In sociology, postmaterialism is the transformation of individual values from materalist, physical, and economic to new individual values of autonomy and self-expression. The term was popularized by the political scientist Ronald Inglehart in his 1977 book The Silent Revolution, in which he discovered that the formative affluence experienced by the post-war generations was leading some of them to take their material security for granted and instead place greater importance on non-material goals such as self-expression, autonomy, freedom of speech, gender equality, and environmentalism. Inglehart argued that with increasing prosperity, such postmaterial values would gradually increase in the publics of advanced industrial societies through the process of intergenerational replacement. The theory of intergenerational change is based on the scarcity hypothesis and the socialization hypothesis. Together, these two hypotheses carry the implication that, given long periods of material affluence, a growing part of society will embrace postmaterialist value systems, an implication that was borne out internationally in the 1980s–2000s years of survey data. The postmaterial orientations acquired by each cohort during socialization have been observed to remain remarkably steady over the time-frame of multiple decades, being a more stable value-system in contrast to the more volatile political and social attitudes. Postmaterialism can be a tool in developing an understanding of modern culture, and is considered in reference of three distinct concepts of materialism. The first kind of materialism, and the one in reference to which it is used most often, refers to economic materialism as a value-system relating to the desire for fulfillment of material needs (such as security, sustenance, and shelter) and an emphasis on material luxuries in a consumerist society. A second referent is the materialist conception of history held by many socialists, most notably Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, as well as their philosophic concept of dialectical materialism. The third definition of materialism concerns the philosophical argument that matter is the only existing reality. The first concept is sociological, the second is both philosophical and sociological, and the third is philosophical. Depending on which of the three above notions of materialism are being discussed, postmaterialism can be an ontological postmaterialism, an existentialistic postmaterialism, an ethical postmaterialism, or a political-sociological postmaterialism, which is also the best known.
History The sociological theory of postmaterialism was developed in the 1970s by Inglehart. After extensive survey research, Inglehart postulated that the Western societies under the scope of his survey were undergoing transformation of individual values, switching from materialist values, emphasizing economic and physical security, to a new set of postmaterialist values, which instead emphasized autonomy and self-expression. Inglehart argued that rising prosperity was gradually liberating the publics of advanced industrial societies from the stress of basic acquisitive or materialistic needs. Observing that the younger people were much more likely to embrace postmaterialist values, Inglehart speculated that this silent revolution was not merely a case of a life-cycle change, with people becoming more materialist as they aged, but a genuine example of generational replacement causing intergenerational value change.
Scarcity hypothesis Inglehart assumed that individuals pursue various goals in something akin to a hierarchical order. While people may universally aspire to freedom and autonomy, the most pressing material needs like hunger, thirst and physical security have to be satisfied first, since they are immediately linked with survival. According to Inglehart's interpretation of Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of human goals ("Maslow's hierarchy of needs"), while scarcity prevails, these materialistic goals will have priority over postmaterialist goals like belonging, esteem, and aesthetic and intellectual satisfaction; however, once the satisfaction of the survival needs can be taken for granted, the focus will gradually shift to these "non-material" goods.
Socialization hypothesis The relationship between material conditions and value priorities is not one of immediate adjustment. A large body of evidence indicates that people's basic values are largely fixed when they reach adulthood, and change relatively little thereafter. Therefore, cohorts which often experienced economic scarcity would ceteris paribus (all things being equal) place a high value on meeting economic needs (such as valuing economic growth above protecting the environment) and on safety needs (will support more authoritarian styles of leadership, will exhibit strong feelings of national pride, will be strongly in favour of maintaining a large, strong army and will be more willing to sacrifice civil liberties for the sake of law and order). On the other hand, cohorts who have experienced sustained high material affluence start to give high priority to values such as individual improvement, personal freedom, citizen input in government decisions, the ideal of a society based on humanism, and maintaining a clean and healthy environment.
Measuring postmaterialism There are several ways of empirically measuring the spread of postmaterialism in a society. A common and relatively simple way is by creating an index from survey respondents' patterns of responses to a series of items which were designed to measure personal political priorities.
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