The Privileged Status of Story
How does the mind work—and especially how does it learn? Teachers' instructional decisions are based on a mix of theories from teacher education, trial and error, craft knowledge, and gut instinct. Such gut knowledge often serves us well, but is there anything sturdier to rely on?
Cognitive science is an interdisciplinary field of researchers from psychology, neuroscience, linguistics, philosophy, computer science, and anthropology who seek to understand the mind. In this regular American Educator column, we consider findings from this field that are strong and clear enough to merit classroom application.
By Daniel T. Willingham
Question: I have read that the mind treats stories differently than other types of information. It seems obvious that people like listening to stories, but it's not obvious how to use that in the classroom. Is it really true that stories are somehow "special" and, if so, how can teachers capitalize on that fact?
Answer: Research from the last 30 years shows that stories are indeed special. Stories are easy to comprehend and easy to remember, and that's true not just because people pay close attention to stories; there is something inherent in the story format that makes them easy to understand and remember. Teachers can consider using the basic elements of story structure to organize lessons and introduce complicated material, even if they don't plan to tell a story in class.
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Everybody loves a good story. Even small children who have difficulty focusing in class will sit with rapt attention in the presence of a good storyteller. But stories are not just fun. There are important cognitive consequences of the story format. Psychologists have therefore referred to stories as "psychologically privileged," meaning that our minds treat stories differently than other types of material. People find stories interesting, easy to understand, and easy to remember. To understand why these benefits accrue, it is necessary to understand the underlying format of stories.
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Definitions of story vary, but a useful starting point is to consider how professional storytellers—that is, playwrights, screenwriters, and novelists—define story. There is relative agreement on some basic features, sometimes called "The Four Cs."1 The first C is Causality. Events in stories are related because one event causes or initiates another. For example, "The King died and then the Queen died" presents two events chronologically, but "The King died and the Queen died of grief" links the events with causal information. The second C is Conflict. In every story, a central character has a goal and obstacles that prevent the goal from being met. "Scarlett O'Hara loved Ashley Wilkes, so she married him" has causality, but it's not much of story (and would make a five-minute movie). A story moves forward as the character takes action to remove the obstacle. In Gone With the Wind, the first obstacle Scarlett faces is that Ashley doesn't love her. The third C is Complications. If a story were just a series of episodes in which the character hammers away at her goal, it would be dull. Rather, the character's efforts to remove the obstacle typically create complications—new problems that she must try to solve. When Scarlett learns that Ashley doesn't love her, she tries to make him jealous by agreeing to marry Charles Hamilton, an action that, indeed, poses new complications for her. The fourth C is Character. Strong, interesting characters are essential to good stories, and screenwriters agree that the key to creating interesting characters is to allow the audience to observe them in action. F. Scott Fitzgerald went so far as to write, "Action is character."2 Rather than tell us that Scarlett O'Hara is popular and a coquette, the first time we meet her we observe two men fawning over her.
Stories Are More Interesting
We might guess that stories are interesting because they often touch on themes that people find intrinsically interesting: romance, sex, death, and the like—all found in Gone With the Wind. That's true enough, but there's more to it. People find material presented in a story format more engaging than if it is presented in expository text no matter what the topic. In one study (Britton et al., 1983), the experimenters asked subjects to read passages. As they read, they were to listen for a tone that sounded unpredictably and only occasionally. Upon hearing it, they were to press a button as quickly as possible. The idea was that if subjects were more absorbed in what they were reading, they would be slower to press the button. The results showed that subjects responded more slowly to the tones when reading stories than when reading expository passages. This result was replicated across many different passages using different tasks (other than the button press) to probe attention.
The reason that stories are engaging may be inherent in their structure. Story structure naturally leads the listener (or reader) to make inferences that are neither terribly easy, nor impossibly difficult. New information that is a little bit puzzling, but which we can understand, is deemed more interesting than new information that is either very easy or very difficult to understand. For example, people enjoy working crossword puzzles, anagrams, and the like, but only if they are moderately difficult. They are tedious if too easy, and frustrating if too hard.
