Published in Yvette Sáchez and Claudia Franziska Brühwiller (2015)(Eds.) Transculturalism and Business in the BRIC States, Gower, 13-58. GLOBE, HALL, HOFSTEDE, HUNTINGTON, TROMPENAARS: COMMON FOUNDATIONS, COMMON FLAWS Brendan McSweeney Introduction The notion that ‘national culture’ shapes the behaviour of the populations of discrete national territories (countries) both within and outside of organizations (e.g. the decisions and actions of managers and consumers) has extensive support within both the academic and management consultancy communities (Breidenbach and Nyiri, 2009). Research, teaching and training which attribute such causal power to national culture relies heavily on the conceptions and descriptions of such cultures by Geert Hofstede; the multi-authored Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness project (GLOBE); or Fons Trompenaarsi. An indication of the popularity of their work and of ‘national culture’ as an explanatory variable within the academic (overwhelmingly management) arena is that Hofstede’s research is one of the most cited in the entire Social Science Citation Index (Parboteeah, Hoegel and Cullen, 2008). Those citations include critiques, but largely they are supportive. His magnum opus – ‘Cultures’ Consequences’ – has become an almost emblematic citation in a number of management disciplines. Both GLOBE’s and Trompenaars’ research is also very widely cited (Tung and Verbeke, 2010). The popularity in management of the Trio’s claims – despite the theoretical, empirical and practical limitations of their research – is, perhaps, not surprising, given the increasing pressures on academics and others to be instantly and visibly “relevant” (March & Sutton, 1997) during an era of enormous acceleration of the inter/trans-nationalisation of business and markets. Their views about the characteristics and consequences of ‘national culture’ receive legitimacy from deeply entrenched belief in national primordiality and uniqueness (Willman, 2014; McSweeney, 2009). Although the Trio have at times engaged in intense criticisms of each others’ research they have much in common. Their differences are, as Earley states, only “minor variants on one another’s styles” (2006: 923). The postulates they share include – national cultures are: (1) values – defined as invariant transituational preferences;(2) universally shared by the population of a country; (3) coherent (contradiction-free/integrated); (4) the fundamental cause/source of behavior and artefacts; (5) stable; (6) identifiable from the mean scores of answers to self-response survey questions from a minute portion of a national population; (7) depicable in league (ranking) tables (indices) of ‘dimensions’ (quantifiable comparators)(Taras and Steel, 2009; McSweeney, 2002a). In short, each national population location is conceived of as a container of an undifferentiated measurable culture which moulds the social in its supposed geographical domain. Each of the seven postulates (above), but 6 and 7 especially, have been critiqued (see Bock 1999, 2000; Breidenbach and Nyíri, 2009; Brewer and Venaik, 2010; Duncan 1980; Earley, 2009; Fang, 2005, 2012; Gerhard and Fang, 2005; Harzing, 2006; Johnson, et al., 2005; Kitayama, 2002; Kuper 1999; Maseland and van Horn, 2010; Magala, 2009; McSweeney, 2002a,b, 2009; Moore, 2012; Schwartz, S. H. 1994; Willman, 2014 for instance). Space does not permit a review of the commentary on all of the postulates. Instead, the chapter considers some aspects which have received comparatively less attention in the management literature. These are: downward conflation (the belief or assumption that the macro (in this instance the national) is replicated at, indeed creates, lower hierarchical levels (organization, individuals, or whatever). More specifically it discusses a crucial methodological error (the ecological fallacy) which characterises an extraordinarily large number of papers which purport to apply the findings of one or other aspect of the Trio’s work. This section also considers the cultural generalizations of Samuel P. Huntington who shares Postulates 1 to 5 with the Trio and those of Edward T. Hall who shares Postulates 2 to 5. However, his primary focus is on the populations in or from multinational/regional locations which he calls “civilizations”. Although the Trio also make general claims about such large populations, they do so to a lesser extent than Huntington. The chapter then considers the implied, and sometimes explicit assumption, in the their work and the work of their followers that national cultures are coherent, that is, integrated and non-contradictory. National