Just two more posts left in my series: ‘cultural theory for dummies’

January 27, 2009 by matthewtaylor
Filed under: Social brain 

Last week I described fourteen types of sub-optimal solutions, each excluding one or more of CT’s four ways of seeing the world (egalitarian, hierarchical, individualist and fatalist). The best circumstance for what cultural theorists call ‘clumsy solutions’ is not just when each is in play (in a sense, they are all always be in play at some level) but when the exponents of each view are able to engage creatively with the others. This helps to address one often made criticism of CT’s paradigms: that within each way of viewing the world there are both reasonable and unreasonable ways of thinking and behaving.

It can be argued that the variants of each paradigm can be placed on a continuum. At one end of the continuum the paradigm tends to present in a way which is dogmatic, defensive and hostile to all others. At the other is an approach which recognises plurality, revels in engaging with other perspectives and acknowledges that in the real world the best solutions are clumsy.

Four paradigms – engaged or antagonistic?

Paradigm            Engaged form               Antagonistic form
Egalitarian          Just, collaborative          Exclusive, negative
Individualist        Creative, dynamic          Selfish, irresponsible
Hierarchical        Responsible, expert      Self serving, bureaucratic 
Fatalistic              Respectful, compliant   Cynical, resistant  

Those seeking to create the best conditions for clumsy solutions have two tasks. The first is to ensure that all the paradigms are considered. The second is to create a context in which exponents of the different perspectives are inclined to engage with the advocates of the others. 

As paradigms derive their power both from their internal logic and from their antagonism to other perspectives, the more each rests on its own strengths and the less on its antagonistic case the more likely it is to generate creative and clumsy engagement.

This leads to the surprising conclusion that the best way to encourage each perspective to be fully engaged with the others is to enable it to develop its own internal strength and logic. So, managers or solution brokers should not seek to impose a single way of viewing the world, create a unified culture or drive people towards an uneasy, inauthentic and resentful consensus. Instead they should encourage people who share one of the four perspectives (particularly the active three – fatalists will probably defy encouragement!) to find solutions which work for them and then try to develop clumsy solutions which draw on, rather than suppress, the different strengths of each perspective. After all, each perspective describes a view which will be shared by many others in the organisation, or who will be affected by a policy. Thus each perspective needs to be engaged if the solution is to have the best chance of working.

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5 Comments on Just two more posts left in my series: ‘cultural theory for dummies’

  1. Matthew Kalman on Tue, 27th Jan 2009 4:47 pm

    2. Hi Matthew,

    You make it sound rather too easy to encourage adherents of one particular paradigm to “develop clumsy solutions which draw on, rather than suppress, the different strengths of each perspective”.

    How many Egalitarians out there are happy to draw on the strengths of the Hierarchical paradigm?

    Very few that I know! ;-)

    You may be interested to know that Prof Clare Graves – the friend of Abraham Maslow’s who pioneered the ideas behind Spiral Dynamics – found in his experiments that teams made up of those few ‘trans-paradigm’ people (who are able to see the strengths in all the paradigms) were ** ten times ** more productive at coming up with novel solutions than any of the individuals who adhered to a single paradigm.

    I hope you might offer a few pointers – in your final post(s) on this topic – about where I might best follow discussions about this aspect of cultural theory. As I said in a previous comment, it certainly feels to me like it’s a kindred approach to Wilber’s ‘integral’ approach, and Don Beck’s ‘health of the whole spiral’ approach (Spiral Dynamics).

    Beck used his approach during the transition from Apartheid – and wrote a book about this. He’s now trying to use it with the Israel-Palestine issue!

    BTW, I’m certainly more than open to the weaknesses that you point out that integral/Spiral Dynamics approaches have.

    Cheers,

    Matthew Kalman

  2. Daniel Vennard on Wed, 28th Jan 2009 3:25 am

    3. I am really enjoying learning about cultural theory and your thoughts on the subject. Thanks for sharing.
    Cheers
    Dan

  3. matthewtaylor on Fri, 30th Jan 2009 8:07 am

    4. Thanks Dan. Just one more CT post to go – proably Monday

  4. matthewtaylor on Fri, 30th Jan 2009 8:10 am

    5. Hi Matthew

    I had heard of Clare Graves in another context. Do you have a reference for this experiment? My final CT post wll briefly address this issue of how to create the best context for clumsiness

    Thanks again for your great comments

  5. Matthew Kalman on Sat, 31st Jan 2009 9:09 am

    6. CLARE GRAVES EXPERIMENT REFERENCE (integral thinking stage creates the most/best solutions)

    What I’ve got is an edited transcript of a presentation by Clare Graves to the National Institute of Health (1971). It’s titled: ‘A Systems Conception of Personality: Remarks by Clare W Graves on his Levels of Existence Theory’.

    He discusses, relatively briefly, how he observed groups of his ‘Organizational Psychology’ students solving problems he’d set them, which had multiple solutions. He looked at how groups with the same value systems (paradigms?) would organise themselves, how many solutions they came up with, how long it took etc.

    He found that the Yellow/integral (trans-paradigmatic) groups “found more solutions than all the others put together”.

    He also found that “the quality of solutions was better than the other groups”.

    And that “time required to arrive at a solution was much better”.

    [Elsewhere he has said this group found “unbelievably more solutions than the others put together….I found that the quality of their solutions to problems was amazingly better”.

    He was pretty shocked at this strong finding from his experiments with these groups – saying that “a sudden and almost unbelievable change takes place in human behaviour…” with the shift to this integral/trans-paradigm way of thinking.

    He was all along checking that this wasn’t caused by differences in intelligence, temperament or suchlike – it wasn’t.

    I can’t myself find – in my limited materials by Graves – any specifics on the number of solutions the different groups found – or that the Yellow/integral/trans-paradigm group found ’10x’ more, just “unbelievably” more etc…

    Hope this helps.

    Matthew Kalman

    PS Can you put a ‘Recent Comments’ bit at the top of your blog – so people notice new comments on older threads, like this one… ;-)

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