Sung-il Kim (1999) tested the idea that a story's interest is derived from readers' need to make medium-level inferences. Kim had subjects read short passages and then rate them for interest. In some passages the penultimate sentence provided a reason for the final action taken, but other passages omitted the reason. For example, one passage (below) described a woman preparing soup and then serving it to her husband.
A newlywed bride had made clam chowder coup for dinner and was waiting for her husband to come home. Although she was not an experienced cook she had put everything into making the soup. Finally, her husband came home, sat down to dinner, and tried some of the soup. (He was totally unappreciative of her efforts an deven lost his temper about ow bad it tasted.) The poor woman swore she would never cook for her husband again.
Example of materials from Kim (1999).
The penultimate sentence is in parenthesis to indicate that some saw the sentence and some didn't. Subjects found the passage more interesting if the reason for the ending was not explicitly in the passage. Similar effects have been reported for more educational materials (e.g., historical passages, see Frick, 1992).
Stories Are Easier to Comprehend
Stories are also easier to comprehend than other forms of text. In one study (Graesser et al, 1994), the experimenters had their subjects read several different types of texts. Texts varied in the familiarity of their content and in their format; some were stories (e.g., one that is very familiar, Princess and the Pea, and one that is not, Bodisat) and some were expository texts (e.g., concerning earthquakes or harvester ants). Each text was read on a computer screen, one sentence at a time; subjects pressed the space bar when they were ready to read the next sentence, so the experimenters were able to measure reading time. The experimenters had analyzed each sentence on a number of dimensions including number of words, grammatical complexity, number of propositions (a linguistic measure of ideas), position in the text, topic familiarity, and narrativity. The experimenters then calculated which of these text characteristics were associated with fast reading times, and which with slow. They found that most of these dimensions had some impact on reading time (e.g., subjects were somewhat slower to read sentences that had more words), but narrativity* had the largest effect by far. Stories were read much faster than expository texts. The researchers take the faster reading speed to indicate greater ease of comprehension.
One key reason that stories are easy to comprehend is because we know the format, and that gives us a reasonable idea of what to expect. When an event is described in a story, we expect that the event will be causally related to a prior event in the story. The listener uses his or her knowledge of story structure to relate the present event to what has already happened. For example, Scarlett agreeing to marry Charles initially seems senseless, as it has been established that she thinks he's a fool. But the viewer knows that there must be a causal link to prior events, and knows that the link is likely related to the main character's goal. Indeed, Scarlett's acceptance of Charles's proposal makes sense given her goal of marrying Ashley and his rejection of her.
Stories Are Easier to Remember
The structure of stories also contributes to the ease of remembering them, and many studies show that stories are indeed easy to remember. In one study (Graesser et al., 1994), subjects listened to the same set of stories and expository texts used in the study described above. Their memory was later tested. Again, familiarity had some impact on memory, but the main effect was for the narrativity of the passages. Subjects remember about 50 percent more from the stories than from the expository passages.
Most researchers believe that it is the causal connections that make stories easy to remember (e.g., Meyers & Duffy, 1990). Janice Keenan and her associates had subjects read different versions of a brief paragraph. The last sentence was always the same, but the penultimate sentence varied so that its causal relationship to the final sentence was more or less obvious. The sample below shows how the penultimate sentence varied in one of the passages.
|Level of Causal Relationship
|Joey's big brother punched him again and again. The next day his body was covered with bruises.||69|
|2||Racing down the hill, Joey fell off his bike. The next day his body was
covered with bruises.
|3||Joey's crazy mother became furiously angry with him. The next day his body was covered with bruises.||75|
|Joey went to a neighbor's house to
play. The next day his body was
covered with bruises.
Sample materials from Keenan et al. (1987). Level is a ranking of
Memory was tested about 35 minutes after reading. Recall was poor if the sentences were very closely related or very unrelated. Memory was best if the subject had to make an inference to connect the sentences, provided it was not too difficult to find the connection.
