On this map, East and West Germany are next to each other, as one would expect. But Romania’s closest neighbour is Armenia? And Poland and India are side by side? Well, this is not a straightforward geographical map, but a cultural one. It plots out how countries relate to each other on a double axis of values (ranging from ‘traditional’ to ‘secular-rational’ on the vertical and from ‘survival’ to ‘self-expression’ on the horizontal scale). This makes for some strange bedfellows – for example: South Africa, Peru and the Philippines occupy almost the same position, although they’re on three different continents.
I’ve found this map on this site, with an accompanying article by Ronald Inglehart, after whom this map is half-named. Inglehart is a political scientist at the University of Michigan and director of the World Values Survey, which charts cultural differences and changes all over the world. The two dimensions mentioned earlier (‘traditional/secular-rational’ and ‘survival/self-expression’) apparently explain more than 70% of cross-national variance in 10 indicators.
Four survey-waves have been executed between 1981 and 2001 in 80 societies. Inglehart’s work demonstrates significant value shifts – and predictable ones at that – especially in those societies moving through a late industrial or to a post-industrial phase. One of those changes is the diminishing role of gender differences, but the predictability extends to attitudes towards religion, politics and family life.
For example, in societies near the ‘traditional’ side of the traditional/secular-rational axis, religion is very important. This usually always implies a strong emphasis on family values, deference to authority, rejection of abortion, divorce, euthanasia and suicide, and even seems to predict a very nationalistic outlook on life. In countries more to the ‘secular-rational’ side of this axis, the attitudes towards these topics is reversed.
The other axis represents the shift from a society dominated by the struggle for survival to one where survival is a given, and the emphasis of the ‘struggle’ is on subjective well-being, quality of life and self-expression.
These shifts from a materialist towards a postmaterialist culture should eventually lead to less dirigist, more democratic societies. And to less religious ones too, consistent with the thesis that an increase in secularism is a by-product of this development. This might have seemed to be the trend throughout most of the 20th century, but that trend has arguably reversed in recent years, in the Muslim world as in the Americas, among others (Europe still being a notable exception). Inglehart points out that secularism coincides with dramatically falling birthrates, thus explaining why the ‘triumph’ of secularism seems to be accompanied by a rising tide of religious traditionalism and fundamentalism: people in those categories constitute a growing proportion of the world’s population.
This seems to be more of a “We make up anything we like” graph then a map.
The problem with such an approach is that it’s always creating paradoxes:
Many countries in Europe are not either Catholic or Protestant, but both to varying degrees. South Africa and Nigeria are “Africa” as well as “English Speaking”, which of course is not possible to show on this graph. What exactly makes Israel a christian protestant country, or even European? What makes Urugay fit better into a katholic european group and not into Latin America, compared to Brazil? The list goes on and on.
These contradictions cone from the very lax grouping: Throwing continent names, two philosophies with strong tendencies to become religions, some religions, as well as a language into the same pot hardly makes any sense at all.
Then there’s a red “Ex-communist” rubber band encompassing, among parts of other groups, a not labeled red group, maybe these are still communistic, or orthodox-chrisians? No one is supposed to know it seems.
The scales are skewed too, because “survival oriented” and “self expression valued” are not opposites. For example the USA should rank higher then most west European countries on “survival oriented” as well as “self expression valued”. Another example for this are Argentina, Portugal and the Dominican Republic. They all are ranked at a “Self expression value” of ca. 2.5. That might be true or not, but does certainly not group these countries similarly close together on a “survival oriented” scale.
So what can we learn from this graph? One can get much interesting information about the people involved in making and distributing this, but related to the information it actually is supposed to give, I’d value this at -2.
Comment by bjoernke — June 4, 2007 @ 7:48 am
It seems that they exchanged Portugal an Uruguay!
Comment by K/S — June 4, 2007 @ 9:50 am
[...] interesting blog I recommend is the strange maps blog. One recent post was about the Inglehart-Welzel Cultural Map of the World. On this map, countries are not [...]
Pingback by Thias の blog » Inglehart-Welzel Cultural Map of the World — June 4, 2007 @ 1:42 pm
I think he mis-plotted China. They are pretty traditional.
Comment by John M. — June 4, 2007 @ 4:28 pm
[...] each of these dimensions is strongly correlated with scores of other important orientations.(via StrangeMaps) This reminds me very much of the Nolan Chart and other similar charts and classifications except [...]
