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Other social groups operate in terms of different cultural models. For example, some working-class families operate in terms of cultural models in which children are seen as inherently willful, independent, and selfish, and in need of
socialization that leads not to more independence, but to collaboration with and caring about the needs of family and others Philipsen 1975.
It is striking that the cultural models, in terms of which the Cambridge families operate, are quite similar to the “formal theories” found in child psychology and child rearing books. This should not really be surprising, however,
since these are just the sorts of people that read and write such books. What we have to ask, however, is how much of psychology reflects the cultural models of upper-middle-class people because psychologists hold these models as
part and parcel of their class and culture-bound experiences in the world, and not because they are “true” in any scientific sense?
4.5 Cultural models in conflict
My second example demonstrates that each of us can have allegiance to competing and conflicting cultural models. It also shows one way in which more powerful groups in society can influence less powerful groups through cultural
models. The example comes from Claudia Strauss’s studies 1992; see also Strauss and Quinn 1997: ch. 8 of working-class men in Rhode Island.
Consider for a moment a common American cultural model of “success” or “getting ahead,” as discussed by D’Andrade 1984, a cultural model that is deeply embedded in U.S. society, in particular:
It seems to be the case that Americans think that if one has ability, and if, because of competition or one’s own strong drive, one works hard at achieving high goals, one will reach an outstanding level of accomplishment. And
when one reaches this level one will be recognized as a success, which brings prestige and self-satisfaction.
ibid.: 95 So pervasive is this cultural model in American culture that D’Andrade goes on to say: “Perhaps what is surprising
is that anyone can resist the directive force of such a system – that there are incorrigibles’’ ibid.: 98. However, people from different social groups within American society relate to this cultural model in quite different ways.
Claudia Strauss in her studies of working-class men in Rhode Island talking about their lives and work found that they accepted the above cultural model of success. For example, one working man said:
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I believe if you put an effort into anything, you can get ahead. . . . If I want to succeed, I’ll succeed. It has to be, come from within here. Nobody else is going to make you succeed but yourself . . . And, if anybody disagrees with
that, there’s something wrong with them.
Strauss 1992: 202 However, most of the men Strauss studied did not, in fact, act on the success model in terms of their career choices
or in terms of how they carried out their daily lives. Unlike many white-collar professionals, these men did not choose to change jobs or regularly seek promotions. They did not regularly sacrifice their time with their families
and their families’ interests for their own career advancement or “self-development.” These men recognized the success model as a set of values and, judging themselves by this model, concluded that they had not really been
“successful,” and thereby lowered their self-esteem.
The reason these men did not actually act on this model was due to the influence of another cultural model, a model which did effect their actual behaviors. This was the cultural model of “being a breadwinner.” Unlike the
individualism expressed in the success model, these workers, when they talked about their actual lives, assumed that the interests of the family came ahead of the interests of any individual in it, including themselves. For example,
one worker said:
[The worker is discussing the workers’ fight against the company’s proposal mandating Sunday work] But when that changed and it was negotiated through a contract that you would work, so you had to change or keep losing that
eight hours pay. With three children, I couldn’t afford it. So I had to go with the flow and work the Sundays.
Strauss 1992: 207 This is in sharp contrast to the white-collar professionals studied in Bellah et al.’s classic book Habits of the Heart
1985, professionals who carried their individualism so far as to be unsure whether they had any substantive responsibility to their families if their families’ interests stood in the way of their developing themselves as
individuals. These Rhode Island workers accepted the breadwinner model not just as a set of values with which to judge themselves and others. They saw the model not as a matter of choice, but rather as inescapable facts of life
e.g. ‘‘had to change,” “had to go with the flow”. Thus, the values connected to this model were much more effective in shaping their routine daily behaviors. In fact, this very distinction – between mere “values” and “hard
reality” “the facts” – is itself a particularly pervasive cultural model within Western society.
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In contrast to these working-class men, many white-collar professionals work in environments where the daily behaviors of those around them conform to the success model more than daily behaviors on the factory floor
conform to this model. For these professionals, then, their daily observations and social practices reinforce explicit ideological learning in regard to the cultural model for success. For them, in contrast to the working-class men
Strauss studied, the success model, not the breadwinner model, is seen as “an inescapable fact of life,” and, thus, for them, this model determines not just their self-esteem, but many of their actual behaviors.
The working-class men Strauss studied are, in a sense, “colonized” by the success model we are all, in fact, ‘‘colonized” by a good many cultural models that have come to us without much reflection on our part about how
well they fit our interests or serve us in the world. They use it, a model which actually fits the observations and behaviors of other groups in the society, to judge themselves and lower their self-esteem. But, as we have seen, since
they fall to identify themselves as actors within that model, they cannot develop the very expertise that would allow and motivate them to practice it. In turn, they leave such expertise to the white-collar professionals, some of whom
made the above worker work on Sunday against his own interests and wishes. On the other hand, many of these white-collar professionals fail to see that their very allegiance to the success model is connected to their failure to be
substantive actors in their families or larger social and communal networks.
4.6 Different sorts and uses of cultural models
