Modeling National Identities and Cultural Change

Abstract

This article examines cultural change in the triad regions, Japan, the United States, and Western Europe. In doing so it attempts to respond to calls to incorporate contextual and temporal factors in the analysis of national culture and their implications for the management of international operations. A four-stage model of development is proposed, derived in dialogue with conceptualizations from anthropology and sociology and with the specialist literature on nationalism. Created by narrow elites over the 19th century, the national cultures of the triad became arenas of violent confrontation in the early twentieth century, and then fragmented into a postmodern diversity in the generation following the Second World War. These tensions reflect broader processes of development that have transformed culture, especially the global forces of rising incomes, rising educational levels, and expansion of the public sphere. In the triad regions these processes have led through a series of stages to a world where individuals choose their own culture. The model therefore predicts in broad outline the likely course of development in emerging nations. The concluding section outlines some possible directions of development and implications for researchers and practitioners.