WHY IS CBD A NEO-WEBERIAN PARADIGM?

Culture Based Development (CBD) research often claims that it is Neo-Weberian. Why?

Max Weber developed a line of research on religious attitudes as a marker for cultural differences across space that lead to different forms of capitalism emerging in different geographies. The first book in this line of Weber's research is the famous: Protestant Ethics and the Spirit of Capitalism. It was followed by his books on China, India and Ancient Judaism that fulfilled his agenda on studying socio-economics through the lenz of culture approximated by religion.

CBD is a quest for improved precision in the quantitative work on cultural bias in economic choice. That is why CBD advocates a comprehensive measurement of local culture instead of using mono-dimensional proxies such as religion.

But CBD importantly endorses the main postulate in Weber's economics of religion - namely, that local cultural attitudes lead to different development - i.e. different forms of capitalism.

Therefore, CBD asked: Was Weber Right? (Tubadji, 2014, IJM) and continued checking the answer of this question, through improved CBD-style precision in quantifying culture through Cultural Heritage and Living Culture factor variables, in over 50 personally authored papers and a series of special issues where colleagues were invited to join forces in continuing the CBD Neo-Weberian quest.

The CBD Neo-Weberian special issues are designed and developed along the steps of Max Weber, the first dedicated to the Occident, the second to China, followed by a special issue now on India and a special issue on the Semitic world.

You are cordially invited to have a look at the past CBD Neo-Weberian special issues and to contribute to the new ones!!! Here where you can find them:

- CBD Neo-Weberian SI on the Occident: https://www.emerald.com/.../Introduction-to-cultural...

- CBD Neo-Weberian SI on China: https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/mjei20/57/1

- CBD Neo-Weberian SI on India: https://www-mlgd.wu.ac.at/.../Call_SI_Neo-Weberian.pdf  (OPEN CALL!!!)

- CBD Neo-Weberian SI on the Semitic world: https://link.springer.com/collections/abfedjehac (OPEN CALL!!!)

Or read more in the new CBD book 1: Tubadji (2025) 'Culture Based Development - Modelling Cultural Bias in Economic Choice', published by Edward Elgar Publishing. You can find it here:

https://www.e-elgar.com/.../culture-based-development...

or here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Culture-Based.../dp/1035341093

Join the conversation: #CBD_Paradigm #CultureBasedDevelopment #CBD_NeoWeberian