Cultural Map of the World
Found this pretty picture, and uncovered quite a bit of material lately, which piqued my stereotyping interest as usual. As much as I tell people we should learn to treat everyone as equals, I also tell people to learn to tell apart their social behaviors, so as to “balance” it out, e.g. if he’s known to be conservative and traditional, don’t prick his temper by shoving him a bunch of modern rational based values in a conversation etc.
And here is the first one: Inglehart-Wezel’s Cultural Map of the World
Notably missing again is smaller countries that never really appear in most sociologist’s minds, i.e. Malaysia and Singapore, which this blogs ardently address.
The original document can be found here on world value survey. The material is part of a thicker book which has just made my reading list (hopefully I’ll get to it and the library has one). Here’s another pretty picture showing how societies move towards more secular thinking and taking survival for granted.
I did some simple exercise of simply trying to place MY/SG on the same two dimensional scale. Singapore is easier: A country constantly living in fear of being destroyed by its unstable neighbor, they remember survival slightly better, although in real life people tend to take it for granted except when they are serving in the military. Although many younger generation embrace self-expression, the general population still tend not to speak up, so I’ll give them a score of 0.75 on the x-axis, somewhere between Spain/West Germany and France/Italy. Similarly on the y-axis, although when we walk through the streets of Singapore one would immediately recognize the cosmopolitan outlook, the multiracial, multi religious society living side by side, many policy makers are still very wary that they are holding onto a bomb that if not handled well, can result in deep polarization of the island which cannot be partitioned any further. Thus, I’d say on the whole they would score around 0.25, around the region of say Israel and Britain.
Malaysia is probably a bit harder: The polarity of traditional values and modern values in suburban versus urban areas are in stark differences (much like US – which is the main reason they are so traditional / conservative when taken as a whole). Orthodox religion, especially that of Islam, is still practiced strongly in many parts of the country, whereas in the cities, most traditional values are simply a done for the sake of doing. Secular thought is most pronounced in the capital, where recent events reminds us that defenders of democracy is still standing strong with their rational thoughts. Since the rural areas still outnumber the town, I’d say the average on the y-axis is probably -0.75, alongside Vietnam and trailing USA. On the x-axis though, Malaysians have exhibited more self expression than that of a typical Singaporean. Survival values are not as pronounced as most families aren’t bothered so much about finding their next meal or fighting a war, perhaps only against the local thieves. In general, city folks are more outspoken than their countryside counterparts. I’d give them a solid 1.25 on the x-axis, measuring up with Great Britain and Switzerland.
Maybe you can draw your own conclusion, using this graph to help identify several key characteristic, since I didn’t follow it exactly in mine.
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