Postmaterialism and Social Movements

Postmaterialism is a general theory of value change, developed in large part by Ronald Inglehart. It describes a shift in individual and societal priorities from survival-based needs to needs related to self-expression. Two hypotheses describe the underlying logic of this change in values. First (the scarcity hypothesis), an individual's priorities reflect the larger context insofar as the individual places the highest value on those things which are in short supply. Second (the socialization hypothesis), there is a time lag between the context and the individual's value priorities, largely because one's basic values reflect the context of one's pre-adult years (Inglehart 1990: 68). Consider each of these hypotheses. First, scarce resources form, to a large degree, an individual's perspective on the world. Consider the lengths a starving man would go to to acquire food. We would expect him to not be dissuaded by laws banning theft if his life was on the line. However, we would expect a man who has no fear of starvation to have a contrasting view of the world, due to the latter's material security. Second, the shift in priorities is not immediate. Giving a starving man a single loaf of bread will probably not cause the man to turn his attention away from an all-consuming search for food, but a sustained trajectory toward material security may cause the man to shift his attention away from the search for food. Conversely, reducing one's material security can, over time, lead to a reversal in value priorities away from postmaterial needs for self-expression. Thus the cultivation of postmaterialist values is dependent upon contextual factors including the level of material security during one's upbringing, but also the economic conditions during the time of a survey measuring the prevalence of postmaterial values (Duch & Taylor 1993). Keywords: public opinion; public participation; reform movements; social change