culture cannot logically be said to have uniform and enduring national “consequences” without that invalid assumption. Following that it discusses the assumption of the fixity of national boundaries within which unique and stable national cultures are said to be located. Finally, it considers a misleading, representation of intra-national variation – the view that countries are composites of multiple mono-cultures. The discussion of these matters is preceded by a commentary on the notion of culture employed by the GLOBE, Hofstede, Huntington and Trompenaars (but not by Hall). A brief overview of the ‘dimensions’ employed by the GLOBE, Hofstede and Trompenaars to depict ‘national cultures’ or national cultural differences is provided in an annex located at the end of this chapter. Culture as Values What is, or is meant by, ‘culture’ – national or other? As early as the 1950s, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn estimated – in a survey of English language sources only – that there were already over 160 definitions of culture (“and its near-synonym civilization”) in use (1952). One can distinguish between at least five types of cultural theories: psychological (culture as subjective values); mentalism (or cognition); textualism; intersubjectivism; and practise theory. On a very basic level these schools offer opposing locations and conceptions of culture. However, as Michael Hechter observes, few concepts of culture “are bandied about more liberally in popular, normative, and explanatory scholarly discourse than that of values” (1993: 1)(emphasis in original) – defined as enduring transituational preferences. Taras, Rowney and Steel’s analysis of 136 publically available instruments for measuring culture revealed that almost all existing instruments and their underlying models of culture are focused on values and overlook other attributes of culture (2009). Within many sub-fields of management, it is the bedrock definition of culture. It is this notion of culture that the Trio rely on. GLOBE might seem to have also compared countries on the basis of “practices” and thus produced two different sets of cultural indices. But both are espoused value indices as what GLOBE labels ‘practices’ are not practices in the sense of the actions of individuals or collectivities but merely respondents’ views about existing social values “in my society” (Earley, 2006). But in any event, the identification of culture defined by GLOBE, Hofstede, Trompenaars and Huntington – as causal transituational preferences – confronts a variety of impediments. These include: their unobservability; the possible roles of a host of other psychological constructs (desires, goals, motives, needs, traits, aversions, tastes, valences, sentiments, and so forth); the multiplicity of definitions of values – as early as 1963 Campbell listed 76 uses of the term- and the opaque link between values and actions. In contrast, Swidler (1986: 273), for instance, states that the values “model used to understand culture’s effects on action is fundamentally misleading”. John Meyer and his colleagues state that “[a] notion of ‘abstract values internalized by individuals through socialization simply leaves out too much’ and is given ‘too much reified inevitability’. They describe as ‘primitive’ the notion of culture as ‘a cluster of consensual general values’ (Meyer et al. 1994: 11–12, 17) and they explicitly reject the Parsonian idea (which the Trio heavily draw on) of a general value system into which individuals are socialized (ibid.: 12)(See also, Joas, 2000; Rohan, 2000). Ailon, 2008; Bock 1999; Breidenbach and Nyíri 2009; Cooper 1982; Gerhart and Fang 2005; Maseland and van Hoorn, 2010). Furthermore, the assumption that values are unaffected by context – that they are invariant transituational preferences – is also at odds with an immense amount of contrary evidence (Ewing, 1990; Shweder, 1999). Culture As Determinate ‘National culture’ (hereafter ‘culture’) – if it is assumed to exist – can be theorized on a range from the scarcely significant to the dominant driver. The view that culture has “affects”, “effects”, “influence”, “consequences”, “manifestations”; “impacts”, or “outcomes” whether deemed weak or strong, are distinguishable from claims that merely point to possible statistical relationships, associations or correlations. At one causal pole, culture is represented as the foundation for just about everything social. Culture supposedly orchestrates behaviour. An important, perhaps the most influential, attraction of the Trio’s depictions of culture is the breathtaking claim that it shapes the