Changing Societies & Personalities, 2018 Vol. 2, No. 2, pp. 198–202 http://dx.doi.org/10.15826/csp.2018.2.2.037 BOOK REVIEW Ronald Inglehart (2018). Cultural Evolution, People’s Motivations are Changing, and Reshaping the World. Cambridge University Press Ana Maria López Narbona University of Michigan, USA University of Malaga, Spain In Cultural Evolution, People’s Motivations are Changing, and Reshaping the World, Ronald Inglehart undertakes a comprehensive scholarly examination of his proposition that “high levels of economic and physical security led to pervasive intergenerational cultural changes that reshaped people’s values and worldviews, bringing a shift from materialist to post-materialist values, which was part of an even broader shift from survival to self-expression values”. This book builds on the author’s previous work concerning modernization as a multifaceted process of social change pivoting on value change, that is transformational in its impact and progressive in its effects. Inglehart’s work builds on, but substantially revises, classical modernization theory as developed by Marx, Weber, Durkheim and many others, updating it to examine post-modern society and beyond, inquiring into the trajectory of the knowledge society and the Artificial Intelligence era. In this book, Inglehart applies the principles of evolutionary theory to develop a new theoretical framework for modernization theory. Evolutionary theory and functionalism shaped modernization theory as early as in the 60s, emphasizing the ability to adapt to gradual, continuous change as the normal condition of stability, by attributing causal priority to immanent sources of changes, and by analyzing social change as a directional process. As the author suggests, “Evidence from around the world indicates that socioeconomic development tends to propel various societies in a roughly Received 17 April 2018 © 2018 Ana Maria López-Narbona Published online 1 July 2018 alopeznarbona@uma.es https://changing-sp.com/ mailto:alopeznarbona@uma.es Changing Societies & Personalities, 2018, Vol. 2, No. 2, pp. 198–202 199 predictable direction, but these changes are probabilistic not deterministic. And cultural change is path dependent. The fact that a society was historically Protestant or Orthodox or Islamic or Confucian gives rise to cultural zones with distinctive value systems that persist even when one controls for the effects of socioeconomic development. Although the value systems of different countries are moving in the same direction under the impact of powerful modernizing forces, their value systems have not been converging, as simplistic models of cultural globalization suggest.” By revisiting the scientific concepts of evolutionary theory and blending them with modernization theory, the author succeeds in marking the categories that tell us more about the subject matter than any other categorical sets (Kaplan, 1973). According to Inglehart, “The central claim of classic modernization theory is that economic and technological development tends to bring coherent and roughly predictable social and political changes. Evolutionary modernization theory agrees, but argues that these societal changes are largely driven by the fact that modernization brings value changes that are causing the people of economically advanced societies to have systematically different motivations, and consequently different behavior, from the people of less developed societies.” The book is structured in an introduction and ten thematic chapters. The introduction presents the approach and concepts of evolutionary modernization theory that are used in the work. The chapters address various social phenomena in an ambitious and comprehensive way. From the end of secularization, to the feminization of society and the rise of Trump and the xenophobic populist parties, the author covers a broad specter of social life. The book analyzes a wide number of topics in comparative perspective covering over 100 countries, which permits a rich examination of both individual and cross-cultural levels. Additionally, Inglehart examines the data in a longitudinal perspective discriminating between enduring birth cohort effects and transient life-cycle effects. As the author points out “A large body of evidence, analyzed using three different approaches, (1) cohort analysis; (2) comparisons of rich and poor countries; (3) examination of actual trends observed over the past 40 years, all points to the conclusion that major cultural changes are occurring, and that they reflect a process of intergenerational change linked with rising levels of existential security.” Inglehart tests his main hypothesis in connection with various realms of society including economy, gender equality, sexual behavior, democracy, happiness, religion, individualism versus collectivism, among others. The author discusses the transformation of many aspects of human existence from individual personality to international relations. The author provides deep insight into the factors that impact on values and behaviors in numerous countries, employing survey data from the World Values Survey and the European Values Survey, from 1981 to 2014, with surveys in more than 100 countries that contain over 90 percent of the world’s population, based on more than half a million personal interviews. https://changing-sp.com/ 200 Ana Maria López Narbona One of the most critical findings confirmed in this book is the evolution towards a globalized world that has increasing inequality within countries. According to the OECD, income inequality in OECD countries is at its highest level for the past half century. In 2015, many countries adopted the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, among which, Goal 10 refers to reducing inequality within and among countries. However, the outlook seems pessimistic as many societies, according to Inglehart, “…are currently regressing toward the xenophobic authoritarian politics linked with insecurity. But, unlike the xenophobic authoritarianism that surged during the Great Depression, this does not result from objective scarcity. These societies possess abundant and growing resources, but they are increasingly misallocated from the standpoint of maximizing human well-being.” The future seems also uncertain as the inadequate