The Many Faces of 'The Cultural Theory of Risk': An Anthropological Critique. Å. Boholm, Institute for Advanced Studies in Social Anthropology, University of Gothenburg, Sweden and Center for Risk Research, Stockholm School of Economics, Stockholm, Sweden
RISK AND CULTURAL BIAS
The 'cultural theory of risk' launched by Aaron
Wildavsky, Karl Dake, Mary Douglas, Michael Thompson and Steve
Rayner has been highly influential in the debate on risk perception
and risk communication. This theory is an extension of the British
social anthropologist Mary Douglas' grid-group theory formulated
in the 1970s. This structural-functionalist model, designed by
way of deduction, aims to explain universal 'cultural bias' through
a general typology of group formation and concomitant cosmology
or world view. Each world view contains distinct ways of coping
with failure and through these counter measures, adopting conventionalized
interpretative schemes, phenomena such as threat, danger, evil,
and failure are not only attributed with meaning s but do actually,
by way of their presence, serve to strengthen the world view and
its supporting social relations. The efficacy of a world view
is restated through the presence of badness. Casting blame, ideas
about pollution, purity and danger and actions undertaken to counteract
various instances of threat and defilement, therefore, serve to
support and sustain a way of life (Douglas 1966).
When turned into a theory of risk perception,
the claim is raised that cultural theory can explain the attitudes
towards various kinds of risks of individuals and collectives
within a society. Cultural theory has launched an ambitious program,
claiming that it can 'predict and explain what kinds of people
will perceive which potential hazards to be how dangerous' (Wildavsky
and Dake 1990: 42). How people understand and react to various
kinds of risks can be explained neither by traits of personality
nor because, human beings in general act according to any given
hierarchy of psycho-physiological needs and preferences.
Risks are culturally 'biased', meaningful phenomena,
the perception of which are highly influenced by socially embedded
-values and beliefs. Furthermore, choices of risk taking and
avoidance are made selectively on the basis of what 'way of life'
or world view an individual adheres to' From the position that-
risk is 'culturally' construed cultural theory hypothesizes that
people fear various things and perceive different kinds of danger
depending on their 'cultural' bias - falling into basically five
ideal types: hierarchy, individualism, egalitarianism, fatalism
and isolationism.
Since the early 1980s cultural theory has produced
a considerable amount of literature addressing the topic of risk.
Despite its grandiose aspirations, however, the empirical results
it has produced are meager (see Rayner 1992: 84). Why, we ought
to ask, should this be the case? If a theory is influential in
its field, assuming that it is a 'good' theory, one should expect
that it would indeed produce a substantial amount of strong research
of high quality, revealing new insights and increasing knowledge.
For cultural theory the empirical results does not match the
claims raised and this lack of empirical substantiation asks for
critical consideration. In spite of its attractive 'scientific'
package, its typologies, its diagrams, its bold and clear-cut
statements, a critical examination of cultural theory reveals
an inconsistent agglomerate of contradictory propositions which,
it could be predicted, would have great difficulty in generating
research problems fitted for empirical investigation.
THE INDIVIDUAL AND WAY OF LIFE
Advocates of cultural theory often seem to
imply that, in principle, there is a one-to-one correspondence
between an individual and a particular way of life. The individual,
through his actions and by way of his beliefs, struggles to support
and maintain his 'way of life'. Therefore there will be five
kinds of people - egalitarians, hierarchists, individualists,
fatalists and hermits. By way of their common 'way of life' each
individual will be molded so that differences and idiosyncrasies
are minimized. Cultural theory states that each 'way of life'
constitutes a bounded rationality, a self-explanatory closed system
of mutually reinforcing beliefs, values and social relationships
(Wildavsky and Dake 1990; Dake 1991).
In cultural theory this typology of cultural
bias and its explanatory power is marred by circularity of evidence.