social action of defined populations enduringly and predictably. It “affect[s] human thinking, feeling, and acting, as well as organizations and institutions” Hofstede & Hofstede, state, “in predictable ways” (2005: 31)(emphasis added). “[L]anguage, food, buildings, houses, monuments, agriculture, shrines, markets, fashions and art”, are Trompenaars states, “symbols of a deeper [subjective] level culture” (1997: 21). Subjective values are treated as the incontestable causal core. The ontological status of the ‘inner’ is distinguished from the ‘outer’ (institutions, practices, and so forth) but at the same time national culture is their cause. “Values”, Allport states, are “the dominating force in life” (1961: 543). “Culture” Etounga-Manguelle states, “is the mother, institutions are the children” (2000). Johns (2006) describes culture’ as “a contextual imperative”. In the tradition of early to middle Parsons (1951: 37), culture is conceived of as “normative pattern-structuring values” which act as a hierarchically superordinated control system (Schmid 1992). Beneath, or behind, the “luxuriant variety, even apparent randomness” (Ortner, 1984: 136) of life is posited a causal psychoculture. The basic idea, as Clifford Geertz critically observes, is that culture is “a set of control mechanisms – plans, recipes, rules, instructions (what computer engineers call ‘programs’) – for governing behavior” (1973: 44). It is held to be as Hofstede described it “the software of the mind”. In contrast, Geertz states, “culture is not a power, something to which social events, behaviors, institutions, or processes can be causally attributed” (1973: 14). GLOBE, Hofstede and Trompenaars occasionally, and inconsistently, mention the possible causal influences in addition to national culture. But mere acknowledgement of other cultures or non-cultural factors without incorporating them into their dimensional models of causally determinate values is an empty gesture (McSweeney, 2009). What evidence do the Trio provide of the power of culture? There is zero empirical evidence derived or derivable from their questionnaire and/or interview based depictions of national cultures or statistical representations of those cultures, of an influence on individuals’ behaviour (Gerhard & Fang, 2005). The asserted link between the descriptions of a national culture and national action is not extracted from, and is not extractable from, respondents’ answers. It is presupposed. Societal level models of all types, not just the cultural, often lack clarity about causality (Oyserman and Uskul, 2008). A ‘cause’ is described (well or badly) as is the outcome(s). But the causal process, the linkages between cause and outcome is too often not unfolded for the reader at least. Instead of descriptions of situated causal mechanisms, the mere fact that two conditions exist, or are supposed to exist, in the same time and space is, together with a general causal theory, treated as sufficient evidence that one caused the other. There is an inverse relationship between the compoundness of a concept and the number of cases attributable to, or covered by, it (Mahoney, 2004; Sartori, 1970). Sub-national analysis will often demonstrate the information poverty of national averages and reveal considerable heterogeneity within countries (Smith, McSweeney and Fitzgerald, 2008). Even if we suppose that (a) the Trio’s mean values scores are accurate national averages; and (b) that values are causal – both highly contested notions – deducing the subnational from anyone of the Trio’s averages and rankings is at best wholly speculative. As Starbuck states: “comparisons between averages may say nothing about specific situations” (2004: 1245). National level data obscures considerable within-country variation. Of course, there are some national uniformities, for instance, most cars are driven on the right-hand side of the road in Brazil; in India many drive on the left-hand side – because of legal requirements a legacy of British colonial rule. The claim that national uniformities are a consequence of ‘national culture’ is a mere assertion that ignores other possible explanations. In any event, there is a vast body of empirical data depicting considerable behavioural variation within countries (see, for example, Au, 1999; Camelo et al., 2004; Crouch, 2005; Goold and Campbell, 1987; Huo and Randall, 1991; Kondo, 1990; Lenartowicz et al., 2003; O’Sullivan, 2000; Streeck and Thelen, 2005; Tsurumi, 1988; Weiss and Delbecq, 1987; Yanagisako, 2002). In short, as Peterson, Arregle and Martin (2012) state, there is an increasingly documented variability in