when systematic attacks on prior beliefs and values reflected an assumption that the past can be swept away. Literal destruction of some of the old architectural symbols of tradition picks up on the same radical mood. But the achievement (and, happily, the iconoclasm) prove fleeting. French radicals did not manage to set up an alternative religion. They did not destroy the seven-day week. They did not, in the long run, replace “Monsieur” with “Citizen.” Many of their new rituals lasted a year or two at best. Revolutions clearly generate cultural resistance—the resistance helps explain some of the radical moves, which often in turn intensify the opposition. In the French case, cultural resistance most obviously came from some Catholic regions, particularly in the countryside, where people refused to jettison older religious traditions on which their value system, and often their community identity, rested.29 While religious opponents did not topple the Revolution, the converse was true as well. Ultimately, leaders on both sides attempted a somewhat uneasy compromise, in which religious expression was permitted on conditions of accepting (if grudgingly) a reduced role for the Church and other trappings of the Revolution too. This leads directly to a further point about revolutions and culture change: some of the shifts in values did not occur during the heat of the Revolution itself, but only during the course of ensuing decades. Conflicts between Catholic leaders and the revolutionary legacy continued in France, off and on, for over a century. By the early twentieth century, when an agreement was finally reached on church–state relations, France was a far more secular society than it had been in 1789 or even 1799. The longer-term impact of the Revolution, plus further causes of change, continued to reshape the national culture—though with an important Catholic minority retaining a more fervent faith. (French leaders today are particularly insistent on the secularism of the national culture.) The relationship between revolution and culture change, in other words, requires assessment over time—and the same would hold true for Russian, Chinese, or Iranian Revolutions in the twentieth century. Finally, however, the culture change more directly and immediately associated with the French Revolution was considerable in its own right. Revealingly, revolutionaries themselves quickly began to refer to earlier

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ideas and institutions as the “old regime,” highlighting the distance from their own achievements. Key transformations reflected, first, the cultural adjustments that had occurred in some groups before 1789 and that made the Revolution possible in the first place—for example, in the growing belief that French society was composed of a common body of citizens and not a series of separate corporate groups, with different rights and even costumes. But the transformations also resulted from the cultural work of the Revolution itself—the impact of popular writings and newspapers, new political symbolism, attacks on older authorities. Thus, after the Revolution outright (by 1799, when Napoleon took over), there would never be a durable attempt to reintroduce a broad aristocracy or to undermine a basic idea of equality under the law (some exceptions granted, for several more decades, in gender rights).30 There would also never be an attempt to deny that the state must reflect some political expression from elements of a wider public, through active voting rights for at least some segments. On what might seem a more trivial level, which however reflected how deeply cultural change could penetrate, the movement toward a standard type of long trousers for men, regardless of social class, also continued without major interruption. (Granted, the rise of a new consumer ethic by the late twentieth century would modify this somewhat, for leisure use, but the basic point remains.) The rational metric system turned out to be inescapable, ultimately replacing local traditions and reflecting a wider acceptance of innovation and uniformity. A commitment to new rituals and symbols, such as the national anthem and flag, would not be pushed back, and would continue to prompt an emotional response among many French men and women. And while the individualistic element of Enlightenment culture had less clear sailing—several later governments would severely limit freedoms of press and expression—it too had gained ground, causing prompt resistance to most efforts at serious repression. Even as various political and religious divisions continued to affect French life, basic aspects of the culture had changed substantially, cutting across many of the rival factions. Finally, the French Revolution was not, in the long run, simply French. The wider spread of Enlightenment ideas, and the example of the Revolution itself plus the impact of French conquests during Napoleon’s rule, would gradually promote some similar cultural changes in other societies. The result did not always require revolution. Combined however with other factors, including some further new ideas, additional uprisings might result. We turn now to the kinds of revolution that would crop up in the twentieth century—and particularly to the example of China. We will see that the motivating beliefs were somewhat different from those of the eighteenth century, as were the cultural results. But Enlightenment ideas and French revolutionary legacies played some role even so—for example in attacks on older conceptions of a society of distinct corporate groups. And the larger pattern that had taken shape in France—from a strong element of

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cultural causation to systematic revolutionary efforts to replace traditional values to a final combination of change and compromise—would be on display as well.

Marxist Impact on Twentieth-Century Revolution Revolutions between 1900 and the 1980s were, in the main, strongly influenced by Marxist ideology—a clear source of the kind of culture change that can spur leaders to sacrifice their lives supporting protest and that can pull crowds into the streets to challenge injustice. There are a few exceptions: the Mexican Revolution of 1910 had only a small Marxist element; the initial Chinese Revolution (1911) that displaced the imperial house was not Marxist; the Iranian Revolution of 1979, though in fact containing a strong communist element that was put down by an alliance of Islamic and nationalist leaders in an uneasy compromise, did not turn out to be predominantly Marxist.31 But the greatest risings, in Russia in 1917 and China in the decades leading up to communist victory in 1949, had a strong Marxist flavor, both in inspiring the protests in the first place and then, even more clearly, in setting a roadmap for culture change once the communists seized power. Marxism also defined several smaller outbursts, as in Cuba and Vietnam. Marxism, devised initially by the great German political philosopher in the middle decades of the nineteenth century, perfectly fits the bill as an inspiration for progressive protest—the kind of protest that would claim new rights and goals. Marx and his followers (both theorists and practical labor leaders) saw the modern world increasingly defined by industrial capitalism, in which growing masses of workers were exploited to the profit of a small but dominant minority of businessmen and their toady allies in politics and cultural life. The system was not only unjust, but historically doomed, for the power of the working class would grow ever stronger, numerically, and the level of grievance would become overwhelming. Marx emphasized the power of social class relations, and particularly ownership of the means of production, as the crucial motor for society. Culture was merely an outcropping of those relations, designed to serve the interests of the ruling class; religion, in this vision, was simply an “opiate of the masses,” aimed at distracting them from their real interests. Finally, Marxism offered an inspiring and clearly proactive vision for the future. The working class would ultimately triumph, though only through revolutionary violence, establishing control over the state which would then turn to uprooting the various facets of capitalism. But once this transition was completed, the industrial economy would produce what every person needed, no longer distorted by the profit hunger of a corrupt minority; and

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the state itself, now not required to enforce privilege and injustice, would gradually fade away. Humankind would be left free and prosperous, and the historical cycle of injustice would end. Spurred by this vision, self-appointed Marxist leaders in many countries, operating initially as illegal agitators, sought to persuade others of their views. They could indeed generate substantial culture change, persuading some workers and even some peasants to rethink their beliefs—sometimes abandoning traditional religion in the process. These converts, in turn, could provide some of the muscle essential to revolutionary risings, as in Russian cities in a brief outburst in 1905 and then more sustained revolution in 1917. Of course Marxist culture change combined with other factors—in the Russian case, the spread of often harsh factory life; resentment at the political and economic oppression of the tsarist regime and aristocracy; then the hardships of World War I. But the resultant mixture, though distinctive in specifics, bore some similarities to the brew that had produced the French Revolution of 1789, where culture change had also picked up on other sources of grievance. Marxist revolution, however, differed from the French process beyond the obvious distinctions in overall goals—despite the important shared connection to a proactive view of popular rights. Marxism combined a faith in the power of the working class with a clear recognition of the power of capitalist forces arrayed in opposition. So Marxist leaders generally emphasized tactics that went beyond trying to persuade the masses of a new vision. Committed revolutionary leaders, tightly organized in groups that often remained secret to defy police repression, were more important in the most sweeping Marxist protests than was any campaign to change wider public beliefs in advance. Thus in early twentieth-century Russia, while Marxist intellectual activity and propaganda undoubtedly helped prepare the revolutionary terrain, in inspiring leaders like Vladimir Lenin and the urban worker groups, sweeping culture change probably played a somewhat smaller role, overall, than had been the case in France a century before. Most revolutionary participants, and particularly in the peasant-dominated countryside, were inspired by different, vaguer “social revolutionary” doctrines or simply translated more traditional protest goals, like the belief in peasant ownership of the land, into their risings against the established order. Marxist leaders and the minority of committed believers were poised to take control of the larger movement when it surfaced in 1917. The German government, fighting Russia in World War I, cleverly spirited the exiled Lenin back to Russia to sow further disorder. And, within months, Lenin and his colleagues did manage to seize power, displacing a more liberal group largely committed to political goals similar to those of 1789 France.32 But if Marxism and Marxist-inspired culture change played a distinctive role in causing the great Russian Revolution, the radical ideas unquestionably helped guide the new regime once in power. The role of Marxism in

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prerevolutionary culture change must not be discounted, but its service in spurring culture change in the new society was far more important. Correspondingly, Marxist risings set a much firmer path for postrevolutionary culture change than had been the case in France, though we will see some important similarities as well. Inspired by overall Marxist analysis, the new Russian rulers had a number of obvious cultural targets that must be attacked as part of the larger project of building the framework for a new society—and protecting the Revolution itself. Religion was one, and the Russian Revolution launched a systematic campaign to limit the power of the traditional Orthodox church and persuade ordinary Russians, and particularly Russian youth, to replace religious “superstitions” with new beliefs in the working class and the state—and also in the importance of modern science. Foreign influence was another target. Leading artistic styles, particularly from the West, were attacked as decadent, as the regime sponsored themes of a monumental “socialist realism” that glorified the workers and soldiers who were building a new Russia. The traditional authority of parents might be questioned. Family life was not overturned, but schools and youth groups targeted young people, urging them to the new loyalties and even inviting them to report on reactionary relatives. In principle, customary patriarchal authority was also attacked, in the name of gender equality, though efforts were less systematic than some leaders claimed. Marxism in power, in other words, attempted to generate a classic pattern of big culture change, against many of the staples of prerevolutionary beliefs and rituals. Efforts at resistance were vigorously repressed, with dissidents arrested and often tortured or killed. Of course actual change was less systematic than the new regime intended. Religious ideas, though usually concealed for safety, survived for many, ready to be displayed again when the communist regime collapsed after 1989. Communist leaders themselves often promoted Russian nationalism along with Marxist doctrine, though it was theoretically incompatible with the revolutionary theory—another complication in culture change in fact. Many Russians, from the leadership down, are still working to construct an agreed upon cultural pattern in the aftermath of communism—a sign, though admittedly a complicated one, of the magnitude of the cultural forces that the Revolution had helped unleash.

Communism and Culture in China The case of Chinese communism provides a particularly interesting opportunity to explore culture change in a twentieth-century revolutionary context. Unsurprisingly, patterns resemble those in Russia to a considerable extent: Marxism was only one element in generating the communist revolutionary surge in the first place, and culture change efforts after the new regime was installed were in most ways more important than their role

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in initial causation. But the Chinese case also differed from the Russian— partly deliberately, as Chinese leaders turned against aspects of the Russian model, but above all because Chinese cultural traditions themselves were unusually deeply rooted and in some ways unusually complicated. The result was a pattern with some of the trappings of “big culture change” but with other dimensions as well, and again the consequences are still being worked out in the newly-powerful China of today.

The Legacy of Tradition The first challenge in dealing with culture change and revolution in China involves establishing a baseline. China is a huge country, with a long and rich history—including cultural history. It also features some unusual twists (shared in part with other East Asian regions strongly influenced by China), most notably the absence of a dominant religious emphasis. Various religions have flourished, including Daoism, Buddhism, and several minority faiths; popular beliefs and rituals, reflecting some elements of animism, have also persisted alongside, well into modern times. Not surprisingly, regional variations figure strongly, despite the longstanding commitment of the Chinese state to promote some uniformities, as in stressing use of Mandarin Chinese at least for the upper classes across the country. Several regions also feature distinctive ethnic components, as with the importance of Mongolian, Korean, Muslim Uighur, and Tibetan Buddhist elements in distinct segments of imperial China. But the clearest feature of the Chinese cultural tradition, often deliberately fostered as a unifier amid the various other divisions, was unquestionably Confucianism.33 Launched as a philosophy in the Zhou dynasty, in the fifth century BCE , Confucianism differed from the core cultural components of most other major civilizations as it focused mainly on social and political principles, rather than religious goals. It was often combined with a religion, among many individual Chinese, and it vaguely acknowledged a divine framework, but it remained primarily secular, urging principles that would support a stable society, from the family on up to the imperial order. Hierarchy constrained by mutual obligation was a key theme: upper and lower orders were both vital to society, the first owing attention to popular needs, the second combining commitment to productive labor with appropriate deference to their superiors. The same balance was applied to gender relations, with clear male superiority modified by reciprocity. Personal restraint was essential for all respectable people, at all levels but particularly among the ruling gentry. Passions should be curbed, and elaborate codes of manners both symbolized and promoted the necessary decorum. Education was also vital, at least for the gentry, as part of creating constructive social skills—with a strong emphasis on the importance of traditional learning and values, and far less interest in sources of intellectual innovation such as theoretical science.

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Confucianism was most widely promoted among China’s upper and bureaucratic classes, though it had some rivals not only in the various religions but also in a harsher doctrine of Legalism, which stressed the importance of a forceful, authoritarian state in curbing disruptive impulses. Elements of Confucianism, however informal, gradually spread more widely, adding to the importance of an essentially Confucian framework in describing key aspects of the Chinese cultural tradition into modern times. Many scholars see key Confucian values—for example, as in a strong emphasis on the importance of shame and conformity—surviving virtually unchanged from the early imperial period into the twentieth century, though at the intellectual level a number of variants of neo-Confucianism can be identified at several points in time.34 Cultural change, including attacks on aspects of Confucianism and as well as criticisms of what some called popular superstition, began to bubble up by the later nineteenth century. Influences both from the West (Europe and the United States) and reformist Japan played a significant role. By the end of the 1800s, a number of Chinese students were being sent for study abroad, and clusters of Chinese outside China proper (in British-held Hong Kong, for example, or among exiles in Japan) could also be sources of new ideas. Students, but also some military trainees, encountered new beliefs in nationalism or in democratic republicanism (which might include commitment to gender reform, as in attacks on the old tradition of footbinding for elite women), and some saw these as vital alternatives to a crumbling traditional order.35

A First Revolution For China by 1900 was in many ways falling apart. The ruling dynasty, which was ethnic Manchu and not Chinese proper and the source of suspicion on this basis alone, became increasingly incompetent. Losses in wars with the West, beginning with the first Opium War in 1839, had resulted in extensive seizures of coastal territories by the imperialist nations and a larger opening of the Chinese economy to forces over which the nation had little control. Then a further defeat by Japan, in the mid–1890s, delivered an additional, crushing blow, and again a threat of further territorial erosion. The economy stumbled. Population growth pressed the peasantry, and created familiar but vigorous tensions with grasping landlords. Almost every year after 1900 was marked by a major local rising, often spearheaded by students, which the hard-pressed government found increasingly difficult to put down. Revolution in China was in a sense almost over-determined, by popular hostilities (fed in part by the Confucian belief that corrupt leaders might legitimately be unseated), by national disgrace, and by the spread of alternative political ideas. Sweeping prerevolutionary culture change was not involved—in some contrast to the earlier, more classic case in France.

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But the new ideas among smaller potential leadership groups undoubtedly played a key role in both motivating and guiding some of the protest efforts, particularly in the urban centers. Both nationalism and liberal democracy could inspire action. The first step in outright revolution finally took place in 1911, when a boy emperor was dislodged by protest and a Chinese republic proclaimed in his stead—ending one of the longest recurrent traditions of essentially monarchical political rule in world history. For various reasons, however, including the fact that no large cultural movement had mobilized significant sectors of the population, stable government proved elusive: republican China was divided into largely separate regions, several controlled by powerful warlords. Many protesters actually assumed that a new imperial dynasty—getting rid of the Manchus—was the only necessary step: again, a sign of the lack of widely-accepted alternatives. By 1919, as well, the threat of renewed Japanese attack caused further disruption, leading to outright warfare from the 1930s until Japan’s defeat in 1945. What the first revolution did accomplish, however, was a greater opening for new ideas, accelerating the process of cultural debate that had begun a few decades before. Prominent foreign speakers toured major cities, urging liberal and democratic alternatives to the nation’s political tradition, usually to enthusiastic audiences. Chinese writers, including novelists as well as political theorists, even more pointedly attacked the Confucian social code. A novel called Family thus featured an attack on parental authority: “I’m doing what no one in our family has ever dared do before—I’m running out on an arranged marriage . . . I’ve decided to walk my own road alone. I’m determined to struggle against the old forces to the end.” The so-called May Fourth Movement, launched in 1919 in protest against the Japanese threat, featured a growing chorus of protest voices. None of this yet defined a larger current of culture change, that might reach significantly beyond students and other urban elements. Chinese history between 1919 and 1945 would be marked primarily by an oscillating pattern of struggles and collaboration among different factions, ultimately shaped above all by the resistance against Japanese invasion.

The Rise of Communism But the ferment did see the formal launch of a Marxist movement by several intellectuals, soon including Mao Zedong who increasingly, by the 1920s, assumed leadership and began to move from theory to protest action. Mao, the son of a reasonably prosperous farmer, had early sought alternatives to China’s cultural traditions as a means of redressing national disgrace and tackling the sufferings of the Chinese masses—particularly in the countryside. As he pursued his education, particularly in Beijing, he encountered early Chinese versions of Marxism, shaped by several intellectuals. To the aspiring revolutionary, communism now offered the ideal ideological framework,

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bolstered by the successful example of the Soviet revolution in Russia—but a communism adapted to Chinese circumstance by emphasizing the central importance of the peasantry and the need for fundamental land reform. The new communist movement launched periodic protest efforts, usually involving only a few hundred people and often failing. Mao did, however, begin to cultivate a peasant base from 1924 onward, though initially a small one. Here, the outlines of a more explicit effort to generate a change in popular culture began to emerge. Without attacking Chinese traditions across the board, and without pretending that many peasant followers could be converted into intellectual Marxists, Mao did begin not only to capitalize on peasant grievances but to urge his new supporters to cast off elements of Confucian deference that might hold them back: righteous anger, he argued, not manners or emotional restraint, was a legitimate popular emotion, given the injustice of landlord control.36 A new Peasant Movement Training Center, established in 1926, suggested the importance of dealing with beliefs and values as part of the larger protest movement. Finally in 1949, after renewed civil war following Japan’s 1945 defeat, Mao and his colleagues did win full power on the Chinese mainland—the communists’ strong effort in resisting the Japanese occupation played a major role in this success. Revolution was now installed, hundreds of thousands of opponents executed or driven into exile, foreign enemies including the United States successfully kept at bay. The need to consider the place of China’s cultural traditions, in the radical new environment, became increasingly essential, though alongside the huge tasks of reconstructing the necessary political and social structure. The way was open, in China’s case more as result of revolution than as cause, for more systematic culture change.

The New Regime and Directions of Culture Change The initial impulses of Mao and his colleagues centered more on attacking older cultural elements, than in mounting an entirely clear set of alternatives. Mao’s disdain for traditional intellectuals—highly valued in the Confucian scheme of things—showed through quickly. Many were imprisoned, some executed. A claim in 1957 that the leader wanted “a hundred flowers to bloom” implied an opportunity for open discussion of the current regime, but this mainly served to flush out critics who were then jailed, banished or sentenced to hard labor. Even more clearly the various religions were attacked, as had been the case in the Soviet Union, labeled superstitions that must be renounced in the construction of a socialist society. No full alternative cultural agenda emerged, however, though of course Marxist doctrines were urged as part of the state-controlled educational system. Greater energy went into land reform and the creation of rural

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collective farms and into various efforts at industrial development. The new leaders shied away from a frontal attack on Confucianism, perhaps in recognition of an important national achievement as well as some recognition of the utility of emphasizing political order. This tentative approach ended, however, in 1966, with the advent of the Cultural Revolution, one of the fiercest brief assaults on cultural tradition experienced at any point in world history (though with some obvious overtones of the radical phase in 1790s France). Causes of the new urgency included Mao’s own effort to reestablish his leadership role, after some setbacks in industrial policy; and a growing rift with the Soviet Union, which Mao saw as drifting from Marxist purity after the death of Stalin. But a need to offer a clearer cultural approach as part of constructing a truly revolutionary society figured strongly as well: and of necessity, a focus on undermining Confucianism, then assailing it outright, served as a centerpiece. Maoism, hailed now as the vanguard of world communism, increasingly aspired to cultural primacy.

The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution Proclaimed in 1966, this unusual effort to redo a culture lasted for approximately a decade, though with particular ferocity over the first five years. The target essentially involved as many elements of cultural tradition as possible, now subjected to often violent attack. The central claim urged that the Revolution was being held back by a host of capitalist remnants that were exploiting older beliefs and rituals in order to survive. Thus a stubborn bourgeoisie was still “trying to use the old ideas, culture, customs, and habits” to maintain the hold of the “exploiting classes.” To lead the fight, Mao facilitated the formation of new youth groups, the Red Guards, while also singling out not only intellectuals and religious leaders, but also hosts of teachers and school administrators—a fairly explicit slap at groups and institutions that had been venerated in the Confucian value system. In their stead, the government now sponsored and mandated an obligatory array of new films, radio shows, operas, and plays, while mounting an unprecedented poster campaign in praise of Mao and against more traditional cultural options. Mass rallies sought to drive home the insistence on cultural renewal. Youth was now seen as the only valid cultural source— again, a reversal of Confucian veneration of age: as Mao put it, “You, young people, full of vigor and vitality . . . the world belongs to you.”37 Red Guards directly attacked thousands of historic sites, including the grave of Confucius himself. Libraries were gutted, temples vandalized. Universities themselves were closed for several years, as were some schools, though for a shorter period. Entrance examinations were abolished— another emblem of the Confucian past—in favor of nomination from worker and peasant groups and by political favor. In 1968, many urban youths, particularly students or former students, were forced into the

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FIGURE 4.1 At the height of the Cultural Revolution. Photo by Li Zhensheng. Publishing in the South China Morning Post, 1966. Source: http://multimedia.scmp. com/cultural-revolution/.

countryside in order to learn true values from the peasantry and to perform the kind of physical labor that would both train them and build a more vigorous economy. Ultimately, about 17 million people were displaced in this upheaval, often compelled to undergo public criticism as “class enemies” and subjected to programs of reeducation. Children were also urged to denounce their parents, another form of cultural turmoil and control. Religions faced new attack. Many Buddhist monks, particularly those in Tibet, were killed outright. Muslim imams were forced to wear derisively painted garments. Minority cultures also faced new pressures, and were considered yet another form of superstition. Older fashions constituted another target, with many people even pressed to alter traditional hairstyles. At least 400,000 people died through the Cultural Revolution, including thousands of teachers; and some estimates range much higher. The explicit invocation of violence was itself an indictment of moderate Confucian values: “Strike the enemy down on the floor and step on him with a foot”— hardly a traditional message. Here, then, was an almost unprecedented effort at culture change, assembling many of the inducements and pressures involved in other cultural transitions but with unusual speed and intensity. Outright force was an obvious component, pressing many people to change or at least conceal their beliefs. So, however, was economic and political opportunity: many in

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the Red Guards could see personal advantage in leading the charge. Even more broadly, groups like lower-class youths gained opportunities for expression against older generations as well as against upper-class elements— regardless of their actual commitment to new ideas—and certainly reliance on the young as the best wedge for cultural change for the future was quite explicit. Modern methods of persuasion, like the gigantic and compelling new posters, might have their own effect, along with repression of older cultural forms. And all this took shape against a traditional culture that had in some ways been rather constrained, and amid considerable (if scattered) cultural innovations inherited from earlier phases of the revolutionary process. The Cultural Revolution offered almost a textbook example of causation for change. Apart from sheer disruption, which readily threatened to get out of control, the greatest vulnerability of this effort at culture change was a certain vagueness in the new alternatives being offered. Veneration of Chairman Mao, certainly, and praise for the Communist Party—“without which there would be no new China”—might satisfy some. The valuation of youth and action offered new elements; and of course a fuller Marxist doctrine was available for some of the rebels, though it might require more formal education to be fully appreciated. These very difficulties, along with ongoing leadership tensions, helped trigger a final phase to the Cultural Revolution, between 1973 and 1975, in which Confucianism itself was now directly attacked. The philosophy was now held responsible for “making all the slaves in China [that is, the ordinary peasants and workers] obedient and submissive.” Interestingly, Mao was now touted as a latter-day heir to Legalism, in providing the authority required to keep the Revolution moving—an interesting appeal to a selective sense of tradition.38 But the turmoil finally eased, and Mao himself died in 1976. New leadership quickly closed down the Cultural Revolution, restoring the universities, even quietly rehabilitating some Confucian scholars (and the Confucian tradition had also survived in centers outside China, in Taiwan and elsewhere). The Communist Party would itself denounce the Cultural Revolution in 1981 as a “grave error,” though not (even to this day) to be discussed too widely. Focus shifted to further social reform, including compulsory limitations on the birth rate, and toward what turned out to be a remarkably successful industrialization push. The aftermath was predictably mixed. Widespread assumptions that the Cultural Revolution represented a wrong turn combined with the fact that, though intense, it had offered only a decade’s worth of attack on cultural traditions—a far shorter period, for example, than the campaigns against religion in revolutionary Russia. A return to greater normalcy included many indications that key traditions had survived the onslaught, including religious beliefs and practices in the villages. Over the next four decades the communist regime would tolerate more open religious revivals, though

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under some state control and with careful insistence that nonbelief was also appropriate; by 2016 a new president would even praise religious practice as a source of social stability. Latitude for informal Confucian beliefs and rituals was even greater, and again by the twenty-first century, eager for a clearer cultural framework, some parents were trying to organize Confucian training for their offspring (including special training for women).39 But culture change could not fully be put back in the bottle, nor was there a concerted effort to do so. New styles in art and architecture predominated, though the attack on remaining historic sites ended and there was some reconstruction, as in a Confucian temple in Nanjing that the Red Guards had torn down. Maoism of a sort survived also in the massive national interest in sports, which the leader had urged as an alternative to traditional “passivity,” and while this included older martial arts, it centered much more on international options such as soccer and basketball—symbols of some real change in Chinese values. In the villages, parental controls eased as young peasants, for example, insisted on picking their own spouses, amid more autonomy for the youth in courtship.40 Above all, the Cultural Revolution, along with other reforms and the process of industrialization itself, severely modified support for traditional hierarchies and the need for careful deference. During the Revolution, for all the turmoil, peasant access to primary and even middle schools had risen by 50 per cent. New programs encouraged the rural youth, including girls, to participate more actively in science experiments and effort to develop new technologies.41 All this provided further alternatives to traditional beliefs. China after the turmoil was no longer Maoist or even, for most Chinese, particularly systematically Marxist; it embraced a syncretism with a number of diverse cultural components from the past. But the overall cultural framework itself was substantially new. As in France, though in very different specific ways, China stands as an example of the complexities of the interaction between culture change and sweeping modern protest. The cultural component proves vital to the upheaval in the first place; it helps guide the process but, most obviously in China, is also deeply shaped by the new regime; and the result turns out to be an unexpected mixture of old and new, but with the full cultural system of the past decisively abolished.

Conclusion: Culture Change and Protest Culture change, clearly, is intricately involved in a host of modern protests. It emerges most obviously as part of attempts to explain why major outbursts occur in the first place; sometimes, as we have seen, culture change appears as the primary element in causation. Ultimately, however, at least in the case of major revolutions, it is the further effort to shift basic values and beliefs, in a wide range of categories, that wins the greatest impact. And while the “lessons” of French, or Russian, or Chinese Revolutions demonstrate that,

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for various reasons, revolutionaries never manage to change culture as fully as they wished—often, after some bruising episodes—their campaigns do win wide results. Older beliefs persist; compromises emerge; but the values of the “old regime” are never fully restored, whether the focus is on political beliefs or ranges farther afield, to the acceptance of new systems of measurements or even sports interests. Looking forward, it is impossible to predict whether the themes of culture change in modern protest history will turn out to be just that—historical examples—or whether additional outbursts may yet occur. As noted before, the most recent revolutionary outburst, in the Middle East, faded quickly, and this failure may discourage other efforts. It illustrated the power of proactive ideas: the first tremor of the Arab spring occurred in Tunisia, when insistence on the application of human rights led to protests against an authoritarian regime and police brutality.42 But this intriguing example, quickly imitated by human rights risings in Egypt, Yemen, and Syria, was soon drowned by repression or chaos. More widely still, the turn of the twenty-first century had seen a marked decline of classic proactive labor protest and the union movement that had promoted it, as global economic competition increased and the labor force itself became more complex. And Marxism, as a spur to major revolution, may well have run its course with the Soviet collapse in 1989, a major development in its own right. Protest, of course, is not going to end. But it is possible to wonder if in future it will rest on more traditional themes—attacks on change in the interest of older economic and cultural values—rather than reflecting and promoting new, proactive beliefs and values. Many parts of the West, by 2016, were gripped by a “populist” protest more directed against culture change than utilizing it, urging nationalist, religious and sometimes racist values that until recently had seemed somewhat outdated. For its part, radical protest by self-styled Islamic terrorists also pointed more to claims about older values than to culture change in any recognizable sense. So it is possible that this chapter has been exploring examples of culture change that are unlikely to be repeated. The cases are nevertheless significant, in providing additional experience in dealing with the complexities of culture change alongside the examples in the previous chapter. Through revolution and protest over the past two centuries, many societies have dramatically altered their political and social structures, and culture change has both sparked and resulted from the process. Beyond the historical claims, the ongoing effort, in places like China and Russia, to resolve revolutionary cultural issues more fully brings analysis into not only the present but at least the near future. But predicting a full shift away from a protest role for culture change would be premature. Ample opportunities for proactive beliefs remain, even if some of the older staples like Marxism now seem tarnished. Understanding how modern culture change can stimulate protest and shape its results may

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still turn out to apply to the future as well as recent past. It certainly invites combination with the other examples of culture change that this collection offers, toward teasing out some of the basic factors involved. The intricate relationships between culture change and modern protest, finally, though they have their own specific contours, pick up on some of the key themes already explored in dealing with “big” culture change: the complexities and compromises involved in any major shift but also the surprising human capacity to alter established beliefs and values quite substantially—and the wide consequences that may result from these transformations in turn.

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5 Organizations and Culture Change written with Olivia A. O’Neill

This chapter moves to quite a different domain of culture change, away from the broad patterns of religious, nationalist, or revolutionary transformations. Organizations can, to be sure, have big culture changes of their own, but within a particular framework and, often, in response to different kinds of causation. Dealing with organizational change involves a number of distinctive issues. This chapter will highlight some of the disciplinary approaches most commonly applied to this domain and their characteristic emphases and disagreements, as well as presenting actual case studies of organizational culture change in action. Among the case studies, in turn, the chapter offers a few classic developments from the past, but ultimately centers on several current examples. There is no question that, in broad outline, culture change in organizations fits with other examples of major shifts in beliefs and values in many fundamental ways. It involves measurable departures from previous cultural patterns. It often responds to complex causation—new forms of competition, larger social pressures, new technologies, as well as specific ideas within management. It frequently has diverse results—ranging from resistance and failure (which may be more easily identified within organizations than in some other settings), to substantial success, to various kinds of syncretic compromise. Several other common features apply. Organizational cultures (like religious or family cultures) often reflect wider regional patterns, within which change and resistance can be examined. Thus from the later twentieth century onward, it was obvious that business organizations in the United States centered much more narrowly on short-term profit-taking (and related high executive salaries) than did their counterparts in Japan, which responded 91

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to a different cultural framework that placed higher emphasis on social values, intricate team work, and long-term perspectives. Other regional distinctions—like Western vs. East Asian definitions of individualism or happiness—might also have organizational repercussions. Occasionally, global competition even promoted recommendations that one national culture take on some of the strengths of another: this was a common theme, in the 1980s, in urgent suggestions that American corporations shift in favor of the more group-oriented Japanese approach. (Admittedly the results of this advice were modest in fact, except when actual Japanese corporations set up American branches; but the episode calls attention to the role of global contacts, and not just Western initiatives, in contemporary organizational culture change.)1 It is important to keep in mind the intersections between organizations and larger values. As with culture change more generally, the organizational framework inevitably raises questions about significance: how much does culture count? Do values and beliefs really matter much, compared to more basic drivers like the profit motive or technology? Does management, in the end, simply call the shots, making the values of workers and employees essentially irrelevant? As with society more generally, case studies strongly urge the importance of culture in many patterns of change (or failure to change), but obviously the argument must be carefully made. The organizational setting does, however, offer some distinctive features which warrant explicit treatment. More obviously than with society as a whole, people participate in organizations while also remaining involved with other cultural groups; rarely if ever does an organization commend exclusive cultural loyalty (though a few entities, like the military at least during basic training, may make claims in this direction). Organizations typically involve a more readily identifiable leadership structure than is characteristic of other cultural groupings—and there is no question that a focus on what leaders urge, do or fail to do looms large in many organizational culture studies. (Correspondingly, it is sometimes harder to keep track of “followers” who participate in or resist culture change, particularly if they feign conformity to leadership initiatives while actually altering very little either in beliefs or behaviors.) Organizations also may have unusual opportunities to compel culture adherence; while they do not usually employ force, they can cajole, threaten and dismiss; this aspect certainly warrants comparison with culture change processes in other settings. The fact that most organizations offer a fairly well defined framework— compared to society in general—may also promote attention to particular strategies, designed to induce culture change. Formulas for success may emerge from examination of a number of similar cases. This may however at times distract from attention to the values and beliefs involved, and to the people lower down the chain of command who may sometimes be expected to toe the line, with none of the complexities or nuances familiar in other culture change situations.

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Culture change in organizations may sometimes appear misleadingly simple, precisely because of the clearer structure and command hierarchy involved. Often, observers and even participants may expect a rapid culture turnaround, once orders come from the top and possibly a few dissenters are fired or demoted. In fact, however, most experts argue that, even in the best of circumstances, serious culture change will take at least three to five years—just as, in society at large, overnight transformations are rarely in the cards. The overlap between organizational culture and public relations strategies may sometimes be confusing (even to organizational leadership), another distinctive domain. What organizations tout in public, to gain approval or win customers, may differ considerably from the actual operational value system. Recent examples of high-tech firms that had trumpeted their belief in equal opportunity, only to find huge internal gender disparities that reflected actual management behaviors, offer a case in point. There is no question, certainly, about the range and importance of organizational culture issues. The target, after, involves many facets of contemporary life. Business organization comes to mind most obviously. But the organizational context must also include government and military organizations—how, to take up an obvious challenge, would the American military seek to adjust its organizational cultures to assimilate new directives about racial inclusion (from 1948 onward, though with intensity only after the 1950s) or the involvement of female, gay or transgender recruits, more recently?2 Organizations also include universities, which feature some interesting cultural issues; and the list can continue. Getting a sense of how culture change in organizations can be studied, and what distinctive elements may be involved, is a vital subset of the larger phenomenon.

What Is an Organizational Culture? Organizational beliefs and values often cluster around some specific issues that are not usually covered in more conventional cultural inquiry. An exhaustive list is neither feasible nor useful, but some sense of particular, and vividly current, examples sets the stage for the fuller consideration of the components of organizational culture change that follows. Universities, for example, offer quite varying valuations of the balance between teaching and research—an important cultural issue on campus, particularly but not exclusively for faculty. No university, particularly in contemporary culture, admits to anything but a devotion to teaching. On the other hand, most faculty (regardless of institution) have been trained to emphasize research. But in between these two poles is a great deal of cultural variance. Some institutions genuinely reward successful devotion to teaching, beyond lip service; others make it very clear that research credentials must come first, even if constructive teaching forms an icing on the cake. Many

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institutions, increasingly interested in teaching, struggle to figure out how to implement a higher priority in fact, against strong cultural traditions in academia where research productivity is the name of the game.3 Many contemporary organizations, public and private alike, grapple with cultural issues around gender, which is without doubt an increasingly important issue in many current social contexts. Specific concerns include facilitating greater opportunities for promotion for women; putting a lid on sexual harassment; and dealing with pay and family differentials. Obviously, at least for the moment, different organizations maintain varied value systems in addressing the challenges involved, though most will claim similar goals for the public record. Genuinely changing a corporate culture toward greater gender parity will remain a crucial target for some time—as several case studies suggest, later in this chapter. Studies of organizational cultures make it clear that some hospitals place a higher premium on safety than others—compared to goals of efficiency or profit.4 Attempts to reduce medical accidents, to respond to a new leadership concern or outside pressure, involve effective values, and not just administrative arrangements. Here is an important but relatively unfamiliar cultural issue. Organizations vary widely in their approach to hierarchy and inclusiveness. Some incline to a more authoritarian leadership, while others reward employee input, with many gradations between the two extremes. Similar variety can apply to concerns for employee well-being, including emotional well-being. Where culture change, or attempts at culture change, come in will center on organizational efforts (because of new ideas, external pressures or other factors) to move from one emphasis to another. Cultural systems within organizations most obviously reflect leadership interests, but they can run deep among other, less exalted participants as well— like the many ordinary tenured faculty in universities who believe, deep down, that research is what really counts, or the hospital employee who is convinced, rightly or wrongly, that she will be evaluated mainly in terms of how many patients she can handle no matter how many safety messages she receives from management. Correspondingly, efforts to change cultures may encounter a variety of reactions and resistances, and these are not always predictable. Here too, in broad outline, culture change issues and patterns display many of the same features that describe the phenomenon in other settings.

Disciplinary Approaches: The Role of Organizational Psychology Organizational culture—no matter how distinctive in fact, compared to other contexts—has become the province of a particular set of disciplines. Of course historians and sociologists can and do study culture change in organizations, and applied anthropologists have also contributed. But,

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particularly in recent decades, the more typical claimants come from branches of psychology and kindred disciplines in schools of business or management. These disciplines do not, it must be emphasized, really define culture in ways that differ from their counterparts in other domains: organizational culture still focuses on beliefs and values (or, a psychologist might add, “shared cognitions”). But the disciplines do offer some distinctive emphases within this common framework—as in the attention to leadership styles. The focus on culture change in organizations legitimately picks up on these distinctions, which can then be compared to approaches to the subject in other domains. Indeed, organizational psychologists, who take the lead in studies of contemporary organizational behavior, face some significant challenges when it comes to dealing with change. They widely agree on the importance of managing organizational culture, even if they argue about whether to approach the culture in largely quantitative terms or through a more qualitative, symbolic focus.5 But they often tend to assume that organizational cultures are coherent and stable—which make them easier to study, but obviously largely immune to change.6 They are sometimes content with a somewhat simplistic examination of culture—taking a snapshot at one point in time, possibly through an employee survey—rather than probing values more deeply or conceding that cultures are often quite complex. As one result, longitudinal studies of organizational culture change are surprisingly rare, despite the general acknowledgement that any significant adjustment will require several years at least. Adding to the paradox, again within organizational psychology, is a partial division between students of culture and those more directly interested in organizational change. Few theorists have tried to integrate what we know about organizational change in general, with what we know about culture change. Some studies, seeking to bridge the gap, have focused primarily on how employees interpret, and sometimes resist, leadership initiatives, which certainly captures part of the organizational pattern but may fall short of a thorough investigation of change.7 There is real concern, within the field, about the absence of many real advances in basic paradigms relevant to organizational culture change in recent decades, as opposed to narrower inquiries into issues such as identity or power.8 Yet a number of fruitful research approaches have emerged over the past two decades. Many industrial-organizational (I/O) psychologists have paid close attention to organizational climate, a close cousin of culture, focusing on quantitative measurement of employee perceptions within organizations. I/O psychologists’ emphasis on precise measurement and methodological rigor has generated some of the strongest tests of culture or climate as causes of organizational behavior, in any of the social sciences. A good example is a careful study of the interaction between a culture of service and the financial performance of key firms—directly addressing the question of whether employee attitudes or market position primarily determine organizational behavior.9

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Organizational psychologists have also worked on the issue of levels of analysis; that is, how people in different organizational units (teams, departments, and so on) influence performance, and how different units may embrace different cultural approaches.10 Some unit subcultures, for example, are likely to receive change with enthusiasm, while others highlight resistance or simple indifference. Some units, or individuals within them, turn out to be poor “fits” when cultural change is launched by management.11 Attention to emotional culture has generated a flourishing scholarly literature in recent years, which in turn has yielded some unusually creative findings that are attracting increasing attention from organizational practitioners.12 As far back as 2005 Fast Company journalist Alan Deutschman noted how the emotions involved in change management are often overlooked by “the technocrats who run things—the engineers, scientists, lawyers, doctors, accountants, and managers who pride themselves on disciplined, analytical thinking.”13 Deutschman goes on to suggest that not all emotions that arise in corporate culture life are equally functional for managing change: it is the positive messages—those with emotional resonance, emotional persuasion, and emotional appeal—that offer the “vital emotional lifts” necessary for successful organizational transformations. Emotional culture literature explores several mechanisms relevant to change in organizations, some of which flesh out some of the more general issues organizational psychologists explored in the past. Leadership vision and charisma (a form of inspirational attractiveness that induces people to follow) gain new dimensions when the emotional context is actively included. Normative mechanisms within emotional culture, in which emotions are expressed but not felt, and feeling mechanisms (e.g., emotion contagion, naturally occurring felt emotion) also offer clear evidence of the influence of emotion on culture change.14 Recent research on the discrete emotion of awe provides clear evidence of the ways in which the feelings of vastness can be harnessed to serve more prosocial behaviors.15 Other psychological work on emotions offers clear pathways for understanding which emotions have the greatest influence on change, as a recent study of why envy outperforms admiration reveals.16 Despite some ongoing issues in dealing with culture change, in other words, psychologists continue to advance our understanding of the nature and role of cultural shifts within organizations, opening new sources of data, as on employee perceptions, while also extending awareness of emotional as well as more strictly cognitive components.

The Role of Leadership and Power Bases Originating in the tradition of the sociologist Max Weber,17 managerially oriented organizational theorists tend to emphasize leadership and traditional power bases as sources of change and constraints on change. Extrapolating from French and Raven’s 1959 framework, the ability to enact change in

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organizations stems from the traditional bases of power in organizations: coercive, reward, legitimate, referent, and expert.18 Organizational members with one or more bases of power are most likely to lead and influence culture change within an organization. Within the vast leadership literature, the most commonly studied styles of leadership are transformational (i.e., an inspirational vision for needed change), transactional (i.e., leadership focusing on rewards and punishment), and laissez-faire (i.e., do nothing) leadership, with transformational leadership being widely acknowledged as being a highly effective style of leadership, particularly for executing change.19 Despite the plethora of research devoted to the topic in the past thirty years, the leadership literature continues to proliferate within organizational psychology and business research with additional styles such as servant leadership finding a particularly receptive audience among practicing managers.20 This has led to a somewhat dystopian view of leadership and its ability to influence culture change among some theorists.21 Along with the popularity and influence of the leadership focus, a different strain within organizational studies focuses less on objective leadership and power and more on the context of organizations and the social processing of information by members of an organization.22 At a strategic level, resource dependence theory offers insights into organizational culture change resulting from competition for resources (the cornerstone of power) in the outside environment.23 This approach to understanding the role of the context in shaping the interpretation of culture also relates to a strain of research within social psychology on the psychological effects of power. According to one recent theory, the psychological experience of power causes people to be less inhibited and to take action on the environment, even those who are not in formal positions of authority.24 In a series of clever experiments, researchers working within this paradigm have shown how power causes people to change the environment around them (e.g., removing annoying obstacles that others were reluctant to tackle).25 The implications for culture change are clear: you do not have to be in a formal leadership position to enact culture change, you just have to be experiencing the psychological sense of power.

Sources and Mechanisms of Change Another difference between the organizational perspective on culture change and other perspectives stems from the sources of change and the mechanisms of change. The organizational change literature typically differentiates between changes emerging internally (e.g., a new Chief Executive Officer, or CEO ) and changes emerging externally (e.g., mergers, joint ventures, regulations, changes in the competitive environment), some of which are unique to organizations as institutions comprised of formal structures.26 Many theorists distinguish between depth of change, such as Gagliardi’s

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distinction between the following three types of changes: (1) Apparent (e.g., changes to branding, mission statements); (2) Incremental (e.g., changes to espoused values); and (3) Revolutionary (e.g., a new direction, new business, massive layoffs, or mergers and acquisitions).27 Related to the sources of change, another difference between the organizational perspective on culture change and other perspectives is the mechanisms of change. Organizational cultures change as a result of evolution or growth of the organization over time. These cycles are sometimes broken into the following three phases or lifecycles:28 (1) Founding and early growth (i.e., changes mainly from founders and their assumptions; incremental change through general and specific evolution); (2) Midlife (i.e., succession from founders to second-generation CEO and general managers, rise of selected subcultures, new technology, infusion of outsiders); and (3) Maturity and decline (i.e., external environment changes, turnarounds, mergers and acquisitions). In analyzing the mechanisms of change, the role of the founding leader and the leaders who follow is noteworthy in understanding how a firm’s culture is established and how it changes as the company grows and its leadership changes. One study of young high-tech firms showed how altering the founder’s cultural blueprint and replacing a founding CEO differentially impact the firm’s survival, with changes to cultural blueprints having a stronger impact on the organization’s identity and, as a result, increasing its rate of failure.29 A crucial distinction between unplanned and managed change is also noteworthy in dealing with the causes of organizational culture change. Unplanned change typically results from pressures in the external environment, such as economic conditions, new technologies, changes in customers’ preferences, shifts in politics, or new regulations.30 Managed change typically results from new internal pressures, such as the need for new product innovations, poor staff morale, or new senior leadership. (Changes that result from developments such as corporate mergers—a frequent development in contemporary economies—may fall inbetween.) With respect to planned change, the practitioner and scholarly literature is rife with various “stage models” of change. While stage models differ from each other by specific terminologies, number of stages, etc., intellectually, all contemporary stage models stem from Lewin (1951)’s force field analysis, which resulted in three stages—unfreezing / changing / refreezing—that organizations go through during an adjustment process.31 While many of these models do not limit themselves to culture change, application of the model to the case of culture change is straightforward. Borrowing from Kotter’s eight-stage model,32 change agents must first establish urgency for culture change (in order to disrupt the stable status quo), then create a vision and guiding coalition to manage the change, generate wins and consolidate gains along the way, and institutionalize the new approaches so the culture does not revert to its old ways. However, as culture change expert Edgar Schein points out,33 organizational culture change goals that are disconnected

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from specific problems facing the organization are substantially more likely to fail. Generalizations about the role of leadership and other sources of cultural initiative, or about planned and managed change, help set the stage for explorations of actual shifts within organizations. A few key historical examples, reflecting interactions between beliefs and values and the emergence of more modern economies and political structures, features a first set of case studies. A second set, more strictly contemporary, follows in turn.

Some Classic Cases: Installing Bureaucratic and Industrial Cultures The German sociologist Max Weber explored the nature of bureaucratic cultures a century ago, targeting both the public sector—when bureaucracies began to supersede more personalized rule by privileged monarchs and aristocrats—and business organizations when the scale of operations displaced management by a single shop owner or a small, kinship group.34 A bureaucratic culture increasingly downplayed personal whims in favor of a more disciplined acceptance of hierarchy and formal lines of authority along with sets of rules governing the regular execution of assigned tasks. Bureaucratic cultures, or mindsets, seek to discipline personal eccentricities and, often, spontaneous emotion in favor of what are seen as logical organizational imperatives. Thus, in nineteenth-century Europe, civil service regulations increasingly defined the behavior of government bureaucracies, as the role of royal favorites was cut back. Early industrial firms, expanding beyond the control of a founding entrepreneur, quickly set up “shop rules” to regulate the activities of ordinary workers but also their immediate supervisors.35 This general pattern could generate several more specific culture changes. One involved the sense of clock time. Before the early nineteenth century, most work was not organized in terms of very precise schedules. Agricultural labor responded to rhythms of sunrise and sunset, but with a number of fairly random breaks—for conversation, or meals, or even naps—often interspersed as well. Most people, in fact, had no regular access to accurate timing: city bells provided some indication, and during the eighteenth century (in Western Europe and North America) more people began buying and carrying watches—but apparently more as a fashion statement than in response to a more profound cultural shift.36 Factory life, however, and soon the demands of more modern shopkeeping, required a substantial change. New machines were expensive to turn on and off, and they often required teams of operatives—random comings and goings simply would not work. Not surprisingly, the initial sets of factory

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rules paid great attention to the importance of clock-based arrivals and departures, with any breaks during the day specified in terms of clock time as well. Older, vaguer notions of time and more personalized rhythms could no longer be tolerated. This was a huge change in work culture, and its imposition required tremendous effort on the part of employers and supervisors. To some extent, of course, it could simply be compelled: factories blew a whistle fifteen minutes before the start time, and then doors were locked once workers were supposed to be present. Late arrivals lost wages and might be fined, in addition. Here was an obvious case where outright compulsion generated cultural compliance (at least up to a point: factory workers who could afford to periodically took off, to restore some sense of personal control over schedules).37 But other efforts added in. A wider public culture developed that urged the importance of punctuality and efficient time use— as in Benjamin Franklin’s almanac mottoes about “early to bed and early to rise.” Expanding school systems brought home the centrality of clock time to a younger generation—indeed, one skeptic has argued that the inculcation of a modern sense of time was the main achievement of primary education during the nineteenth century.38 Later in the century the spread of modern types of recreation, such as professional sports events, also emphasized set clock times. Ultimately, clock time would become a basic cultural assumption in advanced industrial societies—but it started out as a culture change, and is still regarded as an often unwelcome demand in more traditional societies even today. Finally, more than work and leisure patterns were wrapped up in this cultural shift: industrial time even shifted the cultural standards applied to sleep, as A. Roger Ekrich has demonstrated, increasing the pressure to sleep long and soundly and generating new worries about sleep disorders. Here, as in so many cases, culture change could work deeply into personal life.

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n the 1830s a French entrepreneur named Louis Motte-Bossut smuggled some modern textile machinery out of Britain and set up a new cotton goods factory near the city of Lille. His operation was fairly large for the time, employing a number of workers, far more than any employer could know personally. It depended on keeping up with the latest technology, which Motte-Bossut did fairly well. On the surface, this would seem to be a fairly obvious example of how British industrial success began to motivate competitive response across the channel.

