Abstract
The reasonability of the construction of classificatory rankings of societies and related theoretical implications are considered in this paper. I argue that existing classificatory rankings are based on the essentialist views and represent societies as homogenous entities whereas they ignore intra-societal variety. Moreover, the quantitative methodology and methods which underlie those rankings are based on the etic approach and use concepts and indicators which are constructed in the west and don’t reflect indigenous socio-cultural dynamics. Besides, existing rankings simply equalize particular aspects to the whole societal development. For example, gross domestic product is equalized to the level of societal development; however, it actually can’t fully reflect even the situation in the economic field. Though it can be still reasonable to use such impersonal indicators as gross domestic product or longevity which are based entirely on impersonal data and are free from subjective interpretations, for the exploration of general tendencies in particular fields, however, we should restrain ourselves from invalid generalizations. Krys et al. proposed to elaborate culturally sensitive approach, however, still remained in frame of the etic approach, whereas I argue that the only way for the comprehensive and deeper assessment of the level of societal development is to construct a fully emic and indigenous approach that implies the usage of only locally constructed concepts during the definition of indicators. Those indigenous concepts most probably won’t be translatable to other languages that make the aim of the creation of a unified scale theoretically impossible; however, this is the only way for getting valid results at least concerning particular societies with current methodological apparatus. The solution to this issue requires further theoretical development and methodological innovations.
The story of comparing societies to each other is as old as interest in communities. Starting from or even before Herodotus, travelers, philosophers, and traders were exploring and classifying different communities according to their characteristics. This process especially intensified after the famous journeys of European travelers in the Americas, Africa, and Oceania, since the 15th century. Classification of foreigners has never been an easy task. The representatives of the Roman Catholic church were officially questioning and considering if those indigenous people, who were found in various newly found islands, were humans or representatives of some other species (Seed, 1993). Different people and different governments have always had own reasons and purposes to classify various groups one way or another. Some needed it for the better control of subverted territories, some for certain economic reasons, some simply for political propaganda or for the maintenance of “cultural and blood purity,” and so forth.
In the contemporary era, the UN and other international organizations elaborated various rankings and indexes to create more targeted policies and to make practical decisions while elaborating strategies concerning various countries and societies (| Human Development Reports, n.d.). So, this question has a crucial real-life significance and consequences for many people and whole societies. Noticeably, this topic clearly exceeds scientific borders as one can find numerous non-scientific classifications of societies which are constructed by various NGOs and business organizations, for example rankings like “Best countries to live” (Best Countries To Live In 2019, n.d.), “Index of freedom” (Human Freedom Index | Cato Institute, n.d.), “Democracy index” (EIU Democracy Index 2018 – World Democracy Report, n.d.), etc. are easily searchable in the worldwide web. Those rankings influence on the allocation of grants, the attraction/direction of tourist streams, and various policies and political decisions of international political and financial bodies. Also, they impact how do people stereotype particular societies worldwide, e.g. as more or less developed, as more modern or “lagged in development.” Obviously, it is a very tricky task to assess and compare diverse societies based on the level of their development, as it is necessary to have a set of unified indicators for their evaluation at the same scale. The unification of societies at the same scale is the requirement if one wants the assessments of various societies to be comparable to each other. The latter objective is based on the controversial theoretical and ethical assumptions which will be considered throughout this commentary.
Despite the long history of attempts to define unified indicators of societal development, that mission still remains to be a tough challenge even for contemporary social science. In these terms, Krys et al.’s (2019) theoretical exploration of “indexes of societal progress” is a very significant endeavor and could have very noteworthy practical implications. However, in order to arrive at the proper understanding of the matter, we need to reflect on the question of societal classification in its full complexity and take into consideration various subtleties that accompany our perception and the process of construction of various rankings of societies. Historical roots of cross-cultural comparison and its axiomatic ideological implications should be considered in particular.
The issue of the definition of the indicators by which we should evaluate societies’ development has been differently understood at different stages of historical development. Ancient Greeks regarded everyone who wasn’t able to speak Greek as Barbarians and that was one of the oldest versions of ethnocentric classification of various communities (Heit, 2005; Lefkowitz, 1993). Ethnocentrism has been remaining at the core of the evaluation of various (mainly foreign) societies throughout human history till now. Related scientific endeavors from the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century were marked by the dominance of Darwinian evolutionism which inspired the hierarchized perception of societies worldwide (Lindholm, 2007). The western world was put at the top of societal hierarchies by the mainstream of western cultural researchers, while other societies’ place at that staircase depended on their distance and similarity to western cultures. The more western-like society was, the higher it was ranked at the imaginary hierarchy of societies by many meaningful classic anthropologists (Barnard, 2000).