cultural, institutional, and economic characteristics within nations. Examples of positive correlations between one or other of the Trio’s measurements and a practice (organizational or other) are sometimes held out to be evidence of a causal relationship between the former and the latter. But a correlation, of itself, is not evidence of causality and almost any causal theory will generate some correct predictions. Thus, identification of confirming examples is not proof that a theory is correct (Starbuck, 2004). Positive examples can be found for almost any theory. For example, table salt dissolves in warm water every time someone utters a ‘magic word’ before immersing the salt in the water. Looking only at positive examples fails to reveal a vital falsification. The salt is, of course, equally likely to dissolve without the ‘spell’, as the spell has no influence, but a positive test strategy will only identify instances of dissolving when a spell is uttered (Lieberson, 1992). It will not look at what happens when there is no spell. Cultural Conflation Social phenomena are complex not merely because they are almost always the outcome of multiple variables but also because those variables can combine in a variety of ways, at different times and at different levels or strata in society. The combinatorial, and often complexly, nature of social causation makes identification of causation or prediction highly challenging and far beyond the capability of unilevel analysis even when the latter is well executed. Relationships identified at one level of analysis may be stronger or weaker at a different level of analysis, or may even reverse direction (Klein and Kozlowski 2000; Ostroff 1993). Making direct translations of properties or relations from one level to another, by projecting from a higher level to a lower (from the national to organizational or individual) – is unwarranted even it we suppose that the depiction of the national level is accurate. That methodological crime is a reliance on the ecological fallacyii (Selvin, 1958): the fallacious inference that the characteristics (concepts and/or metrics) of an aggregate (historically called ‘ecological’) level also describe those at a lower hierarchical level or levels. The fallacy is also sometimes called the “disaggregation error” (Van de Vijver & Poortinga, 2002); the “fallacy of unwarranted subsumption” (Knorr-Cetina, 1988); or “the fallacy of division” (Aristotle, 350BC in Axinn, 1958). In short, each part is assumed to have the same characteristic or characteristics of the wholeiii and thus that extrapolation from a higher level to lower ones accurately describes the lower. An illustrative example is: the false derivation that any Japanese individual is collectivist because Japan, it is supposed, is culturally a collectivist country (cf. Ryang, 2004). A completed jig-saw is usually a rectangle, but the individual pieces of the jig-saw are not rectangles. The colour green is a composite of blue and yellow. Employment of the fallacy usually leads to false results. As Robinson observes, whilst it is theoretically possible for ecological and individual correlations to be equal, the conditions under which this can happen are far removed from those ordinarily encountered in data (Robinson, 1950)(cf. Steel & Ones, 2002). An implicit and usually false assumption made when relying on the ecological fallacy is that the population being described is homogeneous. Clearly, downward conflation leads to misrepresentation whenever populations are not wholly homogeneous. Rather belatedly the heterogeneity of national populations is being acknowledged in management. Intra-national diversity makes national representations invalid for sub-national analysis but that inconvenient truth is widely ignored by many of the Trio’s followers. But error may also occur when a property at one level is attributed to a homogeneous group at a lower level. Schwartz (1994), citing, Zito (1975), gives the illustrative example of the discrepancy between a hung jury at two levels. As a group, a hung jury is an indecisive jury, unable to decide the guilt or innocence of the accused. However, attributing that characteristic to the individual members of the jury would be incorrect as the jury is hung because its individual members have very strong views. They are not indecisive. The ecological fallacy has been addressed quite extensively in studies of epidemiology and electoral behaviour. It has not been widely considered in the management and business literature. And it appears to have been largely ignored in popular research methods textbooks in that arena. The view