Inglehart, Ronald and Wayne Baker. "Modernization, Cultural Change, and the Persistence of Traditional Values". American Sociological Review, Vol.65, No.1 (2000): 19-51.

Inglehart, Ronald and Wayne Baker. "Modernization, Cultural Change, and the Persistence of Traditional Values". American Sociological Review, Vol.65, No.1 (2000): 19-51.

• The early 20th Century predicted that all societies faced a common modernity, all trending towards some form of superior society with certain characteristics, usually based on economic development.  Most theories assumed that the modernity would look like the contemporary West and that as the Third World developed it would resemble the West. The rise of advanced industrial economies in East Asia has generally disproved this West-centric hypothesis (19).
• Contrary to these expectations, the later half of the 20th Century featured a reemergence of cultural and religious divides in the developed world over issues like abortion. The rise of fundamentalist Islam has also lead some to claim that cultural divides are becoming more salient, not less (19).
• Two different theories exist in regards to value change and socio-economic development. Modernists claim that industrialization produces overwhelming social change which will result in the replacement of traditional values with 'modern' values. The other school argues that traditional values will persist despite industrialization, contending that values are mostly unconnected to economic factors (20).
• Early modernization theory immediately following the Second World War held that cultural attitudes and economic progress were directly linked, prompting the US to attempt to 'reform' societies along Western values as to stimulate capitalist economic development (20).
• These theory came under intense criticism during the late 1960s and 1970s, especially from Neo-Marxist scholars who argued that the underdevelopment of certain countries was actually a result of those same modern capitalist systems which the West was trying to implement in the  Third World (20).
• This dependance theory was also attacked in the 1990s, as more data demonstrated that multinational corporations and foreign investment actual demonstrated positive to mixed effects on developing societies, including tangible benefits for the poor (20-21).
• The Marxist understanding of modernization has not materialized in the capitalist West, as the industrial proletariat gradually shrank following the Second World War and was absorbed in the service sector. Most the OECD transformed into post-industrial societies by the 1970s, and accordingly experienced cultural shifts emphasizing higher quality of life (21).
• Dr. Daniel Bell argues that the societal mindset of countries change alongside the industrialization process. A pre-industrial society is at the mercy of nature and places high premiums on religion and traditional methods of control. An industrial society is drunk on its own secular and human power, leading to declines in religion and attempts to engineer society with intense bureaucratization. A post-industrial society's dependence on knowledge and autonomy means that people indulge in self-expression and individuality with focus on higher quality of life (21-22).
• The idea that dominant religions at the time of industrialization had a profound and lasting effect on the organization of societies started with the work of Max Weber, to be expanded upon by Dr. Samuel Huntington. Other scholars have also observed differences in the form of modernity between societies, along with different explanatory theories (22).
• This study uses data from the World Values Survey, collected in three periods from the 1980s onward and including over 75% of the world population in the countries surveyed (23). From this data, the authors study the presence of traditional values versus secular-rational values -- based on religious devotion, respect for authority, nationalism, and stances of abortion -- and values of survival versus self-expression -- based on security concerns, political conformity, stances on homosexuality, levels of trust, and happiness (23-24).
• There is a correlation between traditional values and survivalist values, as people who are less secure in their economic, social, or cultural situation tend to fear outside forces more and thus demonstrate additional attachment to traditional values. Conversely, societies where economic and social security is guaranteed are more accepting of out-groups (28).
• The results of the study are prevented with country variables on a graph with axes representing the traditional-secular continuum and the survival-expression continuum. The data points of countries are then divided into circles on the cultural dividing lines proposed by Dr. Huntington (28-29).
• The primary divisions appear to be between rich countries and poor countries. Societies with GDP per capita of over $15,000 USD a year tend to be rational-secular and self-expressionist, whereas countries with GDP per capital of under $2,000 USD per year are traditional and survivalist. Other income levels fit a fairly smooth distribution between these two points. This trend exists across Dr. Huntington's cultural zones (29-30).
• A division of the data set along percentages of industrial, agricultural, and service workers seems to support some Marxist elements of economic change spurring culture. Industrial societies are correlated with rational-secular values, while agricultural societies tend to accept traditional values. This indicates that industrialization is the period when rational-secular values become most cemented (30-31).
