Current Sociology

Bachika, Reimon; Schulz, Markus S

doi: 10.1177/0011392110391128pmid: N/A

This article introduces the Current Sociology monograph issue on Values and Culture. It discusses sociology’s renewed interest in values and the general approach on which the contributors converge despite diverse theoretical backgrounds, areas of focus and social settings. It explains how the studies in this publication contribute to the understanding of the formation and operation of values on micro, meso and macro levels in an increasingly globalized world.

Featherstone, Mike

doi: 10.1177/0011392110391129pmid: N/A

This article explores the formation of values on individual, cultural, societal, civilizational and epochal levels and discusses the carriers of values, symbolic hierarchies and future prospects. It demonstrates the continued conceptual and time-diagnostic usefulness of Georg Simmel’s sociological approach to values and argues that his Lebensphilosophie (‘philosophy of life’) offers a platform for dealing with modernity’s contingencies and ambiguities by treating life as such as the ultimate but indeterminate value that must be worked out by individuals. Values are needed as a preliminary means of orientation, even if these need not be considered to be of lasting duration.

Chee-Beng, Tan

doi: 10.1177/0011392110391144pmid: N/A

This article discusses the ecological and political bases of values, and their significance in our understanding of cultural life, through an ethnographic reflection of an indigenous minority in East Malaysia, the Badeng Kenyah’s, encounter with capitalist markets. In addition, post-Mao China’s encounter with the global capitalist market is also discussed to show the nature of values and social change and the need to reinvent values and create institutions to reinforce relevant values that will shape new cultural forms. Human values, including values that emphasize social welfare and harmony with nature, have their roots in the principle of reciprocity in egalitarian small-scale societies. However, values embedded in human cultural traditions are swept away by market forces in an increasingly globalized world. Ecological humanism is an emerging new worldview that influences the reinvention of values and fosters the formation of new cultural forms.

North, Scott

doi: 10.1177/0011392110391145pmid: N/A

This article explores the relationship between Japanese workers’ persistent inner-worldly asceticism and today’s globalizing economy. The interplay of values and corporate cultural practices, global market forces and individual health outcomes is illustrated in the case of an Osaka stockbroker killed by overwork (karôshi) during the 1990 Gulf War and resultant collapse of Japan’s ‘bubble economy’. The analysis centres on corporate documents and events which publicly valorized the broker as the embodiment of the ideal employee. The tradition of discipline, dedication and deference that he came to symbolize interacted with inequalities in the global division of labour to produce tragic consequences for him and his family. Viewed through historical, micro and macro lenses, the negative potential of such ascetic work ethics comes into focus. But the analysis also shows how such cases become catalysts for social movements that emphasize the value of care.

Susumu, Shimazono

doi: 10.1177/0011392110391147pmid: N/A

Advances in biotechnology and medical science, especially breakthroughs in cloning and stem cell research, have raised great expectations for curing diseases, repairing damaged body tissue and organs, enabling conception at advanced age and selecting embryos based on genetic diagnosis. However, the question arises whether these advances will improve the happiness of humankind or whether human bodies are being assaulted as development resources in order to procure greater profits. This article investigates how the value of life is conceptualized by religious cultures vis-a-vis the emerging threats. With regard to the early embryonic stage of human life, the Catholic Church, for example, has raised a loud voice against the artificial termination of pregnancy. As a matter of fact, various religious cultures have showed and underpinned to a considerable extent the value of life and the direction that science and technology should take in this respect. It is argued that the globalized competition in science and technology makes it necessary to transcend the views concerning the value of life propagated by particular religious cultures.

Ciochetto, Lynne

doi: 10.1177/0011392110391150pmid: N/A

Contemporary advertising images in the media play an important role in promoting and sustaining contemporary consumer culture and provide one of the pillars upholding and furthering contemporary capitalism. Though one of its key roles is to promote materialism, advertising imagery also plays a role in cultural and value change at both the surface, selling products, and structural levels, causing shifts in cultural values such as an increasing emphasis on self-gratification through consumption, acceptance of increasing use of sexuality to sell products, obsession with youth, appearance and body image, and overwhelming obsession with modernity and the latest technology. There needs to be greater acknowledgement of these processes or the probable future will be an intensification of the present unsustainable economic system. Preferable options for the future need to take cognizance of the powerful role advertising and the media play in society and assess the possible options for changing those roles.

Graeber, David

doi: 10.1177/0011392110391151pmid: N/A

This article examines the role of values in the political discourse of the last decade in the US. It embarks from what many observers had described as a puzzle: the fact that significant parts of the American working class voted against their economic interests but in line with what they perceived to be their values. As a result, a president had been re-elected who cut taxes for the rich while waging an expensive war in Iraq and increasing public debt to historically unprecedented levels. It is argued that large sectors of the white American working class were disappointed with liberal politicians because they associated them with a cultural elite that occupied positions in society that allowed them to pursue careers of intrinsic value in the arts, science, or politics but which were largely closed to the working class. It is thus suggested that the ‘culture wars’ in the US are better interpreted as a struggle over access to the means to behave altruistically. The article rejects the widespread assumption that individuals are narrowly conceived economic self-interest maximizers. Rather, it suggests that human fulfilment can be related to the satisfaction derived from working for the common good.

Bachika, Reimon

doi: 10.1177/0011392110391152pmid: N/A

Values tend to be taken for granted by communitarian politicians and religiously thinking people as well as by various sociologists, that is insofar as certain aspects of social life underscore the belief in the importance of values. However, other social phenomena, particularly ethnic and religious conflicts, seem more affected by the symbolism of culture than by values. This article attempts to trace the logic of symbolism and values in various cultural settings. It contends that these core components of culture are of much consequence but may be problematic as well, due to their ambivalence and conflation. It concludes that symbolism and values may invert their inherent nature of reason and affect, rationality and irrationality.

Mohan, Kamlesh

doi: 10.1177/0011392110391156pmid: N/A

The argument in this article is twofold. First, the Euro-American project of creating a world market is underpinned by its hegemonic agenda. Second, this has serious implications for the preservation of India’s composite cultural tradition and religious identities. Related to this is the commoditization of women and gender relations. The crucial relevance of grafting the ideals of western modernity for the success of the project of globalization is demonstrated. However, the argument regarding the inevitability of globalization and by implication of western modernity must be contested. The paradigm of modernity for India neither ignores the material aspects of human existence, nor advocates rejection of its rich cultural heritage or withdrawal from community-based social life.

Barbieri Masini, Eleonora

doi: 10.1177/0011392110391158pmid: N/A

Migration at present produces, and will in the future, the encounter of populations belonging to cultures more diverse than ever before. Hence we are moving towards multicultural societies in different parts of the world. The article focuses on Europe and multicultural societies, as well as on the possibility of projects for intercultural societies. In such societies people belonging to different cultures learn to create dialogue by recognizing their own identity and that of other cultures. The article analyses the issue from the conceptual basis of unity and diversity. It also adopts a future-oriented perspective related to the capacity to devise ‘seeds of change’ which may generate visions and projects of and for multicultural or intercultural societies. It searches for evidence of European changes in relation to sociocultural dialogue among bearers of different identities and values leading to possible alternative sociocultural futures.