Ola Ollson and Christopher Paik write,
We outline an agricultural origins-model of cultural divergence where we claim that the advent of farming in a core region was characterized by collectivist values and eventually triggered the out-migration of individualistic farmers towards more and more peripheral areas. This migration pattern caused the initial cultural divergence, which remained persistent over generations. The key mechanism is demonstrated in an extended Malthusian growth model that explicitly models cultural dynamics and a migration choice for individualistic farmers. Using detailed data on the date of adoption of Neolithic agriculture among Western regions and countries, the empirical findings show that the regions which adopted agriculture early also value obedience more and feel less in control of their lives. They have also had very little experience of democracy during the last century. The findings add to the literature by suggesting the possibility of extremely long lasting norms and beliefs infuencing today’s socioeconomic outcomes.
Pointer from Tyler Cowen.
Interesting. Those findings seem to put a foundation under the theme of ancient liberties of the Anglo-Saxon put forth by many including Daniel Hannan in his “Inventing Freedom”. The culture of representative government, private property, common law and individual liberties is traced to the woods of what is now Germany and migrated with the Saxons to England. The traditions on the Continent seem to have been lost but continued even under Norman rule in England then spread throughout the Anglosphere. As an aside, the more individualist versions being in the peripheral areas such as the US and Australia when compared to the UK.
I would wonder if the more individualistic farmer who migrated to the peripheral areas didn’t select more defensively isolated locations, such as islands, which seems to be a prerequisite to maintaining individualism due to the reduction in the need to band together for defensive purposes.
Cause or effect, as usual. Land doesn’t move and can’t be surveyed, in the questionnaire sense. So long-lived and geographically based institutions (such as governments) may select against individualists who feel in control AND vice versa.
This is one reason I left my employer in an old growth industry. As growth slowed the emphasis was moving to stifling behavioral control, risk avoidance and maintenance (and outsourcing to economically repressed low cost regions) rather than innovation and tolerance of novel ideas.
Arnold, thank you for mentioning us. This is indeed fascinating. I have only read the abstract, but I will certainly read the entire paper. The idea that peripheral peoples retained a more individualistic model of social organization, where the older and more settled communities became more collectivist, is fully consistent with our model of the Absolute Nuclear Family existing on the margins of the North Sea until recent times. Most interestingly, this article does not cite to Emmanuel Todd, but the argument appears to be fully consistent with the argument he makes in one of his recent scholarly (rather than polemical) books, L’Origine des systèmes familiaux (2011). It is in French, so I cannot read it. But, perhaps even better, I had a chance to meet Todd in person last year and he explained the argument to me! Non-Francophones can get a summary by putting the French wikipedia article through Google translate, or by reading my blog post about the conversation with Todd. The basic idea is that the simple nuclear family, such as the English have had since before written language, was not a decayed form of a more communal system, but in fact the earliest form of organization, that continued to exist in peripheral areas, like the outermost Northwest edge of Eurasia, including most of England, as well as in the Philippines, the Andaman Islands, and among the pygmies of Southern Africa. It was an irony of history that the society with one of the most primitive forms of family organization was the original source for global modernization. We here in the USA still, by and large, have this same family structure.