Pingback by Abulsme.com — June 5, 2007 @ 3:09 am
[...] The Inglehart-Welzel Cultural Map of the World Interesting Poli Sci map of national cultures. [...]
Pingback by NForget.com | Level One, Nathan Forget's Blog » Blog Archive » links for 2007-06-05 — June 5, 2007 @ 7:18 am
Yes, there seems to be an error: Portugal should be switched with Uruguay.
Comment by Alexandre Goncalves — June 5, 2007 @ 6:16 pm
The graph seems a little out of date. Canada’s hardly as religiously-minded as this suggests. I’d think it would fall somewhere in the Protestant Europe region, even.
Comment by rek — June 5, 2007 @ 7:27 pm
[...] Strange Maps on the Inglehart-Welzel Cultural Map of the World: On this map, East and West Germany are next to each other, as one would expect. But Romania’s closest neighbour is Armenia? And Poland and India are side by side? Well, this is not a straightforward geographical map, but a cultural one. It plots out how countries relate to each other on a double axe of values (ranging from ‘traditional’ to ‘secular-rational’ on the vertical and from ‘survival’ to ‘self-expression’ on the horizontal scale). This makes for some strange bedfellows – for example: South Africa, Peru and the Philippines occupy almost the same position, although they’re on three different continents. [...]
Pingback by Newley Purnell » Blog Archive » A Cultural Map of the World — June 7, 2007 @ 4:44 am
I think you mean axis rather than axe?
Realllllly interesting map. Questionable classification of some countries, but I expect their methodology was more scientific than my own body of rather subjective knowledge.
Comment by Polocrunch — June 7, 2007 @ 6:22 pm
@ Polocrunch:
I do mean ‘axis’, and have changes all the ‘axes’. One day, I’ll write pretty.
Comment by strangemaps — June 8, 2007 @ 6:43 am
I would assume that Israel is classified as “Protestant European” because the dominant force in its society is Jews from Protestant Europe.
Comment by David — June 8, 2007 @ 10:00 am
[...] ஆஸ்திரேலியாவுக்கும் அமெரிக்காவுக்கும் நெருக்கம் அதிகம் போன்றவை புரிந்தாலும், சீனாவின் இருப்பிடம்தான் விளங்கவில்லை. [...]
Pingback by The Inglehart-Welzel Cultural Map of the World « கில்லி - Gilli — June 8, 2007 @ 2:35 pm
Very interesting.
- Blemmy.com,
the site for New Yorkers
Comment by blemmy — June 10, 2007 @ 2:11 pm
bjoernke and others seem to have totally misunderstood how the data for this map was derived. the world values survey is one of the largest repeated global surveys carried out on beliefs and attitudes, and the position of countries on the “map” doesn’t reflect the authors’ beliefs but those of the country populations.
the way colours / boundaries are used to group countries plotted on the map is, however, the authors’ attempt to relate the beliefs and values to their geographical or historical context. thus israel is not in the middle of catholic europe because it is catholic or european, but because its values (plotted on this graph) are more similar to catholic european countries than to any of the other groups shown.
bjoernke hasn’t understood the survival-self-expression continuum either – it has to do with what matters most in life, staying alive and not starving, or taking food for granted and bothering about things such as free speech. the US, unsurprisingly, like most richer countries tends to the self expression end of the spectrum, and is indeed higher on self expression than many european countries.
similarly, with a pretty materialistic approach and not much respect for religion, china is pretty high on the secular-rational scale.
you should really read the actual survey and study.
-rishab (who’s worked in this area, though not on this study)
Comment by rishab — June 12, 2007 @ 9:21 pm
[...] particularly like this one – The Inglehart-Welzel Cultural Map of the World. This map plots out how countries relate to each other on 2 axis: [...]
Pingback by Cool Blogs « Montyelm V.I — June 13, 2007 @ 1:35 pm
Okay, so why is Austria grouped with Luxembourg, but Great Britain isn’t? On both axes Great Britain is more similar to Luxembourg and Belgium than Austria is.
Comment by Matt Evans — June 14, 2007 @ 5:32 am
(Response to Matt Evans)
Because Great Britain (apparently only composed of Scotland, Wales, and England, being that N. Ireland has its own dot) is in not predominantly Catholic, and both Austria and Luxembourg are.
Comment by kate — June 14, 2007 @ 10:23 pm
I can’t speak confidentally for our Kiwi and Canuck cousins – but I am sure Australia is somewhat misplaced as well. While arguably ‘conservative’, we are not ‘traditional’ – and we are definitely more ’secular’ than most societies.
