“Which countries have the biggest hearts?

The relationship of values.

Understanding Culture Universals.

Maria Fernanda López A01154339

Instituto de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey

Campus Ciudad de México
1
“The world is becoming ever more generous – with more people giving time, money or
helping others than previously recorded in the seven years of the CAF World Giving
Index.”

On November 23th The Charities Aid Foundation released a list of the most generous
countries of 2016, called the World Giving Index. It consist on a survey conducted on
140 countries based on how charitable their population is.

The objective of this essay is to explain how there are two levels of cultural values that
affect people’s generosity in two ways:
1) Generosity within your country.
2) Generosity towards other countries.
These two levels of cultural values defy people’s generosity depending on the
relationship that they have with their community along with the relationship that they
have with other countries.
These relationships are what generates the priorities of values and thus forming the
hierarchy of values that situate generosity on a higher or lower scale. According to
anthropologist Alan Fiske there are four different types of relationships:
1. Communal sharing.
2. Authority ranking.
3. Equality matching.
4. Market pricing.

The World Giving Index measures how charitable a nation is, based on asking three
questions to a diverse sample a country’s population. The top 15 most generous
nations, according to this year’s World Giving Index, are:
1. Myanmar
2. United States of America
3. Australia
4. New Zealand
5. Sri Lanka
6. Canada
7. Indonesia

Instituto de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey

Campus Ciudad de México
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 8. United Kingdom
9. Ireland
10. United Arab Emirates
11. Uzbekistán
12. Kenya
13. Netherlands
14. Norway
15. Turkmenistan

As seen, these 15 countries are quite diverse, a list conformed of both high context and
low context cultures, past and future oriented cultures. Also these 15 countries
continue in the same or almost same ranking as previous years, and therefore
suggesting that they are quite conscious of their values.
After studying the World Giving Index I came to the conclusion that there are 3 factors
that can have an immense influence of cultural values:
● Miss Fortune and conflict
● Religion
● Government
These three aspects can shape people’s relationships which are directly related to their
values.

Conflict

For example in times of conflict like during the “Seven Day War” fought between Israel
and Palestine, surrounding Arab Countries united with Palestine to fight Israel. The
Israel-Palestine Conflict generated an Authority-Ranking relationship between Arab
countries and Israel, however it also brought out an Equality-Matching and Communal-
Sharing relationship between Arab countries. Also new values like unity emerged.
This example can evaluate the two levels of values. The Communal-Sharing
relationship was based on the internal values among Arabs while the Authority-
Ranking relationship consisted on the external values which consisted on a different
hierarchy of values which placed generosity towards Israelis on a much lower scale.

Instituto de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey

Campus Ciudad de México
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Religion

“You don’t have to be rich to be generous” - Johnny Hunt

No one exemplifies better the influence that religion has on the hierarchy of values than
Myanmar, ranked number one for three consecutive years in the World Giving Index.
The reason for why the people of Myanmar are described as the most generous of the
world has largely to do with their religion, Theravada Buddhism. It is practiced by
around 80 and 90% of the country’s population. An important aspect of this religion is
the “Sangha Dana” which more or less means “giving to a community”, a belief based
on a monastic lifestyle with almost no luxuries. The factor of religion produces a
Communal-Sharing relationship between the people of Myanmar, however the
hierarchy of values of Myanmar as a country and towards other countries are quite
different since it is a very isolated country, with very constrained foreign relations. Most
of the generosity of Myanmar is internal as the country barely interact with other
countries.

Government

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development announced that

Australia is the happiest country. It is also a great example of how the government can
have an effect on the hierarchy of values and generosity. Australia as a first world
nation and developed country has a GDP of 56,000 dollars per capita. Where 71% of its
populations donate money, ergo being ranked 2nd in the World Giving Index for the
donations category. Most of the donated money goes to humanitarian services and
organizations that are not necessarily Australian. Furthermore around a third of the
donations go to the red cross. This proves that when the internal situation of a country
is stable and people are happy with their government they dedicate their resources to
helping other countries more. The Australian government promotes a Communal-
Sharing relationship between Australia and other countries. However when it comes to
immigrants moving to Australia the citizens nor the government don’t seem to be so
happy about it and are not so generous with them either. This justifies the hypothesis of
there being two different levels of cultural values, from country to country and the
internal values of a country.

Instituto de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey

Campus Ciudad de México
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In conclusion, as stated, there is a direct correlation with the type of relationship and the
hierarchy of values. Also this relationships and cultural values can be in a way
“controlled” by religion, the government and conflict. These three aspects influence both
the internal and external relationships of a country that consequently have an effect on
the cultural values that place generosity on a higher or lower level. Additionally, just
because a country is incredibly generous with its own people, that does not necessarily
mean that the citizens of that country are generous towards the people of other
countries.

REFERENCES:
● Charities Aid Foundation. (2016, October ). CAF WORLD GIVING INDEX 2016. Retrieved
November 30, 2016, from Charities Aid Foundation, https://www.cafonline.org/docs/default-
source/about-us-publications/1950a_wgi_2016_report_web_v2_241016.pdf?sfvrsn=4

● Seeker Daily (2016, November 24). Which countries have the most generous people? Retrieved
from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7n14DEvXvz8

● World giving index (2016). . In Wikipedia. Retrieved from

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Giving_Index

● Home. (2016). World giving index 2016 | global view of giving trends | CAF. Retrieved November
30, 2016, from https://www.cafonline.org/about-us/publications/2016-publications/caf-world-
giving-index-2016

Instituto de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey

Campus Ciudad de México
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