Key Terms
This is the shared set of beliefs, norms, and recurring practices of society.
What is Culture?
This is the second-largest religion in the Middle East and North Africa region.
What is Christianity?
This theory argues that cultural values, such as work ethic and trust, shape economic success.
What is the culturalist school?
This term refers to a group identity rooted in shared ancestry, language, and cultural traditions.
What is ethnicity?
This economic measure represents the total value of goods and services produced within a country.
What is Gross Domestic Product (GDP)?
This is the set of benefits a group or society receives from the ability of its members to trust each other and cooperate with one another.
What is social capital?
These are the four major religions that can be found in the developing world.
What are Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, and Islam?
According to Max Weber, this religious ethic encouraged the hard work and frugality that led to capitalist development.
What is the Protestant ethic?
The Kurds, a group spread across Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey, are an example of this type of ethnic group that aspires to statehood.
What is a nation?
This 18th and 19th-century transformation brought mechanization, urbanization, and increased productivity, significantly shaping global economic development.
What is the Industrial Revolution?
This approach sees identities as more malleable, resulting from choices by individuals and socializing agents.
What is constructivist?
The majority of people in China adhere to no formal religion or follow this traditional set of spiritual beliefs.
What is Chinese folk religion (or Confucianism)?
This economic concept describes the lack of secure property rights, which can discourage investment and economic growth.
What is dead capital?
This term describes groups that occupied a territory before others and maintain distinct cultural traditions.
What is indigenous?
This economic system prioritizes government control over markets, often associated with state-led development strategies.
What is socialism?
In sub-Saharan Africa, many people blend Christianity or Islam with this spiritual belief system that sees spirits in natural objects and ancestors.
What is animism?
Modernization theorists argue that traditional societies suffer from this mindset, which prevents economic progress.
What is fatalism?
This index is commonly used by social scientists to measure the level of ethnic diversity in a country.
What is the Ethnic Fractionalization Index?
What term describes the psychological adjustment to persistent deprivation, akin to "sour grapes" thinking, often adopted by the destitute?
What are adaptive preferences?
This is the extent to which a society is divided into a large number of relatively small identity groups.
What is Ethnic Fragmentation?
This phenomenon occurs when deeply religious individuals believe their actions in the present life affect their fate in the afterlife, sometimes leading to increased economic productivity.
What is religiosity?
According to some scholars, this major resource in Iraq has led to economic instability and political conflict rather than prosperity.
What is oil (or the resource curse)?
High ethnic diversity has been linked to weaker provision of these government-funded services, due to a lack of social cohesion and trust.
What are public goods?
What concept, introduced by economist Richard Easterlin in a 1974 study, suggests that there is little relationship between a country’s GDP per capita and its average level of happiness?
What is the Easterlin Paradox?