regulation of financial sector and the deregulation of economy and financial markets are contributing to financial capitalism that is deepening inequality. The author comments that “Trump promised to make America great again. But Trump’s policies of deregulating the financial sector, cutting medical coverage and reducing taxes on the very rich are the opposite of what is needed by the people who have been left behind. They will make America great for billionaires who pay no income tax”. Another main contribution emanating from this work is that it takes into account cognitions and emotions as sources of value changes. According to Inglehart “…experimental research indicates that human decisions are heavily influenced by unconscious biases or intuitions”. In recent years, social scientists have underemphasized the role of emotions as mediators in human cognition, behaviors, and values. But recently, emotions are gaining momentum (Hochschild, 2016). Inglehart’s analysis based on evolutionary modernization theory has certain limitations, as the author points out. The first is that his analyses are largely confined to national territorial states, partly because he mainly uses the data of the World Values Survey, which carries, out representative national surveys. This could be taken to imply that the transformation of societies reflects internal processes of change, ignoring the role of interactions between societies. The author with his deep knowledge of the world history brilliantly solves this limitation. In any case, the tradition of books that use the national level for their analysis is long and rich (among others, see Merrit & Rokkan, 1966). Second, the evolutionary modernization theory approach could be considered to be the product of an ethnocentric world-view in which the benchmark universally applied is that of the United States of America. However, in the present book, this limitation is overcome as fundamental values and structures associated with modernity and post-modernity are contested. On the other hand, there is evidence that changes tend to be produced in societies of the “social center” and then spread to societies of the “social periphery” (Galtung, 1976). Changes toward post- materialist values and, since 2000, a reversion toward materialist values have begun in the most developed countries (and specifically in the United States of America) Changing Societies & Personalities, 2018, Vol. 2, No. 2, pp. 198–202 201 and within the most prestigious social positions. Furthermore, there is theoretical and empirical evidence of the complementary relations between Galtung’s centre- periphery theory and Inglehart’s theory of value change, based on Spanish and international data (Díez-Nicolás, 2013). Third, long-term ecological viability as a fundamental human value should play an important role in the analysis of advanced industrial societies (Giddens, 1991; Beck, 1992). The author’s concerns about inequality have important implications on the ecological viability of modern societies. Recent literature on the topic of ecological inequality focuses on inequality and green trade (Oosterveer, 2007), power and inequality related to environmental and informational flows (Mol, 2008), differential effects of stringent environmental policies and the unequal distribution of environmental risks (Smith, Sonnenfeld, & Pellow, 2006). Fourth, one of the main conclusions of the book is the threat for stability posed by the unequal allocation of resources. The resources are considered in terms of economic scarcity. However, they should also be considered from the point of view of the scarcity of cultural resources, because the present environment of Mankind is more and more socio-cultural, not only natural. The debate should address the citizenship and the problem of the unequal distribution of resources in society. In this point, Inglehart leaves the door open to future research in the political realm as Insecurity today results not from inadequate resources but from growing inequality, which is ultimately a political question. Fifth, the book seems to support the notion that tradition and modernity represents two mutually exclusive, functionally independent clusters, but Inglehart’s evolutionary modernization theory does not treat all modern or post-modern societies as similar, recognizing different traditions. In his book, Inglehart suggests that “…the forces of modernization have impacted on large numbers of societies in enduring and comparable ways. Urbanization, industrialization, rising educational levels, occupational specialization and bureaucratization produce enduring changes in people’s worldviews. They do not make all societies alike, but they do tend to make societies that have experienced them differ from societies that have not experienced them, in consistent ways.” With this book, Inglehart has established a powerful baseline for future research. Among the topics that deserve further analysis, we suggest the research on immigration and citizenship and the evolution of values in a context of financial capitalism because as the author warns “In recent decades, much of the population of high-income countries has experienced declining real income, declining job security and rising income inequality, bringing growing existential insecurity. This has happened in context with a massive influx of immigrants and refugees.” Understanding the role played by immigrants is critical for societies in general and Western societies in particular as an important percentage of Western countries’ citizens now is of immigrant origin and citizenship is bound up with the problem of unequal distribution of resources in society. Financial capitalism threatens to undermine the very foundations of our societies of individuals (Elias, 1987). https://changing-sp.com/ 202 Ana Maria López Narbona References Beck, U. (1992). From Industrial Society to Risk Society: Questions of Survival, Social Structure and Ecological Enlightenment. Theory, Culture and Society, 9(1), 97–123. Diez-Nicolas, J. (2013). Sociological Theory and Social Reality. Revista Española de Investigaciones Sociológicas, 143, 7–24. DOI: 10.5477/cis/reis.143.7. Elias, N. [1987] (2001). The Society of Individuals. Bloomsbury Academic. Galtung, J. (1976). 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