that every individual in a country has identical values/attitudes/dispositions is often called stereotyping in everyday parlance. Fortunately, the attribution of supposed or observed uniformity to ‘genes’,iv that is racism, is a view now repugnant to most people. But is attributing such similarity to ‘culture’ fundamentally different? The architect of apartheid in South Africa, Werner Eiselen, stated that culture, not race, was the true basis of difference (Giliomee, 2003). Gelfand, Erez and Aycan (2007: 496) point out that “level of analysis confusion also continues to abound … research continues to blindly apply culture-level theory to the individual level …”. Nancy Adler, for instance, states that a national “cultural orientation describes the attitude of most people most of the time” (2002: 19). And yet, Daphna Oyserman, Heather Coon and Markus Kemmelmeier’s analysis of all cross-national empirical research studies published in English on individualism and/or collectivism (the ‘dimension’ of national culture which has received the most empirical attention) found that country explains only 1.2 per cent of the variance in individual-level individualism scores, that is 98.8% of variance in individualism is unexplained by country (2002). Reviewing Hofstede’s own data, Barry Gerhart and Meiyu Fang point out that: “somewhere between 2 and 4 percent [only of individual-level answers to questionnaire questions upon which Hofstede built his national cultural descriptions] is explained by country” (2005: 977)v. Individuals, groups, and organizations engage with sub-national levels and not with abstract national level representations (real or mythical). For instance, in dealing with a company even if staffed by employees of a single nationality, say Russians, one does not negotiate with Rusia or with Russians as a unity, or with some representation of Russians but with one or a handful of people from Russia. Whilst there may be widely accepted ways of behaving the attitudes/values/actions of these people is not predictable on the basis of any of the Trio’s depiction of Russian culture. The notion that each Russian person has the characteristics of ‘Russia’ as represented by GLOBE, Hofstede, Trompenaars, or whoever else is stereotyping. An extraordinary number of papers which claim to rely on one or other of the subjective culturalist’s work come close to resurrecting the concept of ‘national character’ – a much criticised notion long abandoned in disciplines such as anthropology (Bock, 1999). As Max Weber stated: “the appeal to national character [Volkscharakter] is generally a mere confession of ignorance’ (1930: 89). But without the widespread reliance on the fallacy – which sustains the illusion that the Trio’s national-level aggregations also describe individuals and groups of individuals – it is very unlikely that their work would have attracted the current level of academic and practitioner interest (Brewer & Vanaik, 2012, 2014; McSweeney, 2009, 2013).vi At times the Trio have strongly condemned the drawing of spurious cross level inference – advice however often ignored by their followers. Hofstede and his collaborator Minkov, for example, state that: “Hofstede’s dimensions of national culture were constructed at the national level. They were underpinned by variables that correlated across nations, not across individuals or organizations. In fact, his dimensions are meaningless as descriptors of individuals or as predictors of individual differences because the variables that define them do not correlate meaningfully across individuals” (Minkov & Hofstede, 2011: 12)(see also Hofstede, 2001: 16, 463). House & Hanges (2004: 99)[GLOBE] say that it is inappropriate to assume that “cultural-level characterizations and relationships apply to individuals within those cultures”. Hanges & Dickon [also GLOBE] emphasise: ‘Finally, it cannot be repeated enough: …They [the scales] were not specifically designed to measure differences within cultures or between individuals’ (Hanges & Dickson, 2004: 146). Trompenaars states that “individuals in the same culture do not necessarily behave according to cultural norms” (Trompenaars, 1997: 26). But the Trio themselves do not always ‘walk-the-talk’. As Brewer & Vanaik state: the “confounding of the levels of analysis permeates through the Hofstede and GLOBE [and Trompenaars] books and publications on national culture dimensions. Both Hofstede and GLOBE commit the error themselves, both in the definitions of their dimensions and the discussion of their findings” (Brewer & Vanaik, 2012: 678)(see also Earley, 2006; McSweeney, 2002b). Thus the “confounding