mercredi 21 mai 2008

A research program for Culture Matters

"The objectives are to identify the values and attitudes that promote progress, including an assessment of the priority that attaches to each, and those that impede it; and to establish which values/attitudes positively or negatively influence evolution of democratic political institutions, economic development, and social justice, and to rank them."

(Lawrence E. Harrison, "Why Culture Matters", in : Culture Matters. How Values Shape Human Progress, ed. by Lawrence E. Harrison and Samuel P. Huntington, New York, Basic Books, 2000, p. xxxii s.)

A Technical Definition of Culture

"Cultures are the variable and cumulatively learned patterns of orientations to action in societies."

(Harry Eckstein, "Social Science as Cultural Science", in Culture Matters. Essays in Honor of Aaron Wildavsky, ed. by Richard J. Ellis and Michael Thompson, Boulder, Westview Press, 1997, p. 26.

Y a-t-il une culture spécifiquement pour l'individu ? Y a-t-il une culture en acte, indépendamment des dispositions ? Y a-t-il des objets culturels par opposition à des objets qui ne le sont pas ?