• This trend is not, however, uniform. All former Communist states display high levels of rational-secular values regardless of their level of economic development, and Catholic societies are overwhelmingly traditionalist despite industrialization (31).
• Self-expressionist values are linked to the rise of the service economy, with strong correlation and little to no connection to industrialization. Cultural factors also exist here, with Protestant nations scoring consistently higher on self-expression and Communist societies being consistently more survivalist (31).
• While cultural factors appear to exert some effect on societal values, they only represent a portion of that country's history. Accordingly, systems of rule like Communism also leave lasting effects that make ex-Communist members of the Protestant, Muslim, and Confucian zones behave differently, as do immigration patterns (31).
• The cultural zones proposed by Dr. Huntington can be justified using some of this data, but that same study also suggests a number of alternative cultural zones with equal empirical criteria, like an English-speaking zone of a Catholic zone including Latin America (32).
• "Societies with a common cultural heritage generally do fall into common clusters. At the same time, their positions also reflect their level of economic development, occupational structure, religion, and other major historical influences. Thus, their positions in this two-dimensional space reflect a multidimensional reality-and this remarkable socioeconomic cultural coherence reflects the fact that a society's culture is shaped by its entire economic and historical heritage" (32).
• Eight out of the nine cultural zones proposed by Dr. Huntington have a coherence in values at a statistically significant level, the exception being Catholic Europe, although this changes when combined with Latin America (32-33).
• Cultural heritage appears to have a statistically significant effect on values in industrialized societies, however it is only one a number of factors. Both economic development and the proportion of the labour force in industrial and service sectors have significant overlap, but cultural lines are still significant when these variables are controlled for (34, 38).
• This may not be true for the African cultural zone, which had only three case studies and thus does not represent a large enough area to make accurate predictions (34).
• Cultural groups also have demonstrative statistical significance for predicting the GDP and sector employment proportions in countries. The authors also found that the variable of societal trust was particularly affected by cultural zones, with Protestants have significantly more trust for strangers (35-36).
• The correlations between societal values and historical cultural zones suggests two potential explanations: that contemporary religious practices instill specific values, or that historical religious traditions shaped the development of state institutions which continue to function along these historic values. The evidence clearly supports the later explanation, as differences between nations are much larger than between religious groups in the same country (36-37).
• The patterns of values change over the course of the survey period, from 1983 to 1997, demonstrates some trends. Economic development tends to promote rational-secular and self-expressionist values, whereas economic collapse -- like that in the former Soviet Union -- promotes traditional and survivalist values. Developed societies tend to continue becoming self-expressionist, but stop becoming more secular-rational after a point (41).
• Research has suggested that values are already relatively set by the time people reach adulthood, implying that different generations in these studies should display different societal values. The expectation would be that older generations are more survivalist and traditionalist, and that this gap would be exacerbated in countries with high longevity (42).
• The highest rates of generational change in values towards secular-rational were in Communist and Western capitalist societies, with developing and low-income societies experiencing the same shift at a much slower rate of change (43). The same shifts occurred towards self-expressionist values, but here all societies developed at similar rates (44).
• These studies of generational difference only take into account the generations born from 1900 to 1970, not including the substantial changes likely to have occurred in values of the generation growing up under the Gorbachev administration (45).
• High rates of religious belief among wealthy societies can be explained by a number of factors. Firstly, although increased wealth contributes to atheism, the collapse of wealth in the former USSR has contributed to increased religious devotion, as has the end of state-sponsored atheism (46).
• Additionally, security and the need to feel grounded has never been the only reason that religions became successful. Religious belief still provides benefits and communities which cannot be provided elsewhere, something that may explain why some developed societies continue to have high rates of church attendance (47-48).
• Modernization and the value changes that result from it are probabilist not predictive, not every society will behave in the same way. Many factors not explored in this article are involved, and domestic context is crucial (49).
• "The central prediction of modernization theory finds broad support:  Economic development is associated with major changes in prevailing values and beliefs: The worldviews of rich societies differ markedly from those of poor societies. This does not necessarily imply cultural convergence, but it does predict the general direction of cultural change and [...] gives some idea of the rate at which such change is likely to occur" (49-50).