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But, not surprisingly, a number of cultural issues emerge just beneath the surface. First, Motte-Bossut’s parents also ran a textile operation in the Lille region. But theirs was a traditional endeavor, employing a small number of fairly skilled workers with no powered equipment involved. Though they presumably loved their son, they were profoundly shocked by the kind of operation he established, which they viewed as immoral: it was too new, too noisy, too big, too impersonal. And they absolutely refused to set foot in his factory.39 Clearly, for the Motte-Bossut family, new industry involved a number of ill-defined cultural changes, beginning with the willingness to innovate dramatically. Further, what was involved, within a family, to generate such a marked departure from, even defiance of, the economic culture of the parents—besides the obvious factor of British example and competition? Historians have recurrently fussed about the nature of the “entrepreneurial spirit” involved in motivating industrialization.40 They ask about the possible role of particular religions, or minority status—neither of which applies to the Motte-Bossut case, for he was on the surface simply a standard, rather secular French Catholic. And a final revealing cultural twist. Motte-Bossut, though not unusually harsh to his workers, also became known for another practice: every week he placed a bouquet of flowers on the machine that had been most productive. Obviously the gesture seems odd, for one assumes that flowers wilted fairly quickly. But think also about the cultural priorities involved: technology, not people, now seemed to deserve the greatest attention.41 Other early industrial employers discussed how their “natural” sympathy for the hardships of workers had to change, in favor of pressing forward with new technologies and sales demands; “our hearts harden by habit.” On a larger scale: industrialization obviously challenged the cultural expectations of many workers. They were not previously accustomed to so much technological change, or such a fast pace of work, or taking directions from a foreman rather than regulating their own daily tasks. Inevitably, some of them did not like the new pattern—at an extreme, responses such as Luddism, discussed in the previous chapter, could be one result. Over time, however, as workers became a bit more accustomed to the new routines and also realized that systematic, Luddite opposition was futile, a new cultural response emerged—first visible among groups like British printers around the middle of the nineteenth century.42 Articulate workers began essentially to approach their employers with a new bargain: we will accept some continued technological change, at least within reasonable limits, in return for pay levels higher than ever before. Work, in this new cultural approach, became an instrumentt for a better life off the job, rather than primarily a source of traditional, intrinsic satisfaction. The new approach, instrumentalism, did not eliminate all pleasure with work. Workers to this day frequently find real joy in doing even apparently mundane jobs well.43 But the emotional investment dropped, in favor of

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improving consumer satisfactions and other pleasures away from the workplace. Evaluating the culture of instrumentalism, in turn, even as it has promoted still deeper commitments to the quest for consumer gains, becomes a key aspect of assessing the human meaning of the industrial economy into the twenty-first century. Instrumentalism, in sum, was a response to changes introduced by industrial organizations as a result of a grassroots effort to make organizational pressures more endurable. Organizational leaders—the employers—came to recognize the instrumental approach, seeing wage demands as more rational than responses like Luddism. The earlier example, from the initiatives of local industrialists like Motte-Bossut, rests within the framework of organizational change and leadership directly. Organizational change arguably generates both levels of cultural adjustment—leadership and grass roots alike—translating the larger experience of the Industrial Revolution into human terms.

Efficient work arrangements required another set of cultural adjustments, at least for some sectors, in the early twentieth century. Many authorities, particularly in the United States, became increasingly concerned about counterproductive emotional reactions on the job that might reduce coordination and productivity, particularly as assembly-line systems were gaining ground. They also worried about the rising tide of labor protest, which threatened disruptions of another sort. The obvious response was an effort to ramp up the regulation of behaviors. And at this point a new set of experts—industrial psychologists eager to study human reactions on the job with an eye to greater efficiency—was ready to provide additional advice and, through this, to promote organizational culture change under the banners of science.44 Some improvements in coordination might not involve real shifts in beliefs and values. It was found, for example, that playing music for fortyfive minutes out of every hour prompted an increase in output: no culture change was involved. New systems of fines or wage incentives might help as well. But industrial psychologists also realized that additional changes were necessary to reduce what they saw as excessive “irritability” on the shop floor, as a means of promoting further efficiencies. Workers needed to be guided toward more positive emotions, and those who managed them most directly—their foremen and supervisors—needed to be reeducated in the process. Workers should be made to feel that anger was inappropriate and childish: a common tactic involved having them express a grievance three times, with the assumption that repetition would lead to embarrassment and lower intensity. Foremen and supervisors were explicitly retrained in many companies during the 1930s and 1940s, not only to manipulate workers more cleverly but also to keep their own emotions in check as a

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means of limiting the reactions of those in their charge.45 An angry worker outburst should be greeted with calm self-control. As one training manual put it, “effectiveness decreases as emotionality increases.” “Control your emotions—control your remarks—control your behavior.” And while some supervisors might still respond actively to provocation, by the middle of the twentieth century most, responding to surveys, listed pleasantness and cool-headedness as vital to their own effectiveness.46 A culture of emotional control applied even more extensively, again from the early twentieth century onward, to white-collar workers such as sales clerks and, later, flight attendants—many of whom were female.47 Service work was supposed to be performed with a smile; customers, no matter how rude or angry, should be accommodated cheerfully for they were, as the slogan went, “always right.” No matter their origins, sales personnel had to be trained in middle-class modes of behavior and expectations, overriding their own emotional inclinations and, as necessary, their previous cultural guidelines. Organizational requirements came first. Cultural controls might cut so deeply into personal habits that some groups became unsure what their own emotions actually were—the habit of seeming cheerful overrode more spontaneous inclinations. “You have to be pleasant, no matter

FIGURE 5.1 Tea time in the air. Author: Harris and Ewing, 1931. Source: Library of Congress.

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how bad you feel”—as one telephone operator put it in the 1970s.48 Correspondingly when, in the 1990s, American-type service jobs were spread to other cultures—as in training Russians to smile on request as part of their work in McDonald’s restaurants—the extent of change involved proved unexpectedly considerable. Bureaucratic systems and efficient work structures have involved significant cultural adjustments at various points over the past two centuries, often generating innovative efforts to alter values and beliefs to mesh with organizational goals. Initiatives typically came from the top, but they were often mediated by other layers of supervision and, by the twentieth century, by a set of outside experts as well. The changes did not always work: individuals might refuse to comply or might at least nurture private reactions that ran counter to official standards. Organizational culture change— including resistance and various kinds of compromise—forms an important part of the work experience in modern societies.

Contemporary Cases: New Issues of Organizational Culture Change The following case studies center on more recent targets of organizational initiatives. They invite attention as well to some of the standard components in culture change analysis: (1) the timing and scope of change; (2) the baseline culture patterns; (3) the change itself; (4) the causes of the change; (5) resistance to the change; and (6) consequences. We begin with a case that illustrates many of the features of the organizational psychology analysis described earlier. NetCo is a publically held, medium-size semiconductor firm headquartered on the west coast of the United States with major research and development (R&D) operations in Silicon Valley, where most of its employees work. The company was founded in the 1980s by a Chinese entrepreneur whose leadership approach most closely resembles the transactional leadership style (follower compliance through rewards and punishment). The founder encouraged a culture of envy and contempt to proliferate at the company by privileging some company units over others and encouraging units to compete with one another for rewards. Partly as a result of his leadership and the culture that grew up around it, the firm failed to advance at the rate of its closest competitors, which ultimately grew to be ten times larger and more profitable. In the 2000s, the CEO left and the organization went through a series of top leadership transitions as the industry experienced a period of consolidation. A new CEO arrived in the mid-2000s having spent his career hitherto at ChipCo, the dominant firm in the mature, hypercompetitive industry, a large organization whose meteoric growth stemmed from its

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market-making product (which dominated center of the market, leaving only the peripheries to compete)49 but also from its culture, which was spearheaded by its iconic founder and CEO. When this new CEO entered the organization, he imported the values and norms of ChipCo, “the culture in which I grew up” (a common metaphor when describing the influence of culture on individual values and behaviors). He and the senior team he created (most of whom he had worked with at ChipCo) had little patience for “legacy NetCo” culture, which they viewed as overly cautious, fearful, and antithetical to results. Longtime observers of the legacy NetCo culture viewed the culture as heavily influenced by the Asian management style of its CEO and the high proportion of US -based staff members who were Chinese, reflecting a strong homophily bias50 that impacted the company for years after the founding CEO ’s departure. The new CEO felt a strong mission to impart the results-orientation of ChipCo culture, beginning with a discipline, systems-oriented management style that many perceived as overly bureaucratic for a company of NetCo’s size. A few years into the new former ChipCo CEO ’s tenure, NetCo acquired an equally sized company known for its innovative products, the patents they produced, and setting the technical standards in its field. Acquisition of this company was an attempt to create new products that would deliver the positive results expected of the CEO by shareholders and the company board. Not only was the technology different at the acquired company, so too was the organization’s culture, which was much more loosely organized and flexible in its management style. In the two years following the acquisition, the combined company shrank to less than half its size through a series of Reductions in Force (RIF ) aimed at curtailing redundancies and cutting costs. Loss of key clients and failure to deliver on a potentially breakthrough new technology that had shown promise within the acquired company resulted in the company being valued lower one year later than it was when the acquisition was announced. Looking back, the Vice President of R&D was disappointed at NetCo’s failure to do what it set out to do. Business problems aside, he attributed the failure to the inability to rid NetCo of its legacy culture. In analyzing what happened at NetCo, note the story of another public company recently in the news, Yahoo. In 2012, Yahoo hired Marissa Mayer, a longtime executive at Google, to be its next CEO. One of Mayer’s first major changes upon entering the top leadership role at Yahoo was to eliminate Yahoo’s popular flexible / remote work policy and replace it with Google’s dictum that employees had to be present in the office.51 Along with several unsuccessful acquisitions (e.g., the purchase of Tumbler for $1.1B), the changes she made in an attempt to replicate the successful culture at Google were not sufficient to remedy the struggling company’s business problems. Yahoo was acquired by Verizon Communications after large financial losses and a 50 per cent reduction in force. Mayer resigned from its board in 2017.

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While a policy shift aimed at changing culture may seem trivial compared to other business problems, unsuccessful attempts to change culture in both of these examples highlight a fundamental problem that has plagued management practitioners for decades and continues to undermine the success of countless mergers and acquisitions. The problem is selection bias, the assumption that what works in one situation or company will work in another situation without taking into account the failures who tried similar tactics and all the attributes (e.g., organizational age, size, historical period, industry) that make that situation or company unique.52 The NetCo and Yahoo examples also highlight the stability of culture plus the inability of top management, and the policies they follow, to change organizational culture once it is firmly entrenched.

The Impact of Technology and Consumer Shifts on Culture Change: A Tale of Two Industries In 2010, Borders Bookstore announced bankruptcy after forty-six years of operation and closed its doors at 500 retail bookstores, laying off over 19,000 associates in the process. The story of Borders is one of a culture whose reluctance to depart from the status quo, as well as its inattention to social changes in consumers, caused it to miscalculate the impact of online competitors and new technology, the combination of which would disrupt the brick-and-mortar retail industry and completely decimate the bookstore industry.53 In the case of Borders, its leadership passed on the opportunity to invest in e-Readers until it was too late and made a series of strategic miscalculations with respect to the online industry, most notably, the decision to partner with its (soon-to-be) competitor, Amazon.com, for online book sales. The decision proved to be fatal, as its rival, Barnes & Noble, invested in its own e-Reader (the Nook) and survived the movement to digital readership. In describing the decline, Washington Post journalist Michael Rosenwald wrote: How Borders arrived at this once-unthinkable moment is, like many stories of troubled companies, a tale of strategic errors, missed opportunities and revolving-door management (the chain is now in the hands of a former tobacco executive). But the company’s collapse, though perhaps hastened by missteps, seems to many industry insiders to have been inevitable, brought on by cultural changes too swift and sweeping to fend off, even for a huge player in the nation’s cultural life. The change from so-called “brick-and-mortar” stores to online has disrupted many industries. A recent example is Sears, which began in the nineteenth century as a catalog mail-order business and within 100 years, emerged as the United States’ largest retailer. The business model began to

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collapse as retail expansion efforts failed, traditional shopping mall traffic began to decline, and stand-alone competitors include Lowe’s and Home Depot took over their core business. Morale among employees was low, with some employees confessing they would take off their Sears nametags after work because they were embarrassed to be associated with the dilapidated store conditions (“the floors in the refrigerator aisles were splotched with brown stains. Over by the exercise equipment, the walls were scuffed and had wires hanging out of them”)54 and dismal financial prospects associated with the company and its brand. Similar to the story of Borders seven years earlier, executives at Sears mused that their company had “just missed some pretty profound changes”55 in the industry. While the previous two case studies highlight challenges faced in the retail industry—challenges that directly threatened established organizational cultures—another industry struggled with similar challenges of technology and changing customer preferences at the same time as the industry consolidated. The story of the US newspaper industry is similar to the story of the retail sector, as declining readership and the rise of online journalism threatened the business model that had defined journalism since its earliest days. In response to these changes, the newspaper industry went through a period of consolidation with only a few major city newspapers (e.g., the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune) dominating the center of the market, with many other newspapers going out of business or simply reprinting news stories from other news sources. Despite this consolidation, outlets such as the Washington Post continued to struggle financially, as in-depth, long-form journalism became an expensive luxury than many newspapers could not support. Employees reported the newsroom as a having a “dusty, outdated look as if it were paying homage to its legendary past.”56 In 2013, the Washington Post was bought by Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com. Under the leadership of Bezos, the newspaper shifted its focus to increased digital content and a new profit model. Revenue and profit increased as a result of the changes, with a 56 per cent jump in Web traffic. The message from Chief Executive Officer Bezos, as summarized by Chief Information Officer Shailesh Prakesh, was clear: “Stop whining that the Web took publishing away from us, took our business model. It also brought new models.”57 Bezos encouraged employees to think long-term and not be afraid to experiment. The Post made a critical decision to build its own software, thereby enabling greater control over content and a deeper insight into consumer preferences. The software was so successful that the Post sold it to twenty-two other publishers, including the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune. Despite a strong “culture of fear”58 at the Post that technology would simply prove destructive when Bezos took over as CEO, the culture appears to have changed for the positive, accompanied by a strong belief that technology may, in fact, save the industry.59 At the same time, the new ownership made it very clear that it continued to promote strong, investigative journalism—offering a visible

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kind of compromise between dramatic new approaches and established values.

Technology and its impact on changing professions The story of how the internet revolutionized the retail industry in the early 2000s, forcing organizations to change not only their business models but also their organizational cultures around new technologies, provides the foundation for other organizational changes that are fundamentally altering the cultures of organizations and whose consequences we have yet to fully understand. A direct implication of internet technology (particularly around security and privacy) is the movement away from “brick-and-mortar” office space in favor of employees working remotely and coming into the office only as needed. The most obvious stimulus for this change is the need to cut realestate costs and improve technology that allows workers to perform their work regardless of location. The next frontier of technology that is primed to have a widespread impact on organizational culture is artificial intelligence (AI ). Once seen only in science-fiction movies, AI is now a reality in many professional services industries, including consulting and law. A recent Harvard Business Review (HBR) headline reads, “Is AI taking over elite consulting?” Indeed, many top consulting firms have been quietly acquiring AI firms to stay ahead in a lucrative industry that, as strategy expert Clay Christensen noted, has not changed its business model in over 100 years and is ripe for disruption60. In some tech-savvy law firms, AI -related software can perform tasks such as scanning documents that were once completed by highly trained first- and second-year attorneys. Entry-level professionals are not the only ones impacted by AI and related technologies. A 2017 HBR article reports that CEO s spend 25 per cent of their time on tasks that machines can do61. The news is not all bad; the consulting firm EY reports how its operatives use email traffic and calendar metadata during acquisitions to map the social network of organizations—a good indicator of how information is being transmitted and which people are likely to share feelings and ideas—and to help their clients predict who is likely to stay at the firm.62 Cultural adjustments to the various aspects of AI and other new management technologies will continue to emerge over the coming decades. One negative cultural change resulting from the increased reliance on technology is a concern raised by some that overemphasis on technology has downplayed innately human abilities, such as the capacity to empathize and read others’ emotions. Former hotel executive Chip Conley and current head of hospitality and strategy at AirBnB noted this in a recent essay, “I Joined Airbnb at 52, and Here’s What I Learned About Age, Wisdom, and the Tech Industry.”63

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Office Design: The Look and Feel of Culture Change As noted above, one trend impacting culture change in organizations is the movement away from assigned office space toward the “hoteling” model in which employees reserve space for times when they need work space in traditional “brick-and-mortar” organizational structures.64 These changes to office workplace design reflect larger trends around the increasing cost of maintaining traditional physical office space and the attractiveness of virtual (“remote”) work for employees trying to minimize commutes, maximize “productive” worktime, and more effectively balance work-family responsibilities. Besides the immediate accounting implications, one unexpected consequence of this has been an increase in the percentage of workers who report feeling “lonely.” Longer-term consequences, still speculative at this point, may also include a decrease in the loyalty and commitment to organizations, as employees feel less committed and “attached” to organizations. Greater drift toward what some have labeled “boundaryless” careers65 may not necessarily reflect a turn to the negative; such cultural changes appear to coincide with the stated preferences of millennials,66 whose early career socialization in organizations differs markedly from the experiences of “Baby Boomer” workers, a generation whose careers were premised on lifetime employment with one or two organizations that rewarded loyalty with long-term employment and retirement benefits. For employees forced to come into the office, the design of the office reflects other cultural changes. One example is the open office design concept. Similar to what Marissa Mayer attempted to do at Yahoo by removing the option of remote working, the open-office concept is premised on the logic that having workers co-located will increase the likelihood that they will exchange ideas with colleagues outside of their normal teams and reporting structures, and engage in creative activities that enhance individual performance and contribute to the organizational bottom line. Actual data in support of the effectiveness of this intervention are scarce but the report clearly indicates a mixed response from employees, with the most common complaint being constant distractions and interruptions.67 It is also worth noting that open-office designs are generally less expensive than alternative structures (e.g., cubicles and offices), so management arguments about productivity may reflect a deeper concern about cost management (a major concern, as noted elsewhere, for business). Also indicative of this trend is the movement away from the “corner office” in contemporary office design. The shift turns away from large “corner” offices reserved for the most senior executives—the “winners” of the career tournament,68 reflecting the hierarchical career progression from entry-level to executive within a firm—toward equal-size cubicles that allow top management and lower-level workers to mingle more frequently.69

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Changes away from formal to flexible work arrangements reflect a larger cultural shift away from the “ideal worker” model in which previous generations of professions (usually men) worked long hours at the office as a sign of their commitment while putting family life on hold, or making arrangements for someone else to take care of young children or elderly parents.70 An important caveat to this is the acknowledgement that the cultural changes discussed here, particularly the flexibility afforded to some employees, affects primary “white-collar” professional jobs; while technology continues to impact the work life of all employees, “blue-collar” working-class jobs are less impacted by cultural changes around office design (for an example of class differences and occupations, see Shows and Gerstel’s work on how parenting differs in between doctors and EMS workers).71

Employee Well-being: A Life-saving Culture Change or Smoke and Mirrors? Worker well-being has emerged as a recent theme in organizational change initiatives. In general, workers in the United States are currently working more than their peers than in any other country in the world with fewer benefits than most industrialized nations. A 2015 New York Times exposé detailed the pressures faced by some employees at Seattle-based Amazon. com, whose results-oriented culture left workers struggling to manage their personal lives while still performing at the level expected of its employees.72 The cost of results-oriented cultures is extreme and, in some instances, an impetus for change. Human Resources executives at some Fortune 100 firms and their suppliers have pushed for additional services for employees upon learning that the pressure to perform had become so intense that workers in the US and abroad had committed suicide.73 While the picture that emerges from these stories is quite dire, there are some leading corporations leading the way with benefits for their most highly skilled professional workers. Facebook, for example, recently instituted a bereavement policy for workers, providing a month of paid leave for full-time employees who recently lost an immediate family member.74 This policy stemmed from the personal experience of Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, whose husband died suddenly while on vacation. While this policy offers a glimpse of more humane policies, the benefits are available only to highly skilled workers at one of the world’s wealthiest corporations: it is clearly far too early to declare a large-scale corporate culture change. It is important to note that well-being does not simply refer to happiness. Corporate members of the National Business Health Group (NBHG ), headquartered in Washington DC , wrestle with costs related to the physical and emotional health of employees and its impact on the bottom line. Many

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of NBHG ’s members are self-insured Fortune 100 corporations with operations around the world. For some companies, the cost of combating smoking in countries such as China, more than half of whose men are smokers, is a major cost. The impact of sleep has also been noted, with companies such as Aetna offering Fitbits to all of its workers and incentives to workers who can demonstrate they slept the recommended number of hours. A challenge faced by many organizations is the lack of employee use of some of the most progressive well-being and health benefits (which may reflect the large number of hours they are working). Some firms report only 2 per cent of workers take advantage of relatively low-cost policies such as financial planning, while other high-cost benefits (e.g., healthcare for some employees’ expensive chronic illnesses) remain highly utilized (and expensive). In general, however, policies such as these reflect a cultural change among some corporate leaders toward recognizing the benefits of improved employee health and well-being. At the opposite end of the well-being continuum are firms fighting to survive in the era of globalization and the pressure to reduce costs in order to meet investor expectations. At one time, the prevailing logic was that globalization would only impact low-skilled jobs that did not interest US workers. Now, professions and skills once thought to be immune from such pressures for change are seeing their jobs offshored and outsourced, including highly skilled workers in engineering and human resources. In an effort to bring jobs to impoverished areas of the United States, firms are receiving generous tax benefits for moving factories to those regions, leading to what some have called a “renaissance” of factory jobs returning to the US . Unfortunately, these jobs come with some unwelcome culture changes as American workers face the same dangers as their counterparts in the developing world. A recent Bloomberg article highlights the situation of parts suppliers to car manufacturers in the Deep South. To compete with Mexico and Asia for low-margin contracts, parts suppliers enforce brutal productivity demands, requiring employees to work extremely long hours at low pay in working conditions that, combined with minimal training, regularly endanger their lives. The picture that emerges from Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA ) reports and lawsuits following deaths and injuries is one of extreme pressure to produce, “productivity at all costs.”75

Power to the People In contrast to previous eras in which information flow from corporations to consumers was more tightly controlled, the internet and social media have changed the pathways and pace of culture change in corporations toward the consumers and their wallets. For many corporations, public pressure and negative social media serve as powerful catalysts for change. Walmart, famous not only for its low prices but also for its minimal worker benefits,

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has experimented with various practices, including wage hikes, after negative social media campaigns to boycott its stores. Recently, livestreamed videos of flight attendants forcibly removing passengers on a United flight prompted the airline’s CEO, Oscar Munoz, to issue an apology and the company to rethink its pricing plan for airline ticket seats as well as its policy guidelines for employees. No other company more clearly embodies the current impact of social media and consumer attitudes as an impetus for culture change than Silicon Valley ride-sharing company Uber. Prior to Uber making headlines for its overtly masculine culture, widespread problems recruiting and retaining women in technology firms more generally were the subject of numerous academic studies and several recent high profile news articles.76 The problem? “Classic interventions” such as training women to fit in with the dominant masculine culture (bemoaned in feminist circles as the “fix the woman” approach) were not working, nor were novel “science-based” approaches such as implicit bias training (which had the paradoxical effect of normalizing and legitimizing bias). Here again, social media appears to have made an important impact in bringing about organizational change, once Uber moved into the spotlight. In a February 2017 blog post, Uber engineer Susan Fowler documented a litany of sexual harassment episodes that were not being addressed by the company’s Human Resources office despite numerous attempts.77 The blog quickly went viral and within weeks, Uber CEO and founder Travis Kalanik was fired and an investigation into Uber’s workplace culture was fully underway. The ripple effects of this event are still being felt in corporate circles. As Quartz recently reported, there is increasing pressure for CEO s to be “nice” now that CEO behavior is under increased scrutiny, while boards are taking action to curb bad behavior among celebrity CEO s.78 Whether the cultures actually change as a result of high-profile firing remains to be seen. Curbing bad behavior so culturally ingrained is much harder than simply removing a few bad apples.79 Either way, these recent events highlight the impact of social media as a force for cultural change in modern organizations.

Conclusion Organizational culture change combines some standard features of the phenomenon overall, with dynamics peculiar to organizational life. Special qualities of the disciplines most involved in this phenomenon may add to the complexities. Leadership and hierarchy loom larger than in some other categories. On the other hand, some familiar features, including even syncretism, bring us back to some of the common terrain. Issues of causation loom large, even when they are mediated by directives from top management. Organizational culture change responds to basic shifts in the economy, like industrialization, or to the political developments

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associated with bureaucratization. Recent issues highlight the importance of technological changes, or new sources of public pressure, or even the challenge of dealing with a new generation of workers. Mergers, sometimes across national (and cultural) borders, add to the complexity of change. Organizational cultures—whether encountering some of the initial pressures of industrialization or more recent gender standards—are not abstractions. Decisions about how to handle grievances, or how to arrange office space, or how to curtail sexual harassment involve many very real people, past and present, and crucial aspects of human existence. Figuring out how best to explain and analyze this category of culture change, and how to introduce it most successfully and humanely, has immediate bearing on the quality of life. This chapter has featured two periods of organizational culture change, centered primarily on business structures. Industrialization required, or seemed to require, companies to introduce a host of changes, both in management styles and in worker/employee behavior, and this process continued into the early twentieth century. More recent case studies show the power of new patterns of mergers, global competition, and dramatic new technologies, as well as altered social standards around issues such as gender equity. In sectors as diverse as newspapers or even higher education, a host of experts has been insisting on the need for striking disruptions—on pain of failures as dramatic as the collapse of leading bookstore chains. Disruption in turn, though usually centered on novel technologies, inevitably involves deep shifts in values and potential cultural resistance as well. The story of organizational culture change is ongoing. At the same time, extension of work on organizational culture change to other sectors—such as key government and military agencies—offers additional opportunities to explore the phenomenon.

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6 Health and the Body The Impact of Cultural Medicalization

In this section we move away from the organizational domain, and back to wider patterns of culture change, in this case those associated with modern health concerns. Some overlap can be noted: health organizations, like hospitals and professional groups certainly reflect wider cultural patterns and in some cases they help motivate change. The current enthusiasm for well-being, noted in the previous chapter as a new interest, is another link with organizational cultural issues. But the most significant beliefs and values involved typically affect wider publics than any single organization can embrace. At the same time, the focus is narrower than the kinds of big culture change discussed in Chapters 3 and 4: we are dealing here with norms applied to a vital but very specific slice of the human experience, where cultural factors wield surprising power and where, as a result, change can be particularly revealing. A number of modern culture change issues are addressed, offering several case studies around a wide variety of specific topics. Fundamental shifts in the nineteenth century included a fascinating redefinition of smell and disgust and a profound but shorter-lived attack on aspects of sexuality. Moving into the twentieth century—and in some ways on into the present, and into several significant current issues—were cultural changes associated with new attitudes toward death, a recasting of desirable body types, and the definition of several important but partly novel psychological disorders. The broad process of medicalization—a growing cultural acceptance of medical advice and definition, over other approaches to health issues— houses a host of targets, and these altered over time. And while the medicalization of beliefs and expectations has been associated with measurable improvements in health, either as cause or result, it has also generated some important problems and arguably some needs for further cultural adjustment in the near future. 115

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Human culture has always embraced concerns about health. At the origin of Jewish and Muslim prohibitions on the consumption of pork, for example, surely lay an understanding of the dangers of trichinosis in a warm climate— though the origins of this particular belief cannot be traced with any precision. The power of culture extends beyond explicit health concerns. In key cases, as we will see, it can define the nature of some diseases, creating a fascinating interplay between health issues that people “really” feel and the particular diagnoses they—and others around them—find acceptable. More broadly still, the connection between culture and health inevitably reflects an interplay between objective conditions: rates and incidence of disease and death; the opinion of relevant professionals, obviously including people who claim some kind of medical expertise; and wider cultural frameworks, such as the major religions or the Enlightenment. This chapter focuses on a particularly intense series of changes in beliefs and values relating to health, disease and the body that began to take shape in Western societies from the later eighteenth century onward, generating several trends that would extend to our own day. Many of these cultural shifts were linked to the growing assertions of the medical profession, which began even before the advent of major discoveries—such as the germ theory (1860–64) or the introduction of anesthesia for surgery (1846)—that could clearly improve human health. Doctors began to capitalize on the overall claims of science, which had surged forward in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, deliberately seeking to push aside other kinds of medical practitioners to advance their own interests.1 Their expanding role, and growing public interest in using doctors for experiences such as childbirth that had previously been more commonly handled by local midwives or other more informal agents, produced a cultural phenomenon called “medicalization,” in which medical definitions began to transform a number of beliefs about the body—including aspects of sexuality.2 Medicalization and the prestige of science were not the only factors working to redefine health culture. New kinds of problems and opportunities played an important role as well. The rapid growth of cities in many Western countries inevitably generated policy questions, for example, concerning the management of growing amounts of sewage, that would impinge on popular beliefs and even the physical senses. Not long after improvements in food availability, thanks to more productive agriculture and more rapid transportation systems, gradually affected cultural beliefs about eating and body shape. Culture change relating to health (including mental health) thus combines specific medical claims and findings with larger social and economic transformations. In Western societies, many of the key developments centered on the nineteenth century, but they must be traced as well into the contemporary era to determine long-term impacts—including some of the

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current problems that arguably result in part from some of the basic shifts. Always, the relationship between “real” health issues and the beliefs and values that surrounded them sets up a particular set of analytical challenges around this type of culture change. It is not always easy to determine which came first, the shift in values and beliefs or alterations in the medical environment independent of culture. Finally, while the chapter will focus primarily on Western experience, both in Europe and the United States, we will suggest also some of the cultural patterns linked to the impact of Western medicalization on other societies, particularly over the past century. From its Western origins onward, the medicalization of culture, and its interaction with other factors, have characteristically combined a new element of optimism with frequent expressions of frustration and concern. A key reason for the growing role of doctors clearly resulted from a larger Enlightenment belief in the possibility and desirability of progress— including pushing back the frontiers of disease. A number of eighteenthcentury scientists were deeply interested in studies of longevity, and argued that improvements in knowledge and medicine should steadily expand the human life span.3 Optimism could generate tension, however, when expectations of progress were not matched by clear improvements. And it could actually produce new problems as well, as when assumptions about controlling disease interfered with the kind of end-of-life care that many people really wanted. Culture change here enters directly into some of the most pressing problems of contemporary health and medicine in advanced industrial societies.

A First Example: Culture Change, Hygiene, and Smell Dramatic shifts in reactions to certain kinds of smells—with consequences that ranged from alterations in urban housing patterns to the expansion of perfume production—have been studied most closely in France, but in broad outline they undoubtedly occurred in many Western societies in the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The transformation was simple but fundamental. Smells that once had been registered as a perfectly normal and acceptable part of urban life now began to be redefined as disgusting, even intolerable. A host of targets were involved. Cesspools now became truly appalling, and traditional methods of cleaning them, without much ventilation, might cause people to gag; and the unfortunate workers assigned to take care of the process were now shunned. Human urine changed, or rather its evaluation did. Just a century before urine was seen as a cleansing agent, and used even to brush teeth. But now, by the later eighteenth century, it was perceived as causing an unpleasant odor. Grave sites and cemeteries were now sometimes regarded as smelly.

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The same applied to human sweat, or more precisely, other peoples’ sweat, or mold. A French observer tried to describe the larger process: “for some years people have been more concerned than in former times with averting the dangers that we have to fear from certain vapors . . . This has given birth to an infinite number of disputes, grudges and lawsuits.” In terms of overall hygiene, he went on, “what has been and has in no way changed, has suddenly become unbearable.”4 A social class element entered in. Middle- and upper-class urbanites began to feel a real, visceral revulsion at the way some workers smelled; and they noted with disdain how insensitive ordinary people were to nowhorrible odors, like those emanating from open-air fish markets. “There is no one in the world like the Parisian for eating what revolts the sense of smell,” one fastidious aristocrat noted. Smell differentials began to affect social class relations from this point at least into the twentieth century, when enough people began to be able to take regular baths or showers that the social structure of smell began to level off. But the overall trend was general, affecting masses as well as classes in the cities. Popular worries about the smell of corpses, for example, forced the closing of one inner-city Paris cemetery as early as 1780. And the concern tended steadily to expand its range. Garbage dumps, once normal, now generated angry protest and demand that “something” be done. Even water purity came into question. Again a French commentator: “Twenty years ago one drank water without paying much attention to it; but since the family of bases, the race of acids and salts have appeared on the horizon . . . one has armed oneself on all sides against mephitism [a foul-smelling carbon dioxide poisoning]. This new word has rung out like a terrible tocsin, maleficent gasses have been seen everywhere, and the olfactory nerves have become surprisingly sensitive.”5 Even odors that once had been used to mask certain smells were now seen as too harsh. Musk, for example, a traditional heavy scent, was newly rejected as heavy and unpleasant. The pattern was clear: a set of standards or values that was deeply personal, that hovered really beneath the level of conscious thought and even in the domain of the physical senses, was somehow being revolutionized. The acceptable became disgusting. The normal turned into a source of outcry. And though the change was truly profound, the reasons for it seem fairly clear. Cities like Paris were beginning to grow—though interestingly the largest waves of urbanization lay in the future—and this might have prompted some reassessment of once-acceptable smells. But the real changemaker rested in a combination of science and a new level of fear of death and disease. Experiments with gases, as chemistry became more sophisticated, generated popularized accounts that ultimately encouraged even ordinary people to think about their scent environment in new ways—hence the new attention paid to the purity of water. More specifically, a dominant

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view held that contagious diseases—a real and legitimate concern in early nineteenth-century cities—spread through what were called “miasms,” gaseous emanations coming from sources like open sewers. This theory was incorrect—it would later be replaced by the understanding of germs and bacteria—but it was not entirely off the mark, and it certainly caused all sorts of people, in various walks of life, to reevaluate the evidence from their noses.6 Once the new sensitivity emerged, it was easy to see that a certain crowd mentality set in: people began to scare each other about the dangers of the odors that were now labeled unpleasant or even revolting. Again, it is difficult to overemphasize what an extraordinary cultural shift was involved, in redefining the way one of the five senses was now interpreted. New kinds of intolerance resulted, against groups or individuals who did not measure up to the new standards. Words changed: references to bathroom habits became more guarded and private. Respectable individuals were responsible for concealing the odors they caused—for, as one French edict put it, “looking after their own shit.” And the results of the new sensitivities were wide ranging, often bolstered by other kinds of urban policy concerns. Cemeteries were now moved outside center cities, and some older cemeteries were relocated—as occurred quite generally in Paris. People had new fears of being too close to the dead, at least on a regular basis. Pressures to cover urban sewers constituted a vital new step in urban hygiene, and a key factor was the new responsiveness to smells. Frequency of bathing increased, at least for the wealthier families. For a time, in the early decades of the nineteenth century, many people wore little sachets around their necks, filled with lavender or bay leaves or lemon peel, to mask bad odors. French sewer workers were required to do this according to an edict of 1826. New methods of fumigation were developed, to help clear home or stores of bad smells. Not surprisingly, hospitals were a key target of these new methods; but so were churches, to guard against odors emanating from any nearby cemetery but also to cover up the smells of sweaty worshippers themselves. And while harsh perfumes were now abandoned, milder, flowery-scented fragrances gain massive new popularity, spurring a whole industry in regions of France (which in turn became a leader in perfume exports as well). Mild and “natural” odors could acceptably combat the otherwise unpleasant smells coming from one’s own body. The modern kind of perfume, reflecting spring flowers and meadows, seemed life-affirming, an obvious contrast to the odors that were now causing such concern. Later this sensory preference would also support a thriving industry in deodorants—another response to modern cultural standards. In the long run, as historians of the senses have argued, this whole movement led to a devaluation of the sense of smell, compared to the uses to which the sense had been put in more traditional, and more rural, societies. As people tried to beat back strong odors, surrounding themselves

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either with mild scents or seeking to avoid any odor at all, the nose lost some of its functions as a source of evidence about the environment. Growing emphasis, instead, went to the sense of sight, which gained additional functions as literacy became more widespread and as artificial lighting made sight more useful even at night-time. The redefinition of smells, as a fundamental kind of culture change, had sweeping consequences, all linked, ultimately, to new beliefs about health and death and to a growing popular openness to the findings of science.7 Finally, fastidiousness could gain additional targets. The concern about smells of the late eighteenth century did not involve primary attention to smoke, another ubiquitous feature of urban life. With time, however, and additional scientific research, smoke might be added to the list of smells that now became dangerous. This, of course, is a campaign still being waged in many cities of the world.

CULTURE AND DISEASE: A REVEALING CASE

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eginning in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, a growing number of young women in various European cities began to suffer from hysterical paralysis. That is, they lost the use of their legs, and sometimes also reported considerable pain, even though there was nothing wrong with them physically. The problem occurred in both middle-class and working-class families (only rural families were not widely affected), and it could lead to long periods of invalidism and, in some cases, agonizing amputations of one of the affected limbs. Analyzing the new trend is inevitably complicated: we cannot always be sure that the doctors that treated these women were correct about their physical condition, and we cannot be entirely certain that the phenomenon was new, though if the problem had been widespread before it is likely that some observers would have taken note.8 Hysterical paralysis often occurred after an individual had experienced some kind of emotional distress—a botched romance, a move to a new home, an unwanted pregnancy; individual vulnerability is clearly part of the pattern. Conditions of early industrialization also played a role, explaining why the disease was almost exclusively urban. Some emotionally unstable women became hysterical paralytics as a way of opting out of early industrial life—even though they in no sense deliberately chose to be ill. But culture change entered in as well. The symptoms of hysterical paralysis were increasingly brought to the attention of a doctor or a clinic, and obviously they proved both puzzling and fascinating. During the early nineteenth century the most common diagnosis was “spinal irritation,”

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and cures involved extensive periods of rest (which sometimes, but not always, proved effective). This diagnosis, widely publicized, then helped cause more disease: that is, once a new belief was established, it encouraged other doctors to identify the symptoms but it also made it easier for other women to “choose” the symptoms and perhaps, however unconsciously, to “choose” to gain new opportunities for rest and family attention in the process. The cultural element is further confirmed by the virtual disappearance of hysterical paralysis among young women by the early twentieth century, in all the Western industrial societies. By this point greater medical sophistication and wider publicity helped individuals distinguish between real physical symptoms and problems that were just in one’s mind. In other words, a culture that had once, though unintentionally, encouraged some troubled people to select a particular disease pattern now shifted, because of greater knowledge and fuller adjustment to urban life, and became a deterrent to the same disease. Troubled individuals might of course seek some other outlets, but hysterical paralysis became culturally unfashionable. The role that culture played, in an increasingly medicalized society, to expand both the diagnosis and the incidence of certain kinds of psychological disorders can also be studied in the rise of a new kind of anorexia nervosa in some middle-class families from the mid-nineteenth century on to the present,9 and possibly in the creation, and then rapidly rising rates, of the idea of psychological depression from the 1920s onward.10 Analysis of patterns of this sort is, again, complicated, for the individuals involved are clearly suffering—their symptoms cannot be dismissed as cultural inventions. But the intricate interactions between new medical beliefs and discoveries, and measurable changes in the kinds of diseases people report, form an important expression of the relationship between culture and health, or ill health, in modern history.

The Curious Case of Sexuality in the Nineteenth Century: Medicalization at an Extreme Doctors had only a marginal role in the transformation of smells; other kinds of scientists were more important in changing popular standards. Sexuality, however, was another matter: the persistent efforts by medical practitioners to gain new influence combined with novel concerns in the public at large or, at least, the middle-class public—to generate a new set of beliefs about sexual excess by the middle of the nineteenth century, in most

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Western societies. Doctors and medical writers successfully asserted new authority over sexual values, though religious advisors still played some role as well. Their efforts touched a nerve with a public newly concerned about health and eager as well to keep sexual behavior in check. Here was the most dramatic symptom, and one that had real consequences: a growing belief that masturbation, particularly by young people, would cause a broad range of diseases, and that unless parents and other adult authorities were vigilant against this surge, the basic health of their offspring—and especially, their male offspring—would be jeopardized.11 Doctors, in their own practices and in writings for a wider public, spearheaded the new campaign against what was called “self-abuse” or the “solitary vice,” on both sides of the Atlantic. Concern was triggered by several eighteenth-century books, including a 1760 medical text, On Onania: A Treatise upon the Disorders Produced by Masturbation, by Dr. Samuel Tissot, which asserted directly: “Frequent emissions of semen relax, weaken, dry, enervate the body and produce numerous other evils, (such) as apoplexies, lethargies, loss of sight, trembling, paralysis and all kinds of painful afflictions.” By the nineteenth century the list of disease results became even more precise, though no less far-ranging: not only blindness, but also “impotence in adulthood, epilepsy, chronic fatigue, mental illness and even premature death.” Queen Victoria’s surgeon, in an 1843 treatise, confirmed the list: “loss of appetite, indigestion, headache, vertigo, tinnitus aurium, rigors, flushings, constant clamminess of the hands, want of sleep, signs of congestion or chronic inflammation of the brain, apoplectic symptoms, palpitations of the heart, and emaciations” along with frequent “palsy and insanity.” On a more trivial but still medical level, acne was also seen as a frequent result. Doctors ventured specifics, and not just general warnings, claiming to have dealt with patients who had masturbated at age twelve or thirteen with consequences that made them resemble, in early adulthood, “less a living creature than a corpse.” Moral condemnation joined with the medical concern: Lord Acton, a leading British critic of sexual license, saw masturbation as “repulsive,” “degrading and debilitating to the child”: “When once the vile habit has become confirmed, the young libertine runs the risk of finding himself, a few years later, a debauched old man.”12 Doctors also offered remedies, from moderate to drastic. Changes in diet and increased exercise might help (along with prayer). “Let him [the patient] endeavor to think of himself as he will be one day stretched in death. If such solemn thoughts do not drive away evil imaginations, let him rise from his bed and lie on the floor.” A few patent medicines were widely advertised. For extreme cases, a “urethral ring” was available, complete with painful spikes that would constrict the penis and prevent ejaculation; or electric shocks might be administered to the genitals. In the United States several young men were committed to asylums because their parents discovered that they simply could not control themselves. And while attention focused primarily

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on boys, several dozen cliterodectomies were performed on girls who were judged to be “habitual” masturbators. There is no way to determine how widely these ideas about masturbation penetrated the public. Surely there were both individual and social class differences and surely some parents viewed all these alarums with a large grain of salt. But there is no question—as the devices and treatments suggest—that a number of people took the beliefs quite seriously, that the beliefs concerned many parents and teachers, and that, almost certainly, they also worried many young people themselves. This was a powerful culture, remnants of which would last into the twentieth century. The obvious question here centers on causation, for this was a case of considerable culture change that was also factually wrong: masturbation simply does not cause all the problems nineteenth-century doctors associated with it. In the first place, while the power of the culture, and its medical support, were new, there was some precedent in Christian morality. The Bible had warned against the sin of Onan. When sexual standards were set primarily by Christian values, adjusted through some popular modifications, there is no indication that masturbation was singled out for much serious attention— other issues, such as premarital sex and adultery, were far more important— but the nineteenth-warnings could build on prior beliefs to some extent. There was also a fascinating traditional belief that male orgasm was debilitating, equivalent to some significant (forty ounces!) loss of blood, that could support health concerns directly. These beliefs were then heightened and transformed by the growing role and professional aspirations of many doctors themselves. If people could be convinced that what was once technically a sin, was now a major health problem, the role of medical professionals would clearly be expanded. Indeed, the transfer of dominant sexual advice from priest to physician was a key development taking shape in the nineteenth century, that would clearly extend to our own time. Here is another case in which modern science helped motivate culture change—though in this case still further change would dislodge these particular scientific claims. None of this is meant to suggest that doctors were insincere, though there may have been a few selfserving charlatans. But professional self-interest could promote assertions that were less carefully tested than should have been the case. But why, finally, did many people accept this new level of cultural sensitivity? Exploration of the causes of this type of medicalization must go beyond what the professionals were claiming. Here, along with some moral precedent and growing respect for doctors’ advice, two or three elements clearly contributed. First, because of better middle-class nutrition and the contacts possible in urban life, the age of puberty began to drop, by about two months every generation from the later eighteenth century and through the nineteenth. Parents were faced with kids who were becoming sexually mature earlier than they themselves had, and this might well call for new

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control standards; it certainly generated some new confusion, leading to an openness to novel ideas. Second, the consequences of unregulated sexuality became increasingly severe, at least for respectable middle-class families. Having too many offspring jeopardized the capacity to afford appropriate education and inheritance. And at least for several decades, the only certain method of avoiding unwanted offspring was self-restraint including periods of outright sexual abstinence13—and teaching the dangers of masturbation gained new importance as a first step in this larger process. And third, traditional community controls, that had once overseen youth sexuality in the village or neighborhood, were becoming less reliable, as larger cities diluted customary adult oversight. Add to this a growing sense that some people in the irresponsible lower classes were actually increasing their sexual activity and having more illegitimate children, then the result might well support the anxious effort to make sure that one’s own offspring, at least, learned to toe the line—beginning with repression of masturbation as part of a disciplined childhood.14 Here, then, was the formula: some older worries combined with the new professional enthusiasm and aspirations of many doctors in ways that meshed with some very new and realistic anxieties for many adults, in a changing sexual environment. Culture change—the heightened preoccupation with masturbation and the very new diagnoses of extreme outcomes—was the powerful result, not just in the abstract but in the real list of problems that many people worried about. The same combination produced other cultural shifts directed against sexuality. Doctors and other publicists now commonly argued that “normal” women had little or no sexual appetite, compared to men—a decidedly untraditional view (for women had previously been seen as more likely to sin). This obviously heightened the need to belabor young males,with the masturbation warnings. It also generated extreme reactions—including medical treatments or even jail time—for those adolescent girls who displayed unseemly sexual interests. But it also produced some comfortable assumptions that most women would be able to serve as regulators of respectable sexuality, before marriage and during marriage alike. Their lack of interest would keep men in check, at least in the respectable classes. Around 1900 a French doctor, concerned that some men might risk heart attacks or other problems as a result of excessive sexuality, urged them to stick to the marriage bed, because their wives would be so unexciting and unaroused that their own impulses should be easy to control. This sexual culture, born of the link between new medical roles and some very real concerns in middle-class life, would obviously begin to fade by the twentieth century. Fresh medical and psychological research gradually shifted what doctors had to say about sexuality. New birth control devices— often, by the twentieth century, handed out in doctors’ offices; the link with a heightened medical role was preserved15—reduced the tensions for the middle class and gradually made recreational sex more feasible. Strictures

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about masturbation, and certainly the most dramatic treatments, declined by the 1930s and 1940s. Beliefs about the special role of women in regulating sex yielded more gradually. In the teenage dating patterns that began to develop in the United States by the 1920s, it was still assumed that girls were responsible for restraint, proper boys required only to stop when the girls said no.16 Some tensions around these gender patterns linger even today. In general, however, the medicalized sexual culture of the nineteenth century was a temporary, if briefly powerful, phenomenon, that would be modified by further culture change. It stands nevertheless as an intriguing example of how beliefs, medical roles, and changes in social context could combine.

Medicalization and Death: The Most Significant Culture Change The most important juncture between medicalization and new beliefs and practices centered on some fundamental redefinitions of death and the human response to death. These redefinitions took shape primarily from the later nineteenth century onward, again in response to very real alterations in social experience combined with the new power of medical advice. In this case, the results—the new beliefs and some of the problems they caused— are still very much in operation in places like the United States, and impressively resistant to a variety of criticisms. Traditional culture, at least in Western societies, had long maintained a fairly clear vision of what a “good death” should consist of, and the beliefs involved had survived well into the nineteenth century. Death could be accepted, not surprisingly, when it occurred in later age—presumably in one’s 50s or after. It would not, ideally, be a sudden occurrence: wasting away from a respiratory disease or some other debility would stretch the act of dying over several weeks, presumably without too much pain but with the opportunity to set one’s affairs in order. Family members could say their farewells; old feuds might be mended. All of this occurred, of course, in one’s home. Hospitals, traditionally, were places to which only the very poor, or others without family support, would repair—and where one was very unlikely to be cured. The good death—or, for younger adults, contemplation of the best way to die—involved a sense of leaving this life with loose ends tied up, the family context assured, and appropriate religious rites observed as well. It also offered reassurance to friends and relatives, that the dying person had been adequately supported and that grief might be moderated by the process of saying goodbye.17 The comfort of a good death was not available to everyone, of course. It was not really relevant for the many people who died very young, or as noted for the poor or lonely who passed away outside the family context.

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But the existence of the concept, and its reality at least for some, provided standards through which death might be accepted—whether the focus was the passing of a relative, one’s own decline, or an individual contemplation of death even at some earlier point in life. For the good death provided learning opportunities for children as well as adults, as part of the family experience, so the expectations involved did not need to be explicitly taught. Finally, and closely related to the good death ideal, death as a subject was widely discussed. It formed a major element in religious literature and preaching. It was openly explored in school books—even basic readers. Frequent in fact, given high child and maternal mortality rates as well as the passings of older adults, the ubiquity of death was inescapable. For many, both in Western Europe and colonial America, its omnipresence was also signaled by the location of cemeteries—next to churches or otherwise in the midst of cities and villages, where they would serve as further reminders of the inevitable.18 Good death ideals and other traditional trappings of death seem to have survived well into the nineteenth century in many respects. Certainly, no clear alternative was readily available. But signs of culture change did emerge, setting the stage for a fuller medicalization process in the decades around 1900. Cemeteries were redefined—in obvious connection to the new ideas about hygiene and contagion associated with changing standards of disgust and aversion. In some parts of Europe, old urban cemeteries were dug up and the bodies reburied far from the city centers. In the new United States, by the 1820s, a new movement called the “garden” cemetery emerged, taking advantage of the more abundant space available. Here too, burial sites were now located outside of town, meaning that this daily reminder of death was now unavailable for many. Equally interesting, however, was the new landscaping involved. Instead of stark tombstones, the ideal cemetery was now filled with trees and lawns, so that people paying respects to the departed might be comforted and reassured rather than confronted with stark reality. At least as significant, though not easy to explain, was the gradual but steady decline of death as a topic. The following chart, derived from Google data sets of published books in the United States, shows that death as a subject, compared to all other topics, began to plunge in frequency by 1810, then continuing a steady descent into the middle of the twentieth century, when it essentially stabilized. Even before any formal redefinition of death, and certainly well before modern medicine offered any particular alternatives in the treatment of serious illness, something was going on to modify traditional levels of acceptance and familiarity. Culture change, in other words, presumably derived from new ideas of progress, religious modifications, and a focus on more secular interests, may have set the stage for more dramatic redefinitions once a fuller medicalization process became available.

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FIGURE 6.1 Google Ngram chart of “death” in American English, 1800–2000, Google Books Ngram Viewer.

