Culture shift in advanced industrial society

This is an important work as it condenses extensive comparative survey findings into a theoretical framework. Inglehart’s approach is often rejected in principle because it is underlain by "needs theory", i.e. a hierarchised conception of covering needs with societies focused on the very basic ones developing different cultures and values than societies which focus on "postmaterialist" frameworks of organisation and competition.

Methodological polemics and the rivalry of paradigms in the United States and Europe should turn away the attention that is due to such intercultural comparisons. It is possibly more productive to look at Inglehart’s work as a powerful summary of trends that are certainly at work in today’s societies and keep substantiated doubts regarding the causes and the processes that generate these trends.

Works in this vein are important for WP11 because they supply processed suggestions on the shifts that underlie the current quest for security and the formidable institutional backing for that quest.

Inglehart R.,Culture shift in advanced industrial society, Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 1990.