of levels” is not merely the result of “misinterpretations” or “reification and improper extensions” (Taras and Steel, 2009) of the Trio’s work. The Trio themselves bear some of the responsibility. Attempts to define something human which uniquely characterizes a specific country and no other country always fail (Cubitt 1998; Gellner 1983; Kahn, 1989; Sen 2007; Zimmer 1998). Claims to have identified the unique quality of ‘Americanness’, ‘Brazilianness’, ‘Chineseness’ ‘Englishness’, Frenchness’, ‘Germanness’, Indianness, Russianness, or whatever-nationality-ness, always flounder in essentialist impressionism relying on: groundless stereotypes (for instance, all English people are emotionally repressed); features that are not unique (every English person likes an ‘English breakfast’); historical myths (the English have always been distinguished by their tolerance); or national generalizations based on the preferences or dislikes of a sub-national group (the English prefer sweet sherry). These practices are neither shared by all English people nor are they unique to (some) English people. Anderson, Connor, Breuilly, Hobsbawn, Gellner, Weber, and others, have identified numerous ways in which apparently definite markers of national ancientness are in fact of recent origin – “invented traditions” (Hobsbawn and Ranger, 1983). The Scottish tartan is a famous example. It was devised as workgear – for safety purposes – in the eighteenth century by an English ironmaster for his Scottish employees. The notion that it is a primal manifestation of the essence of ‘Scottishness’ is a ‘marketing’ product of nineteenth century nationalist Romanticism (Trevor-Roper, 2008). It is now a symbol of Scottish identity which should not be confused with the Trio’s notion of culture.vii Cavour’s famous dictum that “We have made Italy now we must make the Italians” aptly illustrates the chronic actions by states to create and reinforce the myth of countries as essential unities. Countries are, as Benedict Anderson states, “imagined communities” rather than unities founded on and sustained by primordial ties or values (1991). In recent years, a number of governments, for a variety of motives, including national branding and encouragement of within-country cohesion have sought to identify distinctive national values. None have succeeded and instead have trumpeted banalities that in any event are not nationally distinct such as “tolerance” (UK), “democratic” (Australia). In every arena (however small in terms of population or geographical territory) whilst some patterns may be identifiable there is always evidence of diversity in values descriptions and in practices. For example, homicide rates vary not only between countries (and over time), but they also differ immensely across national locations and between intra-national socio-economic, gender, and ethnic groups (Nisbett and Cohen, 1996); Katz and Darbishire (2000) identified increasing variation in “employment systems” within countries; Tempura, often represented as a quintessentially Japanese dish, was in fact introduced by Portuguese missionaries and was until recently popular only in Southern Japan; there is a wide variation in corporate governance requirements between many US states, for example, the legal protection for shareholders of limited liability was introduced in New York State in 1830 but more than a hundred years later in California in 1931; and so forth. Because of the scale of diversity empirically identified in defined locations, Tung and Verbeke state: “due consideration should be given to intra-national differences” (2010: 1266). Example of such “consideration” are the various studies by Renato Meirelles CEO of Data Popular based in São Paulo of differences in Brazil – including responses to advertising images – not only between different ‘class’ layers but also within each class, especially within the heterogeneous middle class(es)viii (see also Au, 1999; Balbinot, 2012; Brockner, 2005; Fearon, 2003; Gaines and Kappeler 2003; Gerhart, 2008; Gong, et al., 2011; Goold and Campbell, 1987; Gouveia, 2013; Hofstede et al., 2010; Kaasa et al., 2014; Martin, 2014; McSweeney, 2009; Smith, McSweeney and Fitzgerald, 2008; Steel and Taras, 2010). The notion that national populations have been collectively programmed is sometimes extended to multinational, regional or cross regional populations, for example, Anglo/Arab/Asian/East Asian/Eastern/Latin American/Middle Eastern/Western culture/thinking/values/view/mind/epistemologies/systems of knowledge (Dorfman et al., 2012; House, Hanges, Javidan, Dorfman, and Gupta, 2004; Hofstede and Bond, 