Dake (1991: 66), for example, formulates the following hypotheses
'hierarchist should express great concern about behaviors such
as demonstrations and civil disobedience because they see these
acts as disrespectful to the authority'; 'egalitarians... are
predicted to abhor the role differentiation characteristic of
hierarchy because ranked stations signify inequality', and 'individualists
... support self-regulation, especially the freedom of bid and
bargain'. However, since the conclusion is already contained
in the premises, these 'predictions' can hardly be considered
as proper hypotheses. What is to be proved is identical with
the proof. To predict that a greedy person strives to appropriate
wealth belonging to others cannot qualify as a research hypothesis,
since the 'predicted' behaviour 'greediness' is already semantically
entailed in the agent being 'a greedy person'. Dake's predictions
about the 'egalitarian's' abhorrence of 'role differentiation',
the 'hierarchist's' concern for law and order or the individualism
of the individualist are trivial statements of generally agreed,
conventional common knowledge. Cultural theory purports, in contrast,
it is argued to other variants of social science, to explain 'why
people want what they want' (Dake 1991: 2) - but the kind of explanation
that is offered, to put it bluntly, is merely that people strive
for things that they want.
Presupposing a one-to-one correspondence between
'way of life' and individual orientation, although refraining
from using 'personality' as an explanatory concept, cultural theory
echoes the grand culture and personality project in American anthropology
of the 1940s and 50s. Inspired by the cold war it was urgent
to detect what kind of personality was attracted to 'democracy',
what kind was 'totalitarian', or what personality profile characterized
enemy nations, like the Japanese. Margaret Mead, Ruth Benedict,
Edward Sapir and others argued that personality constituted a
microcosm of culture, and that culture was to be understood as
a macroscopic projection of personality. In the light of modem
insights both in cross-cultural psychology and in anthropological
theorizing about culture, society and individual, this entire
project has many shortcomings.
... one inferred a society's basic 'personality type' by observing culturally standardized ways of behaving, and then 'discovered' that this was a culture with that personality would fit in nicely. (Keesing 1976: 204)
One underlying assumption for cultural theory
seems to be precisely the 'configurationalist' presupposition
of a neat correspondence between culture and individual personality,
the latter taken to a microrepresentation of the former. However,
'cultural theory' has been concerned mainly, not with cross-cultural
comparisons of risk perception in different societies, as would
have been expected from the claims raised by the original theory
on 'cultural bias', but rather with comparisons within one particular
society, construed as a miscellany of separate cultures'.
WAY OF LIFE AND RATIONAL CHOICE?
Cultural theory claims that people 'choose'
their 'way of life'. Mary Douglas presents a similar argument
regarding cultural bias and grid-group analysis, said to account
for the 'cumulative effect of individual choices' (1978: 13).
Ways of life are understood to be competitive, questing for adherents,
and if people recognize that their cherished cosmology is no longer
'sensible' they might abandon it in order to encompass an other,
more viable alternative. Such shifts from one way of life to
another might occur if an individual is confronted with a cumulative
mass of 'surprise'. This sensation is defined as 'the
discrepancy between the expected and the actual' and it is of
'central importance in dislodging individuals from their way of
life' (Thompson et al 1990: 3).
But how can people choose between alternative
'ways of life' if cultural theory's 'rationality postulate' -
'rational people support their way of life' (Thompson et al 1990:
96) is to be sustained? Choices between 'ways of life' presuppose
a meta-rationality that transcends the bounded rationality pertaining
to each cultural bias. Thompson et al (ibid: 69), comparing cultural
biases with scientific theories, presuppose that cultural-free
self-interested maximation governs the social interaction of human
beings, making choices between alternative opportunities. It
is taken for granted that people have a meta-awareness of cultural
premises; people are not only aware of what they think and do
during the course of their everyday life, they also distance themselves
from their own way of thinking, examining their world view critically
and possibly they might even deliberately abandon it. People,
it is claimed, depending on their 'level of cultural consciousness'
(ibid: 2-3) pose questions like 'Which way of life matches 'reality'
the best', 'Which one makes me prosper?', or 'Which one explains
the world in the most satisfying manner?'