Hierarchization of societies was the main (implicit) trend until the midst of the 20th century and the Second World War when the Hitler-related catastrophe changed political and social ideological preferences worldwide (Bock, 1999). Radical political twist against ethnocentrism influenced social sciences too. After the Second World War, ethnocentrism became an ideological sin and all social scientists explicitly try to avoid it ever since, at least declaredly. Nevertheless, as Krys et al. (2019) show, most attempts of cross-cultural indexing of societies are still basically western-centered, methodologically and ideologically. The level of economic development has become the most popular indicator for the evaluation of societal development for the moment (Krys et al., 2019). The main benefit of taking economic growth as the index of level of development is that it is a unified measure and provides the possibility to evaluate various societies at the same scale and allows them to compare them. It is easily possible to compare China and the US based on their GDP. The financial parameters of the economic development as an indicator are easily quantifiable, straightforwardly readable, and there are no ideological or ethical strings attached to it. The latter aspects probably facilitated its popularization among contemporary practitioner politicians and political economists who try to be as politically correct as possible.
Besides, I assume that the becoming of economic development as the main measure of societal development is rooted in the history of Anglo-Saxon, Scandinavian, and some other western capitalistic or post-capitalistic societies. Protestant ethics was laid in the foundation of the western modern socio-economic systems, which very simplistically saying, is based on the idea that (wo)man feels more accomplished if he becomes rich, makes “big career,” and is better well off than others. So, the visible signs of success and wealth are perceived as the main measure of human development and also, God’s benevolence to the person. Hard work is regarded as a virtue (Weber, 1958). However, it is widely known that not all communities prioritize these values worldwide. There are some groups that promote spiritual development, social-embeddedness, self-sacrifice, and encourage to appreciate other people’s values and the avoidance of being seen as someone who tries to be better than others (Matsumoto, 2001). Consequently, economic development is not an indicator that could be regarded as a universally culturally accepted developmental goal. So, the need for the reflection of cultural diversity is obvious. However, in order to properly comprehend the value of cultural multiplicity in the process of societal development, then we first need to clearly understand what is the phenomenon that we actually want to explore. So, the clarity concerning the definition of “societal development” is central in this direction.
Is “social development” a real phenomenon?
According to Nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen (1988), development is the “enhancement of living conditions.” However, I assume that human life is a much more sophisticated flow of mental processes which could not be confined only by its external living conditions as it involves internal semiotic dynamics as well. So, it would be more reasonable to follow a wider definition that would allow us to build a more comprehensive approach to human development: “the process in which someone or something grows or changes and becomes more advanced” (https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/development). I assume that the “societal development” should be understood as a systemic process which involves indissoluble relations between humans and socio-cultural meaning systems. The “advancement” by no means should be defined as progress, but a movement ahead, which ensues the transformation of inner and outer infinite worlds (Valsiner, 2014). In order to explore societies, it is important to remove the burden of the necessity of progress that is predominantly the western ethnocentric idea.
We should avoid conceiving “society” and/or “culture” as a “collective representation” in a Durkheimian sense to dodge the threat of their perception as homogenized and impersonal entities. Society as a system has supra-individual properties (Von Bertalanffy, 1950, 1986), but it is nothing beyond the agentivity of its members (Valsiner, 2014; Valsiner & Cabell, 2011). Societal dynamics go beyond personal mental processes, but it becomes possible only by means of and through the relational structure which connects individual agents. It is a systemic relationality between subjects that is the basis for systemic societal features (Drack, Apfalter, & Pouvreau, 2007). Each society forms its own unique configuration of relational structures of signs and meanings. So, for the proper exploration of “societal development,” it is necessary to understand the indigenous arrangement of structural relationships between the members of society.
Furthermore, it is specifically significant to indicate that it is a human who acts, thinks, feels, and develops, not society. It was unique individuals who made breakthroughs in technology, art, and science, not abstractly imagined societies. Individual discoveries were occasionally even suppressed by societal elites. The latter was actively happening in medieval centuries, when Galileo, Giordano, Bruno, and many other innovators were persecuted because they were jumping out of the allowed mode of thinking. Innovative ideas aren’t easily accepted even today. Big inventions happen more often in spite of societal pressure then after their support. Thus, development and progress has always been mostly an individual (or group) achievement, but never abstractly societal. Communities are utilizing discoveries, and, the general public may even have a feeling of common achievement by means of the social identification (Gamsakhurdia, 2019) with an inventor based on having common social identities, however, that by no means can mean that whole society acts or develops as a whole.
