Cultural theory - and the link between George Washington and Gordon Brown

January 14, 2009 by matthewtaylor
Filed under: Social brain, The RSA 

Cultural theory has changed the way I think about policy dilemmas and organisational problems. It can provide insights to everyone from political commentators to community activists to managers of large organisations. Over the next few days in some – hopefully – short, accessible posts I intend to lay out the key tenets of CT as I understand them by reference to concrete examples and contemporary issues.

I have the good fortune to be in regular correspondence with two of the world’s leading cultural theorists, Marco Verweij and Michael Thompson (who wrote a piece in the last RSA Journal). They are busy guys but I am hoping to persuade them to check in and comment on the blog and any follow up chat.

The first question is what kind of explanation does cultural theory offer? At its most simple it offers a way of understanding how people try to solve problems which is more powerful than many conventional approaches.

Here are some common ways of understanding why people adopt different strategies to solve problems:

• ‘Nowt so queer as folk’: We all see a problem in the same way, but people come to different conclusions about what should be done for reasons that are random or perverse

• ‘It’s who you are in society’: People come to different conclusions depending on their own interests and status; e.g. class, status, race, gender

• ‘It’s what you believe’: People come to different conclusions reflecting their deeply held values and political attitudes

• ‘It’s the type of person you are’: People come to different conclusions because of their personalities.

Cultural theory doesn’t deny that all these factors may be relevant but it argues that social problem solving exhibits the interaction of four basic categories of response: the egalitarian, the hierarchical, the individualistic and the fatalistic.

These responses are more systematic than the ‘nowt so queer’ account allows for; they are more complex and dynamic than fixed social interests imply; they cut through and across systems of belief and political affiliation; and - while people may have personalities that predispose them to certain options - the strategy a person advocates will in practice reflect the dynamics of each different problem solving process.

Tomorrow I want briefly to describe the content of the perspectives and summarise some of the evidence for these responses being fundamental and ubiquitous. But I’ll end today with an historical and a contemporary example of cultural theory in practice.

In ‘Dilemmas of Presidential Leadership’ cultural theorists Richard Ellis and Aaron Wildavsky use CT to explore the ways Presidents from Washington to Lincoln have dealt with the circumstances and dilemmas they faced. You need to read the book, but it is typical of a CT perspective that the authors explain George Washington’s tendency to adopt pomp and ceremony whenever he could, his refusal to back the new French revolutionary Republic in its conflict with the rest of Europe, and his heavy handed crushing of the Whiskey Rebellion as examples of the dilemmas facing a hierarchical President operating in a fiercely anti-hierarchical (individualist and egalitarian) culture.  

Fast forward 220 years and we see another insecure hierarchical leader, coping with what was, until very recently, an anti-hierarchical culture. Here is Rachel Sylvester writing yesterday in The Times about Gordon Brown;

“there is a sense in which the Prime Minister is dealing with the economic downturn so confidently partly because it requires greater state intervention - something with which he is instinctively comfortable”

Brown’s standing has risen because the world has come back to him; at a time of fear and insecurity, when the individualist consensus of the last thirty years has crumbled with the casino capitalism it sanctioned, we crave the certainties offered by hierarchy.

The four strategies of cultural theory are ever present options for those seeking social solutions. At certain times events strongly favour a particular response and those that advocate it. That is why a man who was just about our most unpopular ever Prime Minister six months ago has seen his standing rise and his impact grow (at home and abroad) despite being in the midst of a crisis for which most people hold him at least partially responsible.

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Comments

7 Comments on Cultural theory - and the link between George Washington and Gordon Brown

  1. Michael in UK on Wed, 14th Jan 2009 11:55 pm

    2. Good to read more about CT, thank you. In “System Failure” the Demos book/pamplet (free PDF too) Jake Chapman talks about the importance of taking account of different perspectives on complex problems. CT offers what seems to me to be a very powerful and practical way of framing the key perspectives. Would it be right to say that in general solutions or arrangements which find a balance between at least the first 3 CT categories will tend to endure longer than just one caegory which (due ot circumstances) prevals because of surrounding conditions?

