Cultural Species and Institutional Change in China

Abstract

This paper attempts to give a comprehensive account of the cultural embeddedness of the contemporary Chinese economy. Although culture has been revived as a category in economics recently, there is still no methodological basis in the cultural sciences properly speaking. I confront "rule atomistic" and "rule holistic" concepts of culture, and I develop a pertinent framework which introduces culture as being a fluid pattern of networked cognitive models undergoing constant change, which is driven by human creative agency. The analytical approach to culture is necessarily observer-dependent, and hence also presupposes creative activity on part of the scientific observer. I show that this view stands in direct line of descent with Veblenian thought, which has been recently systematicized with the "cultural species" concept. I apply these ideas on the Chinese case, building the argument around the core ideas of culturalism, cultural hegemony and growth, cultural dualism between rural and urban society, localism and territorial competion, and networked entrepreneurship.

Keywords: rule-holistic approach to culture, cultural species, Chinese economic model, cultural hegemony, cultural dualism, localism, networks (all China)

JEL Classification: B40, P20, P30, Z10