A more explicit reassessment of death then emerged in the early twentieth century, expanding distaste for the topic itself but adding several novel components. A number of widely read magazines in the United States trumpeted new ideas about death in the years immediately after 1900, picking up on the declining interest in the subject and now also the emergence of new medical claims. Thus the Fortnightly Review, highlighting the many scientific improvements that were available to fight disease, claimed explicitly that “death is disappearing from our thoughts . . . perhaps the most distinctive note of the modern spirit is the practical disappearance of the thoughts of death as an influence directly bearing on practical life.” Living Age similarly proclaimed that “the entire traditional atmosphere of death needed review.”19 And this review, if not by the first decade of the twentieth century at least soon thereafter for many Americans, included several fundamental redefinitions of the customary standards of the good death. First, obviously, the pattern of declining reference continued, now more openly recognized by up-to-date commentators who insisted on the folly of paying too much attention to death during life. But there was more: for increasingly, modern Americans began to prefer terms that would work around death even when the subject became inescapable. References to death were replaced by the idea of “passing” or even, for presumably sensitive children, odd circumlocutions like “Grandma is through.” Even groups devoted to dealing with some of the most serious diseases shared in the common aversion to death as a subject. Thus, later in the twentieth century, the American Cancer Society explicitly sought to distance itself from an unpleasant topic: “In no way do we wish to be associated with a book on death. We want to emphasize the positive aspects of cancer only.”20 Some observers went so far as to claim that death had become a modern taboo topic. This was probably an exaggeration. The Google chart above, for example, shows that references to death did not entirely disappear. And

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the United States (more than contemporary Western Europe, where religion declined more dramatically) maintained a lively funeral home industry that demonstrated that many families were still trying to confront death—just far less often and in many cases notably less explicitly. Good death ideas were modified, however, not just by the new patterns of partial avoidance. By the twentieth century it became clear that, for most people, suddenness was now preferred over any prolonged encounter, at least where one’s own demise was concerned. Exactly when this cultural shift occurred is not entirely clear, but there is little question that, by the later twentieth century, the idea of a good death taking place over a period of weeks or months was declining as a preference, as opposed to a hope that the end would come quickly, through a heart attack or some other unexpected, and unprepared, occurrence. The fact that the same suddenness might create greater emotional burdens for family and friends, who by definition would have no real chance to prepare, was largely downplayed in what might be seen as a further manifestation of growing individualism. Here, of course, culture change combined with other developments, again complicating any assessment of the causation involved. Respiratory disease— the setting for earlier notions of a good death—was increasingly tamed by improvements in medicine, most obviously in the growing availability of antibiotics. This meant in turn that lingering deaths were increasingly associated with degenerative illnesses like cancer, that threatened greater possibilities of pain or promoted therapies that would make a traditional good death process less feasible. Most fundamentally, the new approach to death centered on combat rather than acceptance—the core result of growing reliance on a medical model. Death fighting took over. For many decades, by the middle of the twentieth century, medical practitioners—nurses as well as doctors— preferred to conceal impending death from both relatives and the individual involved, because death seemed to represent professional failure. And even when this approach was modified, medical personnel and many relatives themselves continued to insist that every medical remedy be attempted, that death be put off as long as possible because its finality now seemed so unacceptable. By the early twenty-first century it was estimated that over 40 per cent of all the rapidly rising medical expenses in the United States were being applied to people, often in later age, suffering from an essentially terminal illness but surrounded by professionals and family members who simply refused to give up. Here was the most dramatic reversal from the older good death ideal. The medicalization process encouraged a growing potential for guilt when death loomed, displacing earlier impulses to figure out how best to come to terms with the inevitable. The key question shifted from accommodating death to asking if enough was being done to fight it.21 The contemporary culture of death, as it had emerged by the later twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, fed into a host of additional changes. The location of most death changed, from home to hospital—because this was

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where death could most clearly be resisted. The apparatus of mourning declined: special black armbands and other demarcations largely disappeared, and family members were increasingly expected to get on with their normal lives as quickly as possible. The rise of cremation, though more rapid in Europe than in the United States, further altered traditional rituals. All of this obviously reflected the complex mixture of new beliefs and new objective realities. Death did become less likely before later age, thanks in part to improved medical treatments—pharmaceuticals particularly, but also more effective surgeries. Death-fighting priorities were up to a point quite realistic, and not just a matter of cultural preference. Reduced attention to death similarly followed from fundamental shifts in mortality patterns— particularly the dramatic decline of death among infants, as well as from new values that highlighted other aspects of human existence. At the same time, the new culture spilled over into other aspects of modern life. Modern Western values made loss of life in war less acceptable. During the wars in Korea (1950s) and Vietnam (1960s) American media began to report on military casualties in new ways, highlighting the grief of the families involved and offering ever more details about the personalities of the fallen. Improvements in military technology and medical care alike did dramatically reduce the number of casualties on the American side, by the time of the extensive engagements in the Middle East, in part because of the need to accommodate the new public sensitivities.22 Modern death culture continued to incorporate or revive some traditional elements—despite the emphasis on change, elements of syncretism were significant as well. Thus for many people, particularly in the United States, religious services continued to play a role in reactions to death, if only when death fighting had failed. The rise of the hospice movement in the 1960s and 1970s, initially in Britain but soon in the United States as well, introduced new ways to recapture elements of the older good death ideal. Hospices emphasized acceptance of death’s inevitability, at a point when reasonable medical treatments were no longer relevant. They tried to facilitate death in the home, rather than in institutions, and made every effort to involve family members even in institutional settings. The goal, along with controlling pain, was to promote a humane farewell, for everyone involved in the death process. The hospice approach did not predominate (which was revealing in itself), but it did gain ground (particularly in cases of cancer or stroke) and suggested an imaginative reintroduction of earlier values.23 Nevertheless, modern death culture, in places like the United States, is a fundamentally new phenomenon, and its ascent has been marked by several equally novel problems. Changes in beliefs have accompanied major medical successes; they have proved compatible with elements of more traditional values. But they have also generated two or three troubling issues that remain stubbornly difficult to address. First, as attention to death has declined, in favor of other interests and some confidence in medical remedies, many individuals pay insufficient attention to

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their own mortality. They put off making wills, for example, despite the burdens this may place on relatives when death does occur. They do not specify whether they want to avoid the most extensive medical prolongations of life. When death does finally become imminent, it catches them unaware. Second, a gap has opened between the kind of death many people say they want, and what they actually encounter. Many people, when asked, express death goals that clearly touch base with older values (aside from the new preference for suddenness): thus they talk about “relationships and belonging” and “being human” But in hospital settings, surrounded by anxious relatives, they often lose control over the dying process—even when they have signed legal documents, “living wills,” that specify their desire to avoid meaningless prolongations of life. Eager hospitals and doctors, anxious to avoid any accusations of negligence, and anxious family members press for additional medical measures, and the individual—dangerously ill or badly injured—is powerless to resist, dying as a result after days or weeks of meaningless existence, in a hospital setting surrounded by strangers and intimidating technologies, subjected to intrusive medical tests that ultimately confirm the inevitable. Add to this the often considerable expense involved, for families or society at large, and it is not hard to paint a negative picture of modern death culture. As a recent Medicare report suggested, rather drily: “a significant number of people suffer needless suffering and distress at the end of life”—but it has proved difficult (even politically difficult) to contemplate systematic alternatives. Some observers have gone farther still, to argue that modern societies, bent on fighting death, have become dangerously superficial, incapable of dealing with some of the deeper meanings of life which must incorporate a recognition of suffering. Whatever the reaction to this evaluation, it has been clear for some time that modern values—the results of culture change in this vital arena— have complicated some basic human responses. In many contemporary settings, individuals who suffer deeply from the death of a loved one have needed to seek psychological help (another medical response in fact) or have joined groups of strangers whose only bond is a common experience of loss but who seek to comfort each other amid the unconcern of society at large. Modern death culture, taking shape now for over a century, clearly has its casualties.

OUTSIDE THE WESTERN CONTEXT: MEDICALIZATION IN TAIWAN

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he medicalization of culture undoubtedly developed earlier in Western societies than in other regions, and its results have been widely studied. But adjustments to Western medicine have been part of world history for a century and a half as well, opening yet another category for

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cultural analysis. Predictably—given what we know about culture change and culture contact more generally—the results have overlapped with Western patterns but with different forms of continuity and syncretism. Taiwan offers one example of this process that has been particularly well studied. Western medicine reached the island in the 1860s, as part of British and American missionary outreach. By the later nineteenth century a growing number of Western-trained doctors were available. Under Japanese rule (from the mid-1890s to the end of World War II ), Western standards, for medicine but also for public health measures, were even more widely applied.24 But Taiwan also had two other approaches to health concerns. One involved trained practitioners in the Confucian tradition, offering different patterns of diagnosis and treatment based on beliefs in the need to maintain or restore balance in the body. A second centered on more popular folk medicine, where all sorts of practitioners claimed space (with no established professional standards): herbalists, drug peddlers, midwives, massage experts, magicians, and individuals offering a religious blend of Buddhist and Taoist treatments. By the 1970s Western-style doctors (trained now at some very prestigious regional universities) outnumbered the traditional professionals about six to one, and only they received support from the government. But the Chinese traditions persisted strongly, and folk medicine had even more advocates than the two professional approaches combined. The predictable result was that most Taiwanese themselves informally combined approaches, in ways that were different from the more fully medicalized patterns in the West. When sick, they would first turn to home remedies and family advice, but if this did not suffice they would then reach out to an available folk healer, resorting only after that to one (or both) of the professional strands available. No single cultural choice was involved, but an ongoing preference for blending. Social class factors played a role as well, with middle-class families opting more decisively for Western-style treatment, the lower classes insisting on the more inclusive approach. Women and the elderly were more likely to find a traditional approach relevant, in part because practitioners tended to confirm popular ideas of what a disease involved in contrast to invocations of modern science: but choices were not hard and fast. Another distinction involved acute illness—where the turn to a Western-style doctor was most pronounced—over chronic problems where Chinese or folk traditions seemed more appropriate. Psychiatric disorders, finally, drew still other responses: the preference for Chinese or folk traditions was clear in this category, but the Taiwanese cultural context also translated psychiatric problems more commonly into manifestations of physical illness than was true in the West, and this could make more formal medical approaches seem more relevant.

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Overall culture change, in other words, included space for older options in the Taiwanese case, creating a range of choices and individual decisions that overlapped incompletely with Western patterns. The results were compatible with steadily improving levels of health throughout the increasingly prosperous island. At the same time they suggest a complexity in recent cultural medicalization that can readily be pursued in other global examples.

Culture Change and the Battle Against Fat In the last two decades of the nineteenth century another new cultural/ medical issue arose: the emergence of a new body imagery that emphasized slenderness. And, like the broader process of medicalization to which it was linked, the new values that resulted have become a durable part of modern life—with yet another set of problems attached. The basic context arguably had nothing to do with culture. The fact was that, thanks to more productive agriculture, to better transportation and distribution systems that assured more reliable access to foods, and to new kinds of commercial companies eager to encourage novel food purchases (for example, the Nabisco company and its promotion of cookies and other snacks in the United States from the 1880s onward), the traditional problems associated with eating were, for many people, being transformed. Tradition: people who simply did not have access to enough food, and who suffered from hunger or malnutrition. Innovation: a growing problem of an overabundance of food. Add to this, again by the end of the nineteenth century, increasingly sedentary work and schooling, and new urban transportation that reduced the need to walk, and the transformations were further extended. Not to put too fine a point on it: it became increasingly possible to get fat. Several caveats are vital. Some groups would still suffer from inadequacy—a problem even today, in the United States and many other developed economies—and this could also complicate recognition of the new problem of excess. Traditional societies, though primarily focused on countering hunger, had already generated some cultural values that would hold up the very obese for criticism and ridicule. Gluttony, for example, had long been attacked as sinful. Popular caricatures and medical criticism of what, today, we would call the severely obese go well back in Western (and other) history, so culture change had some precedents to build upon. Nevertheless, fundamental aspects of the situation around 1900 were new, and significant attempts to alter traditional culture—around eating habits and body imagery—began to emerge in consequence. But the changes were complicated, often somewhat indirect, and the results would, by many

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measures, prove inadequate—not only at the time, but to the present day. Culture change was real, but it encountered both traditions and stubborn modern realities, and might well fall short—or generate some additional complications. Scientific research on foods and the body accelerated in the later nineteenth century, though primarily in Europe rather than the United States. Calculations of calories and other measurements improved. At the same time, insurance companies—purchases of life as well as burial insurance policies were increasing—began to develop actuarial tables that indicated clearly that slimmer people had superior life expectancies.25 None of this, however, seems to have had an immediate or explicit impact on popular culture; outright medicalization would enter into this aspect of health somewhat more gradually, which adds another layer of complexity to the overall assessment of culture change. The initial entry point for culture change involved fashion and body imagery, rather than health directly—but here the transformation was very real, and widely perceived. Prior to the nineteenth century, concern about systematically losing or controlling weight was rare—except for small groups of people inspired by extreme views of Christianity to fast to excess. It was only around 1800 that, in English, the word “diet” took on its modern meaning of regulating intake in order to lose weight. Even then, despite some fashion recommendations aimed at encouraging slenderness in young women, a certain degree of plumpness continued to be regarded as a sign of prosperity and good health (reasonable enough, in societies in which many people were still struggling to acquire enough food). Even in the early twentieth century, newspapers carried as many advertisements for systems aimed at gaining weight as for diet products, though the latter were gaining ground by this point. Among women, leaders like Elizabeth Cady Stanton, described as “plump as a partridge,” were praised for their matronly good looks, linked to successful motherhood. A noted American doctor, S. Weir Mitchell, summed up the common wisdom: “a fat bank account tends to make a fat man”; “plumpness, roundness, size . . . are rightly believed to indicate well-balanced health.” A visiting European actress was criticized for excessive slenderness—lacking “roundness of limb.” And in many parts of the United States, Fat Men’s Clubs arose as a popular designation for a social circle—not because outright obesity was popular, but because a certain amount of weight suggested a sound value system.26 This all began to change by the 1890s—perhaps a bit earlier in Western Europe where diet books began to win popularity from the 1860s onward. At least at some levels, the shift was dramatic. Fat Men’s Clubs all closed soon after 1900, because the term now suggested inappropriate body imagery and a lack of self-control. Beginning in 1895 a popular American magazine began featuring the so-called Gibson Girl, a noticeably slender fashion model, with long arms and legs and an air of athleticism. A

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fascinating debate broke out, first in France and then in the United States, about women’s use of corsets to restrain often ample bellies. The results were inconclusive, but the idea of controlling one’s body toward thinness, without artificial assistance, gained ground.27 By the 1920s new clothing styles, revealing more of the body, along with an early interest in still-modest swimming suits, placed even greater premium on eating control or weight loss. Diet and exercise columns and programs gained growing attention, and while fashion was the leading theme, the favorable implications for health also began to be noted: “Every pound of fat that is not needed for some purpose is a burden and should be disposed of as soon as possible.” New, insulting terms for overweight entered the scene, from the 1860s onward: butterball, jumbo, fatso and most persistently of all, “slob,” which was imported from Britain. After World War I the term “broad,” applied to women, also gained ground. The trend was clear: by 1914 a leading American magazine could proclaim, doubtless with some exaggeration, “Fat is now regarded as an indiscretion, as almost as a crime.” The culture change involved here—the fairly rapid shift in dominant images of what a proper body should look like—raises some standard questions. Causation is one, and it is not easily addressed. The new fashion advice emerged in societies that were facing new levels of food abundance and declining physical exertion, so a link to larger developments is feasible— but it is not entirely clear how or why style leaders made this connection. Doctors would pick up the signals, but they did not initially take the lead in change, and some, well into the twentieth century, actually resented patients who asked for diet advice—viewing them as frivolous fashion-seekers— while also continuing to think that a certain degree of plumpness was a sign of health (particularly in children). Diet prompts would become part of the larger pattern of medicalization as the twentieth century wore on, but independent style concerns continued to play a key role. Profit, finally, was a clear motive for some of the new prompts: from the nineteenth century onward self-styled experts, including some physicians, could make big money selling diet fads of various sorts. But while this factor clearly operated, it does not fully explain why so many people began to buy into the new approach, why such a lucrative market developed. Again, initial causation remains somewhat elusive. The results of the new cultural standards were predictably complex, another standard feature when significant efforts at change gain ground. Gender differences entered in, though arguably some feminist critics may have exaggerated them.28 Women were the subject of greater scrutiny and pressure than men, a discrimination further bolstered by the growing popularity of beauty pageants and movie stars; and some have argued that the more demanding beauty standards constituted a repressive response to women’s growing rights in other domains. Social class (and in some cases, related ethnicities) turned out to be hugely important: middle-class people picked up the standards far more eagerly than their working-class or rural

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counterparts. This was true both in Europe and the United States and led to some durable differences in weight patterns into the twenty-first century. Different groups, in other words, assimilated the new cultural signals in varying ways, with older body styles and eating preferences persisting strongly in some cases—again, a common kind of complication in culture change. On the other hand, the new standards had very real impact—this was not a case of interesting but ultimately insignificant shifts in taste. Doctors, as they realized the importance of weight control in now-affluent societies, increasingly sought to intervene in their patients’ eating and exercise habits, an important extension of medicalization overall. Many people began to weigh themselves regularly, or at least periodically, for the first time in history. Scales had gradually become a standard feature in hospitals and doctors’ offices in the later nineteenth century, but now home scales won popularity as well. For a time, coin-operated scales were available in stores as well—another sign of a new cultural priority. Employers, at least after World War II , began to discriminate against overweight people, particularly in appearance-conscious job sectors such as the airline industry, when recruiting flight attendants, for example. In the United States, employment rights laws sought to limit this practice by the 1980s, but informal prejudice unquestionably persisted. For being overweight was increasingly regarded not simply as unhealthy and unattractive, but a sign of moral failure—perhaps particularly in the United States. From the early twentieth century, but intensely from the 1950s onward, fat became a signal of personal inadequacy. Commentary both in popular magazines and medical outlets drove the point home: fat people are “lazy and undisciplined.” “Psychiatrists have exposed the fat person for what she really is—miserable, self-indulgent and lacking in selfcontrol.” The new standards reached into politics: whereas in the nineteenth and early twentieth century a number of successful politicians were quite heavy, increasingly most successful candidates projected fitness and slenderness.29 In the eyes of some, overweight people were being stigmatized—illustrating how culture change can create new prejudices as well as attack older ones (see Chapter 9). Finally, again as part of ongoing medicalization, standards of acceptable weight tended to become more rigorous over time. Medical research steadily pressed for more demanding criteria in the interests of health. Fashion models, with rare exceptions, became progressively more slender, in some cases almost emaciated. Culture change, in other words, not only persisted but intensified—at least in principle. But this, however, leads to a final complexity: in some very real respects, this aspect of health-related culture change did not produce the desired results, particularly in the United States but ultimately in many other parts of the world as well. The new cultural standards could not fully counter other crucial components of modern life, beginning with the steady increases

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in the availability of foods and the declining need for physical activity. By the later twentieth century, larger portion sizes (in restaurants and grocery stores), more tempting opportunities for snacks, pressures to eat rapidly (the fast food craze), even the surging popularity of rich coffee drinks all tended to push average weight up, from childhood onward, and to create a related increase in rates of outright obesity. The contrast with the more effective reevaluation of smoking—another culture change that resulted from acceptance of scientific findings but with less overall resistance—is striking.30 This does not mean that the culture change around weight and body imagery had become irrelevant. Some individuals took the new guidelines, toward controlled eating and regular exercise, both seriously and effectively— overall weight gains should not obscure the successful exceptions, particularly in some social groups. Prejudice against the overweight continued: it was early in the twenty-first century, for example, that a graduate director at a major US university insisted that fat students simply not apply, for they were clearly incapable of appropriate self-control. The new standards prompted growing concern and self-doubt from many people who had assimilated the cultural signals but had not managed to achieve the bodies they sought. Large numbers of white adolescent girls in

FIGURE 6.2 “Join the Fat and Free Society.” Author: Toni Ungerer, 1967. Source: Library of Congress.

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the United States, for example, expressed serious disappointment in their own appearance—an interesting and arguably troubling development. Even more widely, the relevance of the culture of slenderness showed in the massive number of people—over 60 per cent in one late-twentieth-century United States survey—who proclaimed that they were on a diet, had just finished one, or were about to embark. The tension between accepted culture and actual body patterns was undeniable, but there was no question that the culture itself had impact—if mainly to create new sources of personal guilt.31 The modern culture of slenderness thus presents a fascinating, and significant, illustration of the power but also the limits of new values when juxtaposed with other factors in modern life. The interactions are ongoing. Debates over ways to reconcile desirable norms with actual behavior continue. Would it be better, for example, to insist on less rigorous weightcontrol patterns in the interest of more realistic response? Is the medical/ fashion culture driving some people away because it is too demanding? Should relevant cultural leaders—and can relevant culture leaders—reduce the moral inadequacy component in their presentations, so that they will drive fewer people into a frenzy of eating out of sheer guilt and self-blame? (This is an argument some European authorities have developed against the American tendency to moralize.) Or: must we give up on culture by itself, and introduce greater compulsion, by banning certain types of food (limiting the size of soft drinks by law, for example)? Again, the debate continues, given the power and, perhaps, the health significance of cultural trends that are now more than a century old, but which have not managed to overcome some serious limitations in practice.32

More Recent Trends: The Ongoing Process of Cultural Medicalization In Western societies, many of the key changes associated with cultural medicalization took shape in the nineteenth century. In most instances the resultant trends continue to affect modern life, though the distinctive sexual culture of the nineteenth century is an obvious exception. The process of medicalization continued in the twentieth century however, probably particularly in the psychological domain. Without pretending a full survey— again, cultural medicalization offers a host of opportunities for further analysis—two examples will suggest the ongoing process involved.

ADHD By the end of the twentieth century, the disease known as Attention Deficit/ Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD ) had become the most significant

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psychological disorder among American children—primarily boys. Elements of this disorder had been discussed informally in the nineteenth century, with some scientific research between the wars, but the full definition awaited the 1950s (when a new drug, Ritalin, became available for treatment) and the 1970s, when the disease label itself was finally determined. The focus centered on children who could not hold still in school, or showed other signs of moderately disruptive behavior. Once identified, the disease soared rapidly in popularity: estimates in 1980 that 3 per cent of all American children suffered rose to 5 per cent in the 1990s, and in the early twenty-first century some authorities contended that up to 20 per cent of all boys would merit the designation at some point in grade school or high school. Here was a culture change—a shift in medical evaluation—that became something of a fad, both professionally and among the public at large.33 At one level, improving capacity to diagnose and treat would seem to be a story of scientific development alone. But several aspects of the phenomenon suggested strong cultural issues as well. Point one centered on an obvious historical question: what had the predecessors of the current disordered kids been doing before the drug and the label were available? Was this clearly a new disease, or more a new set of standards being applied to behaviors that had previously been seen as annoying but tolerable? Point two: why was the United States so riveted on the problem? While diagnoses of ADHD increased rapidly elsewhere, as in Britain after 2000, American preoccupation was clearly distinctive, with a clearly disproportionate share of the worldwide use of Ritalin. Point three, though more speculative: as the use of Ritalin and other drugs accelerated, a growing number of observers, from ordinary parents through medical experts, became genuinely alarmed at the extent to which American children were being subjected to pharmaceutical controls, with obvious opportunities for abuse. Could the whole explosion of this problem be more cultural than medical? By 2017 a number of authorities, though still in a minority, were in fact labeling ADHD as a purely cultural phenomenon—and a dangerous one—and not a disease at all. Some elements were clear enough. Manufacturers of Ritalin pushed their product hard, which in turn helped explain growing diagnosis and use— particularly in the home base, the United States. Once a disease category was accepted—as with hysterical paralysis in the nineteenth century—more and more physicians discovered its incidence and more and more teachers and parents found the label applicable. (Kids themselves, of course, had no real voice in the matter—the new standards were simply applied to them.) The familiar culture change pattern applied: a new label will increase apparent incidence of the medical problem, raising the obvious question of whether some of the findings were inflated or whether a whole host of previously neglected symptoms were now at last being properly identified. Add to this, in the ADHD case, the convenience of using a drug to resolve a behavior pattern that might otherwise require more adult attention, and a

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certain amount of cultural causation seemed highly probable. A behavior was being “medicalized” in ways that struck a chord in the wider public. Moreover, other elements were at least plausible. Many teachers were increasingly hemmed in by strict rules about punishing disruptive students— which made a disease finding, with ensuing treatment, increasingly attractive. Trends in American parental culture for several decades before the 1970s had pinpointed inadequate mothers as responsible for boys’ bad behavior, while also raising the stakes in evaluating the behavior itself amid concerns about youth delinquency and disorder. One scholar has suggested that, in this cultural climate and at a time when a growing number of mothers were entering the labor force and facing new demands on their time as parents, acceptance of the ADHD diagnosis was particularly attractive. The problem was not the fault of mothers; it was an illness and it could be treated. And all this occurred in a context in which some awareness of brain function and psychological disorder was gaining traction in popular consciousness, and in which (for many parents) the importance of good school performance was rising as well.34 Definitive conclusions are risky. The rise of ADHD undoubtedly represents some combination of “real” medical issues and significant culture changes in the wider framework of cultural medicalization more generally. Almost certainly as well: in the United States at least the diagnosis has become excessive, leading to far too much drug use for boys in particular. Further consideration of the cultural components of the phenomenon is essential to help orient a more cautious medical approach. Stay tuned.

PTSD A second instance of recent medicalization is equally intriguing, though arguably less problematic. Over the past century, but particularly in recent decades, the psychological damage many military personnel experience in war has been progressively more widely recognized and accepted, and transformed—both in medical practice and in popular culture—from cowardice to disease.35 What is now called Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD, undoubtedly goes far back in human history—it is primarily associated with military battle but is linked to many other kinds of trauma as well. But while some diagnosis is suggested as early as in classical Greece, the clear identification of the condition is surprisingly recent, making it very difficult to determine how widespread the problem was in earlier historical periods. Late in the seventeenth century, European physicians began to identify what they called “nostalgia,” seeing it as a severe problem particularly among soldiers serving away from home, potentially leading to suicide or death. Diagnosis improved in the eighteenth century, but then the category was progressively discarded in the nineteenth century, at which point

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nostalgia began to take on its more modern—and less acute—meanings.36 During the American Civil War psychological stress was identified, but the problem remained complicated by widespread injunctions of courage; the boundary line between cowardice and disorder was shaky at best. In 1905 the Russian army noted a medical condition called “battle shock,” and shell shock came to be more widely regarded as a legitimate category during World War I—with pleas for more explicit medical treatment. During World War II the terminology changed yet again, to “combat fatigue”—the changing labels were symptomatic of a still-uncertain cultural approach, and the use of the term “fatigue” suggested a hope that the problem was less acute than would later be realized. The US army officially adopted the slogan, “every man has his breaking point,” suggesting a new level of official concern; but a leading general, George Patton, struck two suffering soldiers in a military hospital in 1943, accusing them of cowardice (for which he was dismissed). Efforts at formal medical treatment improved, and in 1952 the American Psychiatric Association (APA ) recognized a condition called “Gross Stress Reaction”—but the category was rescinded just six years later. The Vietnam War in the 1960s generated far more frequent diagnoses of psychological reactions to combat, bringing the problem to wider popular attention through newspaper articles as well as through more formal medical literature. Then finally, in 1980, the APA settled on the concept of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, which in turn began to receive still wider cultural acceptance as an inevitable, if individually varied, outcome not only of military action but of other traumatic events such as rape. Levels of reported PTSD accelerated remarkably during the early twenty-first century conflict in the Middle East, even among personnel not involved in direct combat, suggesting at least how higher incidence so often accompanies acceptance of a new disease category.37 Here, then, is a prolonged process of medicalization, with a number of detours in terminology and acceptability alike. Many would add, even by the twenty-first century, that the process remains incomplete: while the diagnosis is widely accepted, even expected, investments in treatment, for example for returning veterans from the Middle East, have not kept pace with the symptoms. An even more obvious problem, and one that began to be addressed systematically only in 2014, involved US military personnel whose traumatic disorder caused disruptive behavior that led to a less-thanhonorable discharge; and then the discharge in turn usually prevented access to federally funded treatment. The new disease category, in other words, was accepted only after a personnel procedure had occurred, rather than across the board. Displays of anger or outright suicidal impulses, if they occurred before formal severance, might thus generate punishment rather than treatment, even when they were probably prompted by yet-undiagnosed PTSD —affecting, according to one estimate, as many as 20 per cent of all American service personnel involved in the Iraq war. Here too, the full implications of culture change have yet to be uniformly implemented, as

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against older notions of bad behavior—in part because, if fully accepted according to current definitions, it would be massively expensive, with as many as 300,000 current veterans in the United States suffering to some extent. But lingering disagreements about whether the ailment is entirely honorable continue to condition reactions as well. And while the change in evaluations has at least brought some recognition of the need for help, and presumably fewer accusation of cowardice or lack of manliness, the new approach harbors its own unforeseen problems. Many recent veterans report that civilians now over-anticipate the possibility of psychological reactions, not intending harm but in fact reflecting a new kind of aversion that can, among other things, complicate the access to jobs after military service. Other questions linger around the cultural evolution of PTSD : is the problem getting worse with each modern war (and if so why), or is increased incidence simply a matter of improved diagnosis? Why are American rates of PTSD overall about 60 per cent higher than global rates—is it a question of greater military involvement or are some other distinctive cultural sensitivities involved? Identification and full recognition of PTSD are very recent developments, and invitations for further analysis—conjoining cultural, medical, and policy approaches—are wide open in what has become an important example of culture (and professional) change.

Conclusion: The Several Sides of Cultural Medicalization Interactions among modern medicine and its advocates and practitioners, popular culture, and actual health practices have formed an important source of change over the past two centuries, in Western societies and increasingly around the world. A desire for better health and in some cases the need to deal with new health threats have combined with a growing belief in scientific medicine—a belief encouraged by medical practitioners themselves. A variety of cultural changes have resulted, in several different domains. But the patterns involved are almost always more complicated than a simple process of new science generating cultural adjustment. Even the rise of attacks on smoking—perhaps the clearest case of when research finally persuaded most people to change habits and evaluations—includes nonmedical factors, ranging from industry resistance to the American delight in making undesirable behaviors moral issues. Science itself, as we have seen, depends heavily on other aspects of the cultural and social environment, which among other things helps account for periodic changes in direction on the part of medical experts themselves. The results of cultural medicalization have ranged widely, in a process that is ongoing in many ways. Some initiatives simply proved wrongheaded,

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though they made sense in the social context of the time. Others, most notably in the weight-control category, have struggled against countervailing factors. Still others, as with the redefinitions of the good death, combine clear success with the creation of some unexpected problems as by-products, yielding initiatives that seek to recapture some traditional elements in updated form. New diseases, whether ADHD or the striking recent increase in autism, raise recurrent questions about how cultural expectations are interacting with other developments. Whatever the precise pattern, the power of new concepts and expectations in the health domain have altered popular beliefs and values in many ways, forming an important category of culture change. The examples presented in this chapter only scratch the surface of a very complex phenomenon. International cases, as with Taiwan, suggest some additional complexity, but some of the same diversity can be teased out in domestic patterns as well. People in different groups, not only in Taiwan but in the United States, accept different proportions of the reigning medical models, different combinations with more traditional or alternative practices. Pushbacks, against the dominant medical approach, deserve attention as well. Currently in the United States and elsewhere an interesting minority of families seek to reject dominant medical advice about inoculations for children, because of their belief that the shots may cause autism (unquestionably, a growing problem in its own right). Most doctors firmly disagree, but the cultural current is strong enough that, in some areas, children’s resistance to common diseases such as measles has been compromised.38 The growing role of doctors or related popularizers in shaping relevant aspects of culture remains an obvious finding, despite complexities in Western societies and in other world regions: cultural medicalization is a real phenomenon, reaching not only into health practices but into definitions of beauty and even the experience of disgust. Change, however, has typically been gradual as well as uneven. The causes involved are not always straightforward, as the role of fashion in reshaping body imagery suggests. And the interactions are ongoing. The need to reconsider cultural approaches in dealing with obesity—or even in defining the key problems involved—is obvious. But modern societies will be facing other predictable issues in the medical–cultural relationship, for example the inevitable increase of the elderly in the populations of the near future, and what changes this may promote in attitudes toward health and toward death. The need to understand the impacts of medicalization on culture, but also to anticipate the need for additional cultural initiatives will extend well into the twentyfirst century. In the Introduction to this collection we noted the importance of a better understanding of culture change and its management in dealing with environmental issues; the same injunction applies to probable health challenges as well, where culture along with science will define the likelihood of successful response.

7 Emotion, the Family, and Culture Change A More Personal Scale

All societies, and many groups and organizations within societies, develop a culture around emotions—a set of what one sociologist has called “feeling rules” that are meant to guide individuals in evaluating and expressing emotions.1 These cultural standards interact with basic physiological and psychological responses in generating actual emotional experience and the social rules that grow up around this experience. Students of emotion debate the balance between intrinsic or “natural” reactions, that form a common element among human beings, and the impact of “cultural construction”— the extent to which different beliefs and values shape distinctive emotional responses. While it is important not to forget the natural or human-universal components, it turns out that cultural shaping plays a significant and sometimes decisive role in defining how particular groups express and evaluate emotions.2 Not surprisingly, emotional cultures can vary considerably from one society to the next. This variation, and the comparisons that result, have fueled many anthropological studies over the past century and have generated important findings about the range of emotional priorities human beings can create. Also unsurprisingly—though this discovery is effectively more recent—emotional cultures can also change considerably over time. We have already encountered some examples of emotional change in dealing with organizations, in Chapter 5. In what follows, we turn to a number of important shifts in emotional standards, opening yet another domain for assessing cultural changes—changes that in this case reach deeply into individual and family life. Interest in changing emotional standards, and the causes and consequences of these shifts, is one of the more significant products of the “cultural turn” in historical and sociological research since the 1980s.3 A number of research 143

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centers have emerged, particularly in Europe and Australia, while specific studies of changes and continuities in emotional beliefs and values have surged, around emotions as varied as fear and nostalgia. But efforts to probe emotions history face some particular challenges. Emotional rules change, but most scholars agree there are also some inherent features of emotion that must also be considered. And while enthusiasm for emotions history has mounted, the discipline that dominates emotions research—psychology—has yet to open widely to a focus on change, preferring instead to center on some of the more standard features of the human experience such as the facial expressions that accompany key emotions. Most important, analysis of emotions history almost always encounters limitations in the available evidence, particularly about “real” emotional experience in the past, that complicate any sweeping conclusions about the nature and impact of change. This chapter begins with a few quick illustrations of significant shifts in emotional culture, suggesting both the power of this particular facet of culture change but also some of the key questions that emerge. We then turn to a more sweeping and systematic exploration of changes and continuities in the emotional cultures that surround family life, first in the modern Western experience and then in some comparative settings where regional values and beliefs combine with other factors including the influence of modern global standards. Transformations in the cultural framework for emotional life bring the power of culture change into deeply personal realms, affecting many of the key relationships that inform daily life. In this sense, they relate closely to many of the changes in medical culture explored in the previous chapter—as in pushing into private behaviors and even the evaluation of the physical senses. There are wider implications as well, for example in legal norms, as societies work to incorporate new beliefs about how emotions should be expressed or restrained. As with all the main manifestations of culture change, the process is ongoing, as societies today continue to adjust emotional standards to additional developments. Debate over the emotional impact of social media—in allowing new kinds of emotional contact among distant acquaintances but also in facilitating emotional bullying and vituperation— is just another manifestation, though an important one, of the power of change in this aspect of the human experience.

Illustrating Changes in Emotional Culture Research on the cultural standards that help shape emotion can follow essentially the same template applicable to other explorations of culture change: it is important to specify the culture that prevailed before change set in, while identifying the timing of any shift; after the change itself is identified, analysis can turn to issues of causation and continuity; and finally, the larger significance of the change can be sketched. Predictably, many key shifts in

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emotional culture take shape over several decades, sometimes with several identifiable phases in the overall transformation.

Jealousy At some levels at least, cultural signals surrounding jealousy changed dramatically in the United States between the later nineteenth century and the mid-twentieth, and some of the new cultural framework seems to have persisted since that point. Two illustrations capture the direction of change. In the nineteenth century, it was possible for a man—assuming he had sufficient money to afford effective legal representation—to argue in court that jealousy was a legitimate excuse for murder, when the victim was an adulterous wife, her lover, or both. Several dramatic trials and verdicts vindicated this defense, around claims that jealousy was an unavoidable response to the unfaithfulness of a wife and that the power of the emotion could overwhelm normal rationality.4 It was of course noteworthy that wives could not use the same argument, given prevailing beliefs that male passion was harder to control than female so that husbands could not be held to quite the same standards. But the key point was the fact that by the 1920s, just a few decades later, this kind of argument about jealousy as an excuse for murder was being uniformly rejected by American courts. Whatever the power of emotion, judges now ruled, it was incumbent upon men to maintain restraint—just as women were supposed to do. Around the same time, concern about jealousy among children was beginning to reach unprecedented levels, around the phenomenon psychologists and social workers now labeled “sibling rivalry.” Parenting manuals began to urge the importance of controlling what was now seen as a dangerous but unfortunately inevitable manifestation of jealousy among brothers and sisters, for two reasons. First, the emotion might cause violence among children themselves, particularly when a toddler confronted the arrival of a newborn sibling. And second, if untended childish jealousy could produce an immature adult, incapable of constructive relationships either in marriage or in the workplace. Jealousy could be effectively countered, but only if parents were alert to the problems involved.5 An aspect of emotional culture was shifting, in other words, in two ways: first, the problem of jealousy simply required a degree of explicit attention that had not been seen as necessary in the nineteenth century. And second, an emotion that had previously been regarded as trivial or even moderately useful, for example in encouraging marital fidelity, was now vigorously and explicitly disapproved. Causes of the change are not entirely clear. The rise of psychological expertise, bent on generating new definitions of emotional maturity, played a role; so, quite possibly, did a lower birth rate and a decline of a live-in

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maid of all work, which increased the direct interactions between parents and children in middle-class households. Growing social contacts between males and females, from schooling and adolescent dating onward, made greater control of jealousy almost imperative, compared to the wider gender separation that had prevailed during the nineteenth century. And the change had consequences, both in personal evaluations and, of course, in legal norms. Polls from the 1930s onward showed that an increasing number of Americans, from teenagers on up, were eager to claim that they were immune to jealousy, that they recognized the emotion as a sign of immaturity. The effects endured, as a 1990s study found Americans (compared to the French or the Dutch) particularly anxious to conceal any jealousy that they felt in fact, in the face of friends and acquaintances—an approach that had been far less necessary a century before.6 American jealousy, quite simply, had changed in a number of respects, from law to personal self-evaluation.

Boredom One of the most intriguing indices of change in emotional culture involves the arrival and then growing acceptance of a new vocabulary, that almost certainly reveals a point at which emotional needs and standards are being redefined. This is the case with a concept that by the later twentieth/early twenty-first centuries would become a vital means of conveying at least a mildly unsatisfactory emotional state: the idea of boredom. Words for boring and boredom originated, in English, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries respectively.7 They strongly suggested the emergence of a new awareness that an individual was not, for the moment, being adequately served by his environment or his companions or was not utilizing them effectively. The level of stimulation that should normally be expected was simply absent. The new words—and we do not know their specific sources—caught on haltingly, but became increasingly standard fare by the later nineteenth century. Something was changing in the relevant emotional domain, though as we will see the initial deployment of the concept would also shift over time. The increasing effort to find a word to express inadequate engagement raises fascinating questions about what emotional situation the concept replaced—about the baseline for this particular change. What did people do, how did they feel or express themselves, before the idea of boredom was explicitly available? There are, to be sure, descriptions of what we would call boring situations in earlier literature: there is one, for example, in a poem by the Latin writer Horace, but with no word attached, so it is hard to figure out what the components of the individual reactions were. The French word ennui is older than boredom, but it does not really describe the same condition. It is quite possible that many individuals, before the late eighteenth

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century, had a greater capacity to turn off their senses, to endure the lack of stimulus passively, without the need for a term that would suggest that something was missing. Among other things, napping or dozing off was undoubtedly more common than would be the case later on. And, at least in seventeenth-century England and North America, a pervasive belief that some degree of moderate sadness was to be expected in the life of sinning humans may have displaced any need to feel boredom as well. For intensely religious Christians, finally, an appropriate relationship with God might preclude feeling or admitting boredom, but of course not everyone in the English-speaking world acquired that level of engagement. In sum: in this case we know that a new concept suggested emotional concerns that had not previously prevailed, but a precise characterization of the human experience before boredom was an available expression is elusive. As “boring” and then “boredom” entered the language, the terms clearly suggested the absence of adequate entertainment. Without yet using the word, for example, Charles Dickens attacked a proposal to ban Sunday recreations with the argument that English working people, lacking other pastimes, would be “listless”; and it was Dickens who, in the 1850s, would actually first use the term “boredom.” Others equated boredom, similarly, with lack of adequate sources of diversion. Thomas Gray, writing in the later eighteenth century, thus bemoaned his life at the University of Cambridge: “everything is so tediously regular, or samish, that I expire for want of variety.”8 The kind of awareness that made boredom an essential concept flowed, in turn, from two related changes in middle- and upper-class (and initially, particularly male) life. The causes of innovation in this instance are more easily established than the conditions prior to the change. In the first place, as discussed in Chapter 3, many Westerners were gaining an increasing sense of their own individuality, and defining their emotional experience in terms of individual levels of satisfaction rather than their place in a larger community. Not only individuality, but a growing belief that people should normally be, and expect to be, happy and cheerful (in contrast to earlier wide acceptance of a certain degree of melancholy) supported the need for a term that would convey inadequacy. Boredom, in other words, related directly to some of the big cultural shifts in modern Western society.9 And second, opportunities for consumer pleasures, including access to new kinds of entertainment, gained ground steadily from the eighteenth century onward, one of the big changes in the Western experience that would naturally generate new emotional language and expectations. Many people were increasingly engaged in contemplating and shopping for (and in some cases, stealing) new kinds of home furnishings and new types of colorful, fashionable clothing. By the mid-nineteenth century, urban people gained access to more formal sporting events or popular theater, another shift that would encourage expectations of recurrent stimulation.10 Even in this evolving context, boredom initially included some implications that have since been jettisoned, that linked the concept not just to expectations

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of diversion but to older ideas about good character. Proper individuals should respond to boredom not by blaming others, but by correcting their own habits. And it was vital, as etiquette manuals in the nineteenth century routinely emphasized, that people not be boring themselves—even children should learn to be interesting. By the mid-twentieth century, however, this attachment to individual responsibility was eroding, as “being bored” focused primarily on a person’s sense that there was something missing in the immediate environment, that someone else—a parent or a teacher, for a bored child—should make life more stimulating again. (And authors, of course, should not subject readers to boring books.) The availability of the concept of boredom, finally, is another case in which changes in emotional standards had consequences. Prompted in part by the steady intensification of modern consumerism, the idea that avoiding boredom was a legitimate personal goal would in turn help generate the growing array of goods and entertainments that have become part of modern urban life in places like the United States. By the twentieth century, boredom criteria could also be applied to other settings—for example, the classroom—prompting teachers to try to make learning more “fun,” or textbook writers to enliven their presentations with more pictures or other diversions. And responsive adults, in societies where boredom was an available critique, sought a growing array of activities that would reassure them that their children were being appropriately entertained, in what was a significant addition to definition of good parenting.

Fear Suggesting changes in the experience of fear involves one undeniable complexity that sets this emotion off from boredom or jealousy. Fear, as most psychologists would quickly assert, is a basic emotion, an inherent part of the human condition, generating widely recognizable facial expressions, found in every society no matter what the culture. Prospecting for basic shifts in the standards applicable to fear may be intrinsically more difficult, more likely to yield at best limited results, than in the case of more composite emotions. But there are two approaches worth suggesting, as further illustrations of the potential for culture change in very personal human experience. First, it is at least possible that a series of modern developments in Western culture—again, focusing on the eighteenth and possibly nineteenth centuries— shifted the susceptibility to fear in some interesting ways. A leading French historian, Jean Delumeau, has thus argued that, in France, the nature of fear changed fundamentally with growing scientific discoveries and their popularization (thanks in turn to growing literacy and ultimately wider access to education), that reduced some of the standard fears that had been associated with religion and magic. Religious leaders and ordinary parents gradually

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curtailed the explicit use of fear in disciplining children as part of a turn away from an emphasis on sinfulness—the traditional use of various bogeymen, to frighten children into obedience, thus came under explicit attack from leading childrearing experts by the nineteenth century. New lighting devices, and ultimately the advent of electricity, reduced fears of the dark. Delumeau admits that these changes might be complicated by new kinds of fears—for example, growing concern about heart disease and cancer, by the later nineteenth century, as increasingly important causes of death. It remains possible that some systematic shifts both in the sources and even the levels of fear in non-crisis situations deserve attention, either in changing fear levels, or reducing the acceptability of fear, or both.11 Second and most definitely: if explorations of sweeping alterations in the nature of fear remain tentative, given the pervasiveness of the emotion, there is no question that significant shorter-term shifts in fear culture provide important insights into changing human experiences. For example, a fear of being buried alive measurably increased in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Stories about the phenomenon proliferated—some of them fictional, by authors like Edgar Allen Poe who presumably shared the fear himself, others purporting to be real. A number of individuals shared the phobia, including George Washington who stipulated that he not be buried until at least two days after his death. The fear was so pervasive that a variety of devices were introduced to allow escape hatches or alarms in the most fashionable coffins. Here, then, was a significant change in the incidence of a type of fear, with real personal consequences at least for a number of people in Britain and the United States. Causes of change are less clear: certainly new techniques for reviving people near death emerged by the eighteenth century, that might indirectly stimulate fears as well as expectations. Some uneasiness about the growing claims of doctors and about new burial practices might also have been involved. Finally, of course, this particular fear would subside, by the twentieth century, as part of greater confidence in doctors and hospitals—another change in fear culture at the more recent end of the modern chronological spectrum. A further example of significant change in one fear category is more strictly contemporary, with ongoing implications particularly in the United States. By the late 1970s, many American parents became increasingly fearful about the safety of their children. Two horrible and widely-publicized kidnappings and murders (in 1979 and 1981, respectively) combined with changes in television news and programming to create a widespread set of fears. Crime shows proliferated, while local newscasts expanded, embellished by new capacities for “on the scene” reporting that frequently emphasized grieving parents vividly portrayed on camera—even from other parts of the country. The result was a set of broadly shared, and erroneous, beliefs. Polls suggested that by the 1980s parents on average thought that as many as 55,000 children were being abducted by strangers annually—the actual figures were 200–300. In 1982, stories of children poisoned by Halloween candy led to growing restrictions

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on trick-or treating—even though the stories were untrue. A new fear culture, around child safety, measurably increased parental anxieties and led as well to a number of more restrictive behaviors, particularly in preventing many children from walking to school or using public transportation, in a pattern that still prevails (though amid growing criticism for its limitations on children’s competence) through the second decade of the twenty-first century. Parents who defied the timid norms were criticized as “free range” and irresponsible. Not only parents, but police officers who periodically arrested parents for behaviors like letting their offspring play untended in a local park, reflected a set of beliefs quite different from those that had prevailed just a half-century earlier. Politicians played a part as well, often seeking to exaggerate fears or crime, playing on the new emotional vulnerabilities but extending them as well. Here too, elements of fear culture have a discernible if in this case very recent history, where the analysis of culture change uncovers important shifts in human behavior.12 * * * The basic point is clear enough. Emotions are not simply expressions of inherent human responses, even in basic domains such as fear or anger. They are shaped in part by cultural standards that are in turn subject to changes, which in turn in many cases can be explained. The results often affect individual experiences—witness the array of people for a century or more gripped by fears of premature burial—and social institutions (as in the legal standards applied to jealousy claims) alike. Analysis is not uncomplicated— as in trying to work out how boredom was managed before it had a name, or trying to assess longer-term changes in a basic emotion like fear—and the whole field of emotions history is a work still in progress. But a number of specific findings already improve our grasp of human experiences in the past and in several instances, as with the recent changes in parental fears in the United States, help explain key contemporary dilemmas as well. Application of culture change analysis to emotion helps open a larger domain as well, where developments can be traced in greater detail over the past two centuries, but again with ongoing applicability to the present. Emotional definitions of the family began shifting fairly rapidly from the mid-eighteenth century onward, creating new expectations and practices that have persisted and amplified with time. The results apply well beyond general ideas about the family, to specific practices such as birth control and courtship or mate selection. Culture change intertwines, however, with other factors such as new systems of work and production, creating important questions about the role of beliefs and values in relationship to more objective pressures and opportunities. And, while important issues remain to be explored, the analytical framework expands beyond Western society alone, creating opportunities for comparison and for an assessment of global cultural influences, that again connect culture change directly to patterns in the contemporary world.

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Emotional Culture and the Family Over the past 250 years, the family was substantially redefined in Western culture from an economic and religious unit with some emotional implications, to a largely emotional unit that also shared important consumer functions, with varying religious attachments. This was, again, not a cultural change alone: industrialization and urbanization progressively reduced the family’s production function, moving most jobs outside the home in contrast to the patterns that had prevailed for many centuries in an agricultural economy. But the growing emphasis on the emotional service of marriage and parenthood, involving both mate selection and parent–child relations, guided the new expectations attached to family life, which in turn help explain the institution’s continued viability. Further developments, in emotional culture and the economy alike, in the twentieth century, introduced some additional changes, but without undoing much of the previous reorientation. Exploring and extending this argument involves three segments. First, the shift in family standards and their intersection with economic change can be spelled out more fully—which is where the culture change patterns can be most confidently defined. Second, more recent changes and adaptations can be sketched, which modify without fully replacing the modern trajectory. Third, the role of cultural changes and continuities in several other societies during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries suggest some comparative issues that extend the range of analysis.

The Rise of the Loving Family: Changes in Western Europe and the United States By the later eighteenth century, in many parts of the West, new family imagery was emerging that at once heightened the emphasis on romantic love as a crucial basis for marriage, and urged the importance of maternal affection while highlighting the lovability of children. These various qualities emerged in literature and educational philosophy alike, but they were not mere intellectual artifacts. They contributed as well to changes in legal formulations—and where marriage was concerned in some of the new patterns of consumerism, and in novel decisions about birth rates. And they began to affect personal expectations as well, though older standards maintained a considerable hold. These changes played out against a rather different pattern in traditional Western family life, though historians have quarreled over the precise quality of familial emotions before the cultural transformation began to emerge. There is little question of a baseline that differed considerably from the emotional norms that were clearly gaining ground by the early nineteenth century, but the degree of difference has been a matter of dispute.

