The “Silent Revolution,” Value Priorities, and the Quality of Life in Britain

Abstract

Inglehart's “Silent Revolution” thesis is examined critically through an analysis of an experimental British survey of subjective attitudes toward the “quality of life.” Inglehart's techniques were replicated to identify “Acquisitive” and “Post-bourgeois” types. It was found that whilst those holding to “postbourgeois” values possessed the demographic characteristics and the political dispositions predicted by Inglehart's thesis, on other highly relevant measures of values choices the postbourgeois group revealed attitudes similarly or even more “acquisitive” than the “Acquisitives.” Discussion is critical of the Maslovian assumptions of Inglehart's model and proposes instead an interpretation of the postbourgeois phenomenon based upon identity and status discrepancies.