An Era of Value Change

The long 1970s have recently emerged as the start of a new epoch in which we still live. This volume asks whether the accelerated value change of these years can be explained with the rise of a new kind of post-rationalism, and presents case studies from across highly industrialized Europe. Theories of value change are tested historically in France, Italy, the two Germanies, the Soviet Union, Poland, Sweden, Spain, Greece, and Portugal. Approaching the era from long-term perspective, the chapters trace the rise of post-rational values in different fields such as social science debates, gender roles, sexuality, mass media, religiosity, humanitarianism, tourism, and nonconformist consumerism. The essays engage in controversy on whether new norms and practices that developed during the decade find their origin in post-rational values, a rise in affluence and education, or political changes.

The comparison in this volume extends both geographically, across the Iron Curtain and including 'smaller' countries, and chronologically, placing the 1970s as a key decade of transformation into a continuum spanning the long twentieth century. The authors show from different perspectives how the transformations of the long 1970s were linked to the legacy of the two world wars, as well as how they were related to the 1960s, which have often been presented as the primary decade of change. Instead of focusing on the dichotomy of materialism and post-materialism advocated by Ronald Inglehart's much-discussed theory of value change, the volume considers the 1970s move towards post-rational values against the backdrop of contemporary intellectual debates on rationalism in advanced industrialized societies.