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BOOK REVIEW The Culture Code: An Ingenious Way to Understand Why People Around the World Live and Buy as They Do by Clotaire Rapaille Broadway - June 2006
Reviewed by Dr. Jonathan Dolhenty Most of my years of formal education have been spent studying within the fields of philosophy and social science. Virtually all the six-plus decades of my life have been devoted to systematically studying human beings in both their personal and social aspects. There is nothing existing in this universe of ours that is more complex than the human condition and the specific life-form which is responsible for that condition. The social sciences made great strides in the twentieth century and will undoubtedly accomplish much more in this new century as concepts about human behavior and thinking become more finely tuned and as methodologies become more refined. Much of the knowledge gained through systematic studies of human behavior and thought has been interesting and valuable "in and for itself"; it is also true, however, that much of what has been learned about human behavior and thought has been put to "practical" use, that is, principles and concepts generated within the social sciences have been "applied" to such enterprises as advertising, marketing, politics, and so forth. And that brings us to The Culture Code by Dr. Clotaire Rapaille. The subtitle of this book tells it all: "An Ingenious Way to Understand Why People Around the World Live and Buy As They Do." Dr. Rapaille is a cultural anthropologist and also a marketing expert. For those of us brought up during the heyday of classical anthropologists such as Margaret Mead, Bronislaw Malinowski, Ruth Benedict, Lucien Levy-Bruhl, and such, the thought that the intellectual discipline of cultural anthropology itself would have any "practical" use in the economic marketplace, or any other marketplace for that matter, is somewhat of a surprise. I was just getting used to the fact that physical anthropology had become a critical element in "Crime Scene Investigation" -- and, therefore, was now "practical" -- and that a forensic anthropologist such as Kathy Reichs (Ph.D., Northwestern University) could write one best-selling novel after another about a forensic anthropologist who gets caught up in thrilling and suspenseful situations. Now along comes Rapaille to show us how cultural anthropology makes a "practical" contribution to corporate decision-making and the marketing of consumer products. What The Culture Code offers is, of course, not "pure" cultural anthropology. There is much here that ventures over into psychology, sociology, and economics, for instance; no one social science is completely independent of other social sciences. It is the particular "frame of reference," the unique "object in view," and generally the specific "intentional aim" that distinguishes one social science from another. Rapaille's main contribution to social science in this book (as well as to consumer marketing) is the methodology he has developed to discover the "Culture Code." What is the Culture Code? Rapaille defines it as "the unconscious meaning we apply to any given thing -- a car, a type of food, a relationship, even a country -- via the culture in which we are raised." So here we have "unconscious meaning" (psychology), "things we buy or consider of value" (economics, sociology, possibly political science, and possibly axiology -- a branch of philosophy dealing with "value"), and the "meaning they have to us because of our culture" (anthropology). Most of us know (or ought to know) that culture exerts a powerful influence on our behavior and thinking (beliefs and values, etc.). Americans, for example, don't look quite the same way at the same things as, say, the French or the Japanese or the Brazilians do. So if a company wants to sell coffee or tea, or trucks or RVs, or vacation trips or whatever in any country or region of the world, it is important, as Rapaille repeatedly points out, that the company understand the specific Culture Code for marketing that special product or service in a particular country or region. How does one uncover or discover the Culture Code for any specific group? This is where Rapaille parts company with traditional thinking about consumer marketing and has developed a methodology based on five "principles" which he explains in detail. Then, he says, "The notion supported by these five principles is that there is a third unconscious at work." This is the "cultural unconscious," to be distinguished from the two familiar ones known as Freud's individual unconscious and Jung's collective unconscious. There is, according to Rapaille (and I agree with him), an American mind, a Japanese mind, a Brazilian mind, and so on, and he refers to them as "mind-sets." I have often used the term "epistemic frames" for the same idea but it generally refers to how we view ourselves and how we look at the world, and includes such "practical" activities as how we as consumers make decisions and conduct ourselves as members of the human community. But, lest you make the mistake of thinking The Culture Code is mostly a "theoretical" treatise from some ivory-towered academic, allow me to dispel that idea immediately. The "theory" grounding Rapaille's methodology takes up a mere twenty-eight pages at the beginning of the book. From that point forward, the reader is on a roller coaster ride which includes fascinating information about the two dozen most important Culture Codes that the author has discovered. Just to whet one's appetite: What are the Codes for Health and Youth? What are the Codes for Food and Alcohol? What is the Code for the American Presidency? If none of those questions intrigue you, what about this one: What are the Codes for Love, Seduction, and Sex? Furthermore, why is it important for today's marketing that a Jeep's headlights be round instead of square? Why is "Independence" the Code for toilet paper? And, why are bathrooms in newly-constructed homes growing ever larger? For many reasons I can think of at this time in our history, in the final chapter of The Culture Code, Rapaille tells us what the special Code for America is. It should make every American proud. This is definitely a book worth reading and I thank the author for sharing his work. 
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