So, it wouldn’t be completely accurate to say that one society is more developed than another if we look at that question from one more angle. Not all Americans invented electricity or the internet, but concrete scientists did. Western users of mobile phones might have a subjective feeling that they are more developed personally than a monk living who spends whole of his life in a Shaolin temple in China and has never held a smartphone in his hands; however, would that feeling be an objective evaluation of the situation?! Actually, most inventions, which laid the foundation for the milestone moments in the course of global development, were singular events of breakthroughs (e.g. the invention of the wheel, electricity, the compass, artwork poetry, internet, etc.). Those inventions were spread throughout the whole world in the process of cultural diffusion (Wagoner, Jensen, & Oldmeadow, 2012). There are just a few alphabets which are used for writing by hundreds of states and languages worldwide. Societies can be regarded as users of those singular inventions at best. So, when we want to talk about the social dynamics at the macro level, it would be more accurate and ethical to understand “societal development” as the level of spreading of particular pieces of knowledge, the usage of particular tools/technologies, or the usage of particular organizational models in various societies. Development in its wider and true sense is a global process, while all particular goods and knowledge are being created universally by humanity, not by certain societies.
On the other hand, individuals are making sense of oneself and their environment only and by means of relating to “others” (Hermans, 1999, 2001; Mead, 1934; Salgado & Gonçalves, 2007; Valsiner, 2000, 2007, 2017), so, the systemic nature of socio-cultural dynamics doesn’t assume that any component of the system can have a decisive voice or go beyond the societal “gestalt,” member of which any person is (Von Bertalanffy, 1950). Society “acts” through individuals; however, individual also acts through the relations with various components of “society.” Relationality and dialogicality is the basis of socio-cultural semiotic dynamics (Bakhtin & Mikhail, 1981; Tateo, 2016).
Noticeably, the consideration of the common “societal development” directly contradicts the intra-societal variety which exists in any community. People from different social and sub-cultural groups have a different level of access to knowledge/education, healthcare system, food, water, and social support/scaffolding. On the other hand, various people are making different contributions to society. Each individual has a unique life-trajectory and members of any society aren’t equally developed. Thus, talk about the general and homogenized indexes might be theoretically misleading and invalid. So, the adequacy of over-generalized assessments of “societal development” is very doubtful unless it manages to reflect interindividual variety.
Subsequently, I will consider several particular societal features beyond economic development which were regarded as the indicators for the evaluation of the level of modernity of societies. These criteria were always associated with particular fields of life, e.g. education, religiosity, crime levels, etc.
Concerning particular indicators or fields of “societal development”
It is unfortunate that “contemporary governing bodies almost universally conceptualize societal development as economic development” and associate it with “well-being” (Krys et al., 2019). Noticeably, the latter remains to be among the most vaguely defined concepts for the present moment and predominantly ignores the subjective nature of human’s mental dynamics and is measured mainly by means of the formal questionnaires, which don’t allow to grasp tensegrity (Marsico & Tateo, 2017), ambiguity, and tensions (Boulanger, 2017; Hermans, Konopka, Oosterwegel, & Zomer, 2017; Tateo & Marsico, 2013) related to human existence. I assume that it is crucial to go beyond particular parameters and to grasp the socio-cultural-economic-political dynamics in its complexity. However, in fact, existing classifications of societies are mostly based on the reductionistic theoretical assumptions on their homogeneity and about the existence of particular societal goals, which are expected to be shared by all members of communities. The latter assumptions are used for the justification of so-called top-down ideological and political approaches, when elites are imposing their agenda on their population (e.g. Bhutan government introduced and imposed own gross national happiness index for the measurement of the societal development) (Krys et al., 2019).
The most popular index by which the successfulness of societies is measured is the level of gross domestic product (GDP), which is used for the evaluation of the economic situation in each independent state worldwide (Krys et al., 2019). The evaluation of economic development of societies by means of gauging their GDP might be least offending as it is measurable simply by given numbers of systemic dynamics of the financial system of any society, which are impersonal unlike values, goals, and other subjectively interpretable/meaningful cultural elements. However, it is clear that it wouldn’t be reasonable to equalize the number of GDP even to the level of economic development of any society as the latter is a much more complex phenomenon comparably to how the former represents it. GDP was criticized because “it measures income, but not equality, it measures growth, but not destruction, and it ignores values like social cohesion and the environment” (Is GDP a satisfactory measure of growth? – OECD Observer, n.d.). So, GDP measures only part of the economic development, while the latter is only part of the wider societal development. GDP could be still used as it allows elaborating more efficient views and policies directed on specific financial institutions, but even in that case, it would be better to consider other elements that constitute global and local meaning systems to be able to understand GDP-related social dynamics.
