Can traditional farming practices explain attitudes towards scientific progress?

Abstract

Recent studies have shown that agricultural legacies can have a lasting effect on cultural formation. However, to date, the literature has not examined how the agricultural origins of culture affect individual preferences for modern technology. This paper addresses this gap by investigating how the agricultural origins of individualist and collectivist cultures have affected individual attitudes towards contemporary science and technology, at the subnational level. Its results suggest that societies that have historically cultivated low labor-intensive crops, which demand individualistic behavior, have developed favorable attitudes towards technology. Conversely, societies that cultivated labor-intensive crops, which required intense cooperation and cohesiveness among farming communities, developed collectivist norms, which in turn led to their exhibiting a lower affinity to, and preference for, technology. This study’s findings advance our understanding of how the diversity of agricultural legacies can explain subnational differences in individual’s attitudes towards modern scientific progress.