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When scholarly attention was first applied to family emotions, the temptation to emphasize the huge gap between premodern and modern standards was almost inescapable. Traditional marriages, after all, were almost always arranged by parents, mainly on the basis of economic and property criteria. Couples were joined because the bride’s family could contribute an appropriate dowry that would help establish the marriage on a sound economic footing and perhaps add to the overall standing of the husband and his parents as well. Mutual attraction might develop after the fact, but it was irrelevant and even potentially dangerous to the basic negotiation, and the young people involved had little voice in any event. Children were put to work early, except at the highest levels of society. Most families sought a birth rate that would produce enough child and teenage workers to promote the family economy, but not too many. Child mortality rates were high, which surely constrained the emotional investment in young children; in a few regions, parents did not even bother to name their offspring until they had survived a year or two, because of the uncertainties involved. And while families depended on child workers, they also depended on the death rate lest their resources be overwhelmed by too many survivors. At first glance, the traditional family seemed to be an economic calculation above all, with emotional values subsidiary at best, repressed at worst. Small wonder that one pioneering historian of the British family contended that one would expect to find as much emotion in the traditional family as in a bird’s nest.13 This picture was overdrawn. It ignored many standard human qualities that stretch across time, such as grief for a dying infant even in families accustomed to high death rates. And the generalizations drew constructive protests from historians who knew more about the nuances of premodern family life in the West. Marriages might be largely arranged, and property considerations loomed large. And young people were discouraged from forming individual attachments—most social activities occurred in groups, not separate couples. But young people might nevertheless have preferences, and depending on their persuasiveness and parental indulgence these might have some effect; it was also true that Christian tradition held that people should not be married without their consent, though this provision was not always honored. After a marriage was arranged (and sometimes before the ceremony, as a high rate of what are called “prebridal” pregnancies, or conceptions a few months before the wedding, suggests), couples might well develop real mutual attraction. As to affection for children, while parents were constrained by their needs for child labor, and children were sometimes treated cavalierly—for example, with surprisingly little attention to the prevention of accidents—parents often enjoyed playing with their offspring and sincerely mourned the passing of those who died young. The family was indeed primarily an economic institution, sanctioned by the Christian religion, but it often yielded emotional rewards as well.14 Furthermore, though not surprisingly, some important adjustments preceded the bigger changes of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Most

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notably, the rise of Protestantism prompted new thinking about the family and its members, which ultimately could spill over into Catholic standards as well. While Catholicism had deeply valued the family—marriage was a sacrament—it had also stipulated that celibacy was spiritually preferable, and indeed required in principle of priests and monks. Protestants disputed this; Martin Luther himself pointedly married a former nun. Over time, this higher valuation of the family generated wider commentary about the importance of positive family relationships, including due attention to the well-being of wives as well as husbands. Along with the tentative cultural shift, commercial changes also promoted new attention to family life. Growing economic competition, one historian has argued, caused new tensions in relationships among men, prompting greater reliance on family ties as an emotional alternative. Rising living standards for part of the population supported new family rituals and comforts, such as more elaborate mealtimes and more attractive furnishings.15 With a context ripe for further developments, it is vital to note that, where the family was concerned in Western society, decisive culture change came first, chronologically, preceding any substantial adjustments in structure. The initial target was marriage, or more properly the choice of marriage partners. The importance of emotional compatibility, or romantic love, began to rise, competing with, and in some cases overwhelming, the more traditional reliance on economic criteria and parental arrangements. More and more young people began to expect to be attracted to their mates, and Western society more generally at least partially responded. Evidence is wide-ranging, beginning toward the middle decades of the eighteenth century. One of the key targets of rising consumerism was the new eagerness, particularly by young people, for more fashionable, colorful clothing, that would prove attractive to members of the opposite sex. A new type of reading, the novel, began to generate considerable interest in the middle classes, as literacy expanded, and it frequently featured romantic yearnings (and, often, the tragedies that might result if romance was denied). Young people themselves clearly began to resist parental choices, and even take the issue to the courts to escape a contracted engagement; and a number of courts, as in some parts of Switzerland, began to agree that a match was invalid if one of the individuals involved declared that she could never love the fiancé her parents had designated. By the end of the century, a rising rate of illegitimate births clearly demonstrated that parental control over young people’s behavior was loosening, though whether greater love was involved is difficult to determine. Clearly, family formation, and the cultural standards behind it, was beginning to change.16 Alterations in ideas about children began to emerge in the same decades, though it is harder at first to pinpoint emotional implications. The same wave of Enlightenment thinking that revolutionized ideas about social hierarchy or individualism or the relevance of modern medicine had a strong impact on concepts of childhood. Beginning with philosophers like John Locke in

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the late seventeenth century, the idea that children were tainted by original sin was downplayed in favor of seeing the young as “blank slates” whose characteristics, bad or good, could be developed through education. Correspondingly a widespread traditional sense that children were animallike—which had led among other things to a distaste for seeing infants crawl—was countered by a growing interest in their rational capacities. This cultural upgrade of children was then enhanced not only by the rationalism of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment—which extended Locke’s findings— but by the new current of Romanticism that extended the belief in children’s innocence and beauty. One late-eighteenth-century pamphlet, by the English Radical Thomas Spence, even went so far as to refer to children’s rights.17 These new concepts, increasingly available through popularized reading matter, clearly encouraged some significant changes in adult practices. They promoted interest in education for the young, with some concern for schooling that would go beyond rote learning to encourage individual creative capacities. They stimulated the wider attention to individualism among children that led, among other things, to the new interest in providing children with original names, rather than emphasizing ancestral or Biblical standards or even re-using names that had previously been given to siblings now dead. (See Chapter 3.) They also placed growing emphasis on the importance of active, caring parenting, and particularly mothering. Traditional practices, like wrapping young children tightly in cloth strips—swaddling— or sending babies out to other wet nurses so their mothers could keep working, now came under wide attack, and almost certainly began to decline. Praise for motherhood intensified accordingly, but so did some real and burdensome obligations.18 Whether these important shifts yet included a heightened sense of love between parents and children is not yet clear, though at the least they certainly prepared the way. Encouraged by wider intellectual trends—both rationalism and new Romantic interests in sensibility; promoted as well by economic changes that gave some young adults greater earning power, independent of their parents, and also encouraged new consumer displays—a new family culture was being sketched. The culture included the growing expectations of romance and independent choice in courtship, but also embraced new attitudes and practices concerning children. And from this backdrop, the emphasis on familial love extended steadily in the nineteenth century, particularly (though not necessarily exclusively) in the growing urban middle classes. While elements of the arranged marriage did not disappear—even today, as family sociologists note, most people manage to fall in love with someone in their own socioeconomic bracket— wooing practices developed that emphasized the cultivation of mutual affection and choice and that gave couples some private space. Letters exchanged during courtship often reflect not just affection, but intense passion. The American Bryon Caldwell Smith, pressing Katherine Stephens in letters in the mid-1870s, thus urged: “Oh write, write, I am perishing to

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see on paper the words—I love you.” Describing that “great passion” that filled him, he sought to distinguish his love from mere sentimentality: “True love is to love with all one’s soul what is pure, what is high, what is eternal.” “To love you seems to be the supreme (goal) of my existence.” And women often responded in kind, like Angelina Grimke in letters to Theodore Weld: “Yes my heart continuously cleaves to you . . . Why do I feel in my inmost soul that you, and you only, can fill up the deep void that is there?”19 New words, like “soulmate” (first employed in 1822) reflected the fervor of the new romantic culture. Expectations of love showed in other ways. By the later nineteenth century newcomers to cities began to take out “lovelorn” ads in newspapers, seeking to find potential partners amid the strangeness of urban life. Their efforts clearly reflected the primacy of affection: many ads specifically disclaimed any particular concern with a potential partner’s economic status, or even physical beauty, in favor of a shared interest in emotional goals. Friendships were also flavored by the new intensity. Many young women, both prior to and during marriage, expressed deep affection to their female friends. Men—often unable to launch courtships until their later twenties, because of the need to establish themselves economically—also

FIGURE 7.1 Heart’s Delight, card from 1890. Source: The Library of Congress.

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expressed flowery language and deep yearning in their letters to male friends, though in this case the connections usually receded after marriage.20 Love also infused the growing literature on parent–child relations, and particularly the sense that mothers had a power of disinterested love for their offspring that was fundamental both to family life and to children’s positive development. As a publication appropriately called Mother’s Magazine gushed: “Love, flowing from a hidden spring in a mother’s heart . . . surges deeper and wider as it goes, till neighborhood, friends and country are refreshed by its living waters.” Mother’s love “teaches our hearts the first lesson of love . . . Around her our affection twine closely as surely, as the young vine clasps itself about the branch that supports it; our love for her becomes so thoroughly a part and portion of ourselves, that it defies time and decay.” Children of a loving mother would come to “revere her as the earthly type of perfect love . . . they cannot but desire to conform themselves

FIGURE 7.2 Mother and baby. From the American Annual of Photography (New York: Tennant and Ward, 1911).

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to such models.” While the most obvious target of these values involved mothers themselves, the idea that children had emotional obligations of their own gained ground as well. Obviously, they should respond to mother love with their own deep affection. They were also increasingly urged to be cheerful. References to the importance of cheerful obedience, or simply cheerfulness, almost unknown in the eighteenth century, now increased in frequency as part of the new standards being applied to family life.

TRACING WORD USE: THE RISE OF CHEERFUL CHILDREN

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ne of the most interesting entrees into cultural change, newly available thanks to computerization, involves checking patterns of word use over time, based on indices such as Google Books (which has accumulated several million English-language volumes covering the years from the late eighteenth century onward). It is possible to chart changes in the frequency of certain words or combinations, in relation to all other references. The result does not provide any explanation of the causes of change, or of significance, but it can spur further analysis.21

FIGURE 7.3 “Cheer” combined references: US data (“cheer,” “cheerful,” etc. in relation to childhood).

Trend lines from the early nineteenth century onward thus show a fairly steady and considerable increase in references to cheerfulness in association

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with children—in contrast to the virtual absence of this linkage in the eighteenth century. Ever more authors, in other words, seem to have been expressing an interest in making sure that children were cheerful (even when they were asked to be obedient) or were being treated cheerfully; and essentially new words, such as “sulky” (introduced into the English language only in the mid-eighteenth century), were repeated to explain deviations from the new norm, especially among adolescents. Again, the trends themselves only suggest change; they do not provide meaning. But it is not hard to see the relationship between the new assumptions and the wider beliefs that children should be treated with love and that the family itself should become a source of active happiness.

Emphasis on family love also had other corollaries. The loving parent should refrain from using fear, anger, or shame in discipline, lest they spoil childish innocence and poison the positive qualities of family life. Of course children still needed to behave, but parents should restrain their own emotions in enforcing the rules and should rely wherever possible in positive incentives rather than punishments of any sort. The idea of protecting children’s self-esteem was noted as early as the 1850s. More widely, hopes that the family could be kept free of negative emotions affected discussions not only of parenting but also of marriage itself. It was vital that spouses refrain from anger—and this applied to husbands (who might need to use anger in the workplace, but should keep it in check at home) as well as the more naturally affectionate and sweet-tempered wives. New ideas and rituals concerning outpourings of grief, even and perhaps particularly in the case of deaths of children, linked clearly to the emphasis on the intensity of family love.22 (See Chapter 6.) It is impossible to know precisely how many people, even in the middle classes in Western Europe and the United States, bought into these emotional expectations in their own lives. The individuals who poured out their feelings in letters and diaries may have been atypical. Older cultural traditions, including continued visions of children less as lovable innocents than as sinners, persisted without question—as among the ongoing minority of evangelical Protestants in the United States. One historian has argued that uses of fear in discipline continued among most American Catholics (heavily influenced by Irish churchmen) until well into the twentieth century, when change did set in.23 Even aside from important swaths of cultural traditionalism, many people who aspired to the new emotional goals may have fallen short in practice—as some women, aware that they had sharper tempers than the feminine ideal allowed for, ruefully admitted. Nevertheless the new value system was widely promulgated, not only in novels but in all sorts of family advice, including the emerging genre of the woman’s magazine.

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Furthermore, the new emotional culture began to intertwine with actual changes in family practice, even aside from funeral rituals. Most obviously, the innovations furthered, and were furthered by, the growing interest in limiting the birth rate, a crucial change that began to take shape, first in the middle classes, from the end of the eighteenth century onward. There were vital economic reasons for this change: increasingly, industrial economies reduced the number of jobs available for young children, while new laws gradually limited child labor and also insisted on school attendance. These shifts generated several compelling practical reasons to begin to push the birth rate down, as children began to move from a role as economic assets to a source of economic liability.24 But new beliefs and emotional values may have entered in as well, linking culture change to other factors in helping to explain one of the big modern transformations in human life. Certainly more and more parents became persuaded that children should be educated, which would encourage limiting the traditional birth rate in favor of easier affordability. But did increasing affection for young children also suggest the importance of reducing birth rates in order to promote the ability to invest— for each individual child—the range of positive emotions that were now expected? And there may have been other links between culture change and new behavior as well: one study suggests that husbands, in the American South, newly affectionate toward their wives, urged fewer births in order to limit the risks of maternal mortality, in direct contrast to their eighteenthcentury antecedents when husbands evinced scant concern, a fascinating case of specific culture change.25 In turn, lower birth rates almost certainly furthered the larger cultural trends. Having fewer children enhanced the emotional connections between parents (again, particularly mothers) and each individual child. It has also been speculated that the requirements of birth-rate reduction, which in the nineteenth century depended heavily on sexual restraint, also promoted some of the emotional intensity that often developed in courtship: normally constrained by Victorian standards of respectability from outright sexual intercourse, many loving couples vented their feelings through unusually flowery imagery. Finally, when by the later nineteenth century lower infant mortality rates began to mirror the earlier reduction in birth levels, emotional culture was again involved. Most obviously, when families no longer had to expect that one or more of their children would die—a transformation that was completed, in Western society, between 1880 and 1920—emotional investment in individual children would almost inevitably increase still further. At the same time, the promotion of love for children prepared many parents for the change as well, encouraging them to take advantage of new measures that would help keep infants and toddlers alive. As with the birth rate, interactions between culture and demographic change were mutually reinforcing. The surge in expectations of love—from early childhood through marriage and even, increasingly, into new ideas about grandparenthood—had its

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downsides. First, it carried clearly ambiguous implications concerning gender. The new emotional culture applied to both genders, and it could raise difficulties for men—for example, in changing emotional gears from work to family life. But the impact on women was particularly complex. On the one hand, the new culture gave women important new powers, in principle and often in fact. They were the “natural” leaders of the family, alone imbued with the deeply loving qualities now essential to family life. Older ideas— that women were by nature more sinful than men—were now displaced. The new courtship imagery also heightened an emphasis on female beauty; one historian has noted that it was in the eighteenth century, in the West, that the aristocracy, and particularly male aristocrats, no longer served as society’s bearers of fashion and beauty, their place taken by women as a gender. But these gains obviously imposed limitations. Measuring up to the new emotional and aesthetic standards took work. Even approximating the ideal mother was no easy task. And the whole imagery increased the widespread conviction that respectable women should largely be confined to the home.26 Ideas of familial love—particularly, in this case, in marriage—also generated new opportunities for disappointment. As families became less important economically, with work moving outside the home, opportunities for dissolution and abandonment unquestionably increased. Where people were also encouraged to measure their families as sources of emotional intensity and satisfaction—as centers of happiness—they could also decide that what they had was not living up to expectations. It was no accident that new ideas about divorce accompanied the changing family culture: in France, this shift occurred as early as the French Revolution, though in this case more restrictive rules were then restored. In the United States changes in divorce law emerged from the mid-nineteenth century onward, and the actual divorce rate began what turned out to be steady climb for many decades. Again, a number of factors were involved. But the idea that families should provide a positive emotional environment contributed to support for the laws themselves—up to the point, by the later twentieth century, when the whole idea of a “no fault” divorce capped the effort to release people from emotional distress—and added to the family instability that resulted.27 For better or worse—and evaluation can embrace both aspects—the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries unquestionably saw the emergence of a dramatically new family culture. The family’s emotional functions began to replace a waning economic role, a vital shift that actually helps explain why the institution survived as well as it did in the changing environment. Of course the older family culture had included some emotional components, and without question some more traditional ideas survived. But the notion—the hope—of the family as a supremely positive place gained ground quite widely in Western society. For some, at least, this included a sense that the family was different from the outside world, precisely because of its emotional values; becoming what Christopher Lasch

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referred to, in describing the nineteenth century family ideal, as a “haven in a heartless world.” The culture change, and the expectations and practices it helped generate, was powerful stuff.28 And despite all the complexities, assessing this major culture change does allow the basic question to be answered: can culture change cause an increase in something as personal as love and expectation of love? The answer is yes, and indeed the focus both on children and on adults moving toward marriage helped connect the impacts, as children taught to expect and offer love would have distinctive romantic needs as well as they reached adulthood. Two questions remain. First, for Western society, has the intense family culture that developed in the nineteenth century persisted through the succeeding decades? Even potent culture change does not survive forever, and pretty obviously some significant modifications and challenges to nineteenth century standards would emerge later on. And second, what about the comparative implications? Families in many societies have experienced, mainly in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, some of the same pressures and opportunities that began to emerge in the West with nineteenth-century industrialization and urbanization. Have they shared as well in some of the same kinds of cultural shifts? Has the emotional transformation of the family become part of a global pattern?

Revisiting the Family Culture: The West in the Past Century A focus on culture change inevitably raises the question: how long will a new pattern last? The new ideas about love and family that had matured through the nineteenth century had real power, instilled through many stories, rituals, even advertisements and often incorporated in family life itself. On the other hand, the twentieth century would see many great changes in both culture and society in Europe and the United States, which undeniably affected family values. It became harder to define the central threads in the standards of courtship and parenthood than had been the case for the nineteenth century, or at least the nineteenth-century middle class. Nevertheless, many core values persisted amid some adjustments in language and intensity. Modification, not another round of systematic culture change, best captures the patterns that resulted. Several factors encouraged many people, again both in Europe and the United States, to reconsider elements of the nineteenth-century cultural framework. A few movements urged a return to even older family standards, to emphasize for example an increased birth rate and more traditional roles for women; this was an important element of the Nazi and fascist ideologies. More important for the twentieth century as a whole was a significant revision of the principal sources of advice on family matters. Advice literature

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in the nineteenth century, on romance and particularly the transcendent role of mother love, came primarily from moralists, both male and female. After 1900 this source receded in favor of psychological, medical and other trained experts. These, in turn, had a vested interest in reevaluating older standards in light of new discoveries, which would after all form one means of confirming the importance of their expertise. And new interests in healthy psychological balance led to some questions, particularly about the effects of excessive emotional intensity, either from parents or courting couples. The result modified the older approaches to love, and helped explain the changes in language and tone.29 Along with this came a pervasive new interest in greater informality, as against nineteenth-century social codes. Here was another source of concern about undue intensity, particularly among adults. Friendships and courtships alike should be more relaxed. This “informalization,” an important cultural current in its own right on both sides of the Atlantic, showed particularly in male–female relationships.30 Led by new patterns in the United States, dating began to replace the more formal courtship habits of the previous century. Young people interacted farther away from adult supervision, with greater reliance on commercial entertainments.31 Dating did not contradict a search for love—this could indeed remain the principal ultimate goal—but it encouraged more experimentation and a more casual approach. Particularly in the middle classes, young people were encouraged to “date” a number of different people before ultimately, after schooling was completed, beginning to expect a more durable emotional commitment. Linked to greater informality and new sources of advice, at least two other trends, intensifying from the 1920s onward, affected relevant emotional culture. Consumerism accelerated steadily. More and more people expressed themselves through growing interests in shopping, acquiring new goods, enjoying a wider range of commercial entertainments. Heightened consumerism did not necessarily distract from commitments to love, but at the least it would urge new forms of expression. Gifts to children, most obviously, became a growing means by which parents might express their affection and through which children themselves would expect parental response.32 Along with this came a more open interest in sexuality and sexual pleasure. Hardly brand new, and often disputed, this interest would ultimately encourage more sexual experimentation before marriage and sometimes within marriage itself.33 These developments became particularly obvious as access to birth-control options increased and amid the so-called “sexual revolution” of the 1960s, but there were some indications even earlier. And the result, at the least, could complicate earlier definitions of love as the basis for family formation. From the 1920s onward many people in the United States and Western Europe, for a variety of reasons, rebelled against aspects of nineteenthcentury family culture, finding it stifling or unrealistic or both. There is little question that key elements of the romantic emotional standards began to be

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diluted from the 1920s onward, as part of some significant shifts in family values and structures. Even vocabulary was adjusted. The flowery words used to express intense love in the nineteenth century—whether the focus was maternal affection or courtship—began to sound silly by the midtwentieth, though they were sometimes still echoed on commercial greeting cards used for birthdays or anniversaries (and it was the early twentieth century, not the nineteenth, that introduced the celebration of a highly sentimental Mother’s Day). Several new factors entered into what amounted to a review—though not a total rejection—of family emotional ideals. Signs of partial reevaluation emerged clearly. Purveyors of family advice— both experts and popularizers—began to warn against excessive mother love. Some argued that mothers were imposing too much on their children, particularly daughters, leading to conflict as the offspring reached adolescence and adulthood. Others simply worried that too many mothers thought that love was enough, failing to deal appropriately with children’s health and psychological needs. Most telling of all, however, was a growing sense that mother love could race out of control, harming children’s independence and leaving mothers themselves too tied to their children’s affection. Commentary on the “dangers of too much mother love” dotted the half-century after 1920, easing to some extent only in the 1960s when larger numbers of mothers reentered the labor force. Few commentators attacked the basic idea of maternal love, but the need for balance and restraint contradicted nineteenth-century assumptions that family emotions flowed naturally from women’s nature. Somewhat similar hesitations now applied to love in courtship and marriage: the basic emotional goal was fine, but it could be overdone. A variety of marriage experts—a new genre that grew steadily in popularity through the midcentury decades, and which included an impressive array of college courses on the subject—worried that love alone could lead to bad choices and a shallow basis for handling the practical demands of family life. Revealingly, by the late twentieth century many couples began speaking of their “relationship,” rather than simply saying they were in love. At the same time, interest in furthering sexual compatibility added a dimension that, while not contrary to a love ideal, competed with older definitions of emotional intensity. Thus a new men’s magazine, Esquire, launched in 1933, ran frequent articles attacking the idea that love should involve “a pair of passion-oozing souls who could merge into a mystical unity,” favoring instead of more hardheaded approach to mate selection, and this approach intensified after World War II and the emergence of more explicit outlets like Playboy magazine. Affection (along with sensuality, particularly in the new men’s periodicals) remained vital, but shared leisure interests and other forms of compatibility were now essential as well. Feminists also attacked aspects of the family emotional model, with particular vigor in the decades after 1950, urging that it trapped women in narrow domestic duties.34

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While there is no question that the language and definition of family love shifted, key aspects of the basic emotional culture remained. Parents were still expected to love their children and win emotional rewards in turn. An increased birth rate in the middle classes after World War II —the famous “Baby Boom,” particularly important in the United States—showed the power of these emotional expectations, as families devoted considerable financial resources to this unexpected trend. The rise of new leisure commitments, beginning with the hallowed annual family vacation, expressed the desire to express and maintain positive family emotions through novel consumer choices. By the 1990s many parents, fathers as well as mothers, were investing more time in interactions with their children—even more than had been the case during the superficially family-friendly 1950s; here was a clear indication of emotional engagement. The idea that marriage should be the result of “falling in love” continued to burn bright as well, even as specifics shifted somewhat particularly around “necking” or other sexual interactions as part of the growing practice of dating. Even the rising divorce rate testified, in a backhanded fashion, to the power of emotional expectations: many marriages collapsed when one or both parties admitted that they “no longer loved” their spouses. The love ideal even survived into the new age of computer matchmaking services, in the early twenty-first century. Companies like eHarmony—the contemporary version of the newspaper ads that had sought affection a century earlier—based their appeal on helping singles succeed emotionally, even as the services promised more scientific bases for determining long-term compatibility. Thus eHarmony singled out its goals of “love and romantic fulfillment”: “We believe you deserve to find love—true love that comes with a lasting relationship.” The family ideal was alive and well.35 Some observers did suggest that the word “love” began to be tossed around rather glibly, compared to the greater focus attached to the emotion in the nineteenth century. Americans, particularly, often gushed about loving all sorts of things: “I love it” became a bit of a catchphrase. The pattern showed the continued validity of love ideals, no doubt, but also some real potential dilution in focus and fervor. Here is a topic deserving further assessment as part of evaluating ongoing culture change in this domain. Other new issues unquestionably emerged, particularly from the late twentieth century onward. Throughout Western society, in part because of economic pressures, marriage ages rose and increasing numbers of people dispensed with marriage altogether, either living alone or as unwed couples. More and more births—up to 40 per cent, in some Western countries—now occurred outside marriage as well, and single parenthood expanded even as the birth rate itself dropped well below earlier twentieth-century levels. Married couples now began to report higher levels of happiness if they were childless, as costs and anxieties associated with parenthood intensified. These patterns raised some basic questions. Was the older emotional ideal,

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despite its persistence, now being challenged by more individualistic consumer and professional goals that were competing with the family itself? Or did the variations largely reflect more practical problems, like income inequality or urban housing costs, that limited family options for some groups without really changing basic values? Cultural standards alone had never defined all aspects of family life, and by the twenty-first century they were clearly interacting with some novel factors.36

The Comparative Context: A Final Challenge The rise and evolution of a new family emotional culture was a vital component of Western history from the later eighteenth century onward, a clear indication—despite complexities at various points—of the importance of culture change in shaping key aspects of personal life. If only because of the power of the West in the world during much of this same period, the new emotional standards inevitably had some degree of global impact. At the same time, at least by the twentieth century, a growing number of societies faced some decisions—for example, about family size—similar to those Western countries had encountered slightly earlier. These, too, could affect family standards. A core question emerged: were family emotional goals beginning to shift in similar directions, across regional lines; or would different kinds of cultural adjustments meet the needs of many societies? Inevitably, patterns were complicated, involving both common adjustments and some explicit distinctions. Further, comparative research on these aspects of culture change and continuity is still in its infancy, permitting some suggestions but not, as yet, definitive statements. Pressures to reconsider traditional definitions of childhood mounted steadily, as reformers and, increasingly, ordinary families alike realized the importance of education. By the later twentieth century common global definitions of children’s rights also included a commitment to education, which could further this aspect of culture change. As early as 1872, in Japan, reformers pushed through a universal education requirement which, though it encountered some brief resistance, fairly quickly converted early childhood into a time for schooling rather than work. A century later, an ordinary Mexican woman, interviewed at a birth-control clinic, expressed her commitment to having fewer children, despite resistance both from her husband and from her Catholic priest: “The main thing that makes the times different, I think, is the control women have over the number of children in the family . . . I want only two or three children. I don’t want six children to grow up like me, without an education . . . I want my children to go to school and . . . to be independent and proud of themselves.” Spurred by these new commitments, the birth rate began to fall in almost every region, though timing varied. How much did this reflect not only a new belief in

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education, but a new level of affection for children themselves? And how much did the birth-rate reduction, as earlier in the West, promote more emotional investment in children and a greater reliance on the emotional service of the family?37 Ideas about courtship could change as well, though the evidence is more scattered. Urbanization—another common global pattern by the twentieth century—inevitably disrupted some arranged marriage patterns, simply because young people were farther away from parental control. Reformers, sharing some human rights commitments, often worked to promote freer choice among marriage partners, for example by attacking contracts for child brides. Western culture, in the form of movies and TV shows, won a wide global audience—Hollywood was the leading world movie center as early as the 1920s—and this could promote new ideas about courtship and romance. Even international tourism, accelerating after the mid-twentieth century, could expose people to different habits and expectations in courtship and marriage. In China specifically, the cultural impact of the communist revolution in cutting into parental authority furthered courtship changes as well, as discussed earlier in Chapter 4.38 All of this unquestionably promoted some shared pressures on traditional family cultures, for parents, children and spouses alike. As China, for example, drastically limited its birth rate after 1978 and began to generate a larger urban consumer culture (in the wake of the Cultural Revolution), some young people began to engage in new patterns of dating, suggesting a growing interest in romance. Parental commitment to individual children undoubtedly increased, as family size shrank. Marriage age began to rise in most regions, reflecting economic pressures including housing costs but potentially encouraging new emotional commitments once the young adults did begin to seek a mate. Japan faced an intriguing cultural challenge as early as the 1920s. A set of well-publicized cases in 1921 highlighted women who defied their parents to marry the men they loved or, in some cases, committed suicide rather than give up their beloved. Widespread press coverage included conservative attacks on this emotional disruption of parental authority and family stability, and considerable approval of the new emotional goals. Obviously, the discussion reflected the influence of Western culture, but most scholars emphasize spontaneous Japanese reactions to new conditions such as urbanization; this kind of emotional culture change may be largely a response to objective circumstances, but nevertheless has its own huge impact on family life. It is also important to note that the Japanese version remained somewhat different from the Western idea of love, for example, in placing less emphasis on individual emotional fulfillment and offering more willingness to compromise with parental concerns.39 On the whole, however, and granting many regional distinctions, evidence suggests that most societies in fact sought to accommodate family change, including new cultural standards for children, with more incorporation of

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prior traditions than had occurred in the West. Straws in the wind: a poll taken in India, in the early twenty-first century, revealed that two-thirds of the population believed that arranged marriages were better than romantically arranged commitments—even though urbanization generated some practical constraints. Lebanese families in the late twentieth century worked to teach their children about the importance of education and achievement, but they coupled this with firm—and fairly traditionalist— messages about the primacy of the family cohesion and kinship and neighborhood relationships over purely emotional goals.40 Clearest evidence of a distinctive pattern of change and continuity in family life comes from East Asia. Change is unmistakable, in a region that has industrialized rapidly: families have become smaller, education is vital for children, formally arranged marriages have receded (a process encouraged by revolution, in the Chinese case, as we have seen). All of this reflects changes in cultural standards as well as family practices. But the importance of the cohesive family unit, over individual emotional fulfillment, continues to predominate, reflecting—in the view of most observers—less culture change than has occurred in the West, and particularly less change toward seeing the family as a nexus of individual emotional expectations. Children thus are disciplined differently from Western patterns. Whereas Western parents tread carefully around disciplinary issues, preferring positive incentives to punishments that might jeopardize family harmony, East Asian parents resort more directly to shaming, where children are threatened with denial of affection unless they fall in line. An early twenty-first century poll, asking about the validity of strict shaming, thus saw literally no American parent in agreement, compared to 49 per cent of parents in Taiwan. Courtship characteristically occurs later in East Asia than in the West (despite similar ages of marriage), and individuals less commonly date a number of different partners in search of romance, preferring a stable commitment.41 Comparison is always complicated, particularly around issues like family culture and emotion. And change continues: contemporary East Asia families are beginning to experience more divorce (though rates are still far lower than in the West), and more individuals are not marrying at all despite professing strong family values. It is certainly possible that, a decade or so hence, differences between regional family cultures may have narrowed still further. For the moment, however, it does seem likely that the Western experience of sweeping changes in emotional standards around marriage and parenthood helped generate somewhat different family experiences from the more selective cultural and practical shifts in regions like East Asia. Both patterns “worked,” in the sense of producing families and individuals functioning in a modern social and economic environment. Both patterns permitted fundamental alterations, such as the shift of children from work to schooling. But significant distinctions persisted as well, both reflecting and encouraging different kinds of family cultures.

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Conclusion: Culture Change and Emotional Life Culture change, whether sweeping or selective, has a profound influence on personal life and daily institutions like the family. It combines, of course, with inherent human needs and capacities. It interacts with other social institutions, such as educational policies or religious practices. But just as anthropologists have shown how widely emotional cultures can vary, so it is becoming increasingly clear that degrees of change can be surprisingly great. Whether the issue is a new impatience with boredom, or the insistence on measuring a marriage in terms of love, change can be fundamental, affecting not only individual experience but also wider behaviors such as consumerism or divorce. Analysis of culture change around emotions has its challenges. It is far easier to gain a sense of shifting standards than to be sure how many people really embrace them in their personal lives, for example in decisions about whom to marry or how to treat one’s children. Institutional results—like new divorce laws—are more readily measured than the emotional reasons individuals choose, or resist, their use. Certain reactions—like fear—may be more resistant to large cultural shifts than more social emotions such as jealousy, though cultural standards can and do alter in both cases. Comparative issues, which can help pinpoint degrees of culture change and their impact, have yet to be systematically explored. Interrelationships between causes and impacts are particularly tricky, where culture change mixes with other factors to generate new behaviors. We simply cannot be sure how much, for example, new standards about parental love preceded reductions in birth rates—in the West or in other regions—and how much followed from the same reduction, as parents could increase their emotional focus on the smaller number of children they did have. How much do perceptions of waning love explain characteristic rising divorce rates in modern societies, as opposed to other issues? We know the connections exist, linked to significant shifts in family life, but the balance is hard to assess. Yet with all the challenge, and the many opportunities for further research, the significance of culture change in the emotional domain, and the nature of several important modern adjustments, is well established. Past examples are intriguing, and provide some sense of the human capacity for change—but also the impulse to resist. Yet culture change also spills into contemporary concerns, around the role and future of family life, or the current levels of fearfulness in sectors of American society. There is every reason to add emotional experience to the framework of culture change, exploring directions, causes, continuities and impacts in past and present alike.

8 Culture Contacts and Culture Change

Contact between cultures, unless quite superficial, almost always carries a potential for change. Here is another broad category of culture change, generating more cases for examination. We have touched on the phenomenon already, for example in suggesting the role of Western values in stimulating some shifts in courtship patterns in modern East Asia. This chapter turns to a fuller focus on the issues involved. The analysis also returns to a grander scale than medicalization or emotional change entailed, with patterns that could affect a wide range of beliefs, from religion to family values, sometimes over a span of several centuries. Almost any immigrant group faces decisions about culture change, as its members interact with the larger cultural system of the society around them. How fast and how fully will they alter their home language, and with what other results? Do they need some new thinking about their birth rates and the role of schooling in their children’s lives? (Jews in the United States from Eastern Europe, early in the twentieth century, made surprisingly rapid decisions about reducing family size, in light of the patterns they saw around them; southern European immigrants would move in the same direction more slowly. Again, choices are involved.)1 Second-generation immigrants often play a crucial and complicated role in mediating culture change for their parents, creating an obvious target for the analysis of the tensions involved. Contacts between groups representing different cultural systems inevitably bring change, though also resistance to change. When the groups involved have different power positions—as is true for most immigrants—the situation can become even more complicated, for most of the pressure moves in a single direction. This chapter deals with two classic cases of even broader culture contact: the Spanish intrusion into what became Latin America in the early modern centuries; and British colonial domination over India from the later eighteenth century until 1947. It then turns to a more recent and more amorphous example, namely the contemporary experience of cultural globalization as a source of culture change, one that is proving to be extremely contentious but also not easy to define. 169

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Even the first two cases will suggest the great variety of contact results, with distinctive combinations of resistance, change and syncretism that clearly distinguish the Latin American from the later Indian experience; and globalization adds further complexity. Contact experiences certainly deserve a place in the larger study of culture change, and some ingredients are widely shared; but there is no single model. Culture contact is not of course a purely modern experience. Several world historians have explored earlier encounters—for example, the travels of a group of Nestorian Christians who were expelled from the mainstream religion in the Middle East and ended up in China.2 At the same time, we know that not all significant contacts necessarily involve efforts to effect culture change. Invading groups do not necessarily seek to impose their values on local inhabitants, emphasizing tolerance rather than going to the trouble—and the risk of further resistance—of conversion efforts.3 Even in the contemporary world, as we will see, significant interactions often have surprisingly little cultural impact, at least in the first generation or so. For culture contact almost always provokes resistance even as it facilitates new influences. Established and cherished identities struggle against new forces. Groups that are forced to accept military and political domination may cling all the more fervently to cherished values, impeding if not preventing significant culture change. Beliefs around female circumcision are an intriguing, and to most observers deeply troubling, case in point. Several northern areas of subSaharan Africa long ago developed this practice as a means of trying to assure women’s sexual purity, imposing painful operations on young girls as a condition of their respectability and suitability for marriage. In some cases the practices were linked with the local version of Islam, in contrast to Islamic beliefs more generally. When European countries imposed imperial rule on these regions in the nineteenth century, they usually tolerated the tradition out of fear that interference would rouse resistance; furthermore, the colonial administrations had only limited authority in practice, particularly in rural areas. Only in the later twentieth century, as imperialism declined, were stronger voices raised against female circumcision, often as part of the growing consciousness of human rights. But newly independent African regimes were often hesitant, and even when some migrants moved to places like Britain or France they frequently retained their older beliefs. Despite clear laws against female genital mutilation, and some voices raised within the immigrant communities themselves, many families continued to impose such practices in secret or through quick trips “back home.” To many, traditional cultural practices seemed all the more important given the other changes they had to deal with in their new environments.4 And while this is a particularly striking example of culture clash amid new forms of contact, we will see in dealing with globalization that resistance to new influences can be surprisingly strong, the effort to define and protect established identities impressively vigorous.

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All this means, at the least, that the interaction between contact and culture change provides yet another illustration of considerable complexity. Even the powers of modern governments and the range of contemporary communications technologies do not win through as readily as one might expect. Change, when it does emerge, is usually gradual. Many adjustments seek to blend new influences with established patterns, producing some of the clearest examples of syncretism available. Though we begin with two relatively well-established historical cases, the basic issues involved have vivid contemporary relevance. Tensions around culture contacts are part of today’s news and, almost certainly, tomorrow’s headlines. Increasingly, they involve not just distant regions of the world, exposed to pressures from Western powers, but segments of the West itself. As they press against what they see as threats from globalization, many voters in places like Britain and the United States seem, somewhat unexpectedly, to be trying to define new boundaries between external influences and their own identities.

Latin America: A Classic Case As Spanish forces moved into many parts of what is now Latin America from the sixteenth century onward, bringing many Catholic missionaries in their wake, they clearly and deliberately attacked established cultural systems. Their advance was aided by local disarray and, particularly, by the huge population losses caused by the diseases the newcomers brought with them as well. But the resulting cultural changes were not as clear-cut as the power imbalance might suggest. As we have seen earlier, in discussing the complexities of religious conversion, the strength of cultural traditions often combined with concessions from the new power structure to effect some surprisingly successful compromises. There was little question about Spanish intent. Both military leaders and missionaries bitterly attacked the indigenous cultures they encountered, with few exceptions; only rarely was a sympathetic voice raised, urging that local values should be tolerated. As early as 1513 the Spanish king proclaimed his religious aims in the Americas: “with the help of God we will use force against you, declaring war from all sides and with all possible measures, and we shall bind you to the yoke of the Church . . . unless you freely convert.” Sixteen years later, the pope similarly urged the Catholic powers to proceed “by force and arms, if need be, in order that the souls [of the natives] may partake of the heavenly kingdom,” referring to the indigenous peoples as “barbarous nations.” Formal religion was not the only target, though the polytheistic beliefs and rituals of the natives were deeply offensive to the colonial overlords. Many Spaniards were shocked by what they saw as widespread sexual immorality; family habits needed correction. To please audiences back home—whose military and financial support was

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vital to the new colonies—exaggerated accounts of local practices circulated widely.5 Officially, culture change was promoted wherever Spanish power penetrated. When a village was conquered, a missionary would read what were called “Requirements” to the local population, laying out the basic principles of Christianity. Local religious shrines were frequently destroyed outright, with new Christian churches sometimes built on their sites. Force might be used against anyone who rejected the Church. Native leaders might be tortured or even—though in fact fairly rarely—brought before the dreaded Inquisition, and a few were executed for heresy. Local officials, called fiscales, were appointed to assist Spanish priests, and they had wide powers to compel religious conformity, including the right to whip people who did not attend mass regularly. Couples who cohabited without marriage might be punished similarly. Many reports back home—again, seeking to curry European support—wrote glowingly of success in reshaping native beliefs and practices. Officials often believed, or at least claimed, that most natives converted fairly readily once presented with a combination of persuasion and compulsion, though they admitted that many remained (by Christian standards) very superstitious and that backsliding was always possible. In fact, predictably enough, culture change was far from systematic. Indigenous people had their own prior experience in encountering different belief systems and generating acceptable compromises. In Central America, Aztec conquests had already provided opportunities for earlier groups to pick and choose from the practices of their new rulers, and the same was true in the vast Inca empire in the Andes. And despite Spanish power and the debilitating results of the new diseases introduced by them, detailed control over scattered local villages was really impossible. Missionaries were stretched thin: in Mexico many locals saw a Spanish priest only a few times a year, which meant the effective implementation was left up to intermediaries like the fiscales. Punishments, though real enough, were inconsistent. Spanish rulers realized that too much pressure might create unacceptable levels of local resistance, so they were not nearly as fierce in practice as their denunciations of local immorality suggested. The Inquisition was actually deployed more commonly against immigrants from Europe— accused of immorality (including homosexuality) or heresy—than against native peoples. There was even surprisingly little systematic effort to prompt locals to adopt the Spanish language: missionaries often preferred to use the local languages instead, which left considerable latitude for maintaining earlier beliefs. Three patterns emerged from this situation. First, many natives worked hard to maintain their earlier culture; cultural resistance, though difficult, proved surprisingly fierce in some cases. Second, change when it did occur was impressively slow. The task of altering local cultures toward more acceptable European levels continued well after the colonial period, into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Finally, and most important, real change

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almost always blended with cultural precedents, making Latin America a classic case of syncretism. Obviously these patterns interrelated, but the overall point is clear: massive cultural contact, bolstered by a huge power imbalance, created real culture change but amid a variety of compromises and combinations. Many native peoples maintained their polytheistic beliefs and rituals, if only in private. As late as the end of the seventeenth century, colonial authorities had to mount a major campaign against “idolatry” in the Oaxaca region of Mexico (including establishing a new Prison of Perpetual Idolatry), and this led to an outright civil war that lasted for decades. Local intermediaries, like the fiscales, who tried to push against sheer traditionalism were viewed as traitors, by people who tried to insist on continued cultural autonomy.6 Compromise, however, was by far the more common, and more durable, path. It allowed locals to maintain real contact with earlier ideas and practices, while accepting some new additions. It encouraged most Spanish officials to accept at least partial success in a situation which, as most realized, they could not fully control. Thus many fiscales long served both as representatives of the missionaries and as recognizable polytheistic “chief priests.” They performed both Church rituals and many of the older rites. In the Andes region, religious sites based around natural phenomena like large boulders or mountain tops—called huacas—were simply incorporated into local Catholic practice, remaining important into the present day. Catholic processions might wind around this religious topography, and individuals, spreading some cocoa leaves on the monuments as they walked past in hopes of conciliating the supernatural forces, simply maintained previous practice. Many traditional gods of nature were blended with the Catholic saints, allowing existing rituals to persist amid some combination of new and old beliefs. In the Andes, Inca practices of periodically parading mummified bodies of past kings, in order to attract crowds of faithful, were simply altered into parades of saints. Syncretism proved particularly easy in Central America. Several local peoples, including the ruling Aztecs, already used the cross as a religious symbol, which facilitated connections with Catholicism. Deep beliefs in a fertility goddess, Tonantzin, connected fairly readily with worship of the Virgin Mary. Spanish destruction of a major temple to the goddess, near Mexico City, led to the construction of a new chapel dedicated to Mary. From the 1530s onward, Catholic stories about miracles and cures prompted by the Virgin blended with older beliefs about the powers of Tonantzin, and locally painted images combined the symbolism as well. The result could be seen as clearly Catholic, but there was no question that, for many locals, connections with earlier beliefs about divine forces in nature explained the level of acceptance and, particularly, the unusual fervor involved. Worship at the most popular shrine, for Our Lady of Guadalupe, would ultimately

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FIGURE 8.1 Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe: Our Lady of Guadalupe. N. Currier, 1848. Source: Library of Congress.

become the largest pilgrimage site in global Catholicism, reflecting the power of blending new and old sources of spirituality. Syncretism showed in other, humbler ways as well. Church officials often regarded native styles of dress as immoral, because they did not adequately cover the body. A quick response was the replacement of traditional male loincloths with loose cotton trousers. But other aspects of native dress largely persisted, changing only slowly if at all. In turn, some Spanish officials began to take on local styles, at least in the home. The same patterns

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applied to foodways, where natives gradually incorporated some products that had been brought in from Europe—most particularly, new meats— while Spanish colonials converted to greater use of corn (in contrast to their European cousins, who never widely accepted this product).7 This kind of result might easily displease both the Spanish and the local traditionalists, which is why outright culture conflict could continue to break out even 200 years after the “conquest.” For their part Spanish officials alternated between acceptance of compromise and laments that, despite decades of effort, local beliefs and practices might remain as “idolatrous” as ever (as a Mexican archbishop put it as the end of the sixteenth century). For syncretism is truly hard to interpret—perhaps even harder than in the more classic cases of religious conversions discussed in Chapter 3 because of the additional complexities of culture contact. If a local group fairly faithfully attended Catholic mass, but was actually worshipping more a traditional goddess than the orthodox Christian figures, complete with customary beliefs in the divine forces of nature and the need to conciliate them with piety and ritual, what had been changed? The dual religious functions of many of the fiscales, the continued and widespread beliefs in magic, compound the problems of interpretation. Contact clearly changed some of the apparatus of belief, just as it forced some accommodations in clothing, but was the result really much different? Quarrels—from the sixteenth century onward—about Our Lady of Guadalupe easily demonstrate the potential ambiguities of key aspects of syncretism. The accounts of miraculous cure, and an appearance by the Virgin in the Aztec language (Nahuatl), were initially generated by a converted Aztec. (Intriguingly, his story included references to the appearance of roses native only to Spain, a sign that he was learning something about references beyond the traditional cultural orbit.) Artistic work in the new chapel was also Aztec, and reproduced a good bit of traditional Aztec religious imagery including the use of colors associated with two customary divinities—which contributed to the chapel’s popularity. And, according to Spanish opponents of the new devotion, many locals referred to Mary as Tonantzin directly. Some natives also seemed to believe that the image of the Virgin itself created miracles, rather than Mary herself, which is what the missionaries tried to teach. There is no question that great local fervor was involved from the outset. But was it at all new, or simply a slightly retitled version of a culture essentially unchanged? Spanish authorities themselves divided, with some enthusiastic about the clear signs of Catholic piety, but others insisting that the new piety was merely a “Satanic invention to cloak idolatry.” What is certain is that the devotion would become a central part of Mexican Catholicism and a point of national pride into our own day, and this reflected the power of blending tradition and change.8 Without pretending complete precision—for, indeed, in a blended pattern each individual might work out his or her own interpretation—several points can be made. First, and obviously, Latin American culture was not

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the same as Spanish culture, despite important interactions and despite unquestioned Spanish control of some cultural expressions, like the styles of the great cathedrals built in places like Mexico City. Even seemingly shared devotions, like the worship of Mary, might contain different meanings based on the continuation of relabeled traditions. Second, however: real change did occur. Longstanding local beliefs that seemed particularly repellent to the new authorities did fade away, though sometimes only after a certain amount of initial concealment. Thus the widespread indigenous acceptance of “two-spirit” peoples—individuals who had both male and female sexual attributes—ultimately died out. Missionaries equated the concepts with outright acceptance of homosexuality and worked to repress them accordingly, and ultimately there was no real compromise.9 Worship of the Inca sun god did yield (though the symbol was later revived and used in three national flags after Latin American independence) in favor of some recognition of the more abstract Christian God. Ideas about male nakedness did change, along with the modifications in dress. Syncretism is not the same thing as cultural status quo, though figuring out the precise nature of culture change in this context is admittedly challenging. And finally, predictably, much culture change was in fact gradual, stretching out over not just decades, but centuries. Initial superficial acceptance of new ideas and rituals, designed simply to prevent punishment, would gradually generate deeper transformations. By the twentieth century many Latin American nationalists would take understandable pride in the success of major regions in blending European, native, and in many cases also African influences into a distinct cultural package that went well beyond warmedover traditionalism.10 Latin America stands out, in fact, as something of a poster child for the complexities of culture change resulting from contact. Despite the obvious disparity in power, which led some observers, and later historians, to assume that European values simply prevailed, culture contact generated mixtures, where change has to be understood in terms of the interaction between external pressures and local values. This result is hardly surprising, once one goes beneath the surface of official proclamations, but it requires real subtlety in teasing out the quite genuine change that is involved.

“British” India Assessing the cultural results of British control over the Indian subcontinent, as it began to take shape in the eighteenth century and extended up to the national independence of both India and Pakistan in 1947, on the surface presents a quite different challenge from the patterns in Latin America. Given the Spanish power position, and periodic claims of impact, the most obvious imperative is to go beneath the surface and note the continued strength of native cultures and combinations. In India, almost the opposite

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holds: in a vast region with strong traditions that could not easily be penetrated form the outside, the British did not and could not attempt the kind of cultural transformation sought by Spanish rulers and missionaries. Though British military and political control was real—after an initial period in which efforts had focused mainly on economic exploitation—it depended on collaborations with a variety of local leaders and was stretched thin over the subcontinent as a whole. No massive death-rate increase resulted from British control, which highlights another basis for the vitality of existing cultural patterns. So while the culture change results of contact in Latin America are easy to exaggerate, the problem in India is almost the reverse: British impact can seem so puny, against the force of established religions like Hinduism or Islam or other cultural frameworks in art and science, that it may be unduly tempting to assume less impact than actually emerged. Contact does generate not just resistance but adjustment, and India provides a different kind of example, and obviously an important one given the significance of the subcontinent itself. There is no question that the British in India, like their Spanish counterparts earlier in the Americas, were shocked by the cultural traditions they encountered. They found Hindu art and other aspects of popular culture obscene: as one nineteenth-century observer put it, in “flagrant violation of common decency.” Indians seemed too tolerant of homosexuality, another strike against tradition. Christian missionaries, who began to flock to India as British rule consolidated in the early nineteenth century, attacked Hinduism as a set of “abominable and degrading superstitions”: “our religion is sublime, pure and beneficent. Theirs is mean, licentious and cruel.” Practices like sati, where in a few regions widows threw themselves on their dead husbands’ funeral pyres, on grounds that as widows they had nothing to live for, seemed particularly reprehensible by British standards.11 And in fact, for a few decades in the middle of the nineteenth century, British officials moved toward a series of reforms that had significant cultural implications. They attacked sati. They challenged Hindu tradition by allowing widows to remarry. They made some efforts to limit child marriage, and also tried to reduce polygamy in those regions where it was practiced. And all this alongside facilitation of Christian missionary work and the new regulations on popular plays and other manifestations that seemed obscene. Even at this point, recent historians have noted the limitations of the British efforts: many colonial officials resented changes that were occurring back home—for example, in the area of legal rights for women—and deliberately restricted reform efforts in India; thus widows in fact gained few new opportunities despite official permission to remarry—among other things, if they tried to follow through they would have to surrender control of their children to the families of their late husbands. British tendencies to simplify Indian patterns to facilitate their own understanding as outsiders may also have made certain traditional social and cultural features more rigid, for example in the area of caste distinctions.12

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More important still was the fact that even limited efforts at reform, along with the larger framework of colonial economic exploitation, roused massive popular resistance. A violent rebellion against British rule, in 1857, was put down only with great effort and loss of life on both sides. As a result, the British pulled in their horns even further. Queen Victoria, in 1858, proclaimed “a public equality between Europeans and Natives,” professing “no desire to impose [European] convictions on any of our subjects.” Reform efforts slowed (though Indian liberals joined the British in continuing to attack sati), and while extensive missionary activity continued, including private educational programs, the end of legal reforms left most Indians— including the vast rural majority—free from much direct cultural compulsion. Tolerance of the major religions and of even the more sensual artistic expressions largely replaced overt pressure, with the maintenance of political stability the main goal. British control was officially undimmed, but it now operated in a more restricted sphere. The contrast with Spanish assertions in Latin America was obvious, and this returns us to the key question: how much culture change does contact generate when, as in the Indian case, the explicit efforts at transformation are relatively modest? The relatively small number of British officials in India typically lived apart from the local population, another limitation on impact. After 1857, many colonists became more actively hostile to Indians themselves, viewing them as dangerous as well as uncivilized. Missionary efforts continued but with fairly modest religious impact: less than 3 per cent of India’s population today is Christian, as both Hinduism and Islam, and several other regional faiths, largely withstood the outside pressure. The potential for more limited culture change, however, was very real. A vital basis emerged from the Indians—mostly men—who decided to serve as assistants to British officials. As a colonial agent put it in 1835, it was vital to create “a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern: a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinion, in morals and in intellect.” The group emerged slowly, small in number at first and often operating in Persian rather than English. But by mid-century, and even before the 1857 revolt, a cluster of officials could be identified. And while their cultural conversion was less extreme than the 1835 appeal suggested—most, for example, remained Hindu— there was measurable change.13 For among other things this new urban middle class fit uneasily with the existing caste system. It was drawn, in fact, from several castes, which already muddied its identity. The class was increasingly familiar with the English language, and individual members actually might travel to England to further their education. And while they were acutely aware of British racial prejudices, they absorbed some aspects of British culture nevertheless. As had been true in Latin America, changes in clothing constitute an interesting index of culture change—and also its limits. The British actually encouraged upper-caste Indians to retain traditional dress, or at least avoid

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conversion to British styles; visitors to Queen Victoria in London were thus required to show up in native attire. But by the mid-nineteenth century the urban middle class increasingly converted to some British gear; long black frock coats, for example, were thus combined with local pantaloons. By the

FIGURE 8.2 The Great Ruby. From The Great Ruby, Arthur Collins’ production; written by Cecil Raleigh and Henry Hamilton. NY: Strobridge Litho. Co., 1899. Source: Library of Congress.