Part of this memory effect likely occurs as subjects are reading or hearing the story; when the second sentence is moderately related, they think more carefully about how the sentences are connected. As discussed in a previous column (see "Students Remember ... What They Think About," in the Summer 2003 issue of American Educator), thinking about meaning is helpful to memory. Indeed, if subjects are asked to elaborate on the sentences and find a connection between them, the memory advantage for the moderately related sentences disappears (Duffy, Shinjo, & Myers, 1990). Thus, it appears that the moderate connection encourages subjects to think about the sentences, whereas the very strong or very weak connection does not.
The story format brings a memory benefit not only when you hear it, but also when you later try to remember it. Causal connections provide an effective web of associations. If you remember the goal of the main character, that is an entrée to remembering how the character tried to achieve that goal, which leads to memory for successive events. For example, if you had difficulty remembering what happened to Charles Hamilton, you might use your knowledge of story structure to guess that Scarlett could not have remained married to him, which would prompt you to remember that he died.
Our Minds Seek Causal Connections
The story format has psychological significance—better comprehension and better memory—because we know what to expect in a story. These expectations are driven by a mental representation for story structure. In most (but not all) cultures, stories entail causality and goals, and so that's what listeners expect when they hear a story. This expectation is so strong that the listener will use them when remembering the story, even if the story lacked these elements. Take a moment to read the Native American folktale below. In a landmark study, Frederic Bartlett (1932) asked English schoolboys to read this folktale, in which some events happen with no apparent causal connection to prior events. When subjects were asked to recall the folktales weeks later, they added and dropped elements for which there were no apparent causal connections in an unconscious effort to make the story better fit their idea of a story. In particular, subjects had difficulty understanding why some characters were ghosts and difficulty understanding why the Indian dies at the end, and those two facts were especially subject to change in their memory. For example, some subjects omitted the fact that the warriors were ghosts, and one subject later remembered that "Ghost" was a clan name for another group of Indians. Many subjects inserted language indicating causality for the death at the end, for example, relating that he had seemed all right, but became ill the next morning and then died.
War of the Ghosts
One night two young men from Egulac went down to the river to hunt seals, and while they were there it became foggy and calm. Then they heard war-cries, and they thought: "Maybe this is a war-party." They escaped to the shore, and hid behind a log. Now canoes came up, and they heard the noise of paddles, and one saw a canoe coming up to them. There were five men in the canoe, and they said:
"What do you think? We wish to take you along. We are going up the river to make war on the people."
One of the young men said, "I have no arrows."
"Arrows are in the canoe," they said.
"I will not go along. I might be killed. My relative do not know where I have gone. But you," he said, turning to the other, "may go with them."
So one of the young men went, but the other returned home.
And the warriors went on up the river to a town on the other side of Kalama. The people came down to the water and they began to fight, and many were killed. But presently the young man hard one of the warriors say, "Quick, let us go home: that Indian has been hit." Now he thought: "Oh, they are ghosts." He did not feel sick, but they said he had been shot.
So the canoes went back to Egulac and the young man went ashore to his house and made a fire. And he told everybody and said: "Behold I accompanied the ghosts, and we went to fight. Many of our fellws were killed, and many of those who attacked us were killed. They said I was hit, and I did not feel sick."
He told it all, and then he became quiet. When the sun rose he fell down. Something balck came out of his mouth. his face became contorted. The people jumped up and cried.
He was dead.
Causality is so powerful a cue to recall that subjects will use it even in expository prose, if it's available. In one study (Gentner, 1976), subjects who listened to passages from a history textbook later recalled the events described not in the order that they heard them, but in the order of causation.
Stories and Story Structure in the Classroom
Stories are interesting, easy to comprehend, and easy to remember; and even preschoolers have some appreciation of story structure (Wenner, 2004). Exactly what has led our minds to handle stories in such a privileged way is not well understood, but it has been suggested that understanding the actions and characters in a story calls on the same processes we use in trying to understand the actions and intentions of people in the real world (Bower, 1978). We evolved as a social species, and so we may have special cognitive apparatus to deal with social situations that are co-opted in thinking about stories.