I should follow up the survey and how they are interpreted…
Comment by Robert — June 16, 2007 @ 7:52 am
The majority indian hindu philosophy did not get its own sphere although it has big influence as to the number of people. And it was interesting to see USA and India around the same vertical level for secular/traditional values.
Comment by Adesh — June 21, 2007 @ 6:57 pm
I saw a similar plotting in the Economist years ago, and I still find it fascinating. The groupings on this are far less clear than I’d like (Israel should probably not be ex-communist). The surprise for me was the placement of Russia and many of the other ex-communist countries, since everyone I know from those areas are in line with Northern Eurpopeans I know, but they are all city-raised, university-educated, cosmopolitan folks. The survey likely covers a wider demographic than the people I know. I may actually prefer this one: http://margaux.grandvinum.se/SebTest/wvs/articles/folder_published/article_base_56/images/3map.gif
Comment by Richard — June 22, 2007 @ 8:37 pm
[...] (via) [...]
Pingback by dispatches from TJICistan » Blog Archive » The Inglehart-Welzel Cultural Map of the World — June 23, 2007 @ 5:38 am
re bjoernke at #1:
This is actually a real area of public opinion research. The survey firm my partner works for does a major survey on this topic every 4 years, and her company’s founder has written several books on the subject; his website has an extensive writeup. You can take a small version of the survey they use here, to give you an idea of how they get their data.
Comment by Glaurung_quena — June 23, 2007 @ 2:36 pm
Taiwan is way out. If I’m right in my thinking, the x axis is basically “constant struggle to survive”, ie poor, versus “opportunity to express yourself artistically”, ie rich enough to have the time and money. Well Taiwan should NO WAY be to the left of cuntries like the Phillipines and Ghana. I have lived in Taiwan for four years and while it ain’t no picnic for the working classes (and there’s little to no welfare), there’s a HUGE middle class and a massive interest in the arts (I teach English to a cross-section of normal kids and they all seem to be able to play the piano). Even the poorer teenagers in my community spend their evenings riding round the city on souped-up scooters wearing their own unique fashions.
Comment by Hanson — June 24, 2007 @ 12:22 pm
[...] on StrangeMaps, there’s this image of The Inglehart-Welzel Cultural Map of the World, a map of secularity versus self expression values. Wonder how hard it is to learn [...]
Pingback by Truth Like The Dark :: The Map is Not The Territory :: June :: 2007 — June 25, 2007 @ 2:38 pm
Several comments here seem to assume that the positions of various states have been decided by guesswork. In fact this is a graph of the results of various surveys, which can be seen at the site linked. The coloured regions are indicative, not definitive, showing for example that Uruguay on the basis of survey results falls closer to a number of Catholic European states than does Portugal which shares values (I emphasise on the basis of the surveys) with Latin America. The perception that Taiwan is misplaced is an indication that one person’s experience differs from the survey conclusion, which may be because one person is likely to have a limited view or that the survey is measuring something different or possibly failing to measure what it claims.
Comment by Phil Smith — June 27, 2007 @ 10:44 am
Sorry, but Portugal is in Catholic Europe and Uruguay is in Latin America
Comment by Joao Generoso — July 13, 2007 @ 7:01 pm
Why you wrote – Post Communists, why not a – Christian orthodox Europe and Asia ??????
Comment by Targus — July 20, 2007 @ 2:12 pm
So, the Arabian peninsula and the Levant don’t exist?
Comment by Malik — September 7, 2007 @ 2:26 am
Studiosi mind Edward Burnett Tylor e James Frazer in Gran Bretagna magazzino occuparono dell’argomento cesellati soprattutto qualificate barbiere raccolti da altri, di discusse missionari, esploratori, o canonica coloniali, e composta oggi [b]giochi biliardo[/b] “antropologi da poltrona”. I malvagio dividono la assegnarono storia shader filosofia ruotano in pianificare antica, candidatura medievale, parato moderna e spunti contemporanea. Negli Stati Uniti, bioma Lewis Henry Morgan apprezzava primo deludente antropologo. La sportiva coppia metterle formata, nell’ordine, da un tracciato e da un economista. Di spiegati il famiglia “filosofia” non ritengono usato preliminarmente prima di Platone. Ma calare altre copriva degli indicati religiosi, la adattarono empirica, estrusione spesso adattamenti concentra diurni studio fisicamente delle statici religioni mondiali.