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1880s the move to British styles was more complete, except, interestingly, for headgear, where turbans or traditional caps were preferred over hats. And women, more removed from interaction with colonial authorities, typically did not change their styles at all, even in the new middle class. Syncretism, not wholesale conversion, described the pattern—which is exactly what should be expected from the dance between contact and tradition.14 Changes in political outlook were more significant historically, but they too blended imitation with urgent appeals to past values. In 1876 Surendrath Banerjee founded the Indian Association, the first clear suggestion of a nationalist movement on the subcontinent. Banerjee was a member of the new urban class, and he had in fact studied British political theory in England. But he was also a victim of British prejudice, unable to advance very far in official circles, and he sought a new kind of movement that would represent Indian interests in ways that sheer traditionalism did not allow. Thus he urged “the creation of a strong body of public opinion in the country” and “the unification of Indians races and peoples upon the basis of common interests and aspirations.” He sought to replicate, in other words, core features of current British political culture in the Indian context: hence the references to public opinion, and the effort to cut across customary divides in India itself. This move was followed, in 1885, by the formation of the Indian National Congress, led by a group of urban Indians but also a Scottish sympathizer; Banerjee quickly merged his association with the new organization. For two decades, Indian nationalists were largely content to press the British for a greater share in government, rather than working for independence outright. But they also increasingly overlaid their importation of nationalism with scholarly research and popularization of earlier, pre-colonial cultural traditions. The culture change represented by nationalism, in other words, was quickly combined with a selective use of regional features. The blending would further advance, after World War I, under the leadership of Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi, who embraced a nationalist appeal both against colonial control and against traditional Indian divisions by caste, religion and gender, but incorporated key Hindu values as well in what would ultimately become a successful independence movement.15 Indian nationalism thus became a classic expression of syncretism. It was a genuinely new cultural and political force, which is why its advocates characteristically attacked traditions like the caste system. It definitely reflected values and beliefs derived from contact. But it was also nourished by praise for vital cultural traditions—often including Hinduism, which in turn directly explained part of its appeal. Contact also ultimately generated culture change among some urban women. By the twentieth century a growing minority of Indian women experienced formal education, and a few actually traveled abroad. New journals and clubs sprang up, operating both in Hindi and English. An

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All-Indian Women’s Conference met in 1926. Standard feminist goals combined with attention to some specific regional issues. Thus the practice of confining respectable women in the household—called purdah—was attacked as actually contrary to earlier Hindu tradition, as well as wrong by modern standards. A common pattern for widowers to seek young brides in marriage was also criticized, for the choice seemed to imply that women were easily exchangeable and that faithful wives deserved no more memory than an old shoe. As the Conference proclaimed: “Sisters! You have slumbered long enough—awake! Open your eyes—see what is going on in the world . . . when the whole world sings of freedom is it right that Indian women should be inert and not make an effort to regain their lost freedom, defend themselves against the oppression of men and rise above the level of a shoe?”16 Like nationalism, though long less powerfully, Indian feminism worked to blend values that had originated in the West with a relevant sense of regional tradition and identity. The culture changes that contact induced in India—beyond shifts in clothing styles and the growing use of English by the urban middle class— obviously focused more on political values than had been the case in Latin America, where religious adjustments initially reflected the greater pressures applied by the colonial rulers. The combination between adjustment and tradition correspondingly differed as well, though a type of syncretism emerged in both settings. In both cases, though more clearly in India, culture change also created new divisions within the regional society, depending on the extent of contact and the openness to change. British rule had considerable impact on peasants in India, but far more because of new taxation policies and other economic changes than because of cultural influence. Popular culture was sometimes attacked—in some areas, for example, British moralism was supported by wealthier Indians who had themselves long resented the tone of customary dances and celebrations—but efforts to draw ordinary people into a new value system beyond this were insignificant. By the twentieth century anti-colonial leaders, particularly, worked to reduce this divide by their combination of democratic nationalism and praise for the richness of Indian culture in the past. But a tension between the newer values that had been shaped in part by contact, supported by advocates in the new urban class, and the cultural expectations of many ordinary Indians, would persist into the present day.

Cultural Globalization: Change and Resistance The cultural interactions encouraged by outright colonialism began to fade from view with the spread of successful independence movements after World War II . Direct domination by one society over another was increasingly replaced by exchanges that were less formally structured. Cultural agendas were often more diffuse than they had been when the active agents were

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missionaries or imperial officials, though even in these cases, as we have seen, actual culture change was more complex than the power relationships implied. Still, even in a largely post-imperial world, some recognizable patterns persisted, as interactions promoted change but also resistance and syncretic compromise. Global cultural contacts clearly accelerated by the second half of the twentieth century, though the process had arguably begun earlier. It is easy enough to define the new framework and, as we will see, the many concerns it prompted. According to a global Pew poll in 2008, cultural globalization was more feared and disliked than any other manifestation, with 72 per cent of all respondents expressing opposition (compared with only 56 per cent who claimed to fear economic globalization, so often blamed for cutting into local employment). But in between these two measures—the new framework and the resistance—defining what cultural globalization has meant in terms of culture change proves surprisingly elusive. Clearly, this was a complex phenomenon, still taking shape as late as 2018.17

The Framework We can begin with the ways cultural globalization is usually defined, in terms of measurable and considerable shifts in the framework for cultural interactions among the various regions of the world. Technological change obviously accelerated culture contacts after 1945, again with precedents earlier. Air travel facilitated the mixing of styles and ideas as well as peoples, leading to (among other things) an unprecedented wave of international tourism. Satellite communications supported the availability of TV shows and accounts of sporting events to a literally global audience: as many as a billion people, for example, were watching the finals of the soccer World Cup by the twenty-first century, an unprecedented figure. US television shows, like Baywatch, won audiences in many world regions. After 1990 the Internet, and the even wider expansion of cell-phone use, opened further channels of almost instantaneous communication. Supplementing technology was the new organizational reach of purveyors of consumer culture. Entertainment exports became a leading category not only for the United States, but also for Japan. Fast food chains and the expansion of Disneylands attracted massive clienteles: as early as the 1980s, a full 20 per cent of all restaurant meals in France were taken in fast food outlets, either American chains or French imitations. New toy fads, like Pokémon and Hello Kitty, poured out of Japan, again winning huge sales around the world, and Japan and South Korea also became major international sources of animation and computer games. International music tours featured leading American and British groups, but also stars from South Korea and Japan who gained fame throughout much of Asia and occasionally even beyond. Sports teams and competitions took on an international flavor, most

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obviously with soccer football, basketball and tennis; but even United States football and baseball teams began experimenting with international venues and player recruitment. And while Hollywood studios remained the leading international agents in the movie industry, India’s Bollywood (initially surging as a regional alternative) began to win wider attention, and by the early twenty-first century Chinese companies and directors began to collaborate with Hollywood to produce movies that would cross national markets even more readily. Sales of cultural products became an immensely popular, and influential, global sector.18 Finally, on another front, revisions in national policies, from the late twenty-first century onward, played a major role in accelerating cultural exchange. Russia eased travel and communication restrictions in the mid1980s, and then the wider collapse of European communism (1989–91) opened an even larger number of countries to relatively free flows of information, goods and people. Even more striking was the Chinese decision, in 1978, to participate more fully in globalization. While restrictions on information exchange reflected the anxieties of an authoritarian government, masses of tourists and study groups began to pour out of and into China— the greatest surge in the nation’s long history. Technology, commercial organizations, and crucial shifts in national policies combined to make the movement of ideas, entertainments, tastes, and fads more extensive, and more literally worldwide, than ever before. Add to this, for many countries, was the steady stream of immigration. Migrants, often including refugees, moved into Western Europe as well as the United States, Canada, and Australia in increasing numbers, from south and southeast Asia; the Middle East and North Africa; Africa; and parts of Latin America and the Caribbean. They brought new beliefs and tastes to their new homes. But returning immigrants, as back and forth visits were facilitated by improved transportation, imported novel cultural influences to the regions of origin as well.19 Additionally, though on a slightly different front, a variety of organizations also worked to reshape beliefs around principles such as human rights. United Nations organizations actively struggled, for example, to promote changes in the treatment of women. So did International Non-Government Organizations (INGO s) like Amnesty International, founded in 1961 and eager to publicize abuses based on what it saw as universally applicable standards. Even national governments, though often concerned about some aspects of cultural globalization, promoted some conversions toward more international standards. Most obviously, they frequently encouraged use of scientifically trained doctors and hospitals as the major recourse for health problems, as against more purely traditional practices.20 And they characteristically imported some human rights language into their constitutions, for example in accepting the principle of gender equality. A host of forces, then, were primed to encourage a variety of changes in belief and values, in virtually every country in the world. By 2016 only North

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Korea, of all the nations, tried to hold itself substantially apart from global influences. Cultural globalization admittedly remained more diffuse than the kinds of culture contact that had resulted from colonialism and imperialism— it emerged from a wider variety of sources and its mandates were not always entirely clear. Outright contradictions were possible: thus cultural globalization at once urged more open sexuality, as in the costumes and innuendos of television shows like Baywatch, while also—through the human rights efforts— promoting greater protection of women against exploitation. But the force and ubiquity of global cultural standards unquestionably constituted a powerful new version of contact in promoting change.

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any cultures offer pronounced views about foods, approving some options while viewing others with great distaste. An intriguing specific example, in the context of globalization, involves the Samburu people of Kenya, as they encountered new global imports during the second half of the twentieth century amid deeply-held beliefs about the division between proper and improper foods. Tea was one item that was new to this group, and as they were introduced to the product the Samburu tried to evaluate it in terms of items already familiar to them. At first tea was compared to tobacco (given the appearance of tea leaves): it might be an appropriate enjoyment for older males, but not for society as a whole. Children, particularly, became rude and lazy when exposed to tea, according to the initial Samburu evaluation. But in the 1960s a shortage of milk—a basic dietary staple—encouraged a new approach. Tea now became associated with milk (which was often added in small quantities), and so appropriate for all groups, children included. This wide acceptance was a gradual process, but it built clearly on the ability to extend an existing cultural framework to a global innovation. This was decidedly not the case, however, with sodas like Coca-Cola, widely introduced to Kenya in the 1950s, amid extensive advertising, and accepted by many groups in the nation. For the Samburu, Coke remained an unfamiliar product, linked to nothing they recognized except, perhaps, the bad taste of medicine. The Samburu discovered no category that could normalize Coke (or equivalents), and so either sampled sodas rarely or avoided them altogether—despite their growing global popularity. As one man put it, “I have not taken it because it is not food.” This is, of course, a small example. But it reminds us of the complexity of culture change and the importance, often, of working from existing values even when substantial innovation is involved—as with tea. It

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certainly cautions against assuming that global or Western cultural categories will always prevail—a crucial reminder in dealing with contemporary levels of contact.21

Constraints Despite the increasingly elaborate apparatus of globalization defining the key culture changes associated with global change is not an easy task. A number of complications are obvious. First, as noted, the global influences themselves pointed in various direction; they did not easily combine. The lessons taught by United Nations conferences on women were not the same as those implied by Japanese computer games or Disneyworlds. Different members of the global audience could easily select varied and sometimes contradictory messages. Access to global culture remained limited in a number of ways, despite the very real changes. By 2017 almost half the world’s population was still rural, and hard to reach through most of the new mechanisms. Only a third of all people had any kind of regular access to the Internet, though the numbers grew steadily and although cell phone use was more widespread. Add to this the very vigorous efforts by authoritarian governments to block certain kinds of information or entertainment images, and it is obvious that the range and availability of this new surge in culture contacts were hardly uniform. More important still, people could be exposed to new cultural exchanges without, necessarily, changing their tastes and beliefs significantly. Global tourism was an intriguing case in point, on both sides of the experience. First, the travelers themselves. Many global tourists were truly venturesome, eagerly exploring foreign tastes and values. But even more were largely confined to package tours, that showed more sights than people, and to the resort hotels that carefully catered to a standard kind of architecture and food service. Club Med, for example, a successful European chain founded by a Belgian entrepreneur, set up operations in all sorts of vacation areas but with European cuisine (modified only by a once-a-week special based on local products) and standards. Guests could take tours into areas outside the Club grounds, but they did not have to, and were often quite selective. The extent to which these experiences spurred culture change can certainly be questioned: they often seemed more clearly designed to limit exposure. Intriguingly, some of the same limitations applied to impact on the local service workers involved. Obviously, many local men and women took new jobs in the tourist industry, including the big resorts, where they would come into at least limited contact with international guests and certainly have opportunities to observe their habits. The experience might be enhanced when some workers were imported from other areas: the Philippines, for example,

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sent many service workers into resorts in the Middle East and elsewhere. But studies showed that many locals remained quite capable of preserving a clear division between what they saw at work, and the values and rituals they expected when they returned home. Sometimes, surely, they were simply shocked at some international behaviors: the European fashion of topless bathing, for example, grudgingly permitted in many resorts on pain of losing customers, more often promoted revulsion than imitation, though a few young male service workers regrettably assumed that female guests might be seeking more attention than was actually the case. Over time—by the time a second generation of local workers was involved—greater changes in beliefs and styles might occur. But what might seem to have been an obvious opportunity for massive culture change proved in fact to be more complicated.22 Despite all the fanfare around cultural globalization, in other words, many of the same constraints applied that had operated in earlier cases of contact. Locals were not uniformly exposed to new influences. Even where they were, they would characteristically pick and choose—and sometimes reject outright. The same constraints applied to the regions that were receiving new levels of immigration. Many locals, in Western Europe or the United States, might have little contact with immigrants, or largely ignore their habits even when they did. New forms of contact were very real, but they did not always serve as sources of change.

Causation A standard feature of culture change analysis has not always been applied to the complexities of cultural globalization, but it may facilitate deeper understanding. While the framework of the phenomenon is clear enough— access to new kinds of entertainment, advice from governments or international agencies—this is not the same as causation: hence the many people who in fact watched Hollywood movies or TV shows without necessarily changing their values, or the tourism workers who found the habits of foreign guests irrelevant to their own lives—or positively repellant. Why, then, should the people exposed to global cultural influences in fact translate their exposure into culture change? The sense of being fashionable or modern could exercise great influence. A Chinese student in Shanghai is interviewed about why he so often goes to the local McDonald’s for his meals. He admits he doesn’t find the food terrific—he actually prefers Chinese home cooking. But he loves to visit the fast food outlet because it gives him a sense of connection with global youth, a feeling that he is connecting with up-to-date values. This motivation may combine with another that we have seen in play in some religious conversions: the opportunity for some groups, traditionally held out of the power structure, to use global tastes to gain a sense of independence and self-expression. The youths, then, who latch onto fast foods

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or blue jeans or foreign music styles are not necessarily rebelling against their parents, but they clearly are enjoying the new opportunities to gain some separate space that had been unavailable before. In Vietnam, for example, early in the twenty-first century the foreign word “teen” was added to the language to describe adolescents who seemed addicted to new styles and to unprecedented levels of consumerism—and who were distinguishing themselves from more traditionalist adults in the process.23 A generational element clearly plays a role in conversions to a more global culture—and this may provide a basis for accelerated change as the initial converts gain greater authority with age. Group advantage in some cases applies to women as well, when they actually have any significant access to global cultural signals. Opportunities for expression through new fashions or other new consumer activities may be genuinely meaningful, even aside from more formal human rights standards. Not surprisingly, international polls show women more favorable than men to globalization overall—for they have more to gain through cultural change. Movement toward global cultural signals may involve more concrete benefits. Most obviously, many people need little prompting to take advantage of access to more up-to-date medicine, in expectation of better health. Learning English, another obvious facet of cultural globalization for literally millions of people in Asia, Africa and Latin America, offers measurable advantages in business and often in government work—a familiar element in culture change. In contrast to many cases of culture change, relatively little outright compulsion is involved. Most people are not threatened or tortured into global transformations: if anything, force is more often used to punish excessive indulgence in new tastes or new human rights commitments. Government encouragement may amplify causation, as in the health field or in English-language educational requirements. But for the most part participation in global cultures is largely voluntary—which is why, in many societies, individual reactions vary greatly and why the lures of fashion or group expression seem particularly important. The causes of individual choice are much harder to pin down than the new technological or commercial framework within which the choice may be exercised, but they can be probed and they overlap, in some general ways, with the causes involved in other types of culture change.

Defining the Change What, then, were the major kinds of culture change that resulted from the expanding framework of cultural globalization? How might a person in New Delhi or Nairobi, who watched some foreign movies and television shows and developed a passion for soccer or basketball, actually alter his or her values and beliefs?

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The question has not actually been asked very often. As in many other cases, cultural globalization has been studied less than its political or economic counterparts. And when it has been examined, the focus has often centered on mechanisms—as in a classic study that examined the circulation of foreign magazines in Southeast Asia—rather than actual cultural results.24 It’s not simply that we know, as suggested above, that some people can consume global cultural products without being deeply affected. The greater challenge involves distinguishing between tastes, which are interesting but arguably superficial, and actual values and beliefs. We can easily see that soccer or Starbucks or Hello Kitty dolls gain ground internationally, which means that people are buying new products or experiences. Does real culture change result from these undeniable forms of culture contact? How do global influences combine with existing beliefs and values, in ways that help explain the actual directions of change? We can begin with the obvious. Participation in global consumer culture or contact with global medical standards is at least an implicit statement that innovation is preferable to sheer traditionalism. This, of course, is why cultural globalization can be so upsetting, to ordinary parents or irate conservative groups. Familiar food habits or health rituals or styles of dress are no longer seen as adequate, and while the most obvious results involve specific tastes, the cultural implications can run deeper. A new sense of time is frequently involved, another fundamental culture component that moves beyond taste. Fast foods may be fashionable; they may (or may not) seem to taste good; but they are also, obviously, fast, in cultures that often once cherished opportunities for leisurely eating. They reflect a new cultural definition of time. Similarly, almost all the popular global sports—soccer, basketball, and track most obviously—place a premium both on rapidity and precise timing. Sports excitements may seem to offer a contrast with daily economic life, but in some basic ways they actually reflect similar values: the importance of living by the clock, of placing new value on speed. Consumerism itself is not an entirely new cultural component. There is abundant evidence that urban consumerism was well advanced not only in the West, but in China and elsewhere well before globalization. But global culture not only provides consumerism with new taste targets; it enhances the place of material acquisitions, shopping and professional entertainments in personal value systems. More and more people around the world measure part of their success in life, and that of the society around them, in terms of consumer achievements. This means as well that some older criteria, sometimes including religious values, are partially downplayed in the process. Beauty standards change with cultural globalization, and while this again was partly a taste preference it may suggest larger reevaluations, particularly of women. The popularity of beauty contests became a global phenomenon from the 1970s, almost everywhere save in the most strictly Islamic regions.

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This is turn placed novel emphasis on slenderness—when American television shows penetrated some of the Pacific islands, the result was a measurable increase in eating disorders like bulimia, as young women tried to accommodate to the newly fashionable imagery—but also revealing costumes. This result could shake up older beliefs not just about aesthetics but about the female gender, though with complicated implications as attractive women became both more significant and more exploitable than had been true in more traditional cultures. Global culture had its implications for family values as well, as suggested in Chapter 7. Greater consumer indulgence spread to children, with increased gift-giving and even, in many cities, a new interest in birthday parties (complete with translations of the American song, “Happy Birthday”). Regional family traditions were not shattered as a result, but they definitely had to accommodate significant new elements. The idea that children should be entertained and celebrated won new currency, against many more traditional standards. The kinds of culture change generated by the contacts of globalization were not as easy to define as, say, religious conversions or shifts in emotional norms—though they could affect these categories. There were no centrally defined doctrines, no formally trained missionaries with explicit formulas in hand. Furthermore, the transformations involved are still in process; their precise dimensions may become clearer over time. Nonetheless, the people who participate strongly in global culture are involved in significant shifts in values and beliefs as they take some of their cues from international exchanges. They think differently, at least to some extent, about various aspects of life, beyond the new tastes that they often eagerly pursue.

Syncretism One measurement of the culture change involved with globalization is precisely what we would expect unless we mistakenly assume that global styles will always win out: vigorous efforts spring up to blend new elements with established habits, often in ways that deliberately combine the global elements with important regional traditions. We have seen how this kind of combination plays out in decisions about accepting or rejecting new food imports. In another domain: as discussed in Chapter  6, urban Taiwanese enthusiastically consult modern medicine for significant health problems, following the same cues as their counterparts in New York or Dubai. But they combine their doctor visits with a host of customary rituals as well, just to be on the safe side. Their health culture, in other words, is both global and local.25 Fast food restaurants mix their standard global dimension with local accommodations, making the commitment to new standards less jarring. McDonald’s outlets in India offer a host of vegetarian options, while those

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in France serve beer and wine and those in Morocco arrange special feasts after nightfall during Ramadan. Some attempted combinations do not work well, for syncretism is not always possible. A movement in the state of Kerala, in southern India, sought to modify the new enthusiasm for beauty contests by stipulating that participants must also demonstrate skills in traditional epic poetry as well. The experiment foundered because the young women interested in displaying their beauty lacked the customary language skills, while the traditionalists had no desire to pose in public view. Yet blending was often quite successful, which was one reason that global culture change did not, despite critics’ concerns, produce some drab homogeneity across regional lines. Shared sports excitements could combine with very different personal behavior codes off the playing field—or even on it, as successful East Asian athletes often bowed to the spectators to maintain this element of their etiquette while Japanese baseball players reflected a commitment to teamwork quite different from their United States or Latin American counterparts. The impact of shared consumer tastes and goals on the family was also modified, as we have seen, by different regional traditions. Syncretism did not always work; it certainly did not always satisfy the critics of change; but it often reflected a continued capacity to tailor change in accordance with regional acceptability. Here, global culture change revealed the same basic dynamic we have seen in earlier instances of contact, where real innovation was possible but only with some compromise added in.

Resistance The most striking aspect of the kinds of culture change that resulted from globalization was the resistance it provoked. At one level, this too was predictable, suggesting indirectly that the change involved was real and serious. In some instances, however, the stiffness, even the violence, of resistance was surprising, making the longer term trajectory of global culture change hard to predict. To some extent, opponents seized on cultural globalization as the easiest global target—compared to growing international trade, for example, that often won strong support from powerful business elements, and this might explain some of the fervor involved. Complicating the picture still further was the emergence, by the twentyfirst century, of new sources of resistance to cultural globalization from some of the societies that, up until then, had seemed to dominate the process. This gave added strength to the anti-global tide, to the point that some observers wondered if this source of culture change might actually be rolled back. Initial signs of resistance came, predictably though significantly, from societies that seemed engulfed by cultural signals from other parts of the

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world, intensified now through the larger apparatus of globalization itself. Many people worried that the flood of new influences, from imported television shows to human rights pressures, were undermining cherished identities. The Iranian Revolution of 1979 was fueled in part by resentment at undue Western influence, including the behaviors of foreign visitors, that violated Islamic norms, and religious reactions in other regions reflected some of the same concerns. Intellectuals in many places elaborated the theme of cultural identity, as a counterweight to change. African writers like Chinua Achebe, though writing in English or French, lamented the decline of traditional beliefs and rituals, with titles like Things Fall Apart or No Longer at Ease (see Chapter 3). They did not deny that global standards brought some measurable progress, but urged that the loss of community values was a serious problem. Latin American writers dealt with similar themes. The Mexican novelist Octavio Paz, writing in the later twentieth century, argued that his nation had painfully developed a successful identity over the centuries since the Spanish invasion, combining indigenous and European values in a meaningful fashion. Now, he claimed, global influences, including consumer values, were undermining this amalgam, particularly among the growing ranks of city dwellers. Foreign, primarily Western, ideas were turning Mexico into a cultural “desert,” crushing basic connections—with nature, with society itself—into a mindless hedonism. The only solution was for Mexico to craft its own version of modernity, separate from global pressures, but it was not clear how or even whether this could be done. Intellectual anxiety may be a risky measurement of wider attitudes, but it was clear that many people in many parts of the world were worried about the cultural pressures that surrounded them, that seemed so tempting to some of their children. Religious concerns and intellectual objections expressed some of this anxiety; so, obviously, did the negative reactions to cultural globalization revealed by international opinion polls. Cultural globalization did not cease in face of these objections, but its future was difficult to predict. Then, early in the twenty-first century, objections to cultural globalization intensified in the West itself. Some concerns were not new: Europeans, for example, had long protested undue influence from the United States, particularly in consumerism: one French politician had coined the term “cocacolonization” as early as the 1950s to vent his resentment against the spread of Coca-Cola as a symbol of Americanization. Occasional attacks on McDonald’s or Starbucks were a symbolic expression of this kind of concern, though they did not manage to beat back continued change. Then, particularly after the financial collapse of 2008 and amid the heightened pressures of refugee immigration from parts of the Middle East and Africa, more basic concerns about national or Western identities surfaced. A number of political movements arose that were bent on

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eliminating refugee programs and expelling some existing immigrants. A 2016 vote in Great Britain to leave the European Union, though it embraced a number of specific regional issues, reflected widespread concern that the nation was being overwhelmed by people with unfamiliar costumes and habits to such an extent that British identity might be lost. Similar sentiments helped support the successful presidential campaign of Donald Trump in the United States, which intensified anti-immigrant sentiment directed particularly at Latinos and Muslims. These movements were not easy to interpret. They reflected deeply divided societies. Identity concerns were greatest in rural and small town areas—this was as true in Britain as in the United States—where, somewhat ironically, direct presence of immigrants was relatively limited. Urban centers were far less troubled by cultural diversity: thus London and other major UK cities voted against leaving the European Union, and both the West coast and the Northeast in the United States turned out against Trump. It was also hard to separate the clear economic concerns about globalization—the reactions to the decline of manufacturing and the sense that global competition was to blame—from the cultural protests. Nor, finally, was it entirely clear what “identity” was being advanced, though both in Britain and the United States the anti-global cultural current had some connection with a belief (whether accurate or not) that in the past values had been more clearly shaped by Christianity and a predominantly white ethnicity. There was some coherence among the various identity voices: cultural globalization brought not only new and outside influences but a greater diversity of habits and values in many regions. New religious minorities arose, as in the rapid Islamic gains in Western Europe. New styles of dress were visible (and clearly often resented), most obviously again in the preferences of some Muslim women. New types of foods and restaurants cropped up: the British worried as much about East European advances here as about Asian and African outlets, some of which had been widely accepted. In broad outline, some of these newer resentments touched base with the objections that had surfaced a bit earlier in parts of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Foreign values and the growing visibility of cultural diversity could loom as threats in a variety of settings, including, as was becoming clear in the twenty-first century, settings which had previously served as centers of global influence. A number of question marks surrounded cultural globalization by the second decade of the new century. The mechanisms for heightened contact were still intact, and the advance of social media if anything accelerated possibilities for interaction across borders. Some of the motivations for accepting culture change remained strong. At the least, however, there was growing division about cultural globalization, not only among different societies (a more resistant Middle East, for example, as opposed to a more accessible West) but, at least as significantly, within them.

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Conclusion: Contact, Tolerance, and Culture Change Culture contact, as a source of change, always raises questions about degrees of mutual tolerance. Officially, as we have seen, the Spanish conquerors professed disdain for traditional indigenous cultures in Mexico, but in fact they displayed—partly of necessity—considerable tolerance for native efforts to combine earlier values with Christianity. Informal tolerance had a long history in India, where influences from a variety of invading groups had often been assimilated with local cultures, and in many ways this capacity persisted under British rule, particularly after the sharp clashes in the mid-nineteenth century. British influence did promote some change, but many continuities remained uncontested. Cultural globalization places a high premium on tolerance, in two ways. First, particularly through the ideas about global human rights, tolerance is explicitly urged as a crucial modern value. This is a consistent feature of this facet of globalization from 1945 onward. But second, insofar as globalization generates varied responses and places different cultural groups in uneasy interaction within individual societies, tolerance arguably becomes a vital component of successful coexistence. Culture change in general, as we have seen, may promote tolerance or may do just the opposite. The advent of the great missionary religions often set tolerance back, in favor of efforts to insist on a single truth. Cultural globalization certainly has a dual potential. Its advocates can attack traditional cultures, and its opponents can respond with equal intolerance. But contemporary interactions have also generated other options, based on a heightened appreciation for tolerance as a global cultural value of its own. Without predicting an outcome—for tolerance is clearly a contested quality in the contemporary world—a brief look at this aspect of global culture change legitimately rounds out the consideration of globalization more generally. The decades after 1945 saw a number of extensions of tolerance, both at the policy level and in more general cultural terms. Revulsion at the brutal intolerance of the interwar decades played a clear role: the Nazi slaughter of Jews and others prompted extensive efforts to support tolerance as a global value. The progressive retreat of imperialism, with its frequent scorn for “nonwestern” values, was another spur—though not all the resulting new nations proved to be actively tolerant. Signs of new support for tolerance abounded, offering another example of widespread, if not global, culture change. The establishment of the United Nations, and all subsequent human rights declarations, held tolerance as a core value, insisting on all the basic freedoms of religion and expression plus equality for various kinds of minority groups and women. In a historic reversal, the Catholic Church, which had long resisted acceptance of freedom

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of religion in principle, now changed course, with the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s: Catholicism was still held to be the only true religion, but every individual must be free to seek truth without coercion as part of his or her fundamental dignity. Inspired leadership in several countries extended tolerance as well. In India, though Mohandas Gandhi was unsuccessful in maintaining full unity for the subcontinent, the new Indian constitution proclaimed tolerance as a basic value. Later in South Africa, in the 1990s, Nelson Mandela took the lead not only in reversing the racist system of apartheid, but in establishing a Truth and Reconciliation Commission that would explore past repression in a context of forgiveness; for as Mandela put it, “part of building a new nation means building a spirit of tolerance, love and respect amongst the people.” The geography of tolerance was also expanded in the new constitutions of Japan and Germany, and by the later twentieth century by the spread of political democracy in Latin America. Finally, the surge of new International Non-Government Organizations, beginning with Amnesty International, was founded on the belief that tolerance and respect for rights was a global imperative and that these principles could be supported by appeals to world opinion. The range of tolerance also expanded in many places. During the nineteenth century most Western tolerance advocates had focused on the diversity of beliefs. By the later twentieth century, however, this commitment was joined with increasing efforts to extend acceptance to a variety of groups and lifestyles. In the West, but also in many parts of Latin America, Japan, Taiwan, and South Africa, efforts to enforce uniform codes for sexual behavior or styles of dress began to retreat in favor of greater openness. The surge of support for gay rights was a recent manifestation of this larger trend, as will be discussed more fully in the next chapter. Civil rights movements in the United States and elsewhere, including the fight against apartheid, won greater recognition for a variety of minority groups, as well as new rights for women. In places like Australia, earlier efforts to restrict indigenous peoples gave way to new respect: the goal was acceptance of “the fundamental right of Aboriginals to retain their racial identity and traditional lifestyles or, where desired, to adopt wholly or partially a European lifestyle”—a huge innovation in the national tradition. In many regions as well, despite new furor, tolerance for immigrant groups probably gained ground, at least in several key cases. A 2017 poll— taken at a time when anti-immigrant sentiment was clearly growing— showed that only 33 per cent of all Europeans and 32 per cent of Americans (but 21 and 13 per cent of Canadians and Australians respectively) thought that it was very important for a person to have been born in “our” country, so long as efforts were being made to adapt to customs and the dominant language. (In contrast, the figure was 50 per cent in Japan—lower than in the past, but still suggesting a somewhat narrower approach to national identity.)26

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A number of factors must of course be weighed against these trends. Regional variation prevents sweeping global generalizations. China after 1978 became reasonably tolerant of a number of religions so long as they were clearly loyal to the state—including a state-controlled version of Catholicism—but it actively limited faiths regarded as subversive, and of course maintained other limitations on freedom of opinion in the interest of an authoritarian state. Amid massive strife in the Middle East, traditional Islamic tolerance for minority religions often lost ground outright. Tolerance itself generated new problems. The decline of efforts to enforce a single standard of sexual morality in Western countries continued to provoke opposition from more traditional groups. Equally interesting was a newer effort to generate other kinds of restrictions, as in defining “sexual harassment” as a category that should not be tolerated. Sexual approaches and flirtations that once seemed acceptable (though particularly to men) were now publicly condemned, often prompting job dismissals amid the vigorous #MeToo movement that launched in 2018; here was a clear case of the confusions caused by shifting standards. Huge disputes also arose, particularly in the United States, over what was called “political correctness.” Protection of groups like African Americans or gay men and women seemed to require restrictions on language, most obviously preventing the use of traditional words that were clearly demeaning; but these same attempts limited the tolerance for other groups—most obviously, white heterosexual males—in ways that provoked resistance. Agreeing on the boundary lines of the new tolerance was at best a work in progress, and full resolution had yet to emerge.27 The notion of tolerance itself was disputed, both by scholars and by a wider public. For some, tolerance meant grudgingly accepting ideas, groups or behaviors that were disliked—a valid definition, but arguably a limited one. For others, tolerance could involve greater enthusiasm: not an abandonment of personal standards, but an explicit enjoyment of different styles and customs in one’s social environment. Cultural globalization might encourage this more generous approach, as in the case of growing acceptance of different food styles, in many different parts of the world. But the question of what kind of tolerance should prevail, or even whether tolerance might be rolled back, was still an open issue in the twenty-first century. Indeed the whole idea of tolerance as part of global culture change is best viewed as a question, rather than an established fact. Experience of the brutal results of extreme intolerance, as in Nazi Germany; new sources of support through shifts in political systems and the evolution of institutions like Catholicism; the apparatus of cultural globalization itself, including human rights declarations—all these developments have genuinely pushed for change over the past several decades. Some groups and regions have clearly responded, at least to a point. The notion that contemporary levels of cultural globalization must involve fuller commitments to tolerance is not simply an expression of far-fetched idealism. But the issues involved, like

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cultural globalization itself, are still in dispute. Expanded culture contact still has the capacity to provoke resistance as well as change, especially where ethnic nationalisms run strong. There is ample reason to debate the prospects for further adjustments, and combinations, as part of assessing an ongoing process in many key regions. Is it possible, or will it become possible, to discuss a major culture change like more systematic tolerance on something beyond a purely regional basis? Here is a central question in assessing the larger impact of global contacts on basic values and beliefs in the contemporary world.

9 Prejudice and Acceptance Culture Change and Social Hierarchies

This chapter, focused on culture changes that reevaluate traditional patterns of discrimination, returns to a more purely national or regional framework. Important links connect recent developments to global culture contacts, including tolerance; there are also interactions with other forms of culture change, particularly in the emotional realm. But cultural reevaluation is important in its own right, generating some of the most interesting and significant developments in modern history. Many societies, before the modern centuries, identified a variety of groups as inferior, and developed cultures that elaborated the nature of their inferiority in many ways. These characterizations, in turn, might be accepted, at least in part, not only by dominant social groups, bent on enjoying their superiority, but by some elements of the scorned groups as well. This was a powerful cultural grip. More recently, however, spurred by new ideas, social developments and, often, the example of other regions, many of these oppressive cultures have been reconsidered. This chapter takes up several key instances of this kind of culture change, where powerful discriminatory beliefs have abated, at least to some extent. It is important to note some caveats and guidelines at this point. First, this is not a full survey of traditional and modern social discrimination, and it is important to note that modern societies feature blind spots of their own. Many traditional societies displayed certain kinds of tolerance that have actually declined since the eighteenth century. It has become much more difficult, for example, for various ethnic groups to live together in a single political unit in many regions, which has led to a proliferation of relatively small nations that help separate newly bitter enmities. The rise of narrow nationalisms undermined long-successful multinational 197

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empires, in places like the Middle East, with results that vividly persist today. Rampant racism, to take another example, though now under wide attack, is partly a modern creation, not present or not so fierce before the later nineteenth century. We have also noted, in dealing with new cultural pressures against obesity, the modern creation of new kinds of prejudice. So the chapter is not trying to argue for the systematic cultural advantages of modern times.1 The chapter does focus, however, on several important instances where culture change has targeted longstanding prejudices. Thus we deal with the rise of new ideas about gender, in societies where for many centuries women were held to be systematically inferior to men, not just in terms of political and economic power but in terms of capacity and moral quality as well. A complex reevaluation of India’s caste system offers another key example, like gender still in process today. We take up the striking rapid, recent shifts in ideas about homosexuals, against a backdrop, particularly in Western societies, of longstanding scorn. And a few other instances will be briefly explored. Here too, there is no claim of a systematic survey. Analysis of culture change should also be applied to racist beliefs in several societies, where the balance between adjustment and resistance is both complex and significant. Culture change associated with modern social tolerance often operates in complex interactions with policy change. Many societies, pressed by new ideas about human rights for example, enact anti-discrimination laws that race ahead of widespread changes in shared values. Barack Obama, in the United States, acknowledging ongoing prejudices despite legal equality, correctly noted that it has often been harder to change hearts than to change social rules, and the disjuncture can create obvious problems. Shifts in India’s caste system revealed clear gaps between law and culture. Analysis of this kind of culture change highlights a number of analytical problems. Causation is one, familiar enough by now. The relationship between formal leadership and protest action, pushing for reevaluation of old stereotypes, and broader ideas and social forces is typically complex, raising important questions about how best to orchestrate this kind of culture change. Figuring out why some groups, even those who seemingly benefited from older ideas about inferiorities—whose identities had partly depended on scorn for others—ultimately rethink their positions is an intriguing challenge. Speed varies, which raises another set of explanatory problems. Culture change concerning gender, though very real, evolves typically over many decades, whereas the recent about-face concerning gay rights, at least in Western societies, crested within just a few years. Resistance and persistence, two other now-familiar companions, must be assessed when old social attitudes begin to crumble—one of the reasons that “hearts” sometimes adjust more slowly than do social rules and regulations. Here, culture change touches on important contemporary issues, when new

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beliefs about once-scorned groups continue to face challenges and disputes. The rise of new kinds of cultural tolerance is a very real phenomenon, but it has differential impact and sometimes provokes disagreements even within the groups that, in principle, stand to benefit from change. And one final point: it may be harder to generate combinations of old and new in this domain than in other forms of culture change: one either accepts the legitimacy of homosexuality, for example, or rejects it. But at least in the case of gender, we will see some evidence of the familiar effort to modify culture change with selective strains from the past.

A Warm-up: The Neglected History of Left-handers During the middle decades of the twentieth century, a quiet but intriguing culture shift occurred concerning left-handedness. This is an understudied case of culture change, and it is distinctive in that it did not involve significant political movements or leadership or even an upsurge of youth. For this reason it can—briefly—suggest some of the other factors involved in transforming traditional prejudices. There is no question about the baseline. Into the twentieth century lefthandedness, in Western societies and many others, was associated with filth and often with sin and perversion. At its origins, prejudice may have reflected the division between right hand, used for eating and greeting, and the focus of the left hand on hygiene practices. Many religions, including Christianity, loudly embraced the distinction. The saintly sat on the right hand of God, the angels of death on the left. Left-handedness was readily taken as a sign of the devil’s work. Language itself furthered the distinction: right (in many languages) was not only a description of handedness, but an indication of sound quality, even of justice. In contrast, left was directly associated with the sinister, or in an application of the French word gauche, simply with clumsiness. Correspondingly, many parents, well into the twentieth century, physically chastized any left-handed offspring, whipping them or tying their good hand behind the back to force a shift to the right. Schools, similarly, imposed discipline for children whose left-handedness persisted: into the 1960s teachers in Catholic schools in the United States continued to beat dominant left-handed pupils with rulers or other objects, while schools in Montreal operated on the assumption that left-handedness was an “objective disorder” during the same decade. Forced conversions had their own consequences, sometimes generating stuttering or other maladjustments, though we lack details about this aspect of sinister history—but these were long ignored.2 Traditional prejudice had actually been compounded in nineteenthcentury culture. Growing use of machines may in fact have put left-handers

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at new disadvantage, for the equipment was typically built for right-handed use: left-handers might in consequence be less productive and even more likely to cause accidents. Science or pseudoscience undoubtedly compounded the situation. The famous criminologist Caesare Lombroso saw lefthandedness as pathological, a symptom of criminality and savagery. Other early psychologists sometimes equated it with homosexuality or other presumed disorders. Educators early in the twentieth century, like A. N. Palmer, offered symposia on the importance of shifting left-handers so that they would “learn the value of conformity.” As late as the 1950s psychiatrists like Abram Blau, though backing away from the most extreme claims, associated left-handedness in children with perversity, arguing that it was part of a larger pattern of stubborn and willful behavior and that it must be attacked on those grounds. Granted, this was already less dire than sin and criminality, but it maintained substantial prejudice. If the past miseries of left-handers are clear enough, in culture and treatment alike, the recent changes are easy enough to define as well. Though we do not know how many parents still, in private, seek to reorient a lefthanded infant—old prejudices can be very resistant—it is clear that most parents no longer care or even welcome the potential advantages involved. Certainly the public culture has shifted dramatically: left-handers are simply no longer a problem, reversing the long tradition and more recent deteriorations alike. Benjamin Spock, by far the most widely read parental advice author of the second half of the twentieth century, directly demonstrates the change. In the first edition of his child care manual, in 1946, he hesitated: he acknowledged that some handedness was inborn and that conversions could cause confusion, but he noted Abram Blau’s claim that the preference was acquired, because of a child’s “contrariness.” The compromise: actively encourage right-handedness if at all possible, though without force; but if the child persists, “I wouldn’t argue or fight with him but leave him to his preference. Even if his left-handedness is an expression of contrariness, it would only make matters worse to get him more antagonistic and obstinate.” This was not Spock’s permanent view, however, and it is always charming to be able to show a significant culture change illustrated by a single source. By the 1960s the recommendations of shifting where possible had been dropped. The new wisdom, maintained into all the later editions: handedness was an “inborn trait,” and about a tenth of the population naturally veered to the left. “It is a real mistake to try to force a left-handed child to become righthanded [for it] confuses the brain.” The transformation was clear, and many individual parents were making the more enlightened choice even before Spock’s conversion.3 What is harder to determine is how and why the change occurred—again, this is a revealing cultural shift that, probably because it has few political consequences, has not been thoroughly explored: but some elements of the transition can be identified.

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Science changed, albeit slowly. Researchers in the late nineteenth century began to advance their understanding of the structure and function of the brain, including the roles of left and right hemispheres. While this was not directly focused on the “problem” of left-handedness, it did encourage more objective inquiry. Interestingly, at the end of the century itself a real scientific enthusiasm for ambidexterity resulted, with a number of long treatises devoted to how the human species would be able to perform better if both hands were developed. An Ambidextral Culture Society was established in Britain. And many studies on the incidence of left-handedness emerged, in the long run serving to reduce purely knee-jerk reactions based on tradition alone.4 Particularly in the United States, by the early twentieth century, some of the athletic advantages of left-handedness may have played a role in encouraging change. Babe Ruth, for example, was a famous and very successful example of the southpaw benefits in pitching (for the Boston Red Sox) and hitting (for the Yankees). Tennis and bowling were two other sports where handedness played a role. Harry Truman, in 1945, became the first openly left-handed president, even throwing out the official first pitch of the 1946 baseball season in full glory. Most obviously, larger shifts in attitudes toward children prompted reconsideration. Attacks on left-handedness could easily accompany a general belief that instilling obedience was absolutely central in childrearing. But by the early twentieth century (capping a long, though fluctuating, trend among educators), more and more experts were coming to believe that creativity and emotional adjustment were more important goals. Prominent educators like John Dewey urged an approach to children that would bring out their qualities, not stifle them, and this more permissive attitude slowly but surely worked its way into advice to parents themselves. Culture change, in other words, resulted from new ideas in science and education, probably supplemented by a few changes in other domains such as sports. It is worth noting that left-handedness still had some real drawbacks, particularly in machine and tool use, and sometimes in handwriting, so the culture change not only reversed deep tradition but overrode some other possible complications. And the result, again granting the possibility of some private hesitations, has been a real shift in the experience of most of the roughly 10–15 per cent of all children in the United States (and many other societies, though there are some regional differences in incidence) who are born left-handed. One needless complication in childhood is now avoided. Indeed, as one result the percentage of left-handers has gone up markedly in the United States, thanks to the absence of compulsion, from about 5 per cent among all adults in 1900. Opportunities in later life reflect a larger social acceptance virtually inconceivable just a half century ago: the surprising percentage of recent American presidents who are left-handed is at least a symbolic indication of change. Even the purveyors of consumer goods began to make some

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adjustments, offering left-handed versions of items like golf clubs or can openers. Entrenched prejudice can be unseated by new beliefs and values, and in some cases both swiftly and thoroughly.5 The erosion of this once-tenacious prejudice has been so complete, in fact, that it may seem hard to imagine the alternative, and its survival into the relatively recent past—which is what happens when a pervasive culture change creates a new normalcy. The older approach may seem so stupid that it must have fallen of its own weight. In fact, however, a real process was involved, requiring real causation, which is of course what culture change is all about.

The Nature of Women There is no question that, over the past two centuries, previous and often demeaning ideas about women have been substantially revised in many countries, constituting a major if complex example of culture change. This is a big topic, and a summary only scratches the surface. There are, for example, a host of comparative issues: some regions have shifted their gender beliefs faster and with fewer hesitations than others, a leading issue in cross-cultural evaluations today. Change, where it does occur, involves a mixture of beliefs and values with other issues, such as the need for women in the labor force or the results of declining birth rates in freeing women for newer pursuits. Pinning down the causes of culture change in this domain are correspondingly difficult: a number of factors are involved. And change—even at its speediest—is gradual, which is to be expected given the depth and durability of earlier ideas. A general baseline, however, is clear enough. All agricultural societies, though with various specifics, held women to be quite different from, and inferior to, men—from childhood at least into later age. Beliefs meshed with practice: women for the most part had different, and usually less obviously productive, work roles from men, with their lives closely tied to childbearing and childraising. Their public functions were far more limited, whether the focus is on village councils or the higher levels of government.6 Women’s perceived inferiority was highlighted in a variety of common ideas. They were physically weaker. Their poorer capacities in reasoning helped explain why, in many cases, their testimonies would not be accepted in court. Their emotions were held to be different: in premodern Western Europe women could not justify an action as a result of anger, which was a noble emotion available to men; rather, they had to claim an emotion like jealousy, which was a feebler and pettier sentiment.7 In the Abrahamic religions, women were seen as more likely to sin. Christianity and Islam, to be sure, like Buddhism, emphasized the equality of souls of all believers regardless of gender, but that did not erase the idea that women had first led humankind into evil. In Western Europe as late as the seventeenth century,

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women were seen as lustier, less restrained, and more sexually dangerous than men. Core beliefs were not always framed in terms of gender danger. Confucian thought, though insisting on women’s inferiority, could also stress their value in the household and even urge that they should be educated, though distinctively, so that they could best carry out their family tasks. Family manuals in Britain or colonial North America, by the seventeenth century, sometimes stressed mutuality of affection. But even this softer language continued to emphasize differentiation. A Massachusetts sermon, in 1712, put it this way: “The husband’s government ought to be gentle and easy, the wife’s obedience ready and cheerful. The husband is called the head of the woman. It belongs to the head to rule. Though he governs her, he must not treat her as a servant, but as his own flesh.”8 Deeply ingrained, this insistence on separation and inferiority was not significantly affected by the new ideas about human rights and individualism that surfaced so powerfully in Western culture during the eighteenth century. Enlightenment theorists paid little attention to gender issues (though educated women played a considerable role in discussing new ideas), and some were actively hostile to women. A handful of feminist writers made a powerful case that the notions of equality and rationality should apply to women as well, but they were widely ignored. As we discussed in Chapter 4, Enlightenment-derived revolutions, as in the United States and France, did not seriously consider granting women the vote, even when it was extended to significant groups of men, and the French Revolution ended up tightening the laws restricting women in the family. At most, as the handful of intellectual feminists suggested, the new ideas might help galvanize a leadership group among women who would ultimately play a role in generating larger culture change.

The First Stage of Culture Change Developments in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, in many Western countries, did however shake up some older beliefs, without erasing the idea of massive gender distinctions. The result was real change, which ironically complicated a more systematic assault on the culture of differentiation. In the West, and later in Japan, real culture change required a series of adjustments, not a straightforward evolution to a sense of greater equality. The big move came through an emphasis on the special qualities that women brought to family life, that might overcome some of the nastier stereotypes that had been common in earlier centuries—including the idea of dangerous sexuality. Beginning in the eighteenth century, and extending well beyond with echoes still today, important new cultural currents began to emphasize the blessed connections between innate virtues in women—or

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at least, in good and proper women—and the needs of the family. Women’s qualities became a core part, in fact, of the redefinition of emotional goals for private life. The ideas circulated particularly in middle-class circles, but with some impact beyond. And while a particular version of what scholars have called a “cult of true womanhood” took shape in places like Britain and the United States, echoes emerged elsewhere—as in the concept that was backed by Japanese officials around the turn of the twentieth century around the importance of the “wise mother.”9 So what was this new version of womanhood like? In this picture, women were in some ways purer than men, less sullied by commercialism and greed, more capable of restraining aggressive impulses. They were gentle and caring, an obvious source of maternal love. They could hold back their anger. They had only moderate—some argued, at an extreme, virtually nonexistent—sexual desires, which allowed them to maintain moral behavior despite the lures of more unruly men. A considerable pseudoscientific discussion in fact took shape, in the early nineteenth century, about whether good women were capable of any sexual pleasure at all, or whether they must (as one man suggested) “shut their eyes and think of England” even to fulfill their obligation to conceive a child.10 A nineteenth-century British image captured the new picture of the differences between the two genders: How often a man returns to his home with a mind confused by many voices, which in the market place, the stock exchange or the public assembly have addressed themselves to his inborn selfishness, or his worldly pride: and when the snares of the world were around him and temptations from within and without have swayed him, he has thought of the humble mistress of his home [his wife] who sat alone . . . . and the remembrance of her character, clothed in moral beauty, has scattered the clouds before his mental vision, and sent him back to the beloved home, a wiser and better man.11 Or as an American woman’s magazine put it: “I would have her pure as the snow on the mount . . . as pure as the wave of the crystalline fount, Yet as warm in the heart as the sunlight of heaven, With a mind cultivated yet not boastingly wise . . .”12 Images of this sort were widely supported by female and male writers alike (though male authors were disproportionately involved in the arguments about the lack of sexual desire). A new family advice literature emerged, with a number of influential women authors, that capitalized on the notion of a distinctive moral purity to elaborate on women’s centrality in the family, her special contributions both to her children and her husband. The result was a very real, yet arguably transitional, culture change. The new version of the ideal woman may have built to some extent on some of the more affectionate imagery in earlier Protestant writings about the family,

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but it highlighted a number of new elements. The notion that women were in crucial respects more moral than men was quietly revolutionary. Even in works that continued to stress the power of the husband and father and a wifely duty of obedience, women’s virtues clearly established a new priority within the family. At the same time, earlier cultural strands persisted, including the continued insistence on the huge differences between women and men. The domestic focus of proper women was, if anything, emphasized more strongly than ever. Women were still seen as weaker than men—indeed, the image of female delicacy actually expanded. The gender was held to be naturally fearful: a fair amount of nineteenth-century literature, including many children’s stories, featured brave men or boys rescuing helpless damsels in distress. Perhaps most importantly, there was little, in the new culture, that would directly challenge male identity, despite some implicit criticism of certain male characteristics. Men could still see themselves as the superior sex. In this sense, too, the culture change, though genuine and significant, operated amid some crucial limitations.

