1. If one insists that “culture” be viewed as a latent characteristic of institutions *and not* of individuals, then a predictive cultural theory of risk is certainly possible. All we need are tools for identifying institutions (“the university”; “the military”; “the home” or whathaveyou) and for validly and reliably measuring the cultural worldviews of those institutions. Then we simply move individuals around from institution to institution & test whether their risk perceptions vary in the way posited. I doubt this is how the world works, but if it is, cultural theory will no longer furnish an explanation of societal disagreements about risk in the way that Douglas & Wildavsky claimed it could in Risk & Culture. The egalitarians, individualists, and hierarchists in R&C were groups of people who disagreed w/ each other about the ideal society; their story would have fallen apart if we imagined that those people were just the ones who at any given moment were at home, at work, at the uinversity, at the salon, etc. Similarly, when we try to make sense of “climate change skeptics” and “climate change believers” today, we are trying to understand people* w/ relatively stable beliefs, not just temporary receptacles for risk outlooks that get poured into them as they wander from place to place. If we want a theory that explains who believes what & why about politically contested empirical claims about risk, the the “instituitionalist” conception of CT is of no use. Or more accurately, if it can be shown that risk perceptions aren’t persistent but vary in individuals as they move from place to place, we should stop trying to do what the “individualist” conception of CT does–viz., trying to find explanations for patterns of variance in individual risk perception–b/c the explanandum turns out to be just a (very amazing) illusion.

2. If culture is viewed as a latent characteristic of individuals (to be sure, one shaped by social influences, but one that is nevertheless *in* people, not their locations), then prediction is also possible. Such a program depends on being able to develop valid and reliable measures of individuals’ cultural wordlviews, which can then be used to test hypotheses about the risk perceptions of those individuals. If the theory works– if it helps to explain, predict, and even prescribe useful strategies for informing belief across persons of diverse outlooks–an “institutionalist” can still deny that this is CT on the ground that culture just *is* a characteristic of persons, but not institutions. But that person will be involved in sort of dogmatic exercise–to define a theory, regardless of what is its good for–& not a scholarly and practical one aimed at helping us to understand what’s going on & what we should think and do about that.

3. Whether one wants to test the “institutionalist” or the “individualist” conception of CT, one can engage in debates about whether the latent characteristic being measured really conforms to the outlooks described by “group”-”grid” or something else. *Here* is where I very much agree w/ the post that we are after something of heuristic value. The idea that we must figure out the “right” view of CT reflects an essentialist orientation (about the thing being measured, and about the theory for measuring it) that I had understood CT to rebel against. But in any case, it is certainly possible to treat MD’s framework not as a “thing” that admits of definitive specification, but rather as a tremendously suggestive and evocative picture of the latent individual characteristics that might in one way or another interact with out they process information about risk; then we can go about trying to translate the picture into valid & reliable measures & what sorts of hypotheses it suggests. What we come with if we treat group-grid in this heuristic (anti-essentialist) fashion should then be assessed by how well the resulting apparatus helps us to explain and predict risk perceptions — the very thing MD and AW were trying to do w/ CT — and not by how well it fits some axiomatically defined construct. People who reject cultural theories of risk as inconsistent with “real” group-grid *whether or not* those theories fit observed patterns of belief and behavior might be doing something interesting, but it is something other than trying to explain the world, scientifically *or* interpretively.

Which of my identities takes precedence, me the autonomous decision maker, or me the social role?

Schweder’s sociological writing persuasively argues whether being ‘Mort’ the individual or ‘the second son,’ the role, is determined by the social surround, Milwaukee or Mumbai.

Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey describe a developmental cognitive ability that is negotiated between the individual and surround.
Their system persuasively describes an emerging individual, or is it a hermit, that can consciously negotiate the extent of their loyalty to/ captivity by their surround.

I would be interested in further comments and sources that wrestle with locus and means of control for these four cultures and their interaction with psychology, growth and change for the individual.

Wonderful site. Thanks for all the hard work.