How can teachers capitalize on the privileged status of stories? There are two groups of applications. First, obviously enough, one can tell more stories. Second, where stories are inappropriate, it may still be useful to inject elements from the story format into lessons. Both approaches are discussed here.
Tell more stories in class.
Since stories are interesting, easy to remember, and easy to understand, they are an ideal introduction to a new unit. The teacher can introduce new material in a way that is both non-threatening and interesting. Further, students may acquire some of the basic vocabulary of the content area and be better prepared to delve more deeply into the subject matter. If you think of stories as a particularly "easy to swallow" way of teaching content, you'll think of a lot of ideal times for using stories: after lunch, at the end of a complex discussion when a simple recap is needed, and during the last few minutes of the school day. A teacher might know of a story that complements the lesson's educational point, but does so in a way that is less taxing, more fun, and more interesting. For one such story, see "Mayday at 41,000 Feet: Watch Those Units!" from the Winter 2003–2004 issue of American Educator. Such a story can also make an ideal break on a day when students are frazzled—and is more attractive than other alternatives (such as undemanding busy work).
Have students read stories outside of class.
Books are available that use a narrative structure to convey complicated content. Most notable are biographies of great figures in science, mathematics, history, and the arts. Biographies make personal the material that teachers want students to master. Biographies of scientists frequently read like detective stories, as they hunt for the solution to a scientific problem. Great scientists and mathematicians also set an excellent example for students through their passion and dedication. Students will gain an important personal perspective when they read an autobiography of an ordinary person who lived through a historical event that they are studying. Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl is a classic example, but there are many other fine works in this vein. Other books integrate educational material into the stories themselves, such as Flatland by Edwin Abbott, or The Man Who Counted by Malba Tahan.
Tell stories to older students.
Teachers may think that storytelling is inappropriate for older students. Once children get to sixth grade or so, they may think that stories smack of preschool. Of course, older children do enjoy stories; they attend movies, they read books. The problem is that listening to stories read aloud in class sounds like (and indeed is) what young children do. The solution is simple enough. The importance of age-appropriate language is obvious, and teachers might also consider not signaling to students that a story is being told. Such signals might include reading aloud from a book, using a dramatic voice, and insisting that the story be told as a whole, uninterrupted. Rather, the teacher might begin the story without announcing it as a story—tell it in everyday language, work from notes, and allow discussion while the story is being told.
When "story" is intrinsic to the subject matter, make use of the story format to structure lessons.
History is a natural story; it has the four Cs —causality, conflicts, complications, and character—built in. Yet, history textbooks rarely use a narrative structure. For teachers, an important way to make use of story in history is through the generous use of trade books that treat history as biography, historical fiction, or a narrative.
Use the four Cs to structure lessons.
There are ways to use the four Cs as the framework for developing lesson plans. For example, a typical lesson on the Spanish-American War emphasizes President Cleveland's and then President McKinley's reluctance to do anything about the Cuban revolution against the Spanish, despite the considerable economic stake that the U.S. had in the country. Successive events (the publishing of an insulting letter by the Spanish Minister and the sinking of the Maine), lead to a U.S. ultimatum that is rejected by the Spanish, whereupon the U.S. declares war. Considering the four Cs might lead to a different framework. The strong character in this drama is Spain, because it is Spain's actions that move the story forward. Thus, a teacher might begin with the background of how Spain first came to control Cuba and the failed revolt of 1868–1878. The central conflict of the story is how the Spanish should deal with the revolt: put it down or try to accommodate the Cubans. The first complication is the increasing involvement of the U.S. in this conflict, which offers a third option—allow the U.S. to mediate. At each step, the teacher would ensure that the causal link between one event and the next was clear to students. Story format can inform the structuring of a lesson plan, even if the lesson does not include a story per se.
Use the most important C—conflict.