According to Krys et al. (2019), Human Development Index (HDI) can be considered as the “most popular alternative to GDP”. HDI evaluates societies in three fields: economic development, education, and longevity. So, two additional aspects are added besides GDP. This approach undoubtedly seems more comprehensive than the simple measurement of financial conditions; however, it still isn’t comprehensive enough as there are many other dimensions of life (e.g. healthcare system, the situation in total institutions, science, political system, etc.) and theoretical aspects (interindividual variety) which are still omitted. Noticeably, the methodology of calculations of the development of education can be very complicated. For example, quantitative indicators of the quality of education (e.g. the number of people who gets secondary or higher education) won’t have any sense without considering the content, ideological goals, and the quality of the particular educational system, which aren’t and don’t even need to be quantifiable.
Utmost importantly, the consideration of various indicators as ontologically separated entities contradicts common sense and to the systemic perception of the society (Von Bertalanffy, 1950). If we assume that a culture is a system, then it will naturally lead us to the further supposition that the “societal development” is also a systemic process and involves interrelated signs and meanings (including values, norms, and such practices as education) which are qualitatively connected to each other and gain meaning exactly through this relationality. It would be unreasonable to represent such fields as education and economic development as ontologically distinguished from each other while they are interconnected and their meaning depends on relation to each other. It is especially unreasonable to consider “longevity” aside from the “economic development” as there could be little doubt about the qualitative connection (and, correlation) between them. Therefore, any measurement which is going to be based on the idea of ontological and semiotic separateness of signs and their meanings will be fundamentally flawed. The situation in different fields should be analyzed in relation to each other, not separately. I assume that better economic conditions are bilaterally related to longevity—the better economic conditions are in the society the longer people live and the longer people work in their lives the quicker economy develops or maybe the bigger is share of pensioners the slower economy develops—these contradictive assumptions are purely speculative and require empirical verification, however; their relationality is indisputable.
Another popular indicator which has been occasionally used for the evaluation of the development of societies is the level of the spread of the religiosity and magical thinking. Based on the level and strength of religiosity people, whole societies were regarded as “primitive” (Barnard, 2000; Lévy-Bruhl, 1927). Undoubtedly, religiosity still remains to be one of the most disputable and widely studied phenomenon. A century ago it was regarded and expected that modernization would eventually diminish religiosity from all over the world, but that actually never happened. Some countries in Europe and the USA, which are members of G7 still are quite religious despite being among economically successful countries (Norris & Inglehart, 2004). Therefore, it is clear that religiosity couldn’t serve as an indicator for the overall societal development not only because it would be immorally ethnocentric to treat religious people as someone who lacks development, but also because there are economically and technologically very advanced countries where higher percentages of population are still quite religious (Norris & Inglehart, 2004). It is an obvious fact that religiosity doesn’t indicate either on the lag of (economic, technological, or educational) development of any person or society as it can be reconciled with wealthy economic systems and technological innovations as well as with the higher rates of poverty.
Other criteria by which societies have been oftentimes ranked worldwide are the level of political freedom, doing business index, internet coverage, global hunger index, etc. Each of them explores the situation in a particular area and provides information on particular tendencies; however, they do not provide information on the situation in societies overall. Moreover, those criteria are formed and defined based on the western conception of liberal-democracy and other meaningful fields of life. Western centrism of cultural and political-economic studies is an issue that is widely recognized but predominantly ignored by the mainstream of cross-cultural psychologists. Krys et al. (2019) address that issue and propose to elaborate “culturally sensitive” models for the evaluation of the level of development.
