Transformation to a Market Economy and Changing Social Values in China, Russia, and Eastern Germany

Abstract

This thesis investigates the mechanisms driving changes in social values, or those values emphasizing relationships, intimate bonds, and families, in the new market economies of Russia, China, and Eastern Germany. It is hypothesized that tensions between social values and individualism, materialism, and calculative rationality have arisen as a result of the transformation to a free-market economy. Methods used are both contrasted semi-structured qualitative interviews with new-rich businessmen and their fathers in Moscow, Shanghai, and Leipzig and the secondary quantitative analysis of World Values Survey data. Findings illustrate the roles of cognitive adaptation, cognitive dissonance, ideological conflict, and intergenerational changeover as mechanisms through which individuals values tend toward de-intimization as a latent effect of their adoption of the following 'tools of success' critical to the core of capitalist market culture: profit calculation, commodified time, instrumentalization of relationships, image cultivation, personal ambition and independence, enhanced work focus, tolerance of failure, and moral flexibility.