Chapter 12
Culture
The Greek historian Herodotus, writing around 430 BCE, claimed that Greeks
were exposed to more changeable weather conditions (than Asians) and were
consequently more spirited, flexible and democratic. The cultural legacy of
these freedom-loving ancient Greeks, argue some, is preserved today in the
individualism and democracy of contemporary Europe and its offshoots in
Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the US (Meier, 2009). While Socrates
argued that democracy would pool ignorance, Plato believed that reasoned
debate among philosopher-kings (not the masses) would lead to a better society.
However, since democracy then disappeared from Europe for two thousand
years until its revival inspired by the American and French revolutions, ‘it takes
a heroically selective reading of history to see a continuous spirit of democratic
freedom stretching from classical Greece to the Founding Fathers’ (Morriss,
2010:260). Measuring culture is difficult, as is examining the nature of cause
and effect. Economists, nevertheless, need to measure things and give them
numbers to see how they relate to economic things such as economic growth.
Culture is the deep determinant that has long made economists nervous.
Any discussion of how culture affects economic outcomes risks association
with now thoroughly discredited nineteenth-century views. Why did Europe
surge ahead economically and colonize much of the world? Many nineteenth-
century Europeans saw themselves as in some way biologically superior to
people in the rest of the world,so colonialism could be legitimized as a supe-
rior race dominating an inferior race. Others argued that the explanation lay
not in genetics but in culture, justifying a kind of ‘cultural racism’ whereby one
dominant and superior culture could colonize in order to civilize an inferior
culture. It is not difficult to see how such thinking legitimized many of the
brutalities of colonialism and led eventually to the horrors and genocide perpe-
trated by the Nazi regime in Germany.
Culture and economic growth
Culture as a deep determinant of growth has its influence working through the
proximate determinants. The links (see Figure 12.1) include: social capital
and trust which facilitate forms of economic exchange; savings and so the
pool of resource available for investment; social norms prohibiting women
from working outside the household; attitudes to the dignity of labour and
hard work affecting labour productivity and so TFP; the mobility of women
250