Critical Analysis Of Culture In Comparative Political Analysis

Ross, Marc Howard (2009). Culture in comparative Political Analysis. In Mark I. Lichbach and Alan. S. Zuckerman (Eds.), Comparative Politics (Second ed., pp. 134-161). New York: Cambridge University Press. (Seminar paper prepared by Wais Mehrabi) Ross presents an argument as to why a cultural approach should be used in comparative politics. He argues it offers “a framework for organizing people’s daily worlds” (134), bridges identities with political proclivities and action, shapes interests and helps interpret motives individuals and actors. Culture delivers these through “organizing meanings and meaning making, defining social and political identity, structuring collecting actions, and imposing a normative order on politics and …show more content…
He admits his the ambiguity of his answer and yet charges that “shared worldviews – but not necessarily particular values or beliefs – and common identity” is sufficient to defend his case. How to distinguish culture from other concepts? He relies on Spiro’s work defining culture as a system of meaning and “culturally constituted elements”. He is concerned with the former. Cultures change slowly and thus how can a slow-changing phenomenon help explain the fast-changing politics? He argues any of the comparative theories like the ones concerning interest and institutions are not better than the cultural one. It is a strawman argument. He argues if other perspectives cannot explain change then the criticism does not have merit. His second point is that cultural analysis did a better job explaining the slowly growing political changes that caused the collapse of the Soviet empire. Lastly, he dismisses the idea that culture is static in that the cultural studies focus on interactions that results in modification of beliefs affecting politics. How culture works? Especially when it comes to organization and its mobilizing power? Ross argues detailed explanations within structure and contexts can alleviate the criticism. Cultural mobilization is “build on fears and perceived threats consistent with internalized worldviews” that are strengthened through “in-group interaction and emotional solidarity” (158). Cultural explanations lack rigorous and are not causal. Ross argues that cultural explanations do not always aim to establish causality. He further argues that culturalists side with constructivists regarding the final authority of knowledge claims and that whether causal explanations are appropriate in the social inquiry at all. Ross further argues that culturalists like constructivists try to “establish conditions of possibility more than