Cultural Values in Political Economy

Herausgeber: Singh, J P

• Gebundenes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

Featuring insights from a wide range of disciplines and a number of esteemed scholars, this volume explores cultural contexts that explain origins and changes in political economic interests and values.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Stanford University Press
• Seitenzahl: 272
• Erscheinungstermin: 25. August 2020
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 231mm x 155mm x 23mm
• Gewicht: 726g
• ISBN-13: 9781503612686
• ISBN-10: 1503612686
• Artikelnr.: 57478041

Autorenporträt

J.P. Singh is Professor of International Commerce and Policy at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University and author of Sweet Talk: Paternalism and Collective Action in North-South Trade Negotiations (Stanford, 2017).

Inhaltsangabe

Contents and Abstracts
Foreword: Cultural Mediations and Political Economy
chapter abstract
Culture is often treated as a marginal or residual factor in explanations
of economic and political behavior. The foreword argues that to understand
the interconnected role of values, interests, and agency in the study of
global transactions in political economy, culture needs to be seen as
independent, generative, and future oriented. By taking this richer
approach to culture, many phenomena that escape the net of rational choice
theory become more understandable, especially in a world of new
connections, mobilizations, and innovations in the political sphere.
1Introduction: Cultural Values in Political Economy
chapter abstract
An intrinsic part of culture is its history. However, at any given time,
different cultural values are sifted through this history and mobilized for
collective action. This chapter provides a context for understanding the
role of cultural values in political economy examined in this book.
Conceptually, the book attempts to provide an interdisciplinary and
comprehensive understanding of cultural values imbricated in political
economy and the way to move from collective to individual interests, and
vice versa. These theoretical moorings allow the authors to operationalize
culture through a variety of methods including historical, ethnographic,
case-study, and quantitative evidence. Part I provides the conceptual
foundations that engender the cultural assumptions held implicit or
constant in a few analyses and explains the contexts under which cultures
transform interests. Part II presents chapters that examine the processes
of cultural interactions that flow from underlying values.
2Culture and Preference Formation
chapter abstract
Economists take preferences to be comparative evaluations of alternatives
that incorporate every factor the agent takes to influence her choices
other than beliefs and constraints. Rational choice is determined by
rational preferences among the alternatives that agents believe to be
feasible and, to a reasonable degree of approximation, the theory of
rational choice does double duty as a theory of actual choice. It may seem
impossible to employ the economist's model to make sense of the influence
of culture or of the mechanisms of cultural change because the economist's
model treats norms and ideals as merely different influences on
preferences. Yet, as this chapter argues, nothing in the economist's model
rules out incorporating additional mechanisms of preference formation and
change. Moreover, it argues that doing so is helpful both in understanding
the interactions between culture and action and in articulating a more
detailed and promising theory of rational choice.
3Value and Values in Economics and Culture
chapter abstract
Issues of value and valuation are fundamental to any consideration of the
relationships between economics and culture. This chapter discusses these
relationships at both macro and micro levels. First, we consider the
possible connections between the cultural values of different societies and
their national economic performance. Then, turning to a functional sense of
culture, the chapter argues that in addressing questions of the value of
art and culture, it is essential to distinguish between economic value and
cultural value, in which the latter refers to aspects of value that are not
expressible in monetary terms. Illustrations are drawn from studies of the
value of the visual arts, literature, and music. Next, we consider culture
in international economic relations, discussing value and valuation in the
areas of intercultural dialogue, cultural diversity, and sustainable
development. The chapter concludes with a plea for more dialogue at an
interdisciplinary level.
4Creating a Culture of Environmental Responsibility
chapter abstract
This chapter explores possibilities for creating a new culture of
environmental responsibility, drawing mainly on recent work in
environmental political theory and philosophy. It begins from the
assumption that culture-conceived as a repertoire of shared values-is
crucial to understanding the interests that people feel themselves to have
and that cultural values can powerfully influence long-term changes in
society. If we want to improve environmental outcomes, we will need a new
culture of environmental responsibility. Key to establishing this culture
