Challenging orthodoxies of both the left and right, Fukuyama examines a wide range of national cultures in order to divine the underlying principles that foster social and economic prosperity. Insisting that we cannot divorce economic life from cultural life, he contends that in an era when social capital may be as important as physical capital, only those societies with a high degree of social trust will be able to create the flexible, large-scale business organizations that are needed to compete in the new global economy.
A brilliant study of the interconnectedness of economic life with cultural life, Trust is also an essential antidote to the increasing drift of American culture into extreme forms of individualism, which, if unchecked, will have dire consequences for the nation’s economic health.
About Author:
Yoshihiro Francis Fukuyama (born October 27, 1952) is an American political scientist, political economist, and writer.
Fukuyama is known for his book The End of History and the Last Man (1992), which argues that the worldwide spread of liberal democracies and free-market capitalism of the West and its lifestyle may signal the end point of humanity’s sociocultural evolution and become the final form of human government. However, his subsequent book Trust: Social Virtues and Creation of Prosperity (1995) modified his earlier position to acknowledge that culture cannot be cleanly separated from economics. Fukuyama is also associated with the rise of the neoconservative movement, from which he has since distanced himself.
Fukuyama has been a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies since July 2010 and a Mosbacher Director of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law at Stanford University. In August 2019, he was named director of the Ford Dorsey Master’s in International Policy at Stanford.
Before that, he served as a professor and director of the International Development program at the School of Advanced International Studies of Johns Hopkins University. Previously, he was Omer L. and Nancy Hirst Professor of Public Policy at the School of Public Policy at George Mason University.
He is a council member of the International Forum for Democratic Studies founded by the National Endowment for Democracy and was a member of the Political Science Department of the RAND Corporation. He is also one of the 25 leading figures on the Information and Democracy Commission launched by Reporters Without Borders.
پیشفته ترین نظریات توسعه می‌گویند راه حل‌هایی که قرار است جوامع را به بهروزی برسانند باید با توجه به ظرفیت های بومی، توسط کسانی که از آنها استفاده خواهند کرد از نو کشف شوند، و بخش مهمی از این شرایط بومی ذیل «فرهنگ» قرار می‌گیرد. از میان انبوه مولفه هایی که فرهنگ در خود جای می‌دهد، بنا بر استدلال فوکویاما، آنچه در توسعه بیشترین موضوعیت را دارد «سطح اعتماد موجود در جامعه است. اتفاقا از میان اجزاء فرهنگ آن جنبه ای که بیشتر از هر چیز دیگر تن به مداخله و اصلاح می‌دهد نیز «اعتماد» است. و مهم‌تر از آن اگر بر وضعیت امروز جامعه‌ی خود دقیق شویم، اعتماد را مهم‌ترین کمبود و نیاز آن می یابیم. این‌ها نکاتی هستند که این کتاب را برای هر فرد علاقه‌مند به پیشرفت کشور خواندنی می‌کند. ضمن آنکه این اثر خواننده را به یک جهانگردی عمیق و لذت بخش می‌برد و بینش هایی از دیگرجوامع در اختیارش می‌گذارد که شابد برای کسب‌شان به سال ها زندگی در کشور های دیگر نیاز باشد.
درباره نویسنده:
فرانسیس فوکویاما، زاده ی 27 اکتبر 1952، متخصص اقتصاد سیاسی و فیلسوفی آمریکایی است. فوکویاما در شیکاگو به دنیا آمد. او مدرک لیسانس خود را در رشته ی هنر از دانشگاه کورنل دریافت کرد و سپس در رشته ی فلسفه ی سیاسی ادامه ی تحصیل داد و مدرک دکترای خود در این رشته را از دانشگاه هاروارد گرفت. فوکویاما در حال حاضر، استاد و رئیس گروه توسعه ی اقتصادی بین المللی دانشگاه جانز هاپکینز در شهر واشنگتن دی. سی. است.
