8/8/2019 The Death of Lucian Pye & Political Culture

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China scholar Lucian W.

Pye died on Sept. 5,

2008. (Photo courtesy

Massachusetts Institute

of Technology)

The Death of Lucian Pye And "Political Culture"?

Monday September 15, 2008

Prominent China scholar Lucian Pye died of pneumonia on Sept. 5 in Boston. He was 86 years

old. Obituaries can be found at the New York Times and the MIT website.

Pye was a longtime professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is best known

for his work that theorized that cultural and psychological characteristics of a nation are what

leads countries to develop in such different ways.

Like his mentor, Gabriel Almond, Pye forwarded the concept of "political culture" which

believes that there are cultural and psychological beliefs that a specific people share about

how politics should be carried out. This differs from having a political ideology. Almond and

Pye believed that people could disagree on ideology, but still share the same political culture.

Much of this research was aimed at finding a counter to the spread of Marxist beliefs around

the world. According to the New York Times obituary, Pye's research in Malaysia found that

communism's appeal there came from insecurity over the pace of change. He also concluded

of Burma that psychology was more important than economics in explaining development.

Pye was born in northwest China as the son of missionaries in Shanxi Province. It's unclear how long he stayed in China.

The MIT obituary says that he was raised in China until he left for college, but the New York Times obit says that he left

China as a child for Ohio. In his career, he served as head of the American Political Science Association and advised a

number of politicians, including John F. Kennedy. He also headed the National Committee on United States-China Relations

that laid the groundwork for the American ping-pong team to visit China in 1971.

A more recent extension of Pye and Almond's views of cultural politics can be seen in former Singaporean Prime Minister

Lee Kwan Yew's views of "Asian Values" or James McGregor's 2005 book One Billion Customers where he compares what

he feels is a Chinese culture of shame with a supposed Western culture of guilt. His argument is that the West's "religious

orientation" led to internalized fear of sin that puts a check on bad behavior. But the Chinese fear of shame, which couldtarnish a family's reputation, leads the Chinese to "feel pretty good about doing almost anything as long as they don't get

caught."

Much of these views are hard to measure. According to his New York Times obituary, critics of Pye's 1985 book Asian

Power and Politics: The Cultural Dimensions of Authority said that much of his analysis were based on flagrant stereotypes

about Asia's political cultures. Pye's MIT colleague Donald L.M. Blackmer even described Pye's 1976 biography of

Chairman Mao Zedong this way: "Interpretation and generalization abound, often unsupported by the sorts of evidence

most of us have been taught to look for."

While the debate on whether there is a "Chinese mentality" has died out significantly in academic circles, it seems to

continue in popular debate. The China Law Blog also had debate about it a few years ago. Perhaps the arguments continue

because it still has financial cache for book authors, or maybe it's just easier to believe a generalization about a group of

people than understand a more complex alternative.

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