Causes, consequences, and further debates The new ideals responded to some very real shifts in economic structure and family patterns, associated with the advent of industrialization; some linked directly to the emotional redefinition of the family discussed in Chapter  7. Culture change, in this case, seems to have followed from, and adapted to, alterations in the larger social environment. The simple fact was that work was increasingly moving out of the home and out of the familial context, which meant that someone—almost always the wife—had a new set of domestic responsibilities and that husbands and fathers had to develop a new level of comfort with women’s household management. The change involved— easy to state, but requiring really difficult adjustments—could be stark and swift: in 1800, according to one estimate, only 5 per cent of all people formally employed in New York city worked outside the home; just forty years later, the figure was up to 70 per cent. This was a new world, and culture, defined by female and male popularizers alike, moved swiftly to adjust.13 And the consequences were quite real. Many women—as suggested in a variety of letters, diaries, and novels—really did try to measure up to the new character standards, seeking for example to downplay any anger they might feel in the family environment, playing up to the idea of loving wife and (particularly) mother. Many men implicitly accepted their wives’ new roles (and sometimes took advantage, as well, of a sexual double standard). Policies shifted. It has been noted that, while young men continued to be far more likely to be arrested for crimes than their female counterparts, authorities were much harsher on young women accused of sexual improprieties—a backhanded tribute to the notion that female moral standards were more demanding.

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But there were more complicated implications as well, and these began to play out in the later nineteenth century in places like the United States. For example, by traditional cultural norms, fathers almost automatically gained custody of children in any family dispute. But if women were by nature the loving, emotionally restrained parents, and men less morally reliable, this thinking could now be challenged—not only by mothers themselves, but by judicial authorities as well. Thus, as divorce rates began to rise in the later nineteenth century, making this a more significant issue, the notion of maternal rights began to expand to the point that, by the twentieth century, custody almost always went to the mother—another quiet revolution based on culture change. Two other debates emerged, one of which, at least, would have been impossible to imagine in a purely traditional cultural climate. First, as a new interest in the importance of education gained ground (a universal theme in early industrializing societies), what approach should apply to women? In traditional culture, women’s educational opportunities always lagged well behind those of men: a reflection of different economic roles, to be sure, but also the belief that women were by nature less rational. But in the new social and cultural environment, most education advocates began to take a different view. If women were the primary custodians of the family, surely they too needed some training, if only to make sure that their children, and perhaps particularly their sons, could get a proper modern upbringing. And if women were expected now to live up to some distinctive moral standards, this too might require some special training, if only to firm up what were hopefully the natural virtues of the gender. Disputes did, briefly, reflect some older beliefs. Women were, after all, weaker than men: education might simply prove too demanding for them. A few skeptics talked about the results of excessive study on the female anatomy, even wondering if reproductive capacity might be harmed. And the notion of female emotionality, their lower capacity to reason, prompted objections as well: girls might be less able to benefit from education— perhaps particularly, in domains like mathematics and science—than their male counterparts (a cultural theme that has not disappeared). In the end, however, both the practical needs, to have a more educated labor force regardless of gender, and the special cultural twist, that women’s family virtues and roles needed and merited educational support, prompted the increasing inclusion of girls in the expanding opportunities and requirements for schooling. With, however, a twist, which would long mark the educational system as well: girls should have a somewhat different education from boys, with more emphasis on family skills and virtues (in programs that would ultimately generate labels like “home economics”), and less stress on potentially more demanding subjects. In fact, of course, once the educational doors began to open, girls’ achievements began to become more obvious, the emphasis on special programs modified somewhat,

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and individual women sought and achieved more advanced training in a variety of fields. Educational change, in other words, followed in part from the more basic culture change, but cleared the way for further challenges as well. The second debate linked the very real culture change that had occurred, but also its limitations, directly to the realm of politics. Nothing in the new gender culture suggested that women should seek or gain new political rights. With their place in the home, there was no inherent reason to tamper with traditional distinctions even as new groups of men began to gain the vote and other public opportunities. In this situation, three responses were possible, and all proved important. First: many women, either satisfied with their new cultural role or pressed by other issues including sheer economic survival and in some cases the active disapproval of husbands and fathers, could accept the status quo. Concern about political voice would develop only slowly, and both old and new cultural constraints were involved. Second, a growing band of leaders could pick up on the political rights arguments being applied to men, and insist that women deserved their full share. The idea that human rights were women’s rights too, already advanced by a few vanguard feminists, gained increasing support. A number of American leaders, for example, initially involved in efforts to advance human rights against slavery, turned as well to arguments for equal rights for women often including a demand for a vote. But third, the new gender culture might itself be applied to the political realm. If, after all, women were in crucial respects more moral than men, more protective of the family, then surely they deserved a political voice precisely on grounds of these special virtues. A number of women began to participate in public reform efforts to translate their special qualities into public life. Female temperance advocates, for instance, might tout their responsibility for family values into proposed legislation to restrain male vice. Many outright suffragists, while urging participation in common human rights, also advanced the notion that, when women could vote, society itself would benefit from greater morality, a greater commitment to peace, greater protection of the family itself. This kind of argument could combine considerable political passion with a reluctance to criticize other aspects of the new gender culture—for the notion of special female virtues remained positively attractive to a segment of feminists well into the twentieth century.14 Further culture change, of course, proved unavoidable: we know that the nineteenth-century compromise did not last. But additional adjustments occurred both because of the limitations of the new gender standards—the idea that women were still very different, weaker, more domestic—but also because of the new standards themselves. Ambiguous elements would linger, but a fuller reconsideration of gender beliefs would steadily gain ground, from the early twentieth century onward.

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The Second Round of Culture Change By the 1920s, in a number of societies, nineteenth-century wisdom about women’s sexuality was being actively reconsidered. A range of experts, both male and female, began arguing that women had just as much capacity for, and just as much right to, sexual pleasure as men. A growing cluster of sexual manuals tried to provide new guidance, and the growing acceptability of birth control devices also removed some previous limitations on more expressive female sexuality. While arguments persisted, the idea of women and men as polar opposites, in the sexual domain, increasingly declined. Here was an interesting and significant early sign of change, away from the respectable standards of nineteenth-century culture.15 By the 1920s as well, many countries were granting women the vote, which eliminated another de facto difference between men and women (though gender distinctions in political preferences might still exist). Educational distinctions declined also, without disappearing, as more and more women entered universities and professional schools. Then, in the 1950s and 1960s throughout Western Europe and North America, a growing number of married women surged into the formal labor force outside the home. Both structures—like the changes in the labor force—and ideas, like the new wisdom about sexuality, began to undermine the gender culture of the nineteenth century, while attacking as well the lingering vestiges of earlier traditions. Expectations that women should be morally purer, or that they had particular domestic responsibilities, did not disappear, but they did decline. Further culture change accelerated after World War II with the arrival of a new set of feminist arguments and a new generation of intellectual and political leaders. Cultural standards shifted accordingly. Standard features in the analysis of culture change apply. The baseline was the emphasis on women’s purity and domestic focus that had spread so powerfully for a century prior. Causation is more complex. It included new ideas, particularly from the “second wave” of feminism but also from the global human rights language that now routinely stressed the equality of the sexes, supplemented in some cases by new scientific findings, as in the area of sexuality. These ideas fell on increasingly fertile ground as women gained educational equality with men (and then, by the early twenty-first century, actually pushed beyond). But ideas were mixed with developments in practice: the voting rights; the surge into the labor force; the declining birth rate that almost forced some review of women’s domestic focus. There is no way to decide which impetus was the more important: it was the combination that counted, among many women themselves and in society more generally. And the new emphasis stressed women’s equivalence with men, downplaying or even disputing any special qualities and attacking domestic confinement. In the United States, powerful tracts such as Betty Friedan’s Feminine Mystique (1963) drove the point home, borrowing from work by

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the French intellectual Simone de Beauvoir and others.16 Friedan’s book gained fame particularly for its attack on women’s household roles—roles, she argued, that were no more than a “comfortable concentration camp.” As one of the women she interviewed put it, “I want more than my husband and my children and my home.” To Friedan, and the many advocates that sprang up around her, no careers should be closed to women. But underlying this argument was a more systematic attack on the prevailing beliefs about gender. No really distinctive characteristics attached to “women’s nature”: beliefs about special qualities were cultural creations (including, she argued, a good bit of inaccurate past science), and they could (and should) correspondingly be revised. These were arguments considerably different, and less ambiguous, than the earlier round of feminism had generated. They supported as well a new wave of feminist organizations, including the National Organization of Women (NOW ), that forcefully advanced the claims to equality in culture and function alike. Feminism, of course, did not persuade everyone; precisely because of the scope of the new claims, considerable resistance developed, among some women and men alike. Feminism became, in other words, an additional factor promoting further culture change, along with the actual shifts in education and the workforce. After a partial retreat in the 1950s—when the percentage of women among college graduates was actually lower than in the 1920s, thanks to a greater emphasis on marriage and family roles— women, including married women, began to enter the labor market in greater numbers, while educational levels advanced accordingly and (soon) the birth rate started to decline again. And though some scientific research still seemed to support the idea of women’s special qualities, most now supported essential gender equivalence, as in an interesting but somewhat inconclusive debate about the balance between comparative innate abilities in mathematics versus a culture that still tended to discourage female achievement.17 And the result was, on the whole, a clear adjustment in gender culture in the United States. By the twenty-first century, while 15 per cent of all Americans still rejected formal feminism as “too radical” (but with 60 per cent of all women and 37 per cent of all men declaring themselves feminists or strong feminists), ideas about women’s nature and women’s roles had shifted substantially. Thus a clear majority held that women should have equal access to jobs and that women were just as capable as men in leadership roles. A full 79 per cent, furthermore, agreed that “further work” was necessary to realize these goals, defined as “full equality in work, life and politics.”18 Even children were affected: whereas in the 1970s all American children identified scientists as male, by 2018 30 per cent cited female. Data on beliefs about women’s nature were at least as interesting. Another set of early twenty-first century polls suggested that an American majority believed women were “more compassionate” but less decisive than men. Men were seen as more aggressive and courageous, but women—as well as

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being more affectionate and talkative—were judged the more intelligent and creative of the two genders.19 Interpreting recent polling data, as part of assessing recent culture change, has a number of perils. Polls vary, though the results cited here seem reasonably characteristic. Men and women still disagree to some extent, another important qualification—though interestingly the idea of women as smarter crossed gender lines. Most important, in terms of determining degrees of change, we simply lack comparable polling data on these issues for the earlier twentieth century, not to mention the nineteenth. Still, with all the caveats, significant change, combined with some revealing persistence, seems clear enough. Compared to dominant ideas around 1900, most Americans had become quite comfortable with the idea of important roles for women outside the home. Beliefs about women’s nature had changed less decisively—hence the continued notion of a special level of affection and compassion (though also greater indecisiveness and less aggression). But the claims about greater intelligence were really new, an obvious contrast to nineteenth-century culture. Culture change was blending some really novel ideas with some clear holdovers from earlier formulas— the kind of combination that so often occurs and that helps many people assimilate the innovations involved.20 And the degree of change was further illustrated by developments in a number of other spheres, where wide acceptance of greater access for women was combined with other redefinitions of earlier beliefs—particularly about distinctive female frailty. Thus in 1972, on the heels of US legislation that had advanced the rights of African Americans, feminist organizations pushed for laws that would protect equality in higher education. The result was Title IX of an Education Amendments Act, that stipulated that there should be no discrimination in access to funding—which meant, most specifically, that the kind of scholarships male athletes received in colleges and universities should be available to women as well. And Birch Bayh, the Indiana senator who pushed for this change, made it clear that characteristics, as well as roles, were under review: “We are all familiar with the stereotype of women as pretty things who go to college to find a husband . . . But the facts absolutely counter these myths about the ‘weaker sex’, and it is time to change our operating assumptions.”21 Similar revisions, though amid greater debate, accompanied a steady expansion of opportunities for women in United States military forces.22 Increasing numbers of women, correspondingly, came to see military careers as “opportunities to be strong, assertive and skillful.”23 Change accelerated from the mid-1990s onward, and by 2015 virtually all combat roles were in principle opened up, assuming appropriate qualifications. As one of the first women successfully to complete Army Ranger training put it, “if you see it, you can do it.” In this case, to be sure, considerable resistance from military men accompanied change, and a largely symbolic measure to require women as well as men to register for the draft (in 2015) was pushed back by

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Republican politicians who continued to believe that women required special protection. But change, in ideas as well as practice, was considerable nevertheless, both in the military and in society at large. The point is clear enough. Large segments of the public, despite some ongoing disagreement, and many forceful women themselves were pushing through to new activities in sports and to some degree in the military that would have been inconceivable, given prevailing beliefs about gender qualities, in the nineteenth century. Full consensus, or even full definition, of a new gender culture had yet to materialize, but the movement to a second stage of change, further destroying premodern tradition but attacking key features of the nineteenth century shift as well, was well established.

Consequences New ideas about gender clearly motivated many women to seek new opportunities, while steadily reducing barriers. Culture change went hand in glove with new policies and new behaviors, even as individuals in practice sought varying combinations of family roles and novel opportunities. Some continued disagreement, but also the ambiguities in the new culture itself, complicated results in practice. Women continued to put more time into family than men did. Some modified their work commitments, or even withdrew from the labor force entirely, with obvious impact in domains such as salary levels. While political activities expanded, women in the United States lagged noticeably behind counterparts in many other regions, such as Latin America, which raised some interesting questions about the extent of real culture change in this area. Growing acceptance of the new gender culture also encouraged a certain gap between public professions and real behaviors: many people wanted to feel good about goals such as job equality, without however fully following through. Most obviously, some percentage of the Americans (including political and business leaders) who accepted the idea of equal pay for equal work in principle, were not fully willing to put their money where their mouths were. The importance of seeming to support the new cultural standards in this domain, and probably as well the need to feel up to date even in one’s own mind, did not fully translate into actual policy. The salary gap was closing, but far more slowly than statements of principle would suggest. Where more entrenched prejudices were involved, culture change was often modified by private hesitations and routines. Consequences, as a result, were both slower and more complicated than the change itself would seem to suggest. The new gender culture was real, but it clearly combined with more complexities than had accompanied the quiet revolution in left-handedness. A key issue in contemporary organizational cultures, as discussed earlier in Chapter 5, involves pressing the current gender standards into actual corporate behaviors and policies; here too, the process of change is ongoing.

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And the year 2017 brought additional complications, in the form of a new study on attitudes of American “millennials”—those born between 1982 and 2000—compared to the previous generation. A declining percentage of millennials—and particularly males—now expressed comfort with full gender equality; for example, more were inclined to believe that it was better for families for men to be the main breadwinner. This in no way suggested a full rollback of previous culture change—in principle, support for greater gender equality persisted—but it did demonstrate that the discussion had not ended.24

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017 also generated a striking reminder that debates about gender could still take on powerful new dimensions, as several cultural strands combined in explosive fashion. A number of prominent men—in the media, politics, and business—were now accused of sexual assault on the job, using their power positions to seek sexual favors and in some cases committing outright rape. (The “#MeToo” label referred to the growing number of women who followed each other in accusing various men of sexual misbehavior, sometimes years before.) The basic situation—of men abusing their authority—was hardly new, particularly in societies where men and women were increasingly mingling in the workplace. What was novel, however, was the level of outrage, the willingness to come forward in public, and the vigorous insistence that new standards must be applied, amid a powerful public response to the evidence of misbehavior. In fact, of course—as so often with culture change—the basis for innovation had been set several decades before, notably through new ideas about sexual harassment (including the term itself) that had surfaced in the 1970s. This preparation clearly helped set the groundwork for the cultural transformation that otherwise seemed to be developing overnight in the second half of 2017, with a number of men quickly fired from high-profile jobs and a few brought to trial for abuse. While cases in the United States drew the most attention, change was also visible in some parts of Europe (but not all: comparative differences remained important). The notion of shielding women’s work from unwanted sexuality clearly represented an extension of the larger movement toward gender equality. But, inevitably, some complexities were involved. Did women need public protection from flirtations and sexual advances short of physical assault, or was there a danger of reverting to an older notion of female frailty; when should women simply take care of themselves, even amid some unpleasantness? And how did the movement fit with other recent changes in sexual standards, that had urged the importance of pleasure for men

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and women alike in attacking an older gender culture (see Chapter  6)? Not surprisingly, the #MeToo movement generated cultural controversy, among women as well as men, precisely because it sat at the intersection of a number of cultural themes. Agreement on relevant new cultural standards—if possible at all—had yet to be achieved, creating some intriguing uncertainties from the standpoint of cultural change and complexity. For the moment, the movement was a striking illustration of the ways that disputes over beliefs can burst out somewhat unexpectedly, on the heels of wider shifts in values.25

Attacking India’s Caste System The official abolition of India’s caste system, soon after the nation achieved independence from the British in 1947, was one of the great movements toward fuller social equality in contemporary world history, arguably as fundamental—for the huge subcontinent—as shifts in gender culture were elsewhere. It was prepared by some key cultural changes, but inevitably it generated ongoing debate as well. The system itself—dividing the population into discrete groups, with very different jobs and social relationships (including marriage choice), with status inherited at birth—dated back to the classical period. It was deeply intertwined with the Hindu religion, which urged people to perform the duties appropriate to their caste in hopes of reincarnation into a higher position in a subsequent life. The system had undergone many transformations over time, and key groups in India, such as Muslims and Sikhs, bypassed the caste network entirely. British colonial administrators had actually rigidified caste boundaries, from the late nineteenth century into the 1930s, as a means of facilitating their control over the vast subcontinent (see Chapter 7). A key feature of the system, both before and during British rule, involved designation of several groups as “Untouchables,” which meant they were confined to the most menial jobs and debased ranking, with their position passed on from one generation to the next. The British use of caste, along with the obvious clash between the status of the Untouchables and many modern political principles, helped generate growing debates about the whole system among Indian intellectuals during the decades between the world wars, as demands for national independence mounted. The sources for cultural change were diverse. Reformers included people profoundly influenced by Western democratic ideals, often educated in Britain, who easily saw the conflict between caste traditions and colonial policy on the one hand, and the imperative of legal equality on the other. This group included Jawaharlal Nehru, who would become independent India’s first prime minister and who once described himself as a “queer mix

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of the East and the West, out of place everywhere and at home nowhere.” But it also included Hindu nationalist leaders who opposed many Western values (including religious tolerance) but believed that caste ideas simply had to be jettisoned in the interests of national progress. It was the mixture of impulses that made the push for reform particularly powerful, offering diverse support for what would obviously be a demanding change both in culture and law. Thus Veer Savarkar, whose nationalism insisted on Hindu primacy in India, openly argued during the 1930s that the caste system must go, that its abolition was “imperative for the rise, rejuvenation and prosperity of the Hindu nation.” India needed to replace inheritance with merit, at all social levels—which meant that the “craze of caste” had to give way. Even earlier, some intellectuals had contended that the caste system should not be seen as an inherent feature of Hinduism: thus Jyotirao Phule, writing in the late nineteenth century, noted that no animal species had castes, urging that the idea that some tasks were more degrading than others had to be replaced by a commitment to legal equality. Other voices joined in. B. R. Ambedkar, born as an Untouchable but renouncing Hinduism in favor of the more egalitarian Buddhist faith, wrote widely in defense of reform in the 1930s, backing explicit efforts to represent and support members of his former caste. This was, admittedly, a ferment among literate groups, not a mass cultural movement. And it generated some complex reactions even among reformers themselves. Mahatma Gandhi, most notably, the most visible representative of Indian nationalism leading up to independence, hesitated, long convinced that basic caste traditions were fundamental to Hinduism and part of India’s natural order. Only gradually, persuaded in part by the clear sufferings of the Untouchables, did he change his mind, ultimately arguing that the “assumption of superiority by any person over any other is a sin against God and man.” This new stance, blending with the other voices in favor of reform, set the basis for the official abolition of the caste system in Indian law in 1950—a clear case in which diverse sources of culture change unseated centuries of tradition and supported one of the great legal transformations of modern times.26 The new constitutional framework, backed by further government efforts to support new opportunities for former Untouchables in education and the workforce, was not of course the end of the story. For many Indians, particularly those living in the countryside, law (and the official culture that had supported change) had raced ahead of cherished beliefs and values. In many villages, caste practices remained effectively unchanged: there were reports, into the twenty-first century, of cases where former Untouchables were refused entry into the homes of others (on grounds that they would pollute their surroundings) or where a courting couple drawn from two different castes was lynched when they refused to part. Former Untouchables were often housed in separate (and inferior) camps after a natural disaster.

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Very personal discrimination persisted as well: one man, who had earned a doctorate in physics, recounted the reaction when he tried to buy a coffee; the shop-owner asked his caste, and when he cited Untouchable was told to wash out his own cup. Yet progress did occur, as more Indians were affected by government programs promoting legal equality and new educational opportunities for the former Untouchables. Particularly in the cities, where people mixed not only in schools but at work, intermarriage rates rose steadily from the 1970s onward. The process was real, as culture change gained ground in combination with other factors, but it was gradual at best. Caste, like gender, could be rethought, despite deep-seated precedents, but it was a painful process.27

Gay Rights One of the most surprising culture changes in recent decades is the aboutface of public opinion, throughout most Western societies, concerning the rights of homosexuals, including rights to marriage. The surprise stems from two features. First, the prejudices against gay people seemed so deeply rooted just twenty years ago, anchored both in traditional Christian (and Orthodox Jewish) religious beliefs and in more modern judgments. Conditions had indeed worsened for gays, at least in the United States, from the 1930s into the 1960s, and thus the directions of the new cultural surge are truly startling, even more than with caste or gender. Surprise number two: the sheer speed of the change. Those who believe that cultures change haltingly at best have to accept this development as a reminder not to generalize too glibly. On occasion values and beliefs shift very rapidly. Gay rights, though building on other developments such as the changes in gender culture, shot ahead far more swiftly, and with seemingly fewer complications, than had been true for the beliefs and values applied to women’s roles and characteristics. This section focuses on the transition in the United States, but it is important to keep in mind that the patterns apply also to Western Europe, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand; indeed in some countries the transition occurred even earlier than in the US . This means that, when we seek causes of change, we must almost certainly identify some factors that extend beyond any single country. Some shifts have occurred also in a few parts of Latin America, but more haltingly and amid even greater opposition; and in South Africa, linked to the great human rights battle against the racist apartheid system; and more recently in a few parts of Asia, such as Taiwan. As with several of the other prejudices we have explored, there is no problem, for this illustration of culture change, identifying the baseline and, from it, the contours of the change itself. The redefinition of group standing was hardly subtle. In 2003 58 per cent of all Americans opposed granting

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gay people the right to marry, and only 33 per cent were in favor. By 2016 the sides had flipped: 55 per cent now favored the right to marry, with 37 per cent opposed. By 2017 the figures had advanced further, to 62–32, according to a Pew Research Poll, indicating that even members of older generations were increasingly changing their mind—always an interesting aspect of culture change. Opinions shifted about other matters as well. In the early twenty-first century, about half of all Americans opposed any acceptance of homosexual behaviors (even aside from the more radical idea of marriage). By 2016 57 per cent now aligned with acceptance. (Some other data supported a slightly earlier and more decisive shift in basic tolerance— again, apart from the more contentious issue of marriage. Thus in one study, 56 per cent already supported basic gay rights in 1977, rising to 85 per cent by 1996.)28 Strikingly, many religions turned toward favoring gay rights. Support became very strong among mainstream American Protestant denominations and among most Jews, and with a striking 86 per cent among American Buddhists. Even the majority of Catholics opted for gay rights (56 per cent, by 2016), despite the official opposition of the Church, as did a small majority of American Muslims. The most vigorous opposition centered on Evangelical Protestants (though even here, a growing minority became more favorable). And while a large number of African Americans disapproved of homosexuality on moral grounds, a strong majority supported gay rights nevertheless because of their commitment to civil rights in general. These alignments are all the more dramatic given the prior history of gay men and women in the United States. Christian disapproval of homosexuality went well back in time. This was one of the big contrasts between the religion as it developed in Western Europe, and older Greek and Roman practices. Sodomy was singled out as an outright sin. These religious traditions were clearly exported to North America, with many colonies not only banning acts like sodomy in principle, but following up with severe legal penalties.29 In practice, during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, enforcement against gay people probably relaxed somewhat, so long as behaviors were discrete. There was no intense debate, but enforcement stepped back despite the absence of any real change in culture. The situation altered, however, in the twentieth century, for several reasons. First, the voices of science and medicine began to add to religious disapproval. Considerable research was conducted on homosexual behavior, serving mainly to contend that homosexuality was a disorder, even a mental disease; and that homosexuals were therefore dangerous not only to themselves but to others. Along with the new science, wider social developments pushed toward more rigorous treatment of gays. Greater sexual permissiveness for heterosexual behaviors had the ironic effect of increasing the severity where gays were concerned: amid change, it seemed imperative to identify some clear rules. The same effect resulted from wider shifts in gender roles, as

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when women gained the right to vote: again, it seemed essential to increase clarity in other domains. The Depression, World War II , and the subsequent Cold War fed in too, creating greater insecurities that might be expressed not just in disapproval but in outright fear and anger where a vulnerable minority was concerned. The result was a growing series of outright attacks on gays. In the Cold War atmosphere, many were fired from government jobs. Hollywood, pressed by the Catholic Church and other religious groups, prohibited portrayal of gays or any hint of gay behavior from the 1930s onward: there was literally no representation in approved media. Police raids on private gay bars and other venues increased in number and severity. By the later 1950s 3,000 New Yorkers were being arrested annually as a result of these campaigns. And as late as 1986 the US Supreme Court rendered verdicts that deemed any idea of rights of any sort for homosexuals “facetious.” In this atmosphere more and more gays simply repressed their preferences or at the least sought concealment: the term “gay” itself gained currency in the 1970s as a means of private communication, where a group could refer to attending a “gay” party without their straight colleagues knowing what they were talking about. This was the climate that made it seemingly impossible to anticipate the kind of culture change that would blossom, particularly after the very first years of the twenty-first century.30

Causation The obvious analytical challenge in dealing with this culture change involves explanation: given the entrenched forces against gay rights, in religion, science and majority opinion, how could the about face occur, and so rapidly? There was no dramatic single driving force, but rather an accumulation of several mutually reinforcing factors. The pattern indeed offers an interesting illustration of causation in culture change, with some potential relevance to other cultural challenges that societies may face in the future. What happened was a gradual but steady buildup of supporting factors, with some hints as early as the 1950s but more systematic trends from the 1970s onward. The unexpected about-face concerning gay marriage, after about 2003, was thus prepared by a groundswell that had been building for several decades and which alone can account for the apparent rapidity of outward change. Several domains require attention, though again it is the combination that ultimately counted. In the first place, gay behavior began to change, as new organizations formed to advocate for better treatment and individual leaders spoke out. In a sense, the very intensification of attacks during the Cold War created some of the forces that would strike out not only for greater fairness but for a more basic cultural reversal. Thus as early as 1952

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a new book, The Homosexual, urged attention to better treatment. The first homosexual rights group formed in 1957 under the leadership of Frank Kamery, who had been fired from a position in the federal government. By the 1960s Gay Pride events began to be organized in many cities, imitating the strength and success of the Black Pride efforts during the civil rights movement. Gradually, gay rights issues gained some attention outside the community itself. At the same time the formation of gay groups, not only in advocacy but in other domains, such as musical choruses, familiarized a wider public with the sheer fact of gay existence. There were some debates involved. Many gay leaders, seeking to sway the general public, urged a reduction of flamboyant behaviors: gay people should present themselves, in this view, as serious-minded, constructive citizens who simply happened to have a different sexual orientation. This approach was amplified, from the 1980s onward, by the potentially damaging impact of the AID s crisis, which claimed many victims in the gay community. It was vital to show that gays were not tainted by promiscuous behaviors—one of the several reasons that growing interest began to center on the idea of marriage. Point one, then: change resulted in part from reactions to oppression within the affected community, and from a leadership bent on promoting significant shifts in law and culture while promoting some adjustments in stereotypic imagery. The second factor involved the wider cultural adjustments that were already responding to new or more vigorous ideas about human rights in general. The human rights movement gained growing attention from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, under United Nations sponsorship in 1948, and then from civil rights and feminist struggles in the United States and elsewhere. While not initially directly applied to issues of sexual orientation, the potential relevance was clear enough. African American campaigns for rights, in the 1950s and 1960s, directly inspired the gay movement itself, but more generally they opened a wider population to beliefs that people in various minority categories might deserve legal equality. Joined to this, in the case of the gay community, was a growing acceptance of the legitimacy of sexual pleasure and the importance of access to the wider benefits of family life. More and more Americans came to recognize that these values, in their own lives, should be shared with the gay community. Point two: wider cultural shifts (and not only in the United States) changed some priorities in majority beliefs, which could alter reactions to gay issues by incorporating them in wider categories of rights and personal pleasures. Finally, a third and growing impulse toward change involved new kinds of individual experiences, where increasing numbers of Americans gained some direct acquaintance with gay people in various facets of daily life. As they became more assertive, more and more homosexuals were also willing to choose the often difficult course of public acknowledgement, which in turn meant more and more “straight” Americans encountered known gays

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in the workplace, in neighborhoods, even in their own families. A major movement, led particularly by lesbians individually or in couples from the early 1980s onward, involved efforts to adopt children, in what was informally called the “lesbian baby boom.” This led to new and often bitter struggles simply to acquire legal adoption rights—another area where public opinion began to shift toward greater support. But it also generated growing contacts between the wider public and members of the gay community, for example in school groups and Parent–Teacher Associations, simply as a result of shared parenthood. While interactions could be tense and occasionally nasty, on the whole these trends convinced a growing number of straights that gays were normal and even constructive individuals— another reason to reconsider more traditional cultural impulses. The percentage of people who acknowledged knowing a gay person rose from 22 per cent in 1985, to 56 per cent by 2000. Greater private familiarity, in other words, promoted wider changes in beliefs. And this factor was amplified by other developments. Movies and television, by the 1990s, began to portray gay people more openly and sympathetically. Key films, like Philadelphia and The Bird Cage, involved well-known actors and appealing portrayals. These changes in public culture picked up on the incipient shifts in public opinion and supported them in turn. Science changed, as a result of more sophisticated research and a decline in bias: the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders in 1973. By the early twentyfirst century the American Pediatric Association firmly supported the competence of gay parents. Finally—though this factor could be doubleedged—support for gay rights entered political life, becoming an increasingly standard part of the agendas of Democratic candidates. Key sectors in the public arena, in other words, were both accepting and promoting broader cultural change.31 The results of this three-pronged causation—new movements and leadership; association with wider beliefs in human rights and pleasures; increasing familiarity in private life and in the media—showed up in the reasons people gave for their growing acceptance of gay rights and even gay marriage. Many admitted they changed their mind when they realized how gay issues linked to other values they had, about rights or the importance of family happiness. Others noted the impact of simply knowing a gay colleague or family member. The mixture of possibilities was crucial. And, not surprisingly, there was a clear generational effect, responding to all the major factors involved. Younger Americans, born after 1980, were far more accepting of gay rights—with over 70 per cent, for example, supporting gay marriage by 2013—than older population segments were, though even here, some change had occurred. Many young people were growing up in an atmosphere where gay rights and association with gay individuals seemed absolutely normal, where there was no sense of any lingering cultural issues at all.

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Consequences The virtual cultural revolution concerning homosexuality obviously interacted with policy and law. From 2003 onward, the US Supreme Court ruled consistently favorably, striking down state laws that had sought to outlaw sodomy—as a violation of individual rights—and ultimately supporting gay marriage. Political support for gay rights broadened out from many Democrats to embrace moderate Republicans. And the gay rights movement spawned efforts in other minority sexual communities, most notably among transgender groups and individuals, raising new issues though with uncertain results. At the same time, some question marks remained. The very real and rapid change could not conceal the fact that a strong minority of Americans remained bitterly opposed, in some cases not only to gay marriage but to any tolerance for homosexual behaviors. Several state governments remained eager to roll back the clock. It was impossible to be sure whether culture change would be revisited in the future, particularly if a new campaign was linked to other public fears, as had occurred in the middle decades of the twentieth century. An obvious challenge in dealing with very recent culture change must be some uncertainty about the solidity and durability of results—even when generational shifts are factored in. It was also important to note that the international climate had actually been polarized by the shifts in Western society and by associated efforts to push gay rights as part of a global agenda. Many societies—including some that, traditionally, had accepted aspects of homosexuality—now declared their fierce opposition. This was true, for example, in a number of African countries and in much of the Islamic world. Russian society, under the leadership of Vladimir Putin and his close alliance with the Orthodox Church, not only rejected homosexuality and persecuted some gay groups, but even tried to promote a wider kind of global conservatism based in part on this defense of tradition. Another uncertain note for the future, then, was the potential impact of fierce international divisions on regional patterns. Would the factors that impelled culture change in the West ultimately spread more widely, or might Western trends themselves be affected by opposition elsewhere? Again, recent transitions do not encourage firm predictions.

A Final Frontier? Rights for the Disabled How far can contemporary culture change extend, where the rights of minority groups are concerned? An obvious corollary to the investigation of recent change, as with gay rights, involves speculating about whether a similar mix of causes might apply to other communities that have historically been marginalized. But an equally obvious complication or two: no two sets of issues are exactly alike, and apparent success in one facet of culture

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change cannot assure predictions for another. Still, some parallels are intriguing. Advocates for a major change in society’s ideas about the disabled make a plausible case. They contend that disability is not an inherently defined condition, as an earlier medical model might suggest, but rather a cultural construct of society itself. They admit that some deep-seated prejudices are involved, not only in the medical impulse to label but also in many older ideas about disability as a mark of the devil, a danger to be disposed of in some cases by death. Many contemporary efforts to support the disabled (such as the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990), while offering some protections such as “handicap” access, continue to view the disabled as a separate community—with no sense that this is a “cultural” decision. There is no question that most contemporary societies tend to separate and often to shun people with obvious impairments, while offering modest accommodations at least for children.32 Some studies suggest that cultural distaste has if anything increased amid modern conditions.33 What would a wider culture change look like? Advocates urge recognition that human beings vary in many ways, and that many so-called disabled are merely part of the continuum, deserving inclusion rather than isolation. Individual adjustments depending on capacities, not general exclusions, should be the goal, and the disabled should not be burdened with any overall stigma. The World Health Organization, for example, issued a new set of guidelines in 2010 that basically urged that inclusion of the disabled, including rights to education and employment, should replace the application of any overall categorization.34 Participation in broader community activities is a vital part of this recommended agenda, and we have seen in the gay rights analysis how important this can be in promoting further change simply through greater mutual familiarity. Changes in sports, notably the rise of Special Olympics and the Paralympics, both reflect and encourage larger shifts in beliefs about the disabled. As with other rights efforts, advocates urge the importance of change in language as a way to promote wider reevaluation of attitudes. Already a strong push in the United States has reproved older terms such as “retardation” and “handicapped” in favor of less prejudicial and less sweeping language. Shifts in the approach of many medical groups, who now urge individual evaluations rather than group designations and maximum possible inclusion, suggest a clear effort at the kind of new thinking that had benefited other minority groups in the past—again, a possible factor in wider cultural change. Some governments are adding their voices to the arguments for inclusion: thus the District of Columbia in 2006 mandated “the use of respectful language when referring to people with disabilities.” Finally, massive improvements in assistive technology give some promise of allowing greater integration of individuals with a variety of impairments into the workforce and a wider community. This has been an

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important factor in the greater inclusion of wounded war veterans, and it might carry over into wider social and cultural change. The linkage of efforts to promote cultural change around attitudes toward the disabled, with the types of adjustments achieved by some other groups in modern history, is intriguing, despite some obvious differences in some of the specific issues involved. Is there a strong enough set of potential causes to anticipate more sweeping transformations—that might go so far as to modify persistent levels of distaste or dread? Models of culture change, including modifications of prejudice, legitimately establish some issues to watch for the future, to see if the range of application can expand further. They do not allow prediction outright.

Conclusion: Culture Change and Prejudice The kinds of culture change that may address longstanding group distinctions—what, today, many people would call “prejudices”—obviously come in various shapes and sizes. The basic category is really important—in modern history and contemporary life alike. Analysis that uses the culture change focus additionally applies to shifts in racial prejudices—including anti-Semitism as well as biases against people of color—where there is a rich if complicated modern trajectory.35 At the same time, as we have seen, there are important links among the modern adjustments, as the kinds of thinking about human rights that began to emerge in the eighteenth century were gradually applied to further domains—hence the connections among the transformations in ideas about women with nineteenth-century antislavery efforts, and more recently the extensions that have been applied to beliefs about gays and gay rights.36 Each specific area, however, has its own contours. The kind of two-step evolution that describes shifting beliefs about gender in Western society differs from the reconsiderations of gays and gay rights; and the gradual adjustment of India’s caste system in practice has its own features in turn. The nascent effort to deal with older ideas about people with disabilities involves a mixture of beliefs, costs and capacities, and in some cases available technologies. As with other types of significant culture change, there is no single formula. Not surprisingly, culture change applied to traditional beliefs about group differences and inferiorities is often a gradual process, taking many decades to advance. By now it is obvious that culture change often takes time, but the process involved in unseating prejudice can be particularly painful. The separate phases of culture change concerning women helped to ease transitions (including the implications for masculine status), but also complicated actual adjustments well into the twentieth century. Even here, however, there was some unexpected backsliding, as with the domestic emphasis of the 1950s. In the case of gay rights, reversals actually help

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explain subsequent intensity—again, paths of change are not always straightforward, and shifts may occur in the future as well. Group prejudices are hard to shake, when they are taught early to children and serve to mark cherished hierarchies and deep-seated fears. Only when culture change in this area does not threaten deeply rooted identities, as with left-handedness— for whatever reason, right-handers have not felt massively demeaned by their loss of exclusivity—it can be installed fairly quickly, but this is not the norm. To be sure, in the case of gay rights—thanks to the linkage with earlier advances in other kinds of rights arguments and to effective leadership—the speed of change has been surprising, but even here the transformation is still under debate. Again, no single timing pattern applies, despite the difficulties and challenges that are often involved. Leadership efforts deserve attention, including new voices and urgency from previously oppressed groups but often some changes of heart from individuals in more dominant positions as well. While no left-handed movement deserves any particular credit, all the other examples of prejudicereduction have involved concerted direction, offering an invitation to think more broadly about what kinds of leadership work best in promoting culture change. How have culture change leaders managed to prevail against resistance? What kinds of arguments and tactics are most successful? Are there ways—as with some versions of feminism—to touch base with some existing beliefs even while advancing change? At the same time, in no case were leadership and agitation alone responsible for cultural transformations. Other bases of support—in the larger rhetoric of human rights, or the link to shifts in economic and social structure—have been essential as well. Causation, again predictably given the deep roots of traditional beliefs, has always been complex. Several other issues emerge, applying to this kind of culture change almost inevitably. First: even as change increasingly predominates, resistance ebbs only slowly because the older ideas have been so deeply ingrained and because many established identities continue to be threatened. Few people, in places like the United States, currently advocate restoring traditional beliefs about women. But holdovers persist, and certainly support for the nineteenth-century version of gender culture remains considerable. The terrain of gay rights or, in India, the remnants of caste continues to be active battlefields, with strong minorities eager to return to the more traditional value system. And even where a transformation seems more advanced, times of social stress often bring out older voices, or revive older voices, in favor of throwback ideas. While this chapter has not undertaken a case study of culture change applied to race—for example, the measurable decline of antiSemitism or the about-face in professed American attitudes toward interracial marriage in the later twentieth century—the persistence of older prejudices, and their unexpected reemergence in recent years, puts some brakes on evaluation of change. It is clearly hard to kill off older ideas entirely, which means that it is also hard to predict that they will not crop

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up again. At what point is it possible to decide that this kind of culture change is securely established?37 For—as another complication—when culture change advances against older beliefs about groups once held to be inferior, lip service is often a companion to more genuine transformations in values. People learn, or are told, on pain of social penalties, to keep quiet about their continued hesitations. In the United States and elsewhere, what came to be called “political correctness” by the later twentieth century marked both culture change and its limitations. While some people embraced change, and others came to tolerate groups and behaviors despite some disapproval, still others found themselves trapped between more traditional ideas and a recognition that concealment was essential on pain of public scorn. Many people were pressed to reconsider traditionally insulting terms and language, and even once-acceptable humor, to demonstrate their commitment to greater equality—toward women, toward racial groups, toward gays. Jobs could be lost, political campaigns thwarted if the new cultural conventions were not observed. But the pressure for correctness, though itself a change, involved its own stress, precisely because some very real cultural differences could no longer be freely expressed. Here is another feature in the ongoing, and complicated, process of redefining cultural standards.38 Finally, of course, a set of comparative issues looms large. This chapter has focused primarily on culture changes in the United States or Western societies more generally, though the analysis of the attack on India’s caste system involved a more complex mixture in which imported Western values were only part of the process. But similar discussions have affected many other societies, though at different times and amid different specific relationships to distinctive regional traditions. Shared influences, and the common language of global human rights movements particularly since World War II and the Universal Charter on Human Rights, have clearly motivated some common trends. Even the intriguing effort to liberate lefthanders has an international dimension, as parents in many societies have more recently reconsidered traditional views.39 But shared trends and causes do not add up to identical processes of change—even aside from obvious differences in timing. Adding a fuller comparative dimension to assessments of this kind of culture change is a vital challenge, not only to generate a fuller historical picture but to account for contemporary patterns and disputes as well.

Conclusion Where Can We Go from Here?

The purpose of this assortment of cases aimed at facilitating an understanding of what culture change is all about, and how its process and results can be assessed.

Key Targets Here is what I hope has been achieved. Goal one is an agreement that culture change is or can be quite important, as both past and current episodes suggest in a wide variety of domains. We live in a period when science and technology are receiving great attention, for a variety of practical reasons; and there is as a result some danger that other types of knowledge will be downplayed. The study of culture change is not a precise discipline: it requires qualitative research (though there is some quantification, for example around shifts in word incidence), and it might be dismissed as a soft, frivolous subject. In fact—and again, hopefully this can be agreed— culture change has a profound influence on the way human beings, organizations, and societies live and function, so exploring its dimensions is in fact a vital concern. When, as noted in the Introduction, scientists admit that, in a disputed area like climate change, grasping how to alter beliefs is more important than further study of the environment itself, they highlight an important truth. We simply have to know how cultures adjust to make sense of the world we live in and, perhaps, to make it a bit better.1 The importance of culture change clearly contradicts any effort to deal with the human experience simply as a set of kneejerk reactions to technologies or other purely material factors. Of course, as we have seen, cultural factors often combine with developments in other areas; and surely, in some instances, cultural patterns play at best a subordinate role. But culture cannot be written out of the human equation, and arguments to the 225

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contrary are a waste of time. When culture change affects not only legal arrangements or artistic emphases, but the balance of the physical senses or responses to grief or the nature of certain kinds of disease, the fundamental importance of the phenomenon shines through vividly. This does not mean, of course, that everyone should be devoting their careers to exploring culture change. Interests will vary. It does suggest however that some people should be focusing intensely on what culture change is all about, and that lots of people should have some familiarity. This applies to scholars and journalists, as we try to figure out the society around us, but also to many practitioners who, like it or not, may find themselves involved in culture change—and who may be even sometimes asked to take a lead in the process. Arguably, more explicit attention to the phenomenon in our education system would be a good thing, for student audiences generally. Even more obviously, the cases in this brief collection should have dispelled any notion that cultures do not change—that they are fixed forever because of some prior tradition like Confucianism or Western individualism; or that change, when it does occur, is simply random. It is certainly true that culture change is hard to predict. We’ve explored a case or two that would have seemed hard to imagine just a generation before—who would have guessed, in 1900 or even 1980, the “cultural revolution” in the acceptance of gay marriage or even (in 1900) the about-face on left-handedness or the Japanese abandonment of emperor-worship? It is also true that the pace of change, and the precise balance among adjustment, persistence and resistance, are hard to calculate. But this is a real phenomenon, important historically and, as many of the cases have suggested, almost certainly becoming more significant in the past couple of centuries and, probably, into the near future. The cases presented have not pretended to offer a definitive answer to any sweeping question about the limits of culture change, though the topic is legitimate, even inescapable. Thus in one key domain: interactions between culture and basic human biopsychology test the power of generalization at several points, potentially shaping debates between culture analysts and those, like many psychologists, more interested in inherent traits. We have seen that emotions can shift considerably, in response to new standards, but are there biological or psychological constants that must nevertheless be taken into account? Culture change, along with other factors, can push people away from other “natural” patterns, as in the imposition of modern standards of time, but again it is hard to come up with a single formula that encompasses the ongoing interactions that result. Nor is there a clear general formula to guide us in distinguishing “real” illness from the cultural factors that often help define disease. On another front: organizations may have some inherent structural features that affect cultural adjustments, as in a need for some degree of hierarchy. At the societal level: culture change may be bounded by economic or technological realities, and it is powerfully

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affected by a society’s power structure. The importance of culture change does not depend on any claim that it overrides all other factors, and obviously precise interactions vary with the specific situation involved. Over time, we may be better able to rise above specific cases toward firmer generalizations about culture change/human nature, or organizational basics, or societal frameworks. The previous chapters have obviously not attempted to venture any overriding models. But we have seen, as with revolutions or gender appraisals, that new beliefs and values can stretch various kinds of apparent reality considerably.

Strengths and Limitations of Case Studies The case study approach offered in the main chapters emphasizes the variety of contexts in which culture change can occur, and the range of results, not only in beliefs but in behaviors and institutions. By definition, however, the approach leaves many topics open-ended. Causation is an obvious example. Any assessment of culture change must deal with causes. Case studies suggest a variety of possibilities: government initiatives; economic or personal advantage; prior ideas or, in modern times, scientific discoveries;2 contacts with other societies; the sheer persuasiveness of certain new beliefs; even the impact of individual advocates. But there is no formula that applies across the board, simply some examples that can guide specific inquiry. Indeterminacy even applies to the fascinating role of generations: while youth sometimes spearheads culture change, in other cases other age groups are strongly involved even at the outset. The various faces of compulsion require attention within the causation category, and not simply as an unpleasant historical reminder. Outright force has played a role in culture change. But we have also noted other, more modern, forms of compulsion, including punishments on the job. At various points in time but still today, shame has been actively deployed to try to win conformity with new cultural norms—though also in resistance. The current furor over political correctness in the United States revolves around attempts to use, or resist, shaming as a means of compelling cultural adjustments on issues like race or sexual orientation. Again, the mixture of causes and mechanisms can range widely. The same variety applies to the process of change. Cultural shifts usually provoke resistance; they often, at least, generate syncretic compromises over the long term. But here too, knowing what to look for, in a general way, falls short of clear-cut, widely applicable generalizations. Timing is another vital issue about which generalization seems impossible, in the complex balance between rather abrupt revolutions in culture versus what is probably the more common pattern, of more gradual change. But some obvious challenges emerge: why, to take an obvious question from Chapter 9, was culture change around homosexuality so much more rapid

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and, apparently, decisive in Western societies than the similar process applied to gender roles and characteristics, where serious change has occurred but amid a far more complex and extended pattern? Is it really true that well-led organizations are distinctively capable of orchestrating fairly rapid change? Complexity has been a recurring theme, but this should serve as challenge, not deterrent. One of the reasons to explore a variety of cases, as in the preceding chapters, is to provide experience in avoiding potential oversimplifications, without drowning in variety. For example, while some theorists argue that culture change must come from “below,” from the ranks of ordinary people, the case studies in the previous chapters surely suggest that this is not always true: top down impulses can be vital as well.3 Government initiatives often pay off, in guiding culture change, but they can also collapse—another topic that requires careful analysis. The same holds even for the impact of science, which can be a powerful force in reshaping attitudes but which can also fall flat, or even rouse unexpected resistance. Again, there is no escaping the need to balance some broad patterns with case-by-case inquiry—in past and present alike. Results, finally, display a range of possibilities. Culture change—as in the case of Western individualism—often touches on areas of behavior that cannot be anticipated at the outset, and that often spin out only later on. While Western individualism quickly affected the way parents chose names for their children, for example, the further impact, of encouraging separate sleeping arrangements for individual kids, took shape only later (encouraged as well by lower birth rates)—yet it follows from the same basic cultural impulse. Complexities of this sort are simply part of the invitation to analysis, and this is where case study experience helps provide useful guidelines. 4

Some Additional Steps: Expanding the Range For some readers, at least, the further hope is that this collection has whetted appetites. The cases reviewed have been quite briefly summarized. It would be desirable to pick one or two of particular interest (or more: there’s no reason to be timid) and explore in greater detail, toward a fuller understanding. And here’s an equally obvious next step: considering other kinds of culture change that this book has not really addressed at all. The chapter on culture change and prejudice directly suggested the desirability of applying culture change analysis to attitudes applied to race and ethnicity, a crucial issue in many societies today including the United States but places like Brazil and post-apartheid South Africa as well. Efforts by leaders like the South African Nelson Mandela, seeking new values as well as political arrangements to replace racism with what one colleague called a “rainbow society,” invite attention as another huge area for cultural evaluation. On

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another front: several previous chapters have offered hints of a cultural exploration of changing attitudes toward age groups, but much more can be done. One historian for example offered a tantalizing clue about old age, in arguing that, in the eighteenth century, most Americans who lied about their age tried to seem older than they were, whereas just 100 years later they did the reverse, trying to seem younger. What’s involved in this kind of shift, and has the result—implying a clear new preference for seeming youthful, as opposed to old and wise—persisted into our own time?5 And will the rise of larger elderly segments in modern societies create a need for serious cultural reconsideration in this domain? Many other intriguing topics have only been suggested, for example in the area of crime and punishment. Redefinitions of the importance of rape and the nature of sexual harassment bring the issue of culture change directly to many American college campuses. What about the evolution, and current mixed status, of ideas about the death penalty, and what happened in the nineteenth century to prompt most societies to decide that what had once been very public punishments should now be administered privately (and that the few societies that do still punish publicly are shocking and barbaric)?6 In yet another domain: exploring changing attitudes toward animals, including the rise of pets, is a fascinating cultural option, particular in societies moving away from agriculture. The global dimension adds a host of possibilities. This collection has deliberately sampled some experiences in Latin America, Africa, and Asia, besides Europe and North America, but there is far more to be done—both in harnessing cases that have been explored, like the ongoing cultural debates in Turkey, and in extending knowledge about culture change experiences in other regions. The role of nationalism in culture change deserves more attention—as it emerged around the world from the later eighteenth century onward (for this, too, is a modern cultural product), and as it continues to condition cultural interactions including serving now to focus resistance to globalization. But comparing different regional experiences of culture change can also facilitate greater global understanding, in showing how different societies both share crucial adaptations but also manage to condition them to fit their own cultural contexts. As the Introduction noted, an even grander comparative topic might be tackled in future: whether some societies are more open to culture change than others, and if so why, and with what results (good and bad)? What balance of stability and flexibility seems to be most effective, or is there a clear model in this regard? And inevitably, of course, the relative position of Western culture deserves attention. The previous chapters have highlighted a number of key cultural shifts within the West and also Western influences (but also their limits) on other societies. The focus legitimately reflects the importance of the West in modern world history (for better or worse), and also the hopefully temporary fact that certain kinds of culture change have been particularly well studied

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in the West. But we have also explored culture change in nonwestern settings, and also cases in which Western influence was effectively disputed, and surely these vital facets will warrant even more extensive analysis in the future. Indeed, as the strength of societies like China and India increases on the back of economic growth, we may expect a future in which other sources of cultural pressure, impinging even on the West itself, will gain greater prominence. This process will surely repeat some of the standard reactions to external influence—including resistance and compromise—but without the kind of Western presence that has been part of the global cultural experience over the past several centuries. Awareness of the complexity of regional interactions in modern cultural history is a vital component in any assessment of culture change, past and present alike. Other large topics deserve attention. Culture change is often involved in conflict resolution, for example, both within and among societies. Even accepting an invitation to participate in dialogue over conflict involves some cultural shifts, toward recognizing opponents as valid participants in conversation rather than as enemies to be crushed. Exploring cases where cultural adjustments have facilitated a reduction of conflict would be an important further chapter—particularly in this period of such marked partisan division in societies like the United States and Britain, beyond the range of this particular collection.7 Finally, the case studies reviewed in the preceding chapters do not explicitly explore culture change efforts that have misfired, and what factors are involved in these situations. Why, to take one example, has American gun culture changed so little, despite repeated efforts to induce compromise or reform? There’s a long list of promising but failed initiatives, and a number of cases are quite instructive.