  2. Michael Thompson on Thu, 15th Jan 2009 8:55 am

    3. Hi Matthew, that’s very nice and, again (annoyingly) I can’t find anything wrong with it. Your discussion of the Ellis/Wildavsky book reminded me of the chaotic
    time we had when we were writing the book “Cultural Theory”. We were all three at Berkeley for a couple of weeks, with me having, so they thought, already drafted the chapters of Part 1. In fact I had to get up each morning at two o’clock, so as to have something to give them both when we met at nine o’clock. All went fine until Aaron thought we were claiming too much and inserted a sentence (it’s still there) “Of course, cultural theory doesn’t explain everything” and then went on “If a wall of water is rushing down the street towards us we don’t need cultural theory to tell us to get out of the way”. “Hang on”, said Richard E, “you’re giving too much away”: “Women and children first” (hierarchy), “Stick with me; I know a way out” (individualism), “What’s the point; I’m staying here” (fatalism) and so on. What a way to write a book!
    I later learnt from Doug MacLean, who is a CT-minded philosopher, that the getting-out-of-the-way-of-the-wall-of-water is an instance of what Aristotle called a “practical syllogism”: “Straightway he acts”, as Aristotle put it - no cogitation, no cost-benefit analysis…no nothing. Something for us to consider when we come to The Human Brain and the Social Bond workshop in Vienna next year? Mike

  3. matthewtaylor on Thu, 15th Jan 2009 9:36 am

    4. Thanks Michael - I refer to this in today’s post. Heathrow’s third runway is a classic failure to find a clumsy solution. What is less clear is whether this is a reflection of the intransigence of either the runway backers or opponents, or a failure by Government to create the possibility of a clumsy outcome.

  4. matthewtaylor on Thu, 15th Jan 2009 9:41 am

    5. In a word ‘yes’. For example, I suggest today that the failure to engage the egalitarian (environmentalist) perspective in the decision on Heathrow runway 3 means the envirnomental safegaurds offered up by Government and the industry are probably worthless.

    But I will write more in the next few days about the different types on ‘non-clumsy’ solutions (solutions that don’t engage with each perspective) and what tends to go wrong with them

    Thanks for reading and copying

  5. Cultural theory - and the row over the Heathrow third runway | Matthew Taylor's blog on Thu, 15th Jan 2009 10:24 am

    6. [...] paradigms being ‘fundamental and ubiquitous’. I’ll do that tomorrow but Michael Thompson’s response to yesterday’s post gives a hint of how cultural theorists claim their perspective can apply to [...]

  6. Duncan Lawie on Thu, 15th Jan 2009 1:45 pm

    7. I found Michael Thompson’s article in the RSA Journal very interesting - but have searched in vain for more information on the computer model he describes towards the end of it. I’m interested particularly in the comment that the model shows that cutting to three strategies causes the model to collapse - and wondering whether it was possible to push the model up to five and, if so, whether that also exhibited instability.

    Also, possibly wildly off-topic, have you seen the recent work on modelling networks of decision making? This suggests that deadlock is an almost natural result of choosing a decision-making group of eight - does this result in four groups of two? - and that more than 20 also makes agreement very difficult

    http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126901.300-explaining-the-curse-of-work.html?full=true

    (It’s starting to look like the only RSS feeds I follow are this and the New Scientist news!)

    Cheers,
    Duncan.

  7. matthewtaylor on Fri, 16th Jan 2009 8:44 am

    8. H Duncan

    I think Michael is checking in to these discussiosn so I hope he may be able to tell you more about the computer models. Thanks for the link (is this related to what I thnk is called the Dunbar number?), which I will read on my way to watch West Brom tomorrow (we hierarchs have to have an outlet for our fatalism!). And thanks for the knd compliment at the end!

    Have a good weekend

    Matthew

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