I’m still thinking about fatalism as one of the four cultures of Grid-group cultural theory.
Even in the United States, whose mascot is Lady Liberty, not Lady Luck, and don’t we all know it, there is clear evidence of fatalist activism. Continue reading Fatalism in America today
Of the four worldviews of grid-group cultural theory, the one cultural theorists themselves most often exclude from the discussion is fatalism. They do this by claiming it is ‘passive’ (Michael Thompson), or ‘isolate’ (Mary Douglas), and by claiming fatalism opts out of policy debates, or is excluded by the others by definition. This betrays a real bias and a failure of imagination on the part of researchers.
Continue reading to find out about fatalist activism and the fatal nation. Continue reading How to be a Fatalist
Two recent blog comments are critical of the way I have presented grid-group cultural theory’s four cultures.
At journalist George Monbiot’s Guardian blog, TheNuclearOption says:
Meanwhile, over at economist John Quiggins’ blog, KieranO says:
Fourcultures, i like what Richard Feynman says ….
“Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.”These four cultures that you describe, simply find and fool themselves. Science is about discovery.
To take the first criticism first, why are there only four cultural solidarities – why not two, twelve or more? Continue reading Grid-Group Cultural Theory: a way of trying not to fool yourself?
It came to my attention recently that there are still churches which don’t let women preach or lead worship.
Choosing the leaders because they are men is a hierarchical approach to social organisation and needs to be set in a context. The other ways of choosing leaders should be noted:
Egalitarian – ‘priesthood of all believers’ (become more like the Quakers and be suspicious of activities that require structured leadership)
Individualist – ‘work out your own salvation’ (become more like the new age and construct your own tailor-made religion out of bought pieces. Leaders are entrepreneurs).
Fatalist – ‘the lot fell upon Matthias; and he was numbered with the eleven apostles’ (Acts 1.26) (become more like a lottery and embrace chance. After all, leadership is pointless – who remembers what Matthias ever did?) Continue reading Grid-group cultural theory and hierarchical churches
Fourcultures received a nice email from Huw asking how I learned about cultural theory. It was while enrolled on a religious studies course that I first came across the work of anthropologist Mary Douglas, who had developed a four part typology of cultures in her book Natural Symbols. Admittedly at the time it didn’t seem very clear how to apply this, since education is mostly wasted on the young. Intriguing as it was, I didn’t take it any further. But it must have been bubbling away under the surface because years later, while studying the phenomenon of peak oil, it suddenly struck home that the arguments for and against peak oil seemed to match very well the contours of cultural bias, or social solidarities, that Douglas had sketched. On further investigation it became clear that the theory had been strongly developed since the 1980s and now has much to say about today’s social, political and religious debates. That’s what this website is about.
A definitive survey of Mary Douglas’s work was written by Richard Fardon: Mary Douglas: An Intellectual Biography (London: Routledge, 1999).
For those wanting to find out more about grid-group cultural theory and the four cultures it describes you could check out Michael Thompson’s book, Organising and Disorganising, which Huw says is great.
Michael Thompson gave a lecture at the RSA, and an interview which you can download.
[updated 4/2/2016]
British Journalist George Monbiot has been writing a number of pieces about a TV ‘documentary’ which supposedly tried to debunk climate change by doctoring statistics and misrepresenting interviewees. Certainly it was one of the most mendacious things I’ve seen on TV, right up there with ads for shampoo that cures dandruff. Monbiot seems to think this kind of thing plays well because, as he puts it,
“We want to be misled, we crave it; and we will bend our minds into whatever shape they need to take in order not to face our brutal truths”.
I think he’s completely wrong on this. We are not self-deceiving in this way, and we are not living in ‘the age of stupid‘ as a film with a similar theory put it (although I look forward to seeing the movie). Well, not with global warming, anyway. Dandruff may be another matter. I’ll explain.
Continue reading What we argue about when we argue about global warming
Four Cultures 