Abstract
Ideologies shape people’s belief systems about what constitutes a good life and well-being and how to navigate between considerations of own well-being versus the well-being of others. In every culture, there is a powerful set of ideals about collectivism and individualism, and societies have to find a balance between individual independence and collective interdependence. Based on its own local historical and cultural traditions, every society has to negotiate its own balance between individual and communal values. Conceptions of what makes a good life have thus, in essential and fundamental ways, to consider both individual autonomy and personal growth and the individual’s partaking in developing, upholding, and maintaining his or her community. Conceiving globalization as an ideology or worldview, as a system of ideas and values circulating in the public realm influencing societies worldwide thereby defining and articulating local values and visions for social change, this study analyzes the influences of globalization on communal values and sense of community as reflected in language usage in public discourses (newspapers) in three different societies: a post-communist East European republic (the Czech Republic), a Nordic welfare state (Norway), and a modern West African society (Ghana).
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Notes
- 1.
Newspapers in Norway have been electronically filed and thereby accessible for analysis since 1984.
- 2.
The method is developed as a “mixed methodology design” (Tashakkori and Teddlie 1998) in that aspects of both the quantitative and qualitative paradigm are combined throughout most steps of the process of assessing ideological shifts. However, in large-scale mappings such as the present study, it is possible to adopt the method purely quantitatively, mapping changes in frequencies of newspaper articles using various key words over time.
- 3.
The methodologies used in the Ghanaian and Czech societies, however, are at about the same level of refinements as the methodology we used in the first studies in Norway.
- 4.
During our research period, Retriever expanded the database; the tabloid VG was by scanning made available as far back as 1945. However, due to both theoretical issues and methodological instabilities, we have not included VG further back than 1992 as one of five newspapers used for assessing Aftenposten’s reliability (see below).
- 5.
The five newspapers are Bergens Tidende, Dagens Næringsliv, Nordlys, NTB, and VG. These newspapers hold different editorial positions on political and ideological issues, and NTB is a press agency delivering articles to all Norwegian newspapers.
- 6.
The second largest newspaper was chosen instead of the largest Czech newspaper, “Blesk,” because Blesk was regarded as too tabloid compared to the archives chosen in Norway and Ghana. Comparison between archives could have been difficult if the selected newspapers varied too greatly in journalistic style.
- 7.
The three search words included, even though the developmental patterns in Aftenposten do not correlate significantly with the other newspapers, are: ansvar (responsibility), rettferdighet (justice), and borgere (citizens). They are included because they represent very interesting issues in comparative analyses. When discussing trends in the Norwegian society, these three search words have to be interpreted with greater care than the others.
- 8.
Even though we have data for Ghana back to 1997, here we present data from 1999 only. The reason being that in the Czech Republic, we have data from 1999 only, and in a longitudinal perspective, the difference between 1997 and 1999 is so little that we prefer to have data for identical periods for the two countries. In Table 4.1, Norwegian data for the same period is presented together with data covering the whole period 1984–2008.
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Nafstad, H.E., Blakar, R.M., Botchway, A., Bruer, E.S., Filkukova, P., Rand-Hendriksen, K. (2013). Communal Values and Individualism in Our Era of Globalization: A Comparative Longitudinal Study of Three Different Societies. In: Knoop, H., Delle Fave, A. (eds) Well-Being and Cultures. Cross-Cultural Advancements in Positive Psychology, vol 3. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4611-4_4
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