1988; Kuperman, 2008; Metcalfe, 2007; Minkov and Hofstede, 2012; Özkazanc-Pan, 2008; Roberston, 2000; Trompenaars, 1997, for instance). An infatuation with the cultural notion of ‘Asianness’ was reinvigorated by business school led explanations for the “economic miracles” first of Japan, then more widely of the “Asian tiger economies”, and now especially of China (See Dorfman et al., 2012; House, Hanges, Javidan, Dorfman, and Gupta, 2004; Hofstede and Bond, 1988; Metcalfe, 2007; Minkov and Hofstede, 2012; Özkazanc-Pan, 2008; Trompenaars, 1997, for instance). The idea that super-national and international entities have unique and shared cultures has a long pedigree. Nineteenth-century France and England saw themselves as the vanguard of “universal civilization” (liberté, fraternité, egalité for the former, the ‘white man’s burden’ for the latter). The notion of ‘civilization’ became more pluralized in the first half of the twentieth century (Fischer, 2007).ix Later, in the first half of the twentieth century the list was extended – more civilizations were ‘identified’ – but the notion fell out of fashion. Post the ‘9/11’ (11 September 2001) destruction of the Twin Towers in New York the essentialist notion of multi or transnational “civilizations” as integrated cultural wholes was reinvigorated. Sales and citations of works of cultural civilizationists such as Samuel P. Huntington (The Clash of Civilizations), Raphael Patai (The Arab Mind), and Bernard Lewis (who first coined the term ‘the clash of civilizations’) rose dramatically and some became required reading in US and other military training programmes and on a range of university courses. Lewis’s civilization “wisdom” was, US Vice President Dick Cheney said, “sought daily by policymakers, diplomats, fellow academics, and the news media” (2006). In some arenas Samuel Huntington’s stark views about fault-lines between “civilizations” (1993; 1996), and derivative literature, has shaped much of the debate about inter-cultural conflict and understanding (Turner 2005). Overstating the case, but nonetheless indicative of its importance, this notion has, according to Kalevi Holsti become the “master explanatory variable” in world politics (in Henderson and Tucker, 2001: 317). Huntington uses the term ‘civilization’ interchangeably with ‘culture’ which he defined, as the Trio do, as subjective “values” (1996; 2000). According to Huntington, in his hugely cited article – The Clash of Civilizations? (1993) – and his subsequent ‘best-seller’: The Clash of Civilizations (1996), each civilization is constituted and motivated by a unique culture so that the “major differences in political and economic development among civilizations are clearly rooted in their different cultures” (1993, 22; 1996a, 29). This, he argues, creates incompatibilities between individuals from different “civilizations” and the inevitability of “clashes” between those cultural civilizations. He identifies “seven or eight major civilizations” (1996: 21), namely, Sinic (Chinese), Japanese, Hindu, Islamic, Orthodox, Western, and Latin American (he is unclear about whether Africa constitutes a “civilization”). In common with all coherent culture theories, each civilization is regarded as a coherent and self-sustaining system. Each civilization is, Huntington states, a cultural “totality” (1996: 42). In effect, the population of each civilization is culturally predestined. Generalizations about civilizations, like generalizations about countries, appeal to established prejudices but they are analytically misleading. Huntington’s work, for example, is inconsistent. Just as the Trio do, it ignores internal diversity, disregards change and is at odds with historical and contemporary realities. The basis of Huntington’s categorization is inconsistent (Henderson and Tucker 2001; Magala 2005). For instance, he separates Latin American civilization from Western civilization on the basis of the former’s Catholic majority. Thus, his notion of a Latin American civilization relies on the implausible assumption that all Catholics share the same culture and that the large non-Catholic minority in Latin America has the same culture as the Catholic majority but that this Catholic Latin American culture somehow is not the same culture as that of Catholic majority countries in “Western” Europe which Huntington treats as identical to that in “Protestant-majority countries” such as Australia. With yet further inconsistency and confusion, in a paper fearful of what he calls the “Hispanic challenge”, Huntington describes “U.S. culture” – supposedly part of “Western” civilization – as “Anglo-Protes