The movement toward cultural sensitivity
A culturally sensitive approach to the studies of the level of development of various societies is based on the assumption that communities differently value various fields of life. For example, it may assume that some countries value GDP more than success in the system of education. Generally, the idea of the importance of the historical particularities of socio-cultural developments isn’t new and was vocalized by various philosophers and thinkers from various social scientific disciplines (Cole, 1996; Hitchens, 1994; Lapidus, 2001; Rosa & Valsiner, 2018; Sapir, 1949; Valsiner, 2000; Vygotsky, 1994). Different paths of their historical development lead to the incommensurability of various societies. I assume that the uniqueness of each community and their socio-cultural meaning systems is beyond any doubt; however, that fact isn’t enough for the argumentation of the introduction of the culturally sensitive social developmental model as the understanding of the macro-level social dynamics ensues certain theoretical and practical consequences which need to be addressed in particular. The main challenge is to understand if it is possible to construct a unified model based on the heterogeneous multiplicity of sub-models.
Krys et al. (2019) propose first to make the list of the values or fields and then gauge which of them are more important for the members of each community and to assess, respectively, each criterion’s statistical weight during the calculation of their social developmental index. This approach might be related to several issues. It is vague how the idea of construction of “value lists” and calculation of their importance for various societies is new comparably to already existing similar research approaches (Hofstede, Hofstede, & Minkov, 2010; Markus & Kitayama, 1991; Schwartz, 2012; Triandis, Leung, Villareal, & Clack, 1985). Also, the World Values Survey and many other studies are making inventories of values for decades for now.
Moreover, the creation of culturally sensitive models could lead to very tricky methodological problems. Krys et al. (2019) avoid methodological framing and directly propose to use quantitative research methods in order to measure the level of social “progress.” Standard questionnaires are going to be used in order to identify the list of developmental goals, “typical cultural” traits, priorities, and/or values, which are going to be used as the basis of the “culturally sensitive” evaluation of the social development. Quantification leads to the ontologization (Valsiner, 2017) of socio-cultural elements and ignores their ability for development along the irreversible timeline. Moreover, the quantitative approach leaves unclear how is it possible to reflect the interpretative/subjective and symbolic aspects of culture (Geertz, 1973), which assumedly are important for the understanding of cultural sensitivity of any theoretical model.
Besides, it seems illogical to count the popularity of concepts, which are constructed in western cultures, in non-western communities in the name of “cultural sensitivity,” e.g. longevity, GDP, etc. as Krys et al. model proposed. This looks more like ethnocentrism disguised by the relativistic mask. Moreover, many values despite being coordinatively shared by societies are enacted only by individual agentivity and are creatively reinterpreted (Valsiner, 2009).
I assume that the popularity of values isn’t always relatable to the western idea of progressive development. Some values are oriented on the preservation of what already exists and may discourage innovation. Particular communities who live in Amazonia reject the idea of leaving the forest and prefer to maintain their existing lifestyle, which is far from western standards. In some cases, the usage of the fact of the realization of particular values to the level of development might get ridiculous forms. For example, “family values” are among the most important ones in many societies (Gamsakhurdia, 2017; Mernissi, 1982), while marriage is regarded among one of the most popular life-goals, but how would the fact of knowing that information will help us in the investigation of the level of development of society?! It would be obviously absurd to count the number of married people and treat that number as an indicator of the achievement of that societal goal and as a sign of development. So, in that sense, the mechanic introduction of the idea of “cultural sensitivity” or indication of the popularity/importance of societal values without adequate theoretical elaborations might lead us to the invalid deductions.
If one wants to get culturally appropriate model then s/he should conduct ethnographic studies in each indigenous community for grasping locally constructed concepts and elaborate research instruments based on them. So, any kind of culturally sensitive model of “societal development” ought to be based on the truly indigenous approach and on the developmental cultural psychological stance which requires the recognition of internal heterogeneity, relationality/dialogicality, dynamics, and irreversibility of microgenetic or macro-level developments. The measurement of the level of societal development might be based on the unique configuration of the hierarchy of signs (Valsiner, 2013) which exists in any society. Those societally coordinated hierarchies are never fully shared or accepted by individuals as each member of society “persistently interprets” (Valsiner, 2009) them in their own subjective way. However, even very indigenous approach of societal modeling will always have to make compromise concerning the validity of their deductions at the macro level as it seems theoretically implausible to fully reflect interindividual variety which is undoubtedly present in any social group with existing “inventory” of methods (both, quantitative or qualitative). The latter issue needs to be addressed in the future more thoroughly; however, in the frame of this commentary, I will restrain myself just by indicating on its necessity.
