1. How should we understand the relationships
between culture and social innovation?
• Many perspectives on culture – Geertz to Bourdieu
• Mary Douglas approach may be the most fertile. She
saw culture as ‘the creation of classifying processes….’
and studied ‘the connection between kinds of social
organisation and the values that uphold them’
• This led to the grid/group approach that has spawned a
lively and dynamic stream of research over 40 years
2.
3.
4. • Each culture is self-defined by opposition to the others
• The four cultures interact within organisations,
movements &c, and compete for members, prestige, &
resources
• But all living organisations contain all four – in varying
degrees of equilibrium (think of a university, business,
NGO…)
• Big social changes usually mobilise all four cultures – and
much writing about social change misses this crucial
point
• Aaron Wildavsky claimed that: ‘the general well-being of
a community depends on the extent to which all of its
interacting cultures are recognized’
5. Research agendas that follow from this:
• Understanding the dynamics of big cultural change through this
lens. The recent work on ‘clumsy solutions’ provides one approach
(eg on climate change)
• Understanding online communities and tools – eg how wikipedia
and others have introduced elements of hierarchy and
individualism.?
• Growth and culture: how social ventures change their cultural mix
as they grow.
• Problems and potentials of collaboration – again how to do these
achieve the right balance, and the ability to make decisions as well
as to talk?
• Power and love: how are these kept in balance
