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Departmental Seminar - Beyond East and West: A Sociological Reexamination of Individualism-Collectivism

29 November 2024 at 3:00:00 am

The cultural dimension Individualism-Collectivism (I-C) was first introduced in 1980 by Hofstede, coining culture a “sociological and not psychological” phenomenon. Since then, the I-C dimension has proliferated across the social sciences and beyond, adopting a range of contradictory measures and interpretations. I-C has been commonly portrayed as a binary, with Western individualism linked to self-centredness and Asian collectivism associated with social harmony and cooperation. Such a view contradicts most major sociological theories from Durkheim, Weber, and Tönnies to contemporary modernization theories and finds no empirical support. To counteract unfounded cultural stereotypes and provide an up-to-date measure, we develop an authoritative, theory-driven I-C index, using nationally representative data from the World Values Survey and European Values Study, covering 99 countries/territories comprising 88% of the world’s population. Our index shows excellent internal coherence and temporal stability and outperforms Hofstede’s I-C in associations with a nomological network of 30 societal indicators theoretically linked to I-C. Instead of East-vs.-West, I-C most accurately depicts cultural differences alongside levels of socioeconomic development, as expected by modernization theory. We argue for an overdue paradigm shift in cross-cultural research: scholars should move beyond outdated cultural stereotypes and instead rely on theoretically appropriate and up-to-date measures of societal culture when seeking to understand global cultural variation.


About the Speaker:


Plamen Akaliyski is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Sociology and Social Policy, Lingnan University. He earned his Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Oslo, Norway, and completed postdoctoral research stints at University Carlos III of Madrid (Spain), Maastricht University (Netherlands), and Keio University (Japan). His research is focused on understanding global cultural value diversity and change, exploring factors such as historical legacies, environmental adaptations, modernization trends, and identity formation. His research appears in journals like European Societies, European Journal of Political Research, Social Science & Medicine and Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology.


Departmental Seminar - Beyond East and West: A Sociological Reexamination of Individualism-Collectivism

Date: 29 November 2024

Time: 11:00am - 12:00pm

Venue: CJT-9.29

Speaker: Prof. Plamen Akaliyski

Registration: https://hkuems1.hku.hk/hkuems/ec_hdetail.aspx?ueid=97149

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