Cultures are not so easily comparable in terms of their prevalent values as we thought before.

What is it about?

This paper is about measurement of people's values in cross-cultural perspective. It (1) shows that emancipative values, a very influential concept in compartive sociology and political science, is a problematic measure of cross-national differences in the level of societal modernization and (2) discusses several general issues in comparative survey research.

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Why is it important?

This paper proposes a major refinement for the concept of emancipative values, foundational for a large body of research in contemporary political sociology. It also raises several important concerncs about current practice of using data from comparative surveys in social science research, well known among methodologists, but still largely ignored by applied researchers.