Amer I can Values

 

Culture has a very influential impact on people.  Humans are born into a culture that has been influencing their growth from before their birth and continues throughout their development, even before they have become cognitively aware of this influence.  Some of the strongest influence of culture is non-material and thus, not readily noticeable.  These aspects of culture affect how people think.  One of the strongest of these non-material cultural components is values.  Values are the behaviors and attitudes that a culture of people deem desirable.

Sociologist Robin Williams's work is seminal research in the sociology of American values.  Williams first published his work in 1951 and then updated it in 1960 and 1970.

In 2008, sociologist Karen Cerulo re-examined Williams's work in her essay published in the Sociological Forum, Social Relations, Core Values and the Polyphony of the American Experience.

In 1985, L. Robert Kohl published a similar examination of values written for refugees and immigrants so that they could adjust to American culture.  

Below is a chart that merges the Williams and Kohl's values lists.

American Values                        vs.        Other Cultures’ Values

Personal control/responsibility                              Fate/destiny

Change seen as natural/positive/Progress             Stability/tradition

Time and its control                                               Human Interaction

Equality/fairness                                                    Hierarchy/rank/status

Individualism/independence/freedom                    Group welfare/dependence

Self-Help/initiative                                                 Birthright/inheritance

Competition                                                            Cooperation

Future orientation                                                   Past orientation

Action/work                                                             “Being”

Informality                                                              Formality

Directness/openness/Honesty                                 Indirectness/ritual/”face”

Practicality/efficiency                                             Idealism/theory

Materialism/Acquisitiveness                                   Spiritualism/detachment

Achievement/Success                                              Acceptance/Status Quo

Morality/judgement                                                Consequentialism/situational ethics

More about American values:

https://www.state.gov/courses/answeringdifficultquestions/html/app.htm?p=module2_p2.htm

Study USA values for understanding Americans

And more recently, in 2015 Sociologists Erik Olin Wright and Joel Rogers published American Society; How It Really Works, which identifies five core social values that most Americans affirm in one way or another: 

• freedom
• prosperity
• efficiency
• fairness
• democracy

Read Kohl's The Values Americans Live By

After you are assigned a number (1-13), find your partner and travel to the table that matches your number. 

1.  What evidence does the author provide for the value that you were assigned?

2.  If you agree with the author’s evidence, what are some specific examples that you can cite from your own life (or your parents’ lives) that show these values shaping either you or your parents?  If you don’t agree why not? Provide evidence that contradicts the author.

3.  Individually, look over the whole reading.  What are the three values that impact you personally the most?  In what ways?

Value 1: _____________ How?

Value 2: _____________ How?

Value 3: _____________ How?

Here is an exercise to try that asks you to personally explore the way values affect you.

Here is a TED Talk by Chris Jordan about how values subtly shape life in the USA.