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The methodological concern relates less to operationalization than to conceptualization.

It's about something called subjective/intersubjective views of culture.

The subjective view of culture says that there is nothing that is shared across people in a society.  Culture is basically the sum total of all opinions in a society.  So that concepts don't have meanings that are the same across actors.

The intersubjective view of culture says that culture is more than the sum of opinions in a society.  It's something that has shared meaning across individuals.  So for example various words like democracy and the like have the same shared meaning to Swiss people in the four national languages.  But, the meaning is not the same between Swiss German and Bavarian German.  

I hope that was clear, but it's a huge issue.

The WVS relies upon methodological individualism, so there is in essence, no such thing as society.  Only individuals.

And I'll give my consent to any government that does not deny a man a living wage-Billy Bragg

by ManfromMiddletown (manfrommiddletown at lycos dot com) on Sun Apr 19th, 2009 at 11:17:26 PM EST
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