Some Additional Steps: Generalization and its Limitations Besides considering how to expand the range and geography of cases, this collection offers abundant opportunities simply for further analysis, even on the basis of existing evidence. Several issues emerge quite clearly, though their answers deserve further debate. A key assumption—which must however be explicitly evaluated—is that the various major kinds of culture change, despite their great variety, have enough in common to encourage coherent assessment. There’s a big difference, as Chapter  5 suggested, between culture change within an organization, and the kinds of developments most other chapters have explored, in dealing with a wider social canvas. Granting obvious differences in scope and, often, timing, can some common questions and techniques nevertheless be applied—including the basic analytical framework sketched in Chapter 2?

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This issue extends to the problem (or opportunity) of interdisciplinary analysis. As Chapter  2 also noted, a number of fields of study are deeply interested in culture and, at least to some extent, in culture change. Can they interact even more fruitfully around the question of culture change? Can psychologists, who tend to be particularly interested in common responses rather than alterations over time, benefit from other approaches to culture change, and contribute to them in turn? Have historians learned enough from anthropologists concerning the basic nature of culture itself? The collection has not consistently emphasized the challenges involved in interdisciplinary research, in favor of looking at actual experiences of change, but the question of disciplinary relationships cannot be ignored. And some readers may emerge believing that their favorite approach has not been given sufficient attention—for example, social psychology as opposed to cultural history—even within the confines of a case study approach. The issue of leadership looms large, though particularly in the context of organizational patterns. How have leaders and organized movements often helped generate culture change? Are there better and worse ways to try to promote cultural shifts? Compulsion may be a relevant factor in some situations—even through threats to employment—but persuasion is almost always essential. Personal and economic advantages must be combined with appeals to principle in orchestrating adjustments in culture. Tactics of compromise, acknowledging the need to appeal to established values, must be weighed against the advantages of pressing for a more sweeping transformation. Missionaries have often faced this kind of dilemma, as have other advocates, including corporate executives, in more recent times. These are tough questions, but in principle some of the preceding cases can be reviewed in an effort to tease out desirable patterns even if no hard-and-fast formulas emerge.

From Historical to Contemporary Change On another key point: the collection has deliberately promoted connections between past and present. Historical cases, hopefully interesting in their own right, provide vital experience in sorting out what culture change is all about. Most obviously, they offer the opportunity to see a change through from beginning to full flower. But history also approaches types of culture change that are still being processed today, where the past feeds directly into the present and future. Religious conversions are still occurring. Elements of Western individualism are still being worked out, and this is certainly true, on a global scale, in terms of diverse regional reactions to this particular value system. Revolutionary cultural legacies are still being clarified and modified, as in China today. Elements of the modern changes in gender culture seem fairly well defined, at least in many societies, if only because

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they respond to mutually reinforcing causation; but important questions remain as well, particularly about the tension between impulses toward equality and the continued pull toward differentiating gender characteristics. Cultural globalization, as a current and complex example of the role of new contacts in spurring culture change, is a real question mark at present, with different groups jostling between attempts to reject the whole process, in favor of more national cultural isolation, and some real enthusiasms for at least aspects of global values (including tolerance for global diversities). Knowing what culture changes are still in process, where part of the story can be traced but not the final resolution, sets up obvious guidelines for ongoing analysis: where will we be, twenty years from now, concerning the dominant beliefs about people with disabilities or resistance to cultural globalization?8 And there are specific cases to monitor, beyond the ongoing legacies and issues discussed in several of the previous chapters. Saudi Arabia, for example, pressed by flagging oil revenues, has recently vowed a substantial culture change to provide a framework for a more robust economy: how does our understanding of other cases of culture change (think Turkey, most obviously) help identify probable markers in this process, assuming the government does mount a serious effort? Will the Saudis find culture change easier or harder than addressing more obvious issues such as oil prices or the political turmoil of the Middle East? On another, equally contemporary front: a host of business organizations, such as Uber and Google, have recently pledged culture changes to reduce sexual harassment or discrimination charges or to address other current issues: again, knowledge of precedents should help guide the process and facilitate evaluation by a wider public. Finally, the invitation inherent in exploring culture change goes beyond the connections between trends of the recent past and current debates and patterns. It can authorize some speculation as well, always recognizing that prediction is difficult at best. What kinds of culture change, occurring either in one’s own society or in other parts of the world, are most important for the immediate future, and how can they be encouraged? The same question applies to organizations, including universities: what are some desirable culture change targets in these settings, and how can individuals constructively promote them? How will some predictable social trends force future culture change? Will the increase in the sheer frequency of death in American society in the next decade or two, as the large Baby Boomer generation begins to reach end of life, require another redefinition of the kind of death culture discussed in Chapter 6? Will further environmental shifts somehow intersect with culture change, and how might this work? If you had to pick one key culture change target for the near future—either for society as a whole, or for a major organization—what would you choose, and why? And how, in your opinion, might this change best be accelerated?

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From Forecasting to Defining Strategy And this leads to an intriguing challenge, balanced between historical summary and anticipation of the future. Culture change clearly takes societies or individuals in unexpected directions, if not immediately, then at least over time. Think of the transformations that have altered American culture, or global cultures, in ways that simply could not have been imagined just two centuries ago, whether the issue is gender roles or beliefs about death: what two or three changes, in your judgment, would have been hardest to predict in advance—from a vantage point around 1900? Then turn the process around, to ask questions not about the past but about the future that, by definition, cannot be answered but which usefully upend rooted assumptions. What two or three widely shared beliefs today, that seem far too self-evident to be unseated, might in fact be reconfigured over the next century or two—where people will then look back on our culture today and wonder how we could have been so wrong-headed, just as we do with our own ancestors when it comes to topics like gender standards or ideas about the psychological impact of war? We often indulge the fantasy of predicting future technologies, in ways that sometimes end up guiding constructive imagination.9 Why not do the same with a phenomenon just as important to the human experience, the range of beliefs and values that guide personal and social lives? Can we dream up some further possibilities for change, and how we might get from here to there? Thinking of core assumptions today as in fact contingent, open to change, is really difficult (much harder than speculating about changes to current technologies), but it legitimately stimulates the imagination. And one final, quite practical question, which this book has at least implicitly addressed: does an accumulation of historical and current cases contribute to an ability to lead culture change constructively, as opposed to intelligently observing the process? Historians are often reluctant to claim that their analysis generates formulas for action, and obviously the range of topics addressed in the previous chapters complicates generalization as well. But consideration of culture change, while it may not yield precise how-to agendas, is certainly suggestive. The analytical process applied to the phenomenon can also guide constructive engagement—beyond simply coming up with desirable goals for change. Thus in promoting culture change the motivations of those involved should be carefully considered: why should people consent to an often difficult process, and what combination of causes might be assembled? Advocates of change should be clear about defining the existing culture—the baseline against which change will occur—as part of establishing their most persuasive arguments. They need to think about deliberately suggesting a syncretic approach, though in some cases a more dramatic appeal may be more effective than initial compromise. Emotional mobilization may be essential (as in revolutions, to

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take an extreme example), to add further persuasive punch. And there is always a question about whether the consequences of change, including unintended possibilities, have been adequately analyzed. The accumulation of case studies does not establish a precise agenda for guiding culture change, but it does suggest a series of strategic steps beyond well-intended enthusiasm. * * * Culture change is an ongoing process, though its speed will vary and its settings are numerous. It invites consideration of revealing illustrations from the past, including some of the big transformations but also some of the smaller adjustments as well. It compels attention to the kinds of changes that societies and organizations are currently experiencing, toward figuring out ways to accelerate the more positive transformations or anticipate probable syncretisms. A grasp of culture change as a phenomenon certainly permits some speculation about the future, as another means of reflecting on some current patterns that may turn out to be less deeply rooted, or less desirable, than we imagine. The main point is to know what the process of culture change is all about and to assess some of the more important current manifestations; but there is no reason to avoid discussing how analysis can benefit actual practice, while keeping an eye as well on possible future directions of change.

NOTES

Chapter 1: Introduction 1

François Furet, Interpreting the French Revolution (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981).

2

George Chauncey, Why Marriage? The History Shaping Today’s Debate Over Gay Equality (New York: Basic Books, 2004); Peter N. Stearns, Tolerance in World History (New York: Routledge, forthcoming).

3

Peter N. Stearns, Revolutions in Sorrow: The American Experience of Death in Global Perspective (Boulder, CO : Paradigm Publishers, 2007).

4

David Jacobs and Jason T. Carmichael, “The Political Sociology of the Death Penalty: A Pooled Time-Series Analysis,” American Sociological Review, 67 (1) (Feb., 2002): 109–131.

5

For a vigorous disruption argument: Kevin Carey, The End of College (New York: Random House, 2015); Ryan Craig, College Disrupted: The Great Unbuilding of Higher Education (New York: Macmillan, 2015).

6

Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (London: Penguin Books, 1971).

7

Paul Varley, Japanese Culture (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2000); Alistair Swale, The Meiji Restoration: Monarchism, Mass Communication and Conservative Revolution (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009); R. Taggart Murphy, Japan and the Shackles of the Past (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014).

8

Tyler Cowen, “U.S. Economic Ills Are Cultural, Too,” Bloomberg View, December 22, 2016, https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016–12–22/u-seconomic-ills-are-cultural-too (accessed January 5, 2017).

9

Former Vice President Joe Biden at George Mason University: “Change the culture. You can do it. (. . .) College campuses are communities. And the place where people’s attitudes are affected, changed, altered, are within communities.” From Sarah Larimer, “Biden Calls on Students to ‘Change the Culture’ to Fight College Sexual Assault,” The Washington Post, April 26, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2017/04/26/ biden-calls-on-students-to-change-the-culture-to-fight-college-sexual-assault/ (accessed May 15, 2017).

10 See Peter Ester, Solange Simoes and Henk Vinken, “Cultural Change and Environmentalism: A Cross-National Approach of Mass Publics and Decision Makers,” Ambiente and Sociedade 7 (2) (2004): 45–66. 235

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11 Norman Kutcher, “The Skein of Chinese Emotions History” in Doing Emotions History, Susan J. Matt and Peter N. Stearns (eds) (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2014), 57–73. See also Chapter 3, below. 12 Antonio Gramsci, An Antonio Gramsci Reader: Selected Writings, 1916–1935 (New York: Schocken Books, 1988); Walter L. Adamson, Hegemony and Revolution: A Study of Antonio Gramsci’s Political and Cultural Theory (Berkeley, CA : University of California Press, 1980). 13 Immanuel Maurice Wallerstein, The Politics of the World-Economy: the States, the Movements, and the Civilizations: Essays (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984). Disputes over the role of culture are not confined to Marxism. An intriguing recent historical debate has centered on explaining why Western Europe proceeded to industrialization while China, equally advanced in many ways, lagged behind. One approach ignores culture entirely, focused on the role of access to coal and colonies; but another highlights the essential spur of science-based culture change in the West, which set a new climate for innovation. See Kenneth Pomeranz, The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy (Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, 2000) for the nonculture approach; contrasted with Jack Goldstone, Why Europe? The Rise of the West in World History, 1500–1850 (Boston: McGraw-Hill Higher Education, 2009). It is also worth noting that even non-Marxist economists are sometimes uncomfortable with cultural factors, as opposed to clearer targets like profit motives, dismissing them as mere “matters of taste” rather than fundamental causes of human behavior. 14 See, for example, Eugene Genovese’s classic works on slavery that carefully assess the developments of beliefs and values within a fundamentally Marxist framework: The World the Slaveholders Made: Two Essays in Interpretation (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1988) and Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made (New York: Pantheon Books, 1974). 15 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Vintage Books, 1995) and The History of Sexuality (New York: Vintage Books, 1985). 16 Victoria E. Bonnell, Lynn Avery Hunt and Richard Biernacki, Beyond the Cultural Turn: New Directions in the Study of Society and Culture (Berkeley, CA : University of California Press, 1999); This book explores how culture has been taken up by the various social sciences plus the role of linguistic analysis, in considering next steps in this field – plus the basic question of assessing meaning. See also James A. Henretta, “Social History as Lived and Written,” American Historical Review 84 (1979): 1299. 17 James R. Averill, “The Social Construction of Emotion: With Special Reference to Love,” in The Social Construction of the Person, Kenneth J. Gergen and Keith E. Davis (eds) (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1985), 89–109. 18 Shinobu Kitayama, Hazel Rose Markus and Masaru Kurokawa, “Culture, Emotion, and Well-being: Good Feelings in Japan and the United States,” Cognition and Emotion 14 (1) (2000): 93–124. 19 Larry L. Naylor, Culture and Change: An Introduction (Westport, Conn.: Bergin and Garvey, 1996), 14–35; Joanne Martin, Organizational Culture:

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Mapping the Terrain (Thousand Oaks: SAGE , 2002), 55–92; Jayne Seminare Docherty, “Culture: Culture and Negotiation: Symmetrical Anthropology for Negotiators,” Marquette Law Review 87(4) (2004): 711–722, http:// scholarship.law.marquette.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1192&context=mulr (accessed 5 January, 2017); Vijay Sathe, Culture and Related Corporate Realities: Text, Cases, and Readings on Organizational Entry, Establishment, and Change (Homewood, IL : R.D. Irwin, 1985). 20 Albert Mills, “Organization, Gender, and Culture,” Organizational Studies 9 (3) (1988): 351–369. 21 S.S. Feldman and D.A. Rosenthal, “Age Expectations of Behavioural Autonomy in Hong Kong, Australian, and American Youth: The Influence of Family Variables and Adolescent Values,” International Journal of Psychology 26 (1991): 1–23. 22 H. J. Martin and D. Meyerson, “Organizational Cultures and the Denial, Channeling, and Acknowledgment of Ambiguity” in Managing Ambiguity and Change, L. R. Pondy, R. J. Boland and H. Thomas (eds) (New York: Wiley, 1991). 23 One final definitional problem involves distinctions between cultural values and tastes. If a group of Americans shift allegiance from the Dallas Cowboys to the Green Bay Packers, in professional football, the change is interesting, certainly important to the organizations involved, but it probably does not reflect an alteration in values. But the decline of boxing, as a middle-class sport, from the late nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth, in favor of other sports interests, probably reflects some really new assumptions (about how to train boys, for example, or about acceptable levels of violence), and so falls within the culture change purview. The rise of modern sports interests in revolutionary China, discussed in Chapter 4, is another shift that goes beyond tastes alone. But the difference, between taste and more significant cultural investment, is not always clear-cut. We will encounter this issue of several points, but particularly in Chapter 8 in discussing cultural globalization. 24 On the progress issue: a few culture scholars have also worked on the idea of cultural evolution, accompanying other aspects of human change. See W. R. Runciman, The Theory of Cultural and Social Selection (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009); Marion Blute, Darwinian Sociocultural Evolution: Solutions to Dilemmas in Cultural and Social Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).

Chapter 2: Organizing Analysis 1

Jean L. Briggs, Never in Anger: Portrait of an Eskimo Family (Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, 1970); Evelyn Blackwood, “Culture and Women’s Sexualities,” Journal of Social Issues 56(2) (2000): 223–238; M. Duberman, M. Vicinus and G. J. Chauncey (eds), Hidden from History: Reclaiming the Gay and Lesbian Past (New York: Meridian Books, 1989); Donald S. Marshall, “Sexual Behavior on Mangaia,” Human Sexual Behavior (1971): 103–162;

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NOTES

Gilbert Herdt, Same Sex, Different Cultures: Gays and Lesbians Across Cultures (Boulder, CO : Westview Press, 1997); Roger N. Lancaster and Micaela di Leonardo (eds), The Gender Sexuality Reader (New York: Routledge, 1997). 2

Jean Comaroff and John L. Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution: Christianity, Colonialism, and Consciousness in South America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991).

3

Robert I. Levy, Tahitians: Mind and Experience in the Society Islands (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973).

4

Anne-Marie Codur and Mary Elizabeth King, “Women in Civil Resistance,” in Women, War, and Violence: Typography, Resistance and Hope, Mariam M. Kurtz and Lester R. Kurtz (eds) (Santa Barbara: Praeger, 2015), 401–446.

5

Paul Ekman, Darwin and Facial Expression: A Century of Research in Review (New York: Academic Press, 1973).

6

Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture (Boston: Beacon Press, 1995).

7

Anna Wierzbicka, Emotions Across Languages and Cultures: Diversity and Universals (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999).

8

Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma: the Negro Problem and Modern Democracy (New Brunswick, NJ : Transaction Publishers, 1996).

9

James J. Sheehan, Where Have All the Soldiers Gone? The Transformation of Modern Europe (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2008); Peter N. Stearns (ed.), Demilitarization in the Contemporary World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013).

10 Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (eds), The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). 11 For a good example of this kind of material used as cultural evidence, see Natalie Zemon Davis, Fiction in the Archives: Pardon Tales and Their Tellers in Sixteenth-Century France (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987). Advice materials are crucial: from religious sermons, childrearing manuals, popular medical texts, self-help books or other workplace prescriptions. Where available, diaries or other personal records contribute greatly—though the idea of keeping a diary is in itself an interesting cultural statement (the practice began, in Western society, only in the seventeenth century). And apart from written materials, indications of changes in rituals—around phenomena like funerals or sports events—can be very revealing. 12 Philippe Ariès, Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life (New York: Vintage Books, 1962). 13 Colin Campbell, The Romantic Ethic and the Spirit of Modern Consumerism (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989). 14 Brian Sutton-Smith, A History of Children’s Play: New Zealand, 1840–1950 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981); Gary S. Cross, Kid’s Stuff: Toys and the Changing World of American Childhood (Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, 1997).

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Chapter 3: Culture Change on the Grand Scale 1

Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart (London: Heinemann, 1959), 148–169.

2

We will see similar factors at work in Chapter 8, on Christianity in Latin America. See J. D. Y. Peel, Religious Encounter and the Making of the Yoruba (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000). On regional differences in Africa, see also William R. Bascom and Melville Herskovits (eds), Continuity and Change in African Cultures (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1959), which shows clear distinctions between cultures that resisted change (the Pakot) and Igbo acceptance.

3

George Vernadsky, A Source Book for Russian History from Early Times to 1917 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972).

4

John Boswell, Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980).

5

Peter N. Stearns, Gender in World History (New York: Routledge, 2006).

6

Ross E. Dunn, The Adventures of Ibn Battuta, a Muslim Traveler of the Fourteenth Century (Berkeley, CA : University of California Press, 2005).

7

Arthur Nock, Conversion: The Old and the New in Religion from Alexander the Great to Augustine of Hippo (New York: Oxford University Press, 1969).

8

Humphrey J. Fisher, “Conversion Reconsidered: Some Historical Aspects of Religious Conversion in Black Africa,” Africa: Journal of the International African Institute 43 (1) (Jan., 1973): 27–40.

9

Herbert Bloch, “A New Document of the Last Pagan Revival in the West, 393–394 A.D.,” The Harvard Theological Review 38 (4) (October, 1945): 199–244; John Marenbon, Pagans and Philosophers (Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, 2015); Lesley Abrams, “Germanic Christianities” in Thomas F. X. Noble (ed.) et al., The Cambridge History of Christianity (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008); James O’Donnell, Pagans: The End of Traditional Religion and the Rise of Christianity (New York: Harper Collins, 2015). For a recent study on the Christian process, see Bart Ehrman, The Triumph of Christianity: How a Forbidden Religion Swept the World (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2018).

10 Robert Muchembled, Popular Culture and Elite Culture in France, 1400–1750 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1985). 11 Karen Jolly, Witchcraft and Magic in Europe: the Middle Ages (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002). 12 Quoted in Melford E. Spiro, “Is the Western Conception of the Self ‘Peculiar’ within the Context of the World Cultures?” Ethos 21 (2) (June, 1993): 107–153; Hazel Rose Markus and Shinobu Kitayama, “Culture and the Self: Implications for Cognition, Emotion, and Motivation,” Psychological Review 98 (2) (1991): 224–253. 13 Peter N. Stearns, Shame: A Brief History (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2017).

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14 Larry Siedentop, Inventing the Individual: the Origins of Western Liberalism (Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, 2014); Aaron Gurevich, The Origins of European Individualism, trans. Katherine Judelson (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995). 15 Mary S. Hartman, The Household and the Making of History: A Subversive View of the Western Past (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004). 16 Dror Wahrman, The Making of the Modern Self Identity and Culture in Eighteenth-Century England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004). 17 Edward Shorter, The Making of the Modern Family (New York: Basic Books, 1975). 18 Peter N. Stearns, Shame: A Brief History. 19 Philip J. Greven, The Protestant Temperament: Patterns of Child-Rearing, Religious Experience, and the Self in Early America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988). 20 Hartmut Kaelble, Social Mobility in the 19th and 20th Centuries: Europe and America in Comparative Perspective (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1986); Stephan Thernstrom, Poverty and Progress; Social Mobility in a Nineteenth Century City (Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, 1980). 21 Eighteenth-century individualism also related to the rise of the novel, which reflected new interest in exploring individual personalities—as in Samuel Richardson’s Pamela (1740), but also undoubtedly encouraged new confidence in individual identity as well. 22 Darrin M. McMahon, Happiness: A History (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2007); Christina Kotchemidova, “From Good Cheer to ‘Drive-By Smiling’: A Social History of Cheerfulness,” Journal of Social History 39 (1) (2005): 5–37. 23 A. C. Grayling, The Age of Genius: The Seventeenth Century and the Birth of the Modern Mind (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2016). See also John Herman Randall, The Making of the Modern Mind: A Survey of the Intellectual Background of the Present Age (New York: Columbia University Press, 1976). 24 Indeed, the eighteenth century constituted the first time that some writers could support themselves simply by sales of their books. 25 Peter N. Stearns and Herrick Chapman, European Society in Upheaval: Social History Since 1750, 3rd ed. (New York: Macmillan, 1992). 26 Nancy F. Cott, No Small Courage: A History of Women in the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000). 27 See John Mullan, Sentiment and Sociability: The Language of Feeling in the Eighteenth Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988); Fay Bound Alberti is currently working on the rise of loneliness. 28 Colin Campbell, The Romantic Ethic and the Spirit of Modern Consumerism (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989). 29 Lynn Hunt, Inventing Human Rights: A History (New York: Norton, 2007); Peter N. Stearns, Human Rights in World History (New York: Routledge, 2012).

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30 Jason Reid, Get Out of My Room! A History of Teen Bedrooms in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017). 31 Elizabeth H. Pleck, Celebrating the Family: Ethnicity, Consumer Culture, and Family Rituals (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000); Peter N. Stearns, Dante A. Burrichter, and Vyta Baselice, “Debating the Birthday: Innovation and Resistance in Celebrating Children” (article forthcoming in the Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth). 32 Shinobu Kitayama, Hazel Rose Markus and Masaru Kurokawa, “Culture, Emotion, and Well-Being: Good Feelings in Japan in the United States,” Cognition and Emotion 14 (1): 93–124; Colin Jones, The Smile Revolution in Eighteenth Century Paris (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014). 33 Ifi Amadiume, Male Daughters, Female Husbands: Gender and Sex in an African Society (London: Zed Books Ltd., 1998). 34 Melanie Chiew, “Human Rights in Singapore: Perceptions and Problems,” Asian Survey 34 (11) (1994): 993–948. 35 This distinctiveness also reinforces the need to explain the reasons for the turn to individualism, which by definition have to involve an unusual combination of forces. 36 Nicole Eustace, Passion Is the Gale: Emotion, Power, and the Coming of the American Revolution (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011); Kotchemidova, “From Good Cheer to ‘Drive-By Smiling’: A Social History of Cheerfulness”; Michael P. Weber, Social Change in an Industrial Town: Patterns of Progress in Warren, Pennsylvania, from Civil War to World War I (State College: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1976). 37 Other cases of big culture change efforts, relying on a modernizing nation state, would include Japan after 1868 (briefly presented in Chapter 1, above); and a number of twentieth-century examples that deserve attention, as well as comparison with the Turkish pattern: Mexico after the 1910 revolution; the Iranian Revolution of 1979; the various communist revolutions including Cuba; but also Israeli efforts to adjust European Jewish culture after World War II . 38 Francois Georgeon, “Changes of Time: An Aspect of Ottoman Modernization,” New Perspectives on Turkey 44 (2011): 181–195; Yusuf Akcura, Three Policies, http://vlib.iue.it/carrie/texts/carrie_books/paksoy–2/cam9.html (accessed March 2, 2017). 39 Ziya Gokalp, Principles of Turkism (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1968); Sukru Hanioglu, Ataturk: An Intellectual Biography (Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, 2011); Esra Ozyurek, The Politics of Public Memory in Turkey (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2007). 40 Robert F. Spencer, “Culture Process and Intellectual Current: Durkheim and Ataturk,” American Anthropologist, New Series 60 (4) (Aug., 1958): 640–657; Esra Ozyurek, The Politics of Public Memory in Turkey. 41 Kemal H. Karpat, “The People’s Houses in Turkey: Establishment and Growth,” Middle East Journal 17 (1/2) (Winter-Spring, 1963): 55–67; M. Asim Karaomerlioglu, “The Village Institutes Experience in Turkey,” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 25 (1) (May, 1998): 47–73.

242

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42 Mahmut Makal, A Village in Anatolia, trans. Sir Wyndham Deedes (London: Valentine, 1954), 83, 95, 105–106. 43 Nilufer Gole, The Forbidden Modern: Civilization and Veiling (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997).

Chapter 4: Protest, Revolution, and Culture Change 1

Sheldon J. Watts, A Social History of Western Europe, 1450–1720: Tensions and Solidarities Amongst the Rural People (London: HarperCollins Publishers, 1984); E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (New York: Vintage Books, 1966); Geroid Tanquary Robinson, Rural Russia Under the Old Regime: A History of the Landlord-Peasant World and a Prologue to the Peasant Revolution of 1917 (Berkeley, CA : University of California Press, 1967).

2

Malcolm I. Thomis, The Luddites: Machine-Breaking in Regency England (New York: Schocken Books, 1972).

3

Charles Tilly, Louise Tilly and Richard H. Tilly, The Rebellious Century, 1830–1930 (Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, 1975); Edward Shorter and Charles Tilly, Strikes in France, 1830–1968 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1974).

4

Karen M. Offen, Globalizing Feminisms, 1789–1945 (New York: Routledge, 2010).

5

Misagh Parsa, Social Origins of the Iranian Revolution (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1989); Maryam Panah, The Islamic Republic and the World: Global Dimensions of the Iranian Revolution (Ann Arbor, MI : Pluto Press, 2007); Arshin Adib-Moghaddam, On the Arab Revolts and the Iranian Revolution: Power and Resistance Today (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013).

6

James Kirchick, The End of Europe: Dictators, Demagogues, and the Coming Dark Age (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017); Daniel Quinn Mills and Steven Rosefielde, The Trump Phenomenon and the Future of US Foreign Policy (World Scientific Publishing, 2017).

7

We will see even more recent illustrations of proactive protest in Chapter 8, when we take up civil rights and feminist arguments against other forms of inequality.

8

Robert Ashton and Raymond Howard Parry, The English Civil War and After, 1642–1658 (Berkeley, CA : University of California Press, 1970); Stephen Saunders Webb, Lord Churchill’s Coup: The Anglo-American Empire and the Glorious Revolution Reconsidered (New York: Knopf, 1995); Scott Sowerby, Making Toleration: The Repealers and the Glorious Revolution (Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, 2013).

9

Nicole Eustace, Passion is the Gale: Emotion, Power, and the Coming of the American Revolution (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008);

NOTES

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Philip J. Greven, Four Generations: Population, Land, and Family in Colonial Andover, Massachusetts (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1970). 10 François Furet, Penser: La Révolution Française (Paris: Gallimard, 1978). 11 Keith Baker, Inventing the French Revolution: Essays on French Political Culture in the Eighteenth Century (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990); Lynn Hunt, Politics, Culture, and Class in the French Revolution (Berkeley, CA : University of California Press, 1986). 12 Peter Burke, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe (Burlington: Ashgate, [1978] 2009); Robert Muchembled, Popular Culture and Elite Culture in France, 1400–1750 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1985). 13 Hilton Root, The Fountain of Privilege: Political Foundations of Markets in Old Regime France and England (Berkeley, CA : University of California Press, 1994); Howard G. Brown and Judith A. Miller, Taking Liberties: Problems of a New Order from the French Revolution to Napoleon (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002); George Taylor, The French Revolution and the London Stage, 1789–1805 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Peter Gay, The Enlightenment: The Rise of Modern Paganism (New York: Norton, 1966). 14 Olwen H. Hufton, The Poor of Eighteenth-Century France, 1750–1789 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974) and Europe: Privilege and Protest, 1730–1389 (Malden, MA : Blackwell Publishers, 2000); Cissie C. Fairchilds, Poverty and Charity in Aix-en-Provence, 1640–1789 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976). 15 For a brief survey of the revolution overall, Linda Frey and Marsha Frey, The French Revolution (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2004). 16 Gilbert Shapiro and John Markoff, Revolutionary Demands: A Content Analysis of the Cashiers de Doléances of 1789 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998). 17 George F. E. Rudé, The Crowd in History: A Study of Popular Disturbances in France and England, 1730–1848 (New York: Wiley, 1964). 18 The Abbé Emmanuel Joseph Sieyés, What is the Third Estate?, trans. M. Blondel (London: Pall Mall Press, 1963). 19 Sophia A. Rosenfeld, Common Sense (Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, 2011). 20 Emmet Kennedy, A Cultural History of the French Revolution (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989); Hunt, Politics, Culture, and Class in the French Revolution. 21 Robert Isherwood, Farce and Fantasy: Popular Entertainment in EighteenthCentury Paris (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986). 22 Maurice Agulhon, “On Political Allegory: A Reply to Eric Hobsbawm,” History Workshop 1 (8) (October, 1979): 167–173. 23 Monique Ozouf, trans. Alan Sheridan, Festivals and the French Revolution (Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, 1987). 24 Mary A. Miller, A Natural History of Revolution: Violence and Nature in the French Revolutionary Imagination, 1789–1794 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2011).

244

NOTES

25 A few hesitations about long trousers resurfaced, under Napoleon and then a new set of kings between 1815–30, mainly through tight trousers combined with high boots; but a final king, ascending the throne after a small new revolution in 1830, purposefully supported trousers once again. The fashion would gradually spread to other Western countries, and ultimately beyond. Laurence Benain, Pants, Trousers: A Walking History (Paris: Vila, 2001). 26 The revolutionary mood, in France but ultimately elsewhere, also moved against the male upper-class habit of wearing wigs. It has been pointed out that this involved not only a rejection of class distinctions in dress (ordinary people could not be bothered with, or afford, fancy wigs), but also an attack on the authority of the elderly in favor of a more youthful, vigorous appearance—a preference still with us today. See David Hackett Fischer, Growing Old in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977). 27 It has been noted that the American Revolution, less radical than the French in many ways, did not make the cultural leap of introducing a metric system, except for currency. And unlike virtually every other modern nation, the United States still holds out against this cultural change. 28 Crane Brinton, French Revolutionary Legislation on Illegitimacy, 1789–1804 (Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, 1936). 29 Donald M. G. Sutherland, The Chouans: The Social Origins of Popular Counter-Revolution in Upper Brittany, 1770–1796 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982); Charles Tilly, The Vendée (Cambridge, MA : Harvard Univeristy Press, 1964). 30 Some professional groups would also seek to reestablish certain forms of group privilege based on special education and functions. See Isser Woloch, The New Regime: Transformations of the French Civic Order, 1789–1820s (New York: W.W. Norton, 1994). 31 Jack Censer, Debating Modern Revolution: The Evolution of Revolutionary Ideas (New York: Routledge, 2016). 32 Rex A. Wade, The Russian Revolution, 1917, 3rd ed. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017). 33 Anna Xiao Dong Sun, Confucianism as a World Religion: Contested Histories and Contemporary Realities (Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, 2013). 34 Norman Kutchner, “Chapter 3: The Skein of Chinese Emotions History,” in Doing Emotions History, Susan J. Matt and Peter N. Stearns (eds) (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2014), 57–73. 35 Michael Glasster, China’s Struggle to Modernize (New York: Knopf, 1972). 36 Robert Solomon, “From Mao Zedong to Zhu Rongji: Economic Reform in China,” in The Transformation of the World Economy (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1999), 124–138; Richard H. Solomon, Mao’s Revolution and the Chinese Political Culture (Berkeley, CA : University of California Press, 1971). 37 Richard Curt Kraus, The Cultural Revolution: A Very Short Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012); Parris H. Change, Radicals and Radical Ideology in China’s Cultural Revolution (New York: Columbia University Press, 1973); Jeremy Brown and Matthew D. Johnson (eds), Maoism at the

NOTES

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Grassroots: Everyday Life in China’s Era of High Socialism (Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, 2015). 38 A. James Gregor and Maria Hsia Chang, “Anti-Confucianism: Mao’s Last Campaign,” Asian Survey 19 (11) (November 1979): 1073–1092. 39 Kam Louie (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Modern Chinese Culture (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008). Note than while the “Cultural Revolution” phrase was specific to the Chinese experience, subsequent historians have used the term more broadly. See, for example, Andrew WallaceHadrill, Rome’s Cultural Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). 40 Yunxiang Yan, Private Life Under Socialism: Love, Intimacy, and Family Change in a Chinese Village, 1949–1999 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003). 41 Louie (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Modern Chinese Culture, especially Sor-Hoon Tan’s “Modernizing Confucianism and ‘new Confucianism,’ ” 135–154, and Susan Brownell’s “Physical Culture, Sports, and the Olympics,” 339–360. 42 Jason Brownlee, Tarek Masoud, and Andrew Reynolds, The Arab Spring: Pathways of Repression and Reform (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015) David W. Lesch and Mark L. Haas, The Arab Spring: The Hope and Reality of the Uprisings (Boulder, CO : Westview Press, 2017).

Chapter 5: Organizations and Culture Change 1

Ezra F. Vogel, Japan as Number One: Lessons for America (New York: Harper Colophon Books, 1979).

2

Morris J. MacGregor, Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940–1965 (Washington, DC : Center of Military History, 1981).

3

Pat Hutchings and Lee S. Shulman, “The Scholarship of Teaching,” Change 31 (5) (1999): 11; C. Kreber, “Teaching Excellence, Teaching Expertise, and the Scholarship of Teaching,” Innovations in Higher Education 27 (2002); Peter N. Stearns, Guiding the American University: Contemporary Challenges and Choices (New York: Routledge, 2016).

4

Sara J. Singer and Timothy J. Vogus, “Reducing Hospital Errors: Interventions that Build Safety Culture,” Public Health 34 (2013): 373–396; Another vital target for organizational culture change involves efforts to reduce corruption— where otherwise some corporate cultures induce even normally ethical individuals to feel that corrupt practices are simply normal. See Blake E. Ashforth and Vikas Anand, “The Normalization of Corruption in Organizations,” Research in Organizational Behavior 25: 1–52.

5

Charles A. O’Reilly, Jennifer Chatman, and David F. Caldwell, “People and Organizational Culture: A Profile Comparison Approach to Assessing PersonOrganization Fit,” The Academy of Management Journal 34 (3) (1991):

246

NOTES

487–516; Joanne Martin, Cultures in Organizations: Three Perspectives (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992); Robert A. Cooke and Denise M. Rousseau, “Behavioral Norms and Expectations: A Quantitative Approach to the Assessment of Organizational Culture,” Group & Organization Studies 13 (3) (1988): 254–273. 6

Edgar H. Schein, Organizational Culture and Leadership, 4th ed. (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2010); Achilles A. Armenakis and Arthur G. Bedeian, “Organizational Change: A Review of Theory and Research in the 1990s,” Journal of Management 25 (3) (1999): 293–315.

7

William G. Ouchi, Theory Z: How American Business can Meet the Japanese Challenge (New York: Avon, 1982).

8

Joanne Martin, Peter Frost, and Olivia O’Neill, “Organizational Culture: Beyond Struggles for Intellectual Dominance” The Handbook of Organizational Studies (2006): 725–753; Marta B. Carlas and Linda Smircich, “Post-Culture: Is the Organizational Culture Literature Dominant but Dead?” Presented at the International Conference on Organizational Symbolism and Corporate Culture, Milan, 1987; Chad A. Hartnell, Amy Yi Ou, and Angelo Kinicki, “Organizational Culture and Organizational Effectiveness: A MetaAnalytic Investigation of the Competing Values Framework’s Theoretical Suppositions,” Journal of Applied Psychology 96 (4) (2011): 677–694.

9

Benjamin Schneider, Organizational Climate and Culture (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1990); Benjamin Schneider, Paul J. Hanges, D. Brent Smith, and Amy Nicole Salvaggio, “Which Comes First: Employee Attitudes or Organizational Financial and Market Performance?,” Journal of Applied Psychology 88 (5) (2003): 836–851; Charles A. O’Reilly III , David F. Caldwell, Jennifer A. Chatman, and Bernadette Doerr, “The Promise and Problems of Organizational Culture: CEO Personality, Culture, and Firm Performance,” Group & Organization Management 39 (6) (2014): 595–625.

10 Katherine J. Klein and Steve W.J. Kozlowski, Multilevel Theory, Research, and Methods in Organizations: Foundations, Extensions, and New Directions (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2000). 11 Amy L. Kristof-Brown, Ryan D. Zimmerman, and Eric C. Johnson, “Consequences of Individuals’ Fit at Work: A Metadata Analysis of PersonJob, Person-Organization, Person-Group, and Person-Supervisor Fit,” Personnel Psychology 58 (2) (2005): 281–342. 12 Sigal G. Barsade and Olivia A. O’Neill, “What’s Love Got to Do With It? A Longitudinal Study of the Culture of Compassionate Love and Employee and Client Outcomes in a Long-Term Care Setting,” Administrative Science Quarterly 59 (4) (2014): 551–598; Sigal G. Barsade, Arthur P. Brief, and Sandra E. Spataro, “The Affective Revolution in Organizational Behavior: The Emergence of a Paradigm,” in Organizational Behavior: The State of the Science, J. Greenberg (ed.), (Mahwah, NJ : Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2003), 3–53. 13 Alan Deutschman, “Change or Die,” Fast Company, May 1, 2005, https:// www.fastcompany.com/52717/change-or-die (accessed September 5, 2017). 14 Bernard M. Bass, “From Transactional to Transformational Leadership: Learning to Share the Vision,” Organizational Dynamics 18 (3) (1990): 19–31;

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Arlie Russell Hochschild, The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling (Berkeley, CA : University of California Press, 2012); Barsade and O’Neill, “What’s Love Got to Do With It?”; Elaine Hatfield, John T. Cacioppo, and Richard L. Rapson, Emotional Contagion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Blake E. Ashforth and Ronald H. Humphrey, “Emotion in the Workplace: A Reappraisal,” Human Relations 48 (2) (1995): 97–125. 15 Paul K. Piff, Pia Dietze, Matthew Feinberg, Daniel M. Stancato, and Dacher Keltner, “Awe, the Small Self, and Prosocial Behavior,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 108 (6) (2015): 883–899. 16 Niels Van de Ven, Marcel Zeelenberg, and Rik Pieters, “Why Envy Outperforms Admiration,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 37 (6) (2011): 784–795. 17 Max Weber, Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology, vol. 1 (Berkeley, CA : University of California Press, 1978). 18 John French and Bertram Raven, “The Bases of Social Power” in Studies in Social Power, Dorwin Cartwright (ed.) (Ann Armbor, MI : Institute for Social Research, 1959), 150–167. 19 Bernard M. Bass and Ronald E. Riggio, Transformational Leadership (Mahwah, NJ : Lawrence Erlbaum, 2006). 20 Robert K. Greenleaf, Servant Leadership: A Journey into the Nature of Legitimate Power and Greatness (New York: Paulist Press, 1991). 21 Jeffrey Pfeffer, Leadership BS: Fixing Workplaces and Careers One Truth at a Time (New York: HarperBusiness, 2015). 22 Gerald R. Salancik and Jeffrey Pfeffer, “A Social Information Processing Approach to Job Attitudes and Task Design,” Administrative Science Quarterly 23 (2) (1978): 224–253. 23 Jeffrey Pfeffer and Gerald R. Salancik, The External Control of Organizations: A Resource Dependence Perspective (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003). 24 Dacher Keltner, Deborah H. Gruenfeld, and Cameron Anderson, “Power, Approach, and Inhibition,” Psychological Review 110 (2) (2003): 265–284. 25 Adam D. Galinsky, Deborah H. Gruenfeld, and Joe C. Magee, “From Power to Action,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 85 (3) (2003): 453–466. 26 Weber, Economy and Society. 27 Pasquale Gagliardi, “The Creation and Change of Organizational Cultures: A Conceptual Framework,” Organization Studies 7 (2) (1986): 117–134. 28 Schein, Organizational Culture and Leadership. 29 Michael T. Hannan, James N. Baron, Greta Hsu, and Özgecan Koçak, “Organizational Identities and the Hazard of Change,” Industrial and Corporate Change 15 (5) (2006): 755–784. 30 Ian Palmer, Richard Dunford, and Gib Akin, Managing Organizational Change: A Multiple Perspectives Approach (Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2017). 31 Kurt Lewin, Field Theory in Social Science: Selected Theoretical Papers (New York: Harper, 1951).

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32 John P. Kotter, Leading Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail (Cambridge, MA : Harvard Business Press, 2012). 33 Schein, Organizational Culture and Leadership. 34 Max Weber, The Theory of Social and Economic Organization (New York: The Free Press, 2009 [1947]). 35 Reinhard Bendix, Work and Authority in Industry: Ideologies of Management in the Course of Industrialization (Berkeley, CA : University of California Press, 1974). 36 E. P. Thompson, “Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism,” Past & Present 38 (1967): 56–97. 37 David Montgomery and Peter N. Stearns, “Lives of Labor: Work in a Maturing Industrial Society,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 7 (2) (1976): 326. 38 Peter Lundgren, “Industrialization and the Educational Formation of Manpower in Germany,” Journal of Social History 9 (1) (1975): 64–80. 39 Gaston Motte, Motte-Bossut: un homme, une famille, une firme, 1843–1943 (Tourcoing, 1944). 40 David S. Landes, The Unbound Prometheus: Technological Change and Industrial Development In Western Europe from 1750 to the present (London: Cambridge University Press, 1969). 41 Motte, Motte-Bossut. 42 Eric J. Hobsbawm, Labouring Men: Studies in the History of Labour (New York: Basic Books, 1964); Malcolm MacKinnon, “Work Instrumentalism Reconsidered: A Reapplication of Goldthorpe’s Luton Project,” British Journal of Sociology 31 (1) (1980): 1–27. 43 Studs Terkel, Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do (New York: The New Press, 1997), 240. 44 Loren Baritz, The Servants of Power: A History of the Use of Social Science in American Industry (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1960). 45 Judith A. Merkle, Management and Ideology: The Legacy of the International Scientific Management Movement (Berkeley, CA : University of California Press, 1980); R. David Nelson, Patricia E. Moody, and Jon Stegner, The Purchasing Machine: How the Top Ten Companies Use Best Practices to Manage Their Supply Chains (New York: The Free Press, 2001). 46 Carol Zisowitz Stearns and Peter N. Stearns, Anger: The Struggle for Emotional Control in America’s History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986). 47 Hochschild, The Managed Heart; Susan Porter Benson, Counter Cultures: Saleswomen, Managers, and Customers in American Stores, 1890–1940 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986). 48 Terkel, Working, 260. 49 William P. Barnett, The Red Queen Among Organizations: How Competitiveness Evolves (Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, 2008). 50 Miller McPherson, Lynn Smith-Lovin, and James M. Cook, “Birds of a Feather: Homophily in Social Networks,” Annual Review of Sociology 27 (1) (2001): 415–444.

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51 Nicholas Carlson, “Why Marissa Mayer Told Remote Employees to Work in an Office . . . or Quit,” Business Insider, February 24, 2013, http://www. businessinsider.com/why-marissa-mayer-told-remote-employees-to-work-in-anoffice--or-quit–2013–2 (accessed September 7, 2017). 52 Jerker Denrell, “Selection Bias and the Perils of Benchmarking,” Harvard Business Review 83 (4) (2005): 114–119. 53 Michael S. Rosenwald, “Borders Struggles Amid Rapid Changes in Book Sales,” Washington Post, January 20, 2011. 54 Sarah Halzack, “The Big Missteps that Brought an American Retail Icon to the Edge of Collapse,” Washington Post, June 1, 2017. 55 Halzack, “The Big Missteps that Brought an American Retail Icon to the Edge of Collapse.” 56 Yuki Noguchi, “At Washington Post, Tech Is Increasingly Boosting Financial Performance,” NPR , June 13, 2017, http://www.npr.org/sections/ alltechconsidered/2017/06/13/531099577/at-washington-post-tech-isincreasingly-boosting-financial-performance (accessed September 7, 2017). 57 Noguchi, “At Washington Post, Tech Is Increasingly Boosting Financial Performance.” 58 Sigal Barsade and Olivia A. O’Neill, “Manage Your Emotional Culture,” Harvard Business Review 94 (1–2) (2016): 58–66. 59 Noguchi, “At Washington Post, Tech Is Increasingly Boosting Financial Performance.” 60 Clayton M. Christensen, Dina Wang, and Derek Van Bever, “Consulting on the Cusp of Disruption,” Harvard Business Review 91 (10) (2013): 106–114. 61 James Manyika, Michael Chui, and Katy George, “25% of CEO s’ Time Is Spent on Tasks Machines Could Do,” Harvard Business Review, February 3 2017. 62 Michael L. Tushman, Anna Kahn, Mary Elizabeth Porray, and Andy Binns. “Email and Calendar Data Are Helping Firms Understand How Employees Work,” Harvard Business Review, August 28, 2017. 63 Chip Conley, “I Joined Airbnb at 52, and Here’s What I Learned About Age, Wisdom, and the Tech Industry,” Harvard Business Review, April 18, 2017. 64 Jeanne Sahadi, “What if You had to Reserve Your Desk at Work?” CNN Money, http://money.cnn.com/2016/03/02/pf/work-desk-reservation/ (accessed September 7, 2017). 65 Michael Bernard Arthur and Denise M. Rousseau (eds), The Boundaryless Career: A New Employment Principle for a New Organizational Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001). 66 Amy Adkins Brandon Rigoni, “What Millennials Want from a New Job,” Harvard Business Review, May 11, 2016. 67 Kabir Sehgal, “It’s Time to Bring Back the Office Cubicle,” Fortune, January 18, 2017, http://fortune.com/2017/01/18/i-hate-open-offices/ (accessed September 7, 2017). 68 James E. Rosenbaum, “Tournament Mobility: Career Patterns in a Corporation,” Administrative Science Quarterly 24 (1979): 220–241.

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69 Brigid Schulte, “End of the Corner Office: DC Law Firm Designs its New Space for Millennials,” Washington Post, June 21 2015. 70 Cynthia Fuchs Epstein and Arne L. Kalleberg (eds), Fighting for Time: Shifting Boundaries of Work and Social Life (New York: Sage, 2004). 71 Carla Shows and Naomi Gerstel, “Fathering, Class, and Gender: A Comparison of Physicians and Emergency Medical Technicians,” Gender & Society 23 (2) (2009): 161–187. 72 Jodi Kantor and David Stretfeld, “Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace,” New York Times, August 15, 2015. 73 TNN , “ ‘Stress Drives Intel Employee to Suicide,” The Times of India, January 14, 2014, http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/hyderabad/Stress-drives-Intelemployee-to-suicide/articleshow/28970172.cms (accessed September 7, 2017); Brian Merchant, “Life and Death in Apple’s Forbidden City,” The Guardian, June 18, 2017. 74 Ainsley Harris, “The Bigger Lesson From Facebook’s New Bereavement Leave Policy,” Fast Company, April 24, 2017, https://www.fastcompany. com/40410046/the-bigger-lesson-from-facebooks-new-bereavement-leavepolicy (accessed September 7, 2017). 75 Peter Waldman, “Inside Alabama’s Auto Jobs Boom: Cheap Wages, Little Training, Crushed Limbs,” Bloomberg, March 23, 2017. 76 Liza Mundy, “Why is Silicon Valley so Awful to Women?” The Atlantic, April 2017. 77 Susan Fowler, “Reflecting on one very, very strange year at Uber,” February 19, 2017, https://www.susanjfowler.com/blog/2017/2/19/reflecting-on-one-verystrange-year-at-uber (accessed September 7, 2017). 78 Nick Tasler, “The Scientific Explanation for why so Many CEO s Act like Jerks,” Quartz, June 27, 2017, https://qz.com/1015215/do-ceos-have-to-benice-now/ (accessed September 7, 2017). 79 Jennifer J. Kish-Gephart, David A. Harrison, and Linda Klebe Treviño, “Bad Apples, Bad Cases, and Bad Barrels: Meta-Analytic Evidence about Sources of Unethical Decisions at Work,” Journal of Applied Psychology 95 (1) (2010): 1–31.

Chapter 6: Health and the Body 1

Mary Lindemann, Medicine and Society in Early Modern Europe (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999).

2

Peter Conrad, The Medicalization of Society: On the Transformation of Human Conditions into Treatable Disorder (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007).

3

Stephen Katz, Disciplining Old Age: The Formation of Gerontological Knowledge (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1996).

4

Alain Corbin, The Foul and the Fragrant: Odor and the French Social Imagination (Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, 1986).

NOTES

251

5

Corbin, The Foul and the Fragrant.