Furthermore, the temporality of perception is another crucial aspect of getting a truly culturally sensitive approach to the investigation of social development. The perception of the level of “development” is always placed in a particular moment of time-flow. It is always subjective and can never be represented by an impersonal number. Humans evaluate and interpret the level of their development in relation to their past experiences and future expectations and goals (Josephs, Valsiner, & Surgan, 1999; Valsiner, 2014). The same achievement might be interpreted and evaluated differently by different persons and by different societies. The same number of GDP can bring positive reactions, pleasure, and optimism in one society, while sadness and pessimism in another. Evaluation of the level of “success” depends on numerous social, cultural, economic, political, geopolitical conditions and even on the size of the country and its composition. All these factors and parameters are constructed in the process of historical development and represent various aspects of irreversible systemic socio-cultural dynamics.
The last crucial question is: even if one manages to construct a truly indigenous model for the reflection of the level of particular societies’ development, how would s\he compare them to each other then?! The culturally sensitive approach would lead to the construction of the unique theoretical concepts in accordance with each particular cultural system. Those concepts might not be translatable in other languages. Consequently, in case if researchers elaborate indigenous approaches to the studies of societal development, they will get qualitatively different and incomparable concepts and models in general. In fact, each society’s, as well as each person’s “progress” 1 should be measured in accordance with their own path of development and surrounding conditions. So, for the truthful appreciation of cultural diversity and the uniqueness of various pathways of developments, one should abandon the task of the ranking of societies at all. The more radical stance would even call for the total rejection of the possibility of measurement of societal development and to make an accent on the investigation of individual processes of agentic development.
And, finally, it is crucial to be conscientious of ethical threats related to the exploration of the options for communities’ classification during the consideration of societal development. The fact of positing objective to compare various societies based on their level of development is itself somehow unethical as it is based on the assumption that some societies are “better” than others. The classification of societies worldwide is the predominantly western idea while all theoretical or empirical instruments (e.g. formal questionnaires) used for that cause are constructed also there, so, making the quest to make that process “culturally sensitive” may seem a bit hypocritical especially if it attempts to superficially imitate indigeneity. In that sense, introduction of cultural sensitivity in the global societal classifications might be dangerous and take us back to the beginning of the 20th century when research group from Cambridge led by Rivers went to southern hemisphere to find out differences in various cognitive processes, while on the other end of the world Luria was studying thinking processes among local Kazakh and other middle Asian dwellers (Bock, 1999; Lindholm, 2007). This threat becomes especially sharp when western researchers propose to measure the popularity of scientific constructs like longevity, well-being, education among non-western societies (Krys et al., 2019).
Conclusive remarks
Classification of societies by means of various rankings is a very fashionable activity and has been very popular throughout the whole human history. However, the scientific rigor and reasonability of such endeavors are very questionable. Hierarchized classification of societies is based on the etic methodological approach and doesn’t reflect internal homogeneity and systemic processuality of socio-cultural dynamics worldwide. Moreover, it is associated with ethical problems because of representing some societies better than others.
Societal classifications are predominantly based on the measurement of GDP which is equalized to societal development; however, in fact, it can’t adequately reflect even the level of economic development, not to speak about the omission of the wider context. More complete approaches, like HDI, propose to measure education and longevity beyond GDP; however, such initiatives are far from being comprehensive. Krys et al.’s proposal of the culturally sensitive classificatory system is a very significant endeavor; however, at the moment it merely mechanistically introduces the factor of indigeneity as a disguise for implicitly ethnocentric approach. Krys et al. propose to use indicators that were constructed in the west (e.g. GDP, longevity, education) among non-western societies and count their popularity among non-western societies to calculate their statistical weight. Indigenously constructed indicators are simply ignored.
Societal classifications should be based on the systemic understanding of societies, which would reflect human subjectivity and interindividual variety that is revealed through the relational social structures. None of particular aspects or components can separately indicate the level of societal development as all of them gain meaning and can function only in relation to each other. The truly culturally sensitive approach should take the emic approach and be based on the values and norms which exist in the local community and use local concepts for the evaluation of personal or societal development. Noticeably, development doesn’t always mean progression. The main issue related to indigenous approaches is that local concepts and indicators might not be translatable to other languages that make the task of the creation of unified scales for making rankings of societies worldwide theoretically impossible. Each socio-cultural system is unique and should be evaluated only at the own indigenous “scale,” compared to oneself at different points of irreversible development. Although even the indigenous approach would have to make a compromise with interindividual variety at the societal level, which is not graspable by currently existing methodological apparatus. Further elaborations on methodological apparatus and theoretical developments can change this picture in the future.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This publication has been produced during my scholarship period at Uppsala University, Institute for Russian and Eurasian Studies, which is funded by the Swedish Institute.