However, taken that 'way of life' refers to
an integrated system including a complete cosmology, an ontological
system that structures the world and which concerns basic topics
of human life - such as social belonging, social continuity, dominance,
death, morality, time and space, history, and food - as well as
concomitant social arrangements, there is very little, if any,
social anthropological evidence that support that individuals
deliberately select their cosmology and the institutional settings
that their existence is embedded in (Bourdieu 1977).
ALTERNATIVE VERSION OF CULTURAL THEORY
Two versions of cultural theory could be identified,
both sharing the assumption that there is a one-to-one correspondence
between individuals' orientation and ways of life. The two versions
differ in their views of the long-term continuity of this bond.
On the one hand, individuals are understood to be determined
by their way of life; the bond, consequently, will be stable and
static. On the other hand, since individuals themselves determine
their way of life, choosing the most rewarding one, the bond could
be construed as fragile and shifting.
The modes for construing the relationship between
individuals and ways of life are however not exhausted by these
two possibilities. Still another version of cultural theory claims
that the correspondence is not between individual persons and
'ways of life' but between 'social contexts' and 'ways of life'.
Thompson et al (1990: 265) propose that although there is a certain
'strain to consistency' individuals might very well encompass
more than one 'way of life'. Way of life corresponds in a one-to-one
relationship, not to individuals, but to 'social contexts' - a
person might very well be a hierarchist at work, an egalitarian
at home and a fatalist in his spare time. This version of the
theory portrays persons as mosaics of ways of life, each enacted
in its proper social context. The self is 'compartmentalized'
so that persons are able to cope with 'multiple' social contexts
that place different demands on them (ibid: 266).
Also this version of cultural theory invokes
the principle of self-interested maximization; the individual
might find it beneficial to pursue different 'ways of life' in
different realms. Here cultural theory presents a picture of
a fragmentarized society; a poorly integrated assemblage of incompatible,
or even rival social contexts. In such a society integration
is accomplished by individuals who are knowledgeable of and competent
in enacting each way of life in its proper context and who are
able to move from one context to another, changing and adapting
their actions and attitudes depending on what is appropriate.
But where does all this leave us, how can cultural
theory predict anything about peoples perceptions of risk? If
we ask questions to people on this topic, in what mode will they
answer? Will a particular subject respond in the mode of being
a hierarchist or individualist, or will he answer in the mode
of a hierarchist on the way of becoming an individualist? The
alternatives are numerous as have been indicated by the typology
of twelve types of 'microchange' where each way of life is on
its way of becoming one of the others (Thompson et al 1990: 75-78).
To put it drastically, perhaps subjects -will even change their
way of life during the course of an interview or the task of filling
out a questionnaire. But if 'way of life' is not located in individuals'
minds but instead in social contexts why then address individuals
at all by asking them questions? If 'way of life' corresponds
to social context rather than to individuals, cultural theory
would predict answers to questions and questionnaires to be entirely
context dependent.
References
Bourdieu, P. 1977. Outline of Theory of Practice, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Dake, K. 1991. Orientating dispositions in the perceptions of risk: an analysis of contemporary worldviews and cultural biases, Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 22: 61-82
Douglas, M. 1966. Purity and Danger. An
Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and
Taboo, London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul
--- 1978. Cultural Bias. Royal Anthropological
Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. Occasional papers 35
Keesing, R. M. 1976. Cultural Anthropology.
A Contemporary Perspective, New York
etc: Holt Rinehart & Winston
Rayner, S. 1992.Cultural theory and risk analysis,
in Krimsky, S. & Golding, D. eds.
Social Theories of Risk, Westport,
CT: Praeger
Thompson, M., Ellis. R., & Wildavsky,
A. 1990. Cultural Theory. Boulder, San
Francisco: Westview Press
Wildavsky, A. & Dake, K. 1990. Theories
of risk perception: who fears what and why? Daedalus 112:
41-60
This report has been financed by a grant from
CEC for the Riskpercom project led by professor
Lennart Sjöberg, Center for Risk Research,
Stockholm School of Economics.