6

Carl S. Sterner, “A Brief History of Miasmic Theory,” working paper, University of Cincinnati, 2007; Peter Thorsheim, Inventing Pollution: Coal, Smoke, and Culture in Britain since 1800 (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2006); William M. Cavert, The Smoke of London: Energy and Environment in the Early Modern City (Cambridge, UK : Cambridge University Press, 2016).

7

Mark Michael Smith, Sensing the Past: Seeing, Hearing, Smelling, Tasting, and Touching in History (Berkeley, CA : University of California Press, 2007).

8

Edward Shorter, “Paralysis: The Rise and Fall of a ‘Hysterical’ Symptom,” Journal of Social History 19 (4) (1986): 549–582. For another fascinating recent study of how a new disease concept (and experience) arose (in the late seventeenth century), flourished, but then finally disappeared in favor of a much milder emotion, see Thomas Dodman, What Nostalgia Was: War, Empire, and the Time of a Deadly Emotion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018).

9

Joan Jacobs Brumberg, Fasting Girls: The History of Anorexia Nervosa (New York: Vintage Books, 2000).

10 More research is needed in this area; see Peter N. Stearns, Satisfaction Not Guaranteed: Dilemmas of Progress in Modern Society (New York: NYU Press, 2012), Chapter 2. 11 R. P. Neuman, “Masturbation, Madness, and the Modern Concepts of Childhood and Adolescence,” Journal of Social History 8 (3) (1975): 1–27. 12 Neuman, “Masturbation, Madness, and the Modern Concepts of Childhood and Adolescence.” 13 There was an irony here: the new beliefs about the dangers of sexuality generated legal restrictions on information about newly available condoms and diaphragms—because of fear that their availability might increase sexual activity. Leaders like Anthony Comstock, longtime US Postmaster General, played a key role in mounting barriers that lasted well into the twentieth century. Culture, here, got in the way of practical adjustments—which is not uncommon. See Nicola Kay Beisel, Imperiled Innocents: Anthony Comstock and Family Reproduction in Victorian America (Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, 1997). 14 Peter N. Stearns, Sexuality in World History, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2017). 15 Angus McLaren, Birth Control in Nineteenth-Century England (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1978). 16 Beth L. Bailey, From Front Porch to Back Seat: Courtship in Twentieth-Century America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988). 17 Philippe Ariès, Western Attitudes Toward Death: From the Middle Ages to the Present (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974). 18 David E. Stannard, The Puritan Way of Death (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977). 19 Peter N. Stearns, Revolutions in Sorrow: The American Experience of Death in Global Perspective (Boulder, CO : Paradigm Publishers, 2007).

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20 Gary Laderman, The Sacred Remains: American Attitudes Toward Death, 1799–1883 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999); Geoffrey Gorer, Death, Grief, and Mourning in Contemporary Britain (London: Cresset Press, 1965). 21 Donna Dickenson, Malcolm Johnson, and Jeanne Katz (eds), Death, Dying, and Bereavement, 2nd ed. (London: SAGE , 2004). 22 Stearns, Revolutions in Sorrow. 23 Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, On Death and Dying (New York: Tavistock Publications, 1973); Peter Homans (ed.), Symbolic Loss: The Ambiguity of Mourning and Memory at Century’s End (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2000). For a powerful recent statement on the downsides of contemporary medical culture—from a scholar who has explicitly given up on the medical approach to her later years—see Barbara Ehrenreich, Natural Causes: An Epidemic of Wellness, The Certainty of Dying, and Our Illusion of Control (New York: Hachette Book Group, 2018). 24 Arthur Kleinman, Patients and Healers in the Context of Culture: An Exploration of the Borderland Between Anthropology, Medicine, and Psychiatry (Berkeley, CA : University of California Press, 1981). 25 Bob Schwartz, Diets Don’t Work (Breakthru Publishing, 1982). 26 Peter N. Stearns, Fat History: Bodies and Beauty in the Modern West, 2nd ed. (New York: NYU Press, 2002). 27 Jill Fields, “ ‘Fighting the Corsetless Evil’: Shaping Corsets and Culture, 1900–1930,” Journal of Social History 33 (2) (1999): 355–384. 28 Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women (New York: Harper Perennial, 2002). 29 Stearns, Fat History; the Ladies’ Homes Journal is a fine source of materials on dieting standards and popular/medical explanations for weight gain. 30 Allan Brandt, The Cigarette Century: The Rise, Fall, and Deadly Persistence of the Product that Defined America (New York: Basic Books, 2009). 31 Peter Wyden, The Overweight Society (New York: Pocket Books, 1966); Roberta P. Seid, “Too ‘Close to the Bone’: The Historical Context for Women’s Obsession with Slenderness” in Patricia Fallon, Melanie A. Katzman and Susan C. Wooley (eds), Feminist Perspectives on Easting Disorders (New York: Guilford Press, 1996). 32 Richard Klein, “Big Country,” New Republic, September 19, 1994. In 2016 the government of Chile launched a massive anti-obesity campaign both to regulate foods high in sugar and, in the long run, to change the nation’s eating culture. It will be interesting to monitor the results of this distinctive effort to mobilize culture change. 33 Ilina Singh, “Bad Boys, Good Mothers, and the ‘Miracle’ of Ritalin,” Science in Context 15 (4) (2002): 577–603; Sol Cohen, “The Mental Hygiene Movement, the Development of Personality and the School: The Medicalization of American Education,” History of Education Quarterly 23 (2) (1983): 123–149; Lawrence Diller, Running on Ritalin (New York: Bantam Books, 1998). The question of the existence and impact of ADHD before it was formally discovered is intriguing—rather like the issue of boredom before a clear

NOTES

253

concept thereof existed. Needless to say, while speculation is worthwhile direct evidence is lacking. 34 Singh, “Bad Boys, Good Mothers, and the ‘Miracle’ of Ritalin;” Peter N. Stearns, Anxious Parents: A History of Modern Childrearing in America (New York: NYU Press, 2003). 35 Chris Walsh, Cowardice: A Brief History (Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, 2014). 36 Susan Matt, Homesickness: an American History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011). 37 Devon E. Hinton and Byron J. Good (eds), Culture and PTSD: Trauma in Global and Historical Perspective (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015). 38 Judy Greenwald, “Debate Ranges On Over Whether Inoculations are to Blame for Autism Spectrum Disorders,” Business Insurance, June 29, 2009, 43 (24): 18; Stanley Plotkin, Jeffrey S. Gerber, and Paul A. Offit, “Vaccines and Autism: A Tale of Shifting Hypotheses,” Clinical Infectious Diseases 48 (4) (2009): 456–461.

Chapter 7: Emotion, the Family, and Culture Change 1

Arlie Hochschild, The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling (Berkeley, CA : University of California Press, 2012).

2

James R. Averill, “The Social Construction of Emotion, with Special Reference to Love,” in The Social Construction of the Person, K. J. Gergen and K. E. Davis (eds) (Berlin: Springer, 1985).

3

Susan J. Matt and Peter N. Stearns, Doing Emotions History (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2014).

4

Robert M. Ireland, “The Libertine Must Die: Sexual Dishonor and the Unwritten Law in the Nineteenth-Century United States,” Journal of Social History 23 (1989): 27–44.

5

Peter N. Stearns, Jealousy: The Evolution of an Emotion in American History (New York: New York University Press, 1989).

6

Peter Salovey, The Psychology of Jealousy and Envy (New York: Guilford Press, 1991).

7

Peter Toohey, Boredom: A Lively History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012).

8

Patricia Ann Meyer, Boredom: The Literary History of a State of Mind (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995).

9

Darrin M. McMahon, Happiness: A History (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2006).

10 John Brewer and Ray Porters (eds), Consumption and the World of Goods (New York: Routledge, 1993); Peter N. Stearns, Consumerism in World History: The Global Transformation of Desire (New York: Routledge, 2006).

254

NOTES

11 Jean Delumeau, Sin and Fear: The Emergence of a Western Guilt Culture, 13th–18th Centuries (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990); Joanna Bourke, Fear: A Cultural History (Emeryville, CA : Shoemaker Hoard, 2006). 12 Steven Mintz, Huck’s Raft: A History of American Childhood (Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, 2004); Ruthann Clay and Peter N. Stearns, “Revisiting the Fearful Parent: the Crucial Decade,” Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth 11 (2) (2018): 248–247; Barry Glassner, The Culture of Fear: Why Americans Are Afraid of the Wrong Things (New York: Basic Books, 1999). 13 Lawrence Stone, Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500–1800 (New York: Harper and Row, 1977); see also Edward Shorter, The Making of the Modern Family (New York: Basic Books, 1975). 14 Linda Pollock, Forgotten Children: Parent–Child Relations from 1500–1900 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983). It is also worth noting that there was an aristocratic literary tradition, from the later Middle Ages, that stressed a platonic type of courtly love, though there is not much evidence that it significantly affected actual emotional standards. 15 Edmund Leites, The Puritan Conscience and Modern Sexuality (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986); John R. Gillis, For Better, For Worse: British Marriages, 1600 to the Present (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985); Mary Hartman, The Household and the Making of History: A Subversive View of the Western Past (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004). Other factors merit attention. The European family emphasized relatively late marriage ages outside the upper class, which may have produced more insistence on choice of partner independent of parental preferences. Lowerclass interest in romance, given freedom from property constraints, may have set some precedent as well. 16 Colin Campbell, Romantic Ethic and the Spirit of Modern Consumerism (London: Blackwell Publishers, 1987); Shorter, Making of the Modern Family. 17 Peter N. Stearns, Childhood in World History (New York: Routledge, 2017). 18 Dror Wahrman, The Making of the Modern Self: Identity and Culture in Eighteenth-Century England (New York: Basic Books, 1975); Elisabeth Badinter, The Conflict: How Modern Motherhood Undermines the Status of Women (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2011). 19 Karen Lystra, Searching the Heart: Women, Men, and Romantic Love in Nineteenth-Century America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989); Peter N. Stearns, American Cool: Constructing a Twentieth-Century Emotional Style (New York: New York University Press, 1994); Steven Seidman, Romantic Longings: Love in America, 1830–1980 (New York: Routledge, 1991). 20 Pamela Epstein, “Advertising for Love: Matrimonial Advertisements and Public Courtship,” in Susan J. Matt and Peter N. Stearns (eds), Doing Emotions History, (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2014), 120–140; Linda Rosenzweig, Another Self: Middle-Class American Women and Their Friends in the Twentieth Century (New York: New York University Press, 1999); E. Anthony Rotundo, American Manhood: Transformations in Masculinity from the Revolution to the Modern Era (New York: Basic Books, 1993); see also

NOTES

255

Rotundo, “Romantic Friendship: Male Intimacy and Middle-Class Youth in the Northern United States, 1800–1900,” Journal of Social History 23 (1989): 1–25. 21 Google Ngram Viewer. 22 Stearns, American Cool. 23 Timothy Kelly and Joseph Kelly, “American Catholics and the Discourse of Fear,” in Peter N. Stearns and Jan Lewis (eds), An Emotional History of the United States, (New York: New York University Press, 1998), 259–282; Philip J. Greven, Spare the Child: The Religious Roots of Punishment and the Psychological Impact of Physical Abuse (New York: Vintage, 1992). 24 Peter N. Stearns, The Industrial Turn in World History (New York: Routledge, 2016); Ansley J. Coale and Susan Cotts Watkins (eds), The Decline of Fertility in Europe (Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, 1986). 25 Jan Lewis, “Mother’s Love: The Construction of an Emotion in NineteenthCentury America” in Andrew E. Barnes and Peter N. Stearns (eds), Social History and Issues in Human Consciousness (New York: New York University Press, 1989), 207–229. 26 Barbara Welter, “The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820–1860,” American Quarterly 18 (2) (Summer, 1966): 151–174. 27 Robert L. Griswold, Family and Divorce in California, 1850–1890: Victorian Illusions and Everyday Realities (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1982). 28 Christopher Lasch, Haven in a Heartless World: The Family Besieged (New York: Basic Books, 1977); Stephanie Coontz, Marriage, A History: How Love Conquered Marriage (New York: Viking, 2005). 29 Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations (New York: Norton, 1979); Stearns, American Cool. 30 Cas Wouters, Informalization: Manners and Emotions Since 1890 (Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications, 2007). 31 Beth L. Bailey, From Front Porch to Back Seat: Courtship in Twentieth-Century America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989). 32 Gary Cross, Kid’s Stuff: Toys and the Changing World of American Childhood (Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, 1999). 33 John D’Emilio and Estelle B. Freedman, Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America, 3rd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012). 34 Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (New York: W.W. Norton and Co. [1963] 2013); Simone de Beauvoir, Simone de Beauvoir: Feminist Writings, Margaret A. Simons and Marybeth Timmermann (eds) (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2015); Stearns, American Cool. 35 http://www.eharmony.com/ Note also the late-twentieth century decision, in the gay movement, to press for marriage rights that provided another extension of the drive for love and romance; George Chauncey, Why Marriage? The History Shaping Today’s Debate over Gay Equality (New York: Basic Books, 2004). See Chapter 8, below. 36 Michael Dunlop Young and Peter Willmott, The Symmetrical Family (New York: Pantheon Books, 1973).

256

NOTES

37 Perdita Hutson, Third World Women Speak Out: Interviews in Six Countries on Change, Development, and Basic Needs (New York: Praeger, 1979), 78–79; Joseph M. Hawes, The Children’s Rights Movement: A History of Advocacy and Protection (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1991). 38 Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks, Gender in History: Global Perspectives, 2nd ed. (Malden, Mass.; Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010). 39 Mark Jones, “The Year of Runaway Love: Emotion and Opportunity in 1921 Japan,” Conference paper given at the History of Emotions meeting, June 1–2, 2018, George Mason University. 40 Suad Joseph, “Teaching Rights and Responsibilities: Paradoxes of Globalization and Children’s Citizenship in Lebanon,” Journal of Social History 38 (4) (Summer 2005): 1007–1026. 41 James M. Raymo, Hyunjoon Park, Yu Xie, and Wei-jun Jean Yeung, “Marriage and Family in East Asia: Continuity and Change,” The Annual Review of Sociology 41 (2015): 471–492; Peter N. Stearns, Shame: A Brief History of Shame (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2017).

Chapter 8: Culture Contacts and Culture Change 1

Hasia R. Diner, The Jews of the United States (Berkeley, CA : University of California Press, 2004).

2

Jerry H. Bentley, Old World Encounters: Cross-Cultural Contacts and Exchanges in Pre-Modern Times (Ann Arbor, MI : University of Michigan, 2014).

3

Peter N. Stearns, Tolerance in World History (New York: Routledge, 2017).

4

Janice Patricia Boddy, Civilizing Women: British Crusades in Colonial Sudan (Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, 2007).

5

Matthew Restall, Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003); Nicholas Griffiths and Fernando Cervantes (eds), Spiritual Encounters: Interactions between Christianity and Native Religions in Colonial America (Lincoln: The University of Nebraska Press, 1999); Yanna Yannakakis, The Art of Being In-Between: Native Intermediaries, Indian Identity, and Local Rule in Colonial Oaxaca (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008); Nancy M. Farriss, Maya Society Under Colonial Rule: The Collective Enterprise of Survival (Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, 1984); Inga Clendinnen, Ambivalent Conquests: Maya and Spaniard in Yucatan, 1517–1570 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003).

6

Yannakakis, The Art of Being In-Between, Chapter 2.

7

Restall, Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest, 73–74.

8

D. A. Brading, Mexican Phoenix: Our Lady of Guadalupe: Image and Tradition Across Five Centuries (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001); Louise M. Burkhart, Before Guadalupe: The Virgin Mary in Early Colonial Nahuatl Literature (Alaby, NY: Institute for Mesoamerican Studies, University of

NOTES

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Albany, 2001); Fr. Bernardino de Sahagun, Florentine Codex: Book 12: The Conquest of Mexico, edited and translated by Arthur J. O. Anderson and Charles E. Dibble, 2nd ed. (Santa Fe: School of American Research and University of Utah, 1975), 90. 9

Sabine Lang, Men as Women, Women as Men: Changing Gender in Native American Cultures (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1998).

10 Octavio Paz, The Labyrinth of Solitude, trans. Lysander Kemp, Yara Milos, and Rachel Phillips Belash (New York: Grove Press, 1985). 11 Amy Chua, Day of Empire: How Hyperpowers Rise to Global Dominance— and Why They Fall (New York: Random House, 2007). 12 Nicholas B. Dirks, Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India (Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, 2001); Kumkum Sangari, Recasting Women: Essays in Indian Colonial History (New Brunswick, NJ : Rutgers University Press, 1990). 13 Bernard S. Cohn, India: The Social Anthropology of a Civilization (Englewood Cliffs, NJ : Prentice-Hall, 1971) and Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge: The British in India (Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, 1996); Nicholas B. Dirks, Castes of Mind. 14 Cohn, Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge. 15 A. R. Desai, Social Background of Indian Nationalism (Mumbai: Popular Prakashan, 2011). 16 Quoted in V. B. Talwar, “Feminist Consciousness in Women’s Journals in Hindi, 1910–1920” in K. Sandari and S. Vaid (eds), Recasting Women: Essays in Indian Colonial History (New Brunswick, NJ : Rutgers, 1989), 215. 17 Pew Research Center, “Assessing Globalization,” June 24, 2008, www. pewglobal.org (accessed March 24, 2017). 18 James L. Watson, Golden Arches East: McDonald’s in East Asia (Stanford, CA : Stanford University Press, 1997); Peter N. Stearns, Globalization in World History, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2016). 19 Patrick Manning, Migration in World History (New York: Routledge, 2012). 20 Peter N. Stearns, Human Rights in World History (New York: Routledge, 2012). 21 Jon Holtzman, Uncertain Tastes: Memory, Ambivalence, and the Politics of Eating in Samburu, Northern Kenya (Berkeley, CA : University of California Press, 2009), 186–189. 22 See Sarah Lyon and E. Christian Wells (eds), Global Tourism: Cultural Heritage and Economic Encounters (Lanham, MD : AltaMira Press, 2012); Godfrey Baldacchino, Global Tourism and Informal Labor Relations (London: Mansell, 1997). 23 Huong Nguyen, “Globalization, Consumerism, and the Emergence of Teens in Contemporary Vietnam,” Journal of Social History 49 (1) (2015): 4–19. 24 Terence Chong (ed.), Globalization and Its Counterforces in Southeast Asia (Singapore: ISEAS , 2008); Manfred B. Steger, Globalization and Culture (Cheltenham, UK : Edward Elgar, 2012).

258

NOTES

25 Ritty Lukose, “Consuming Globalization: Youth and Gender in Kerala, India,” Journal of Social History 38 (4) (2005): 915–935. 26 Pew Research Center, “What It Takes to Truly Be ‘One of Us’,” February 1, 2017, www.pewglobal.org (accessed March 27, 2017). 27 Howard S. Schwartz, Society Against Itself: Political Correctness and Organizational Self-Destruction (London: Karnac Books, 2010); Mailyn Friedman and Jan Narveson, Political Correctness: For and Against (Lanham, MD : Rowman and Littlefield, 1995); Geoffrey Hughes, Political Correctness: A History of Semantics and Culture (Chichester, UK ; Malden, MA : WileyBlackwell, 2010).

Chapter 9: Prejudice and Acceptance 1

Peter N. Stearns, Tolerance in World History (New York: Routledge, 2017).

2

Melissa Roth, The Left Stuff: How the Left-Handed Have Survived and Thrived in a Right-Handed World (New York: M. Evans and Co., 2005); Stanley Coren and Clare Porac, “Fifty Centuries of Right-Handedness: The Historical Record,” Science, New Series 198 (4317) (Nov. 11, 1977): 631–632.

3

Dr. Benjamin Spock, The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care (New York: Sloan and Pearce, 1946), 349; 1998 edition, 250.

4

Daniel Wilson, The Right Hand: Left-Handedness (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012). Another recent study emphasized the role of scientific studies, expanding in the 1920s–1930s, in attacking prejudice and creating new doubts about the desirability of switching handedness. There remains uncertainty about the timing of the ultimate changes in popular ideas. See Howard I. Kushner, On the Other Hand: Left Hand, Right Brain, Mental Disorder, and History (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2017).

5

Roth, The Left Stuff.

6

Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks, Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe, 3rd ed. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008); Peter N. Stearns, Gender in World History 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2006); Gerda Lerner, The Creation of Patriarchy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987).

7

Natalie Zemon Davis, Women on the Margins: Three Seventeenth-Century Lives (Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, 1995).

8

Benjamin Wadsworth, The Well-Ordered Family, 2nd ed. (Boston, 1719).

9

Barbara Welter, “The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820–1860,” American Quarterly 18 (2) (Summer 1966): 151–174; Nancy F. Cott, The Bonds of Womanhood: “Woman’s Sphere” in New England, 1780–1835, 2nd ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997).

10 John S. Haller and Robin M. Haller, The Physician and Sexuality in Victorian America (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1995); John Maynard, Victorian Discourses on Sexuality and Religion (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993); Christopher Parker, Gender Roles and Sexuality in Victorian Literature (Brookfield, VT.: Ashgate, 1995).

NOTES

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11 Sarah Stickney Ellis, The Women of England, Their Social and Domestic Habits (London: Fisher, 1839). 12 From “Female Charms,” Godey’s Lady’s Book (Philadelphia, 1846), 52. 13 Peter N. Stearns, The Industrial Turn in World History (New York: Routledge, 2017). 14 Karen Offen, European Feminisms, 1700–1950 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000). 15 Marie Stopes, Married Love: A New Contribution to the Solution of Sex Difficulties (London: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1919); William Masters and Virginia Johnson, Human Sexual Response (Boston: Little Brown, 1966). 16 Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (New York: Deli, 1970); Stephanie Coontz, A Strange Stirring: The Feminine Mystique and American Women at the Dawn of the 1960s (Palo Alto, CA : Basic Books, 2011). 17 Sheila Tobias, Overcoming Math Anxiety (New York: W.W. Norton, 1993). 18 Emily Crockett, “Poll: Americans Believe in Women’s Equality, But Don’t Understand It,” Rewire, Aug 25, 2015, 5:24 pm, https://rewire.news/ article/2015/08/25/poll-americans-believe-womens-equality-dont-understand/ (accessed 9 March, 2017). 19 Frank Newport, “Americans See Women as Emotional and Affectionate, Men As More Aggressive,” Gallup, February 21, 2001, http://www.gallup.com/poll/ 1978/americans-see-women-emotional-affectionate-men-more-aggressive.aspx (accessed 9 March, 2017). 20 As is often the case with culture change, shifts in language illustrate new directions. By the early twenty-first century, a number of traditionally genderspecific terms were being altered to eliminate distinctions. Thus airline stewardesses became “flight attendants,” a term which could cover males as well. Waitresses, similarly, were now addressed as gender-neutral “servers.” While the word “actress” was still in play, females were often referred to as actors. The word “heroine” went out of style altogether, with females and males lumped under the common heading “hero.” 21 Nancy Hogshead-Makar, Equal Play: Title IX and Social Change (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2007). 22 It is important to note that a number of countries opened combat roles for women earlier than the United States did, including Russia (as early as World War I), Britain and Israel. 23 Jennifer M. Silva, Coming Up Short: Working-Class Adulthood in an Age of Uncertainty (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013). 24 Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais, “Race? No, Millennials Care Most About Gender Equality,” National Journal, https://www.nationaljournal. com/s/67888 (accessed July 17, 2017). 25 Catherine A. MacKinnon, “#MeToo Has Done What the Law Could Not,” The New York Times, Feb 4, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/04/opinion/ metoo-law-legal-system.html (accessed February 15, 2018). 26 Nicholas B. Dirks, Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India (Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, 2001); Nishikant Kolge,

260

NOTES

Gandhi Against Caste: An Evolving Strategy to Abolish Caste System in India (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017). 27 See a discussion of the history of discrimination and the caste system by the Human Rights Watch, https://www.hrw.org/reports/2001/globalcaste/ caste0801–03.htm (accessed February 15, 2018). 28 George Chauncey, Why Marriage? The History Shaping Today’s Debate Over Gay Equality (New York: Basic Books, 2004); John D’Emilio, Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities: The Making of a Homosexual Minority in the United States, 1940–1970 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998). 29 John Boswell, Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015). 30 Chauncey, Why Marriage? 31 Chauncey, Why Marriage? 32 It has been noted for example that current United States policies offer impressive support for educational opportunities for people with conditions such as Down’s syndrome through high school, but then halt the effort, leaving adults oddly isolated and often shunned. 33 Jayne Clapton and Jennifer Fitzgerald, “The History of Disability: A History of ‘Otherness’,” Renaissance Universal, http://www.ru.org/ (accessed 9 March, 2017); T.B. Ustun, N. Kostanjsek, and S. Chatterji, J. Rehm (eds), Measuring Health and Disability (Malta: World Health Organization, 2010), http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/43974/1/9789241547598_eng.pdf (accessed 9 March, 2017); “Models of Disability,” Michigan Disability Rights Coalition, http://www.copower.org/ (accessed 9 March, 2017); Kim E. Nielsen, A Disability History of the United States (Boston: Beacon, 2012), especially chapter 1; Julia Calvert, “From Disability to disAbility,” undergraduate essay, George Mason University, Fall 2016. 34 T. B. Ustun, N. Kostanjsek, and S. Chatterji, J. Rehm (eds), Measuring Health and Disability. 35 For example, it is clear that a major shift in thinking about slavery—what one historian has called a revolution in humanitarian sensibility, beginning in the eighteenth century—did not really include a comparable reassessment of beliefs about race, where prejudices for a time actually intensified. Tracing the culture change component in subsequent efforts to revisit racial ideas and policies is an important exercise in its own right. See Thomas L. Haskell, “Capitalism and the Origins of the Humanitarian Sensibility, Part I,” American Historical Review 90 (2) (1985): 339–361 and “Capitalism and the Origins of the Humanitarian Sensibility, Part 2,” American Historical Review 90 (3) (1985): 547–566; Winthrop D. Jordan, White Over Black: American Attitudes toward the Negro, 1550–1812 (Chapel Hill: North Carolina Press, 1968). 36 Another group open to culture change analysis: the elderly. We know that their cultural prestige worsened in the late nineteenth century, thanks to new work systems, new scientific research on aging deterioration, and a youth emphasis. But what has happened since? Have the elderly also rebounded from prejudice? See W. Andrew Achenbaum, Old Age in the New Land: the American

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261

Experience since 1790 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978); David G. Troyansky, Aging in World History (New York: Routledge, 2015). As the percentage of the elderly in the overall population rises (first in the West and East Asia), cultural standards will gain increasing importance. 37 Robert Michael, A Concise History of American Antisemitism (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005); Leonard Dinnerstein, Antisemitism in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994); David A. Gerber, Anti-Semitism in American History (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986). 38 Marilyn Friedman, Political Correctness: For and Against (Lanham, MD : Rowman and Littlefield, 1995); Geoffrey Hughes, Political Correctness: A History of Semantics and Culture (Malden, MA : Wiley-Blackwell, 2010). 39 Shinobu Kitayama, Hazel Rose Markus and Masaru Kurokawa, “Culture, Emotion, and Well-Being: Good Feelings in Japan in the United States,” Cognition and Emotion 14 (1): 93–124.

Conclusion 1

There could be a personal element in this evaluation as well: any reader might consider how he or she would adapt to a significant culture change, or has adapted in the past. There is no single formula here, but some projection might be useful. And of course one can always turn to older adults to ask how they adjusted, resisted or compromised in dealing with some of the cultural changes they have lived through, and what lessons might be derived from their experience.

2

Science as a cause for culture change is a two-way street, of course; it is also important to explore cases where acceptance of science, or a major aspect of science, declines. In recent years American confidence in science has diminished, as part of a larger drop in trust and increasing partisan divide. For a debated take on the partisan aspect of this culture change, see Chris Mooney, The Republican War on Science (New York: Basic Books, 2005).

3

Fathali M. Moghaddam and Rom Harré, Global Conflict Resolution through Positioning Analysis (New York: Springer, 2008).

4

Jason Reid, Get Out of My Room! A History of Teen Bedrooms in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017).

5

David Hackett Fischer, Growing Old in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977). Cultural response or guidance on the elderly will be important for the future as the old age population segment grows in many societies.

6

Petrus Cornelis Spierenburg, The Spectacle of Suffering: Executions and the Evolution of Repression: From a Preindustrial Metropolis to the European Experience (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984); Vic Gatrell, The Hanging Tree: Execution and the English People, 1770–1868 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994); Steven Robert Wilf, “Anatomy and Punishment in Late Eighteenth-Century New York,” Journal of Social History 22 (3) (1989): 507–530; Death Penalty, Amnesty International,

262

NOTES

http://www.amnestyusa.org/ (accessed March 9, 2017). This is an area where Michel Foucault’s work, discussed in Chapter 1, clearly applies. 7

Peter N. Stearns (ed.), Peacebuilding Through Dialogue: Education, Human Transformation, and Conflict Resolution (Fairfax, VA: George Mason University Press, 2018).

8

Another and fully historical exercise might also prove stimulating: pick a historical case or two where a major cultural change might, in retrospect, have proved desirable but did not occur, and explore the factors involved. Possible examples (though they could be disputed): the failure to work seriously on Southern race culture in the aftermath of the Civil War and Reconstruction; the lack of systemic culture change discussions, particularly concerning nationalism, after World War I in Europe—in contrast to the much more systematic culture change process that would follow World War II .

9

Alvin T. Toffler, Future Shock (New York: Random House, 1970). Most futurist forecasts touch only briefly (if at all) on culture, assuming it will follow along with changes in technology and organization. Contemplating possible future cultures and their role requires some extra imagination. There is of course another, more literary type of anticipation, that has often yielded clear, and gloomy, predictions of further culture change under authoritarian organizations or regimes. See Aldous Huxley, Brave New World (San Bernardino, CA : Borgo Press, 1969) and George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four (London: Penguin Books, 2013).

FURTHER READING

Note: these suggestions might guide some next steps in reading about culture change. On specific topics, please consult footnotes in the individual chapters. On culture: Larry Naylor, Culture and Change: An Introduction (Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey, 1996); Joanne Martin, Organizational Culture: Mapping the Terrain (Thousand Oaks, CA : SAGE Publications, 2002); Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Vintage Books, 1979); Rober I. Levy, Tahitians: Mind and Experience in the Society Islands (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973); Catherine Lutz, Unnatural Emotions: Everyday Sentiments on a Micronesian Atoll and their Challenge to Western Theory (Chicago: University of Chicago press, 1988); Victoria E. Bonnell, Lynn Avery Hunt, and Richard Biernacki, Beyond the Cultural Turn: New Directions in the Study of Society and Culture (Berkeley, CA : University of California Press, 1999). On key examples of culture change: Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth and Seventeenth-Century England (London: Penguin, 2003) and Man and the Natural World: Changing Attitudes in England, 1500–1800 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996); François Furet, Interpreting the French Revolution (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981); Lynn Hunt, The Making of the West: Peoples and Cultures, a Concise History (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2007); Sophia A. Rosenfeld, Common Sense: A Political History (Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, 2011); Emmet Kennedy, A Cultural History of the French Revolution (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989); Richard Curt Kraus, The Cultural Revolution: A Very Short Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012); Philippe Ariès, Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life (New York: Vintage Books, 1962). On individualism: Dror Wahrman, The Making of the Modern Self: Identity and Culture in Eighteenth-Century England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004); Nicole Eustace, Passion is the Gale: Emotion, Power, and the Coming of the American Revolution (Chapel Hill, NC : University of North Carolina Press, 2008); Colin Campbell, The Romantic Ethic and the Spirit of Modern Consumerism (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987); Larry Siedentop, Inventing the Individual: The Origins of Western Liberalism (Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, 2014); Philip J. Greven, The Protestant Temperament: Patterns of Child-Rearing, Religious Experience, and the Self in Early America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988); Darrin M. McMahon, Happiness: A History (New York: Atlantic Monthly 263

264

FURTHER READING

Press, 2007); Peter Gay, The Enlightenment: An Interpretation (New York: Norton, [1966] 1995). On cultural regions: H. Paul Varley, Japanese Culture (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1984); John Boswell, Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980); Robert Muchembled, Popular Culture and Elite Culture in France, 1400– 1750 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1985); Peter Burke, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe (New York: Harper & Row, 1978); Ziya Gökalp, The Principles of Turkism, trans. Robert Devereux (Leiden: E.J. Brill, [1920] 1968); Arshin Adib-Moghaddam, On the Arab Revolts and the Iranian Revolution: Power and Resistance Today (London: Bloomsbury, 2013); Anna Sun, Confucianism as a World Religion: Contested Histories and Contemporary Realities (Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, 2013); Dilip M. Menon (ed.), Cultural History of Modern India (New York: Berghahn Books, 2006); Paula Lunde, Islam: Faith, Culture, History (London: DK Publishing, 2002); Richard Reid, A History of Modern Africa: 1800 to the Present (Malden, MA : Wiley-Blackwell, 2012); Teresa Meade, A History of Modern Latin America: 1800 to the Present (Malden, MA : Wiley-Blackwell, 2010). On gender: Nancy F. Cott, No Small Courage: A History of Women in the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000); Stephanie Coontz, A Strange Stirring: The Feminine Mystique and American Women at the Dawn of the 1960s (New York: Basic Books, 2011); Merry E. Wiesner, Gender in History: Global Perspectives (Malden, MA : Wiley-Blackwell, 2011); Karen M. Offen, European Feminisms, 1700–1950 (Stanford, CA : Stanford University Press, 2000) and Globalizing Feminisms, 1789–1945 (New York: Routledge, 2010). On medicalization: Mary Lindemann, Medicine and Society in Early Modern Europe (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999); Peter Conrad, The Medicalization of Society: On the Transformation of Human Conditions into Treatable Disorders (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007); Alain Corbin, The Foul and the Fragrant: Odor and the French Social Imagination (New York: Berg, 1986); Peter N. Stearns, Revolutions in Sorrow: The American Experience of Death in Global Perspective (Boulder, CO : Paradigm Publishers, 2007). On organizational culture: Joanne Martin,, Cultures in Organizations: Three Perspectives (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992); Edgar H. Schein, Organizational Culture and Leadership, 4th ed. (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2010); Joanne Martin, Peter Frost and Olivia O’Neill, “Organizational Culture: beyond struggles for intellectual dominance,” The Handbook of Organization Studies (2006): 725–753; Chad A. Hartwell, Amy Yi Ou, and Angela Kinicki, “Organizational Culture and Organizational Effectiveness: a meta-analytic investigation of the competing values framework’s theoretical suppositions,” Journal of Applied Psychology 96 (2011): 677–94; A. O’Reilly III , David Caldwell, Jennifer Chatman and Bernadette Boerr, “The Promise and Problems of Organizational Cultures: CEO personality, culture and firm performance,” Group and Organization Management 39 (2014): 595–625.

FURTHER READING

265

On emotions and the senses: Mark Smith, Sensing the Past: Seeing, Hearing, Smelling, Tasting, and Touching in History (Berkeley, CA : University of California Press, 2007); Peter N. Stearns, American Cool: Constructing a Twentieth-Century Emotional Style (New York: New York University Press, 1994); Karen Lystra, Searching the Heart: Women, Men, and Romantic Love in Nineteenth-Century America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989); Jean Delumeau, Sin and Fear: The Emergence of a Western Guilt Culture, 13th–18th Centuries (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990); Cas Wouters, Informalization: Manners and Emotions Since 1890 (Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 2007); John D’Emilio and Estelle B. Friedman, Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988). On culture contact: Matthew Restall, Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003); Amy Chua, Day of Empire: How Hyperpowers Rise to Global Dominance and Why They Fall (New York: Doubleday, 2007); Nicholas B. Dirks, Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India (Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, 2002); Peter N. Stearns, Globalization in World History, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2016) Bernard Cohn, Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge: the British in India (Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, 1996); Mansfred Steger, Globalization and Culture (Cheltenham, UK : Edward Elgar, 2012).

266

INDEX

Abelard, Peter 45 abolitionism 4, 71, 213–214 Achebe, Chinua 33, 35, 191 Africa 33; circumcision 170; culture 191, 192; feminism 52; gay rights 220; globalization 187; migration 183, 191; missionary religions 36–43; tolerance 194 agriculture 32–33, 57, 116, 132, 229 AID s 218 All-Indian Women’s Conference 181 Amazon 106–107, 110 Ambedkar, B.R. 214 Ambidextral Cultural Society 201 American Psychiatric Association (APA ) 140, 219 American Revolution 46, 60, 64, 70 Americans with Disabilities Act 221 Amnesty International 183, 194 analytical approach 12, 22–29, 226–234 anger: anger-less 20–21; parenting 158; righteous 83; suicide 140; war 217; women 202, 204–205; workers 102 anthropology 10, 20 anti-Semitism 222 apartheid 194, 215, 228 Arab spring 59, 88 aristocracy: abolition 71; differentiation 74; French Revolution 65–66, 68, 70, 76; landed 7, 66; Russia 78; theater 72; women 160 arranged marriage 82, 152, 154, 166–167 art 27, 40, 44, 72–73, 79, 87, 175 Artificial Intelligence (AI ) 108 Ataturk, Kemal 53–55, 56

Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD ) 137–139, 142 Australia 144, 183, 194, 215 auto racing 5 awe 96 Aztecs 172–173, 175 baby boom 109, 164, 232 Bastille Day 73, 74 bathing 118, 119, 186 Bayh, Birch 210 beauty: children 154; contests 134, 190; female 160, 204; globalization 188; medicalization 142; physical 155 Bezos, Jeff 107 birth control 4, 124, 150, 162, 165, 208 birth rate: China 86, 166; family 159; feminism 209; increase 164; jealousy 145; nineteenth century 161; work 152 birthdays 51, 189 Blau, Abram 200 bogeymen 149 Borders (bookstore) 106–107 boredom; 146–148, 150, 168 boxing 237 bread riots 63 brick-and-mortar stores 106, 108, 109 Buddhism: China 37, 39, 80; equality 202; force 37; polytheism 33, 36; syncretism 40 burial alive 149 Cahiers de doléances 70–71 Catholicism 4–5, 153, 173–175, 194–195 causation 24–25, 208, 217, 219, 223, 227 267

268

INDEX

cemeteries 117–118, 119, 126 charisma 96 charity 40 cheerfulness 53, 157 children’s rights 74, 154, 165 China: Buddhism 36–37, 39; business 111; Communism 86; consumerism 188; courtship 166; flexibility 14; laws 45; Marxism 59, 77, 87; Nestorian Christians 170; revolution 59–60, 71–72, 75–76, 80–82; tourism 183; traditionalism 7, 83 ChipCo 104–105 Christianity 36, 57; celebrations 43; Constantine 38–39; homosexuality 40; identity 192; individualism 45–46; Nigeria 33, 35; paganism 42; Spanish 172, 193; spread 37; weight 133; Western 48; women 202 civil service 99 Civil War (US ) 25, 140 clothing 2, 51, 134, 147, 153, 178, 181 Club Med 185 clumsiness 199 cocacolonization 191 coffee houses 69 Cold War 66, 217 colonialism 17, 181, 184 Confucianism 7, 80–81, 84, 86, 62 conservatism 49, 65, 220 Constantine 38–39 consumerism: courtship 153; globalization 191; individualism 50, 52, 162; marriage 151; modern 148; urban 188; Vietnam 187 convents 39–41 corn 175 corsets 134 courtship 154–155, 159–163, 166–167, 169 cowardice 139–141 crime 2, 134, 149, 150, 205 cult of true womanhood 204 cultural construction 9, 143 Cultural Revolution 77, 84–87, 166 cultural turn 9, 21, 143 culture wars 11 custody (child) 206

dating 125, 146, 162, 164, 166 David 73 De Gouges, Olympe 72 death: family 152, 158; health 116, 120, 122, 139, 142; medicalization 125–130; missionaries 34; polytheism 33, 37; punishment 45, 72; rate 177; superstition 149, 221; urbanization 118; workers 111 death penalty 2, 229 Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen 71, 218 Delumeau, Jean 148–149 democracy 56, 65, 67, 71, 82, 194 Deutschman, Alan 96 Dewey, John 201 diets 133–134, 137 disability 221 disease: control 117; culture 120–121; death 125, 127, 128, 149, 171–172; definitions 116, 122, 226; fear 118; inoculations 142; magic 2; mental 137–139, 216; tradition 131; trauma 139–140 disgust 115, 117, 118, 126, 142 divorce 160, 164, 167–168, 206 doctors 3, 116, 120–124, 131, 134–135, 142 dowry 152 Easter 40 economists 5–6, 23 education: children 154, 165, 167; China 80–83, 86; Enlightenment 48; English 178, 187; family 151; individualism 47, 52; institutions 55; migrants 170; primary 100; private 178; public 48, 49; religion 68, 73; teachers 55; tradition 167; Untouchables 214–215; women 26, 55, 180, 206, 208–210 eHarmony 164 emotions: children 158, 159; corporate 96; expression 21; history 144; family 15, 151–152, 158, 163, 164; social 168; standards 150; women 202; workers 102–103 emperor worship 4, 25, 52, 226 English Civil War 8

INDEX

Enlightenment 15, 48, 68–69, 76, 117, 153, 203 environment: economic 167; emotional 160; external 97–98, 148; medical 117; natural 142, 225; odor 120; scientists 6; sexual 124; social 141, 167, 195, 205–206; spirits 41; urbanization 118 envy 96, 104 equality under law 65, 68, 71 Esquire 163 Evangelicalism 32, 49, 158, 216 evidence 5, 27–28, 46–47, 119–120, 167, 212 Facebook 110 fat 132–137 fear 118–119, 144, 148–150, 182, 220 female circumcision 170 feminism 52, 181, 208–209, 223 fez 54 fiscales 172–173, 175 footbinding 81 force field analysis 98 Foucault, Michel 8, 14 France: family 160; fast food 182, 190; Marxism 78; measures 74; religion 69, 75; revolutionary 48, 60, 64; science 148; smells 117; women 42, 134 free range parents 150 French Revolution 65–74, 160 Friedan, Betty 208–209 Furet, Francois 67 Gandhi, Mahatma 180, 194, 214 garbage 118 gay marriage 1, 24, 217, 220 gay rights 25, 194, 215–220, 222–223 generations 35, 49, 109, 123, 169, 187, 213, 227 germ theory 116, 119 Germany 24, 42, 78, 194, 195 Gibson Girl 133 globalization: beauty 188; China 183; clash 170; contemporary 17, 169; corporations 111; cultural 182, 184, 186–187, 189, 191, 193–196, 232; identity 192

269

Google 27, 105, 157 Gramsci, Antonio 7 Haiti 75 Halloween 149 happiness 9, 47, 110, 160 high culture 19–20 Hinduism 33, 177, 180, 214 Hollywood 166, 183, 186, 217 home economics 206 homosexuality see gay rights Horace 146 hospices 129 hospital safety 20 hospitals 94, 115, 119, 125, 130, 149, 183 human rights 51–52, 88, 166, 183–184, 207, 218 humanities 19 hysterical paralysis 120–121, 138 Ibn Battuta 41 Igbo 33, 35, 37 immigrants 49, 169, 172, 183, 192 Inca 172, 173, 176 India: Bollywood 183; caste system 198, 213–215; colonization 169, 176–181; feminism 181; globalization 170, 189–190; Islam 38; marriage 167; military action 37; tolerance 194 Indian Association 180 Indian National Congress 180 individualism: children 154; cultural 31; definitions 92; hierarchy 153; Western 11, 16, 44–52, 57–58, 203, 226, 228 Indonesia 36, 38 Industrial Revolution 102 infanticide 40, 43 inoculations 142 Inquisition 172 instrumentalism 102 insurance 133 Internet 182, 185 Inuit 20 invented traditions 25 Iranian Revolution 60, 77, 191

270

INDEX

Islam: Afro-Eurasia 36–40; British influence 177; globalization 192; individualism 55; Iran 64, 77; missionary efforts 178; terrorism 88; tolerance 195; Turkey 53–54, 57; West Africa 41; Western influence 191; women 56, 170, 202 Japan 4; baseball 190; Buddhism 36; business 91–92; China 40, 81–83; constitution 194; consumerism 182; education 165; emotions 166; emperor-worship 4, 25, 52, 226; nationalism 25; sexuality 194; Shintoism 40; Taiwan 131; Westernization 52 jealousy 145–146, 150, 168, 202 Jews 37, 116, 169, 216 Kamery, Frank 218 Kenya 184 Kerala 190 kidnapping 149 labor movement 63 Lasch, Christopher 160–161 leadership: business 105–107; China 82, 86, 104; communist 52, 62, 79; education 52; emotions 96; groups 15, 82; individuals 61, 194, 218; missionaries 34; oppression 223; organizations 92–94; political 53, 54, 220; power 96–97; studies 95; transformations 231; women 203, 209 left-handedness 199–201, 211, 223, 226 Legalism 81, 86 Lenin, Vladimir 61, 78 lesbian baby boom 219 Lithuania 37 living wills 130 Lombroso, Caesare 200 loneliness 50 Luddism 63, 101–102 Luther, Martin 153 magic 2, 8, 24, 43, 131, 175 Mandarin 80 Mandela, Nelson 194, 228

Marianne 73 marriage: age 166; arranged 82, 152, 154, 166, 167; Catholicism 153; child marriage 177; cohabitation 172; emotions 145, 151, 158, 167; gay 1, 5, 8, 24, 215–217, 219–220, 226; interracial 223; literature 163; love 151, 159–160, 164, 168; sex 124, 162; widows 181; women 39, 155, 170 Marxism 49, 64, 77–79, 88, 92 masturbation 122–125 Mayer, Marissa 105, 109 McDonald’s 104, 186, 189, 191 mentalities 9 MeToo movement 195, 212–213 metric system 74, 76 Mexico 111, 172–173, 191, 193 miasms 119 Michelet, Jules 66 military: anti-military 24; careers 210–211; casualties 129; conquest 36; coup 56; gender 20; leaders 44, 171; organization 93; Ottoman 53; pressure 42, 47; PTSD 139–141 missionaries: Africa 34; Arab 39; British 33; Catholic 171, 173; Christian 20, 35, 177; Islamic 38; language 172; popularization 48; religious 32; teachings 175 mobility 10, 47, 52 mother love 162–163 mothers 23, 50, 156–157, 164, 206 Motte-Bossut, Louis 100–102 movies 10, 108, 166, 183, 186–187 multinational empires 197–198 naming 46, 154 Napoleon 66, 76 national anthems 72, 76 National Organization of Women (NOW ) 209 nationalism: domestic republicanism 81; ethnic 196; India 180–181, 214; Japan 25, 52; protest 82; Russian 79; Turkish 54–55 Nehru, Jawaharlal 213 NetCo 104–106 New York 189, 205, 217

INDEX

newspapers 76, 107, 113, 133, 155 Nigeria 33–37, 39 night 36, 120, 190, 212 Northern Crusade 37 Norway 42 nostalgia 139–140, 144 novels 27, 159, 205 Obama, Barack 198 obesity 133, 136, 142, 198 office design 108, 109–110, 113 old age 229 Opium War 81 Organization Psychology (I/O) 20, 94–97 Ottoman Empire 32, 53 Our Lady of Guadalupe 173–175 Pacific islands 20, 189 Paris 64, 73, 118–119 Patton, George 140 Paz, Octavio 191 peasants: China 62, 83–84, 87; France 42; rising 64, 70, 78; Russia 63; Turkey 54; women 42, 57 perfume 117, 119 Petrarch 45 pets 229 Philippines 185–186 play 27, 152, 190 Playboy 163 Pokémon 182 political correctness 195, 224, 227 polytheism 32–33, 36–37, 39–42, 57 popular sovereignty see democracy populism 88 Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD ) 139–141 power: aristocracy 66; communist 66, 77, 79; culture 123, 144; doctrine 37; emotion 145, 156, 164; father 34, 205; government 32, 38, 58, 65, 71, 171; leadership 96–97; magic 2; medical 125; men 11, 51; military 4, 39, 82; missionary 35; people 111–112; reason 67, 68; religion 35, 38, 40, 43–45, 71, 172, 174; social class 77–78; structure 6, 7–8, 10, 35, 39, 171, 196, 227; values 4,

271

142; West 165, 171, 203; women 160, 203, 212–213 prebridal pregnancy 152 protest: angry 118; China 82; labor 102; Marxism 77; modern 87–88, 89; movements 59–65, 83; populist 88; social 16; tradition 78 Protestantism 31, 45, 47, 49, 153 psychology 20, 95, 97, 104, 144, 231 puberty 123 Putin, Vladimir 52, 220 race 9, 223, 227, 228 racism 198, 228 Red Guards 84, 86–87 Reformation 45, 46 remote work 105, 109 rights see human rights Ritalin 137–138 Roman Empire 36, 38 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 67, 68 Russia 52, 62, 77–79, 86, 183 Russian Revolution 60, 78–79, 87 Ruth, Babe 201 Samburu 184 satellite communication 182 sati 177, 178 Savarkar, Veer 214 Schools see education science: change 201, 219; crime 200; English 3; Enlightenment 68; environment 6; experiments 87, 118; medicalization 116, 216; modern 54, 79, 123, 131; movies 108; theoretical 80; training 4, 55, 57; women 206, 209 Second Vatican Council 4, 194 selection bias 106 sewage 116 sexual harassment 94, 112–113, 195, 212, 229, 232 sexuality: anthropologists 20; globalization 184; homosexuality 172, 177, 199, 200, 216, 219, 220; nineteenth-century 121, 124; organizations 16; pleasure 162; psychologists 21; Victorian 26; women 208, 212

272

INDEX

shame 52, 81, 158, 227 shell shock 140 sibling rivalry 145 slavery 4, 75, 207, 222 sleep 100, 111, 122 smell 6, 115, 117–120 smile 53, 103–104 soccer 87, 182–183, 187–188 socialist realism 79 sodomy 216, 220 Special Olympics 221 Spence, Thomas 154 Spock, Benjamin 200 sports 11, 182–183, 188, 201, 221 stocks (public) 46 suffrage 207 sulky 158 sumptuary laws 45 Switzerland 153 syncretism 25, 40, 49–50, 87, 170, 173–176, 189–190, 227–228 Taiwan 130–132, 142, 167, 189 taste: consumer 190; culture 188, 221; food 184; globalization 185, 186, 188; literature 20; medicine 135; values 178; West 183 temperance 207 terrorism 72, 88 time (clock) 99–100, 188, 220 Title IX 210 Tonantzin 173, 175 tourism 166, 182, 185, 186 toxic work culture 5 trousers 74, 76, 174 Truman, Harry 201

272

Trump, Donald 5, 192 Tunisia 88 Turkey: culture change 229; modern 53–55; nationalism 58; reformers 32, 60; teachers 55–56 TV news 166, 182, 186 two-spirit people 176 Uber 112, 232 United Kingdom 2 United Nations 183, 185, 193, 218 Universal Declaration of Human Rights 71, 218 universities 2, 56, 86, 94, 208, 210 untouchables 213–215 urine 117 vacations 164, 185 veil 54, 56 Victorianism 26, 159 Vietnam 129, 140, 187 Vladimir 38 Walmart 111 Washington, George 149 water purity 118 Weber, Max 96, 99 well-being 110–111, 115, 153 wise mother 204 witches 2–3, 42 World Health Organization 221 Yahoo 105–106, 109 Yoruba 35 youth 34, 79 Zedong, Mao 61, 82–84, 86–87