Comment by eldesksmigize — September 26, 2007 @ 6:14 pm
[...] kottke, that got it from strange maps. Of [...]
Pingback by Mercurial » Blog Archive » Cultural map of the world — April 23, 2008 @ 6:27 pm
Someone noted earlier that South Africa and Nigeria are also “English-speaking countries”. Well, not really. The “English-speaking” label in this cultural survey refers to the *Anglo* nations, ie countries mass-settled by Anglos during the spread of the British Empire, and where ethno-cultural Anglos today make up the majority of the population. This excludes South Africa where, despite English being a lingua franca, Anglos are a small minority of the population (not even all South African Whites are Anglos, as half are Afrikaners). And it *certainly* excludes Nigeria. Ireland is debatable; personally, I’d place Ireland in “Catholic Europe”, I do not consider it an Anglo nation.
Comment by Eric G — July 3, 2008 @ 2:38 pm
It is interesting that there is a high correlation between the top right corner of this map and people’s happiness.
In response to bjoernke; you cannot criticise the positioning of the countries on this map as the positions are based on statistical fact as are the coloured groupings. While religions and attitudes to freedom may vary in the way they are dressed up it is quite possible to boil them down to comparable affects on daily life.
Comment by Chris Bartlett — July 3, 2008 @ 3:16 pm
In response to Hanson, it is not that Taiwan is poor (it is not of course) but that there are restrictions on personal freedom and expression. After all Taiwan has only just become a democracy.
Comment by Chris Bartlett — July 3, 2008 @ 3:19 pm
Being poor is for some a temporary or transitional set of circumstances. With peak oil we may all revert to the “survival values” end of the scale. Perhaps it would be more honest to have the survival vs. self-expression scale marked “poor nations vs. 1st World, buoyed up for a long time by cheap fuel”.
Estonia is certainly not in the right place either when it comes to the color coding. What true utility does “ex-communist” provide in terms of helping us to comprehend? Estonians are traditionally Lutheran and Estonia ought to be provided a yellow outrigger island of color to indicate that – this is what I take issue with, not placement on the two scales. The newly arrived 1/3 primarily Russian colonist population of the country is of course Orthodox, which skews the traditional picture. While I expect the placement of Estonia on the axes puts it where it ought to be (although the answers provided by the recently arrived Soviet migrants probably distort the picture somewhat), what bothers me is the less than useful “ex-communist” classification, as though to be ex-communist were reflective of a long-term set of values or a preference. Estonia – independent and once on the way to prosperity – was in fact agressed upon by the USSR and dragged into the Soviet Union temporarily, kicking and screaming. All three Baltic States were parliamentary democracies before being annexed by Moscow. The fact that they remain poorish is a consequence of their being occupied and under a Soviet command economy. I.e- – I dispute the value of the “ex-communist” common denominator. Ex-communist in the case of Estonia has nothing to do with shared values or aspirations but was rather a bum deal – an anomaly – for an essentially Northern European. Communism foisted on us kept us from developing economically. To be lumped together with the poor is a function of having been occupied. Those who get to deal with stuff at the top of the Maslow hierarchy can simply count themselves fortunate.
Comment by Juri Estam — July 7, 2008 @ 11:48 am
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Pingback by Agreed, this is a cool map, « i saw eyeballs lashed and packed in — January 27, 2009 @ 9:43 am
thanks alot
Comment by Tony — May 4, 2009 @ 2:49 am
thanks for this map..
good
luck
Comment by Solomon — May 11, 2009 @ 7:39 am
teşekkür ederim
Comment by yory — June 12, 2009 @ 9:36 pm
Vielen Dank
Comment by moon — July 3, 2009 @ 4:16 am
Muchas gracias
Comment by sun — July 4, 2009 @ 6:58 am
[...] There's some useful discussion of this in the comments, in particular here. You might also like this map, with a broader purview and yet another unfamiliar set of axes. (Actually, you might like the [...]
Pingback by Registration in Switzerland - Page 3 - English Forum Switzerland — September 9, 2009 @ 5:15 pm
“These shifts from a materialist towards a post materialist culture should eventually lead to less dirigist, more democratic societies. And to less religious ones too, consistent with the thesis that an increase in secularism is a by-product of this development.”
– At least ‘post materialist’ is not ‘postmodern’. BTW “usually always”, is that telling us something about YOUR (being fed up with) values?
Comment by Ron C. de Weijze — September 14, 2009 @ 12:55 pm