Screenwriters know that the most important of the four Cs is the conflict. If the audience is not compelled by the problem that the main characters face, they will never be interested in the story. Movies seldom begin with the main conflict that will drive the plot. That conflict is typically introduced about 20 minutes into the movie. For example, the main conflict in Star Wars is whether Luke will succeed in destroying the death star, but the movie begins with the empire's attack on a rebel ship and the escape of the two droids. All James Bond movies begin with an action sequence, but it is always related to some other case. Agent 007's main mission for the movie is introduced about 20 minutes into the film. Screenwriters use the first 20 minutes—about 20 percent of the running time—to pique the audience's interest in the characters and their situation. Teachers might consider using 10 or 15 minutes of class time to generate interest in a problem (i.e., conflict), the solution of which is the material to be learned.
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Cognitive science research confirms that stories are indeed powerful. This research shows us where this power comes from and suggests how teachers might harness it. Stories have a particular format, and each of us has a representation of that format in memory. Teachers may use this power both by the judicious use of storytelling in the classroom, and by using the structure of stories to organize a lesson.
Daniel T. Willingham is professor of cognitive psychology and neuroscience at the University of Virginia and author of Cognition: The Thinking Animal. His research focuses on the role of consciousness in learning. He thanks Bill Brewer and Randy Fletcher for useful conversations in preparing this article.
*"Narrativity" was determined by asking readers to rate whether they believed that a given piece of writing seemed like a "story." (back to article)
1. The definitions vary somewhat, and some contain five or six Cs rather than four, but there is considerable overlap in the definitions (Field, 1994; Hull, 1983; McKee, 1997).
2. The Notebooks of F. Scott Fitzgerald, ed. Matthew J. Bruccoli. New York and London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich/Bruccoli Clark, 1978, p. 332.
Bartlett, F. C. (1932/1995). Remembering. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Bower, G. H. (1978). Experiments on story comprehension and recall. Discourse Processes, 1, 211–231.
Britton, B. K., Graesser, A. C., Glynn, S. M., Hamilton, T., & Penland, M. (1983). Discourse Processes, 6, 39–57.
Duffy, S. A., Shinjo, M., & Myers, J. L. (1990). The effect of encoding task on memory for sentence pairs varying in causal relatedness. Journal of Memory and Language, 29, 27–42.
Eggen, P. & Kauchak, D. (2001). Educational Psychology, 5th ed. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall.
Frick, R. W. (1992). Interestingness. British Journal of Psychology, 83, 113–128.
Gentner, D. R. (1976). The structure and recall of narrative prose. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 15, 411–418.
Graesser, A. C., Singer, M., Trabasso, T. (1994). Constructing Inferences During Narrative Text Comprehension. Psychological Review, 101, 371–395.
Keenan, J.M., Baillet, S.D., & Brown, P. (1987). The effect of causal cohesion on comprehension and memory. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 23, 115–126.
Kim, S-i. (1999). Causal bridging inference: A cause of story interestingness. British Journal of Psychology, 90, 57–71.
Meyers, J. L. & Duffy, S. A. (1990). Causal inferences and text memory. In A. C. Graesser, & G. H. Bower (Eds.), Inferences and text comprehension. New York: Academic Press.
Wenner, J. A. (2004). Preschoolers' comprehension of goal structure in narratives. Memory, 12, 193–202.


Identification. The origin of the word "Niue" is obscure. Formerly, the island included two endogamous, warring factions that occupied separate territories: a northern region called Motu and a southern region called Tafiti.
Location and Geography. Sometimes affectionately called "the Rock," Niue Island is one of the world's largest coral islands and smallest self-governing states. Niue is a large coral island ten miles by seven miles (16 kilometers by 11 kilometers). Some 350 miles (600 kilometers) southeast of Samoa, Niue has no strategic or trade significance and was not annexed by one of the European powers until 1900, long after most other Pacific islands.