is novel ways of thinking about what responsibility means and creating new
political and economic practices to support it.
5Cosmopolitans and Parochials: Economy, Culture, and Political Conflict
chapter abstract
Both political economy and culture have been marshalled as explanations for
parochialism and cosmopolitanism, opposing orientations that influence
contemporary politics and foreign policy. Simple models based on
international economic position do not adequately explain parochial
attitudes on such issues as Brexit or immigration. Cosmopolitan attitudes
are linked to a particular, often local, cultural infrastructure
(information environment, educational institutions, and transnational
experience). In explaining both parochial and cosmopolitan attitudes and
action, the effects of globalization on local culture and politics are of
central importance. The link from economy to political behavior and
outcomes is created by divergent locational effects of globalization and
the local cultures they produce: globalized urban environments versus
disadvantaged hinterlands that perceive themselves as left behind.
International political economy must illuminate this link between economy
and culture, which has important public policy implications.
6Crossing Borders: Culture, Identity, and Access to Higher Education
chapter abstract
Through the adoption of a semiotic approach to culture, this chapter aims
to assist in the development of a cultural explanation of global political
culture. A semiotic approach asserts that meaning is assigned by
participants to social patterns and behaviors found in society. The
experience of boundary spaces offers a laboratory of sorts for revealing
the contours of culture and cultural differences, including class
differences. It is the experience of stepping out of a comfort zone and
into alien space, a place where one does not necessarily know what goes
with what, that is most revealing. Habituated roles create the contours of
borders and boundaries that come with attendant expectations and customs
associated with nation, class, race, gender, and age, among other
identities.
7Ideology, Economic Interests, and American Exceptionalism: The Case of
Export Credit
chapter abstract
This chapter analyzes the sources and implications of American
exceptionalism in the area of export credit. For virtually all major
economies, export credit is an important industrial policy tool to promote
economic growth. Remarkably, however, while its rivals are dramatically
increasing their use of export credit, the United States has become a major
outlier. An ideologically driven campaign led by the Tea Party sharply
constrained the operations of the US Export-Import Bank: the bank was shut
down entirely for five months in 2015 and subsequently limited to financing
only minor transactions for nearly four years. This chapter argues that
American exceptionalism on export credit cannot be understood without
reference to culture, specifically the market fundamentalist ideology of
the Tea Party, which has led to a conception of national economic interests
and preferences that departs radically from other states.
8Strangest of Bedfellows: Why the Religious Right Embraced Trump and What
That Means for the Movement
chapter abstract
This chapter outlines the connection and disconnection between cultural and
material factors in the rise of the religious right in the United States.
This social movement comprises socially conservative and politically active
born-again and evangelical Christians, as well as some ultraconservative
Catholics. This movement comes out of a unique subculture that is
suspicious of mainstream political and social institutions and that rejects
many of the conventional norms of a democratic society. At once, this
subculture claims moral superiority in what it considers a corrupted
society while pursuing access to levers of power in order to conform the
mainstream culture more to its own idealized image of the United States.
Religious conservatives were the key to electing Donald J. Trump as
president, and this chapter explores linkages of social and cultural issues
to the broader economic factors that played a substantial role in religious
conservative support for his election.
9Applying the Soft Power Rubric: How Study Abroad Data Reveals
International Cultural Relations
chapter abstract
A country's ability to attract foreign students to its universities is one
common way to understand its soft power in the international community.
Applying the Soft Power Rubric to empirical data, this chapter reveals the
preferences of students who go abroad and uncovers South Africa's and
Malaysia's roles as rising regional hubs and France's slowing growth as a
global hub, which complicate our understanding of North-South or
core-periphery postcolonial relations. The rubric reconceives soft power as
when foreigners transform their thinking from "us" and "them" to a
collective "we," emphasizing the perspective of the countries at the
periphery rather than at the core, unveiling important networks of cultural
relations, offering a path forward to bring cultural data into empirical
modeling, and pointing to fruitful areas for future work. The chapter also
offers a contrast with others in this book that emphasize a reaction
against globalization.