Formed by volcanic upheavals, the island sits atop 100-foot (30-meter) cliffs rising straight out of deep ocean. All fourteen villages are situated on a narrow terrace that encircles the island. The interior consists of a central saucer-shaped plateau, one hundred fifty feet (forty-five meters) higher than the terrace, covered in ferns, scrub, and second-growth trees. In the southeast quadrant, the remaining primary forest has been set aside as a conservation area protected by legislation and supernatural strictures.
There is no surface water except in a few caves with small, brackish pools. Rainwater is collected in tanks as run off from roofs. Despite fluctuation in annual rainfall, the tropical climate is conducive to agricultural production, although cultivation is difficult because of the terrain: a thin layer of fertile soil surrounding jagged limestone pinnacles. East-southeast trade winds give way during the wet season (November to March) to variable winds and occasional storms. Hurricanes have been massive forces of social change, occurring on average once every seven years and causing considerable damage to both buildings and agriculture.
There are no surrounding protective reefs or sheltered lagoons. The capital, Alofi, is on the western, lee side of the island at the only place where a wharf could be constructed. Until very recently, the monthly cargo ship had to anchor in deep water about a mile offshore and transfer goods to a barge or lighter for transport to the wharf.
Demography. Niue has always had a small population, probably never more than five thousand, because of the strenuous work involved in crop production and the periodic famines. The demographic concern is depopulation, not overpopulation. Spurred in large part by extremely adverse weather, outmigration on a massive scale has been a feature of life since the opening of the airport in 1971. Every five-year census since 1970 has recorded a decline in the population between 15 and 23 percent; in 1995, just over two thousand people remained on the island.
Most outmigrants are unmarried youths or adult couples with young children who intend to stay away permanently. Some fifteen thousand Niueans now live in New Zealand. The proportion of children in the population dropped from one-half in 1970 to about one-third in 1995, while the proportion of elderly people has increased from 6.4 to nearly 10 percent.
Linguistic Affiliation. The Niuean language is related to other western Polynesian languages, such as Samoan and Tongan, with slight pronunciation differences between the Motu and Tafiti moieties and different spelling conventions.
Most Niueans are bilingual. Niuean tends to be the language of family and village life, and English the language of business. Considerable switching between languages occurs in almost every setting.
Emergence of the Nation. On attempting to land in June 1774, Captain James Cook and his crew were forcefully repelled by parties of fearsomely attired men uttering blood curdling screams and brandishing spears. Hastily leaving after little actual combat, Cook called the place "Savage Island," a name that appeared on maps into the twentieth century.
National Identity. Until around 1960, Niueans had a poorly developed concept of their island as constituting a distinct culture or nation. Between the mid-19th and 20th centuries, Niue was gradually but increasingly exposed to the outside world, resulting in inexorable change in ways of life and Niuean identity. External influences included mission activity, labor migration, colonization, development of a money economy based on agricultural exports and mercantile endeavors, service in foreign wars, and control by a rigid and rather unresponsive administration. People gradually began to develop an allegiance to a broader entity than their natal villages. That process began during encounters with colonial administrators. The process was accelerated in the early 1960s, when the general populace was able to work with and live next to a large and diverse group of white New Zealanders ( palagi ) brought to help the island recover from hurricanes. Those workers came from a wide range of socioeconomic positions with varying aspirations and experiences. Outmigration in the 1970s also heightened a sense of national identity, as Niueans arriving in New Zealand felt a need to distinguish themselves from other Pacific Islanders and the Maori.
Ethnic Relations. Few outsiders reside on the island, but those who do are generally well tolerated, although competition for scarce jobs can lead to resentment. Most foreigners are expatriates who provide technical advice to the government or have married Niueans. In the early 1980s, about one hundred people from Tonga, where pressure on land was intense, mobilized kin ties and moved to Niue. Also present were a few dozen high school children from the Tokelaus, receiving education not available in their homeland. In the 1990s, a handful of people from Tuvalu settled in a deserted village, escaping the threat that rising seawater posed to their homeland.
No area can be described as urban, but nearly one-fifth of the population lives in the vicinity of Alofi, a typical Pacific port town-capital. Villages are laid out around a central, flat open space, the village green ( male ) which is used for meetings, sports events, and ceremonies. Most houses symbolically if not literally face the most socially important and visually dominant structures near the male: the church and the pastor's house. The church is a central feature of social organization, underpinning all social interaction, providing moral guidance, enabling the redistribution of goods and services from wealthy to less well-off members of the village, socializing children, and upholding traditions while spurring change.
Most buildings have been constructed within the past twenty years, using materials, styles, and furnishings imported mainly from New Zealand.
Food in Daily Life. Despite the fact that many families can afford imported foodstuffs such as canned corned beef, frozen lamb or chicken, and rice, agriculture remains important. Subsistence activities not only raise food, especially highly prized ceremonial foods, but also symbolize the central values linked to work and identity. Enough surplus food is produced to sustain only one small market each week.
Fishing results in a variety of deep-sea catches, such as yellowfin tuna, red bass, and sailfish. Despite the difficult terrain, slash-and-burn (shifting) agriculture is a major crop-producing activity. Niueans cultivate both root crops such as talo (taro), yams, and tapioca, and tree crops such as coconut, breadfruit, papaya, and mango, as well as bananas. Planting also sustains the production of pigs. Hunting of fruit bats, birds, and land crabs, and gathering of fern shoots and other vegetation occurs regularly.
Food Customs at Ceremonial Occasions. A boy's first haircutting ( hifi ulu ) and a girl's ear-piercing ceremony ( huki teliga ) are occasions for displaying family solidarity, wealth, and status. Symbolically marking role transitions, these ceremonies involve the donation of cash or gifts to the celebrants. Such gifts are reciprocated by an elaborate and public presentation of feast foods. The extended family does extra work to procure sufficient quantities of these highly esteemed uncooked foods, such as pigs, fish, taro and other prized root crops such as ufi (yams), and barrels of salt pork or canned corned beef.
Celebrations of one's twenty-first birthday, weddings, graduation from college, or major community events are less ceremonially intricate. Feast foods are cooked in an earth oven ( umu ) and presented to guests along with other items. After the blessing, each guest gathers items for later consumption into a basket.
Basic Economy. The economic base of the island is foreign aid. In the early 1970s, the economic productive work base changed from agriculture to service provision. By the mid-1980s, more than 80 percent of employed adults worked for wages for the government. In 1990, restructuring and downsizing of the civil service took place. Despite the political and social upheaval this caused, the island's standard of living and economy did not plummet, in large part because of the aid still arriving from New Zealand and other international sources. Per capita aid remains among the highest in the world.
Land Tenure and Property. Land is inalienable and cannot be sold or deeded permanently to non-Niueans. There is a preference for patrilineal inheritance of real property such as land and an emphasis on primogeniture. Women have some rights, but these are not as strong as those of male claimants. Absentee landowners cause considerable tension in some families. The Land Court is probably the most important and contentious aspect of the judiciary. Major political struggles revolve around means to resolve the dilemmas posed by absentee landowners.
Commercial Activities. Tourism, based on deep-sea scuba diving and snorkeling, is the biggest money earner, with the two thousand people who visit annually contributing around $1 million to the economy. Like the export trade, tourism is vulnerable to disruption because of bad weather.
Other commercial activity is heavily agriculture-based: the manufacture for export of coconut cream, taro, passion fruit, limes, and honey. Plaited ware such as hats and baskets and other handicrafts are important export items. Earlier attempts to assemble hand-sewn soccer and rugby balls and similar light industries failed largely because of transportation problems. A small but significant proportion of government revenue is generated through the sale of postage stamps to collectors.
Trade. Niue generally imports approximately fifteen times as much as it exports. Usually, the primary trade item, taro, accounts for 85 percent of export earnings but is highly vulnerable to disruption from weather. In 1996, Niue experienced a 40 percent reduction in exports because of a severe drought; taro brought in only $90,000. In that year, imports reached a five-year high of $3.4 million. Along with food products and alcohol and tobacco, the major imported goods are consumer durables such as outboard motors, aluminum dinghies, refrigerators, and motorcycles.
Division of Labor. Men, especially young men, are expected to undertake physically strenuous or dangerous tasks such as deep-sea fishing. Older men and educated younger men represent the family or village in civic and spiritual affairs. Women generally are assigned tasks focused on the domestic domain, such as caring for old people or children, cooking, sewing, and weaving.
Niue is characterized by a lack of hereditary rulers, a very flexible social hierarchy, an individualistic achievement orientation, and a strong work ethic. More than by speech patterns, dress styles, comportment, or social interaction, differentiation into fluid socioeconomic strata depends on personal charisma or accomplishment and material wealth, such as ownership of aluminum fishing dinghies or outboard motors.
Government. There is a democratically elected parliamentary government. The premier is chosen by a vote by the twenty elected representatives in the Fale Fono (Niuean Assembly). The formation of distinct political parties has been more discussed than realized. Political cleavage exists between those who do and those who do not wish to change the infrastructure initially set up by the New Zealand administration.
Niueans over age 18 get two votes. One vote is to elect the village representative. These politicians tend to be older men with prestigious backgrounds, such as pastors, government officials, and successful planters and merchants. The second vote is used to elect six island-wide representatives or Common Roll members. These politicians often include women and tend to be younger than village representatives who have been educated abroad as teachers, doctors, or administrators. Hence, modern politics both conforms to a Polynesian tradition of gerontocracy by having elders represent individual villages and deviates from that convention by rewarding individual achievement and expertise in new arenas.
Social Problems and Control. A small police force consisting of a chief and a constable assigned to each village maintains law and order. Most criminal acts are relatively minor misdemeanors (petty theft, unsafe driving, allowing pigs to wander) and are dealt with locally by warnings or small fines. More serious crimes, such as assault, are prosecuted in the magistrate's court and may result in large frees or imprisonment.
Basic social welfare programs exist. For example, free nutrition supplements are available to ensure the health and well-being of young children, and older people receive a modest pension.
Various voluntary associations include a trade union for government employees, women's groups, sports teams, church choirs, dance groups, and youth groups.
Although women are not automatically accorded the sociopolitical status that men achieve after marriage, women can achieve positions of authority and influence, especially at older ages, through education and by demonstrating effective leadership.
As important as gender in assigning tasks and respect is chronological age. Those who are older are respected and deferred to not just because of family background, experience, and accomplishments but because they are older. Attention to relative age is linguistically signaled and bolstered by the social, religious, economic, and political organization of life.
Domestic Unit. In the past, villages were endogamous, somewhat matrifocal units. The mixing of youth from all villages at the high school has caused the breakdown of this tradition, and that of the Motu-Tafiti rivalry.
People live in extended family groups called magafaoa , which oversee land ownership and use. Villages are composed of related magafaoa. Households within a magafaoa occupy clusters of nearby dwellings. The head of a household is usually a married man ( patu ) who represents his domestic unit in church and village politics. Also living in his household are his wife and unmarried children, any recently married children and their spouses, and some grandchildren. Frequently, a household includes a sibling of the patu or of his spouse, a widowed older relative, or a niece or nephew who goes to a nearby school.
Infant Care. Mothers are the primary caregivers for infants. Grandmothers are crucial resources, especially for firstborn children, because they teach new mothers how to parent properly. A child who crawls and begins to talk is thought to be capable of understanding. When a child is around one year old, the indulgent period of infancy gives way to intense training in social behaviors and a heightening of the role that fathers play in the lives of their children.
A child is the responsibility of all members of a magafaoa and may be fed, clothed, chastised, and cared for by any family member; the child thus may end up living in a different household temporarily or permanently. While at play, toddlers and young children are usually in the care of older siblings.
Child Rearing and Education. There are six elementary schools and one high school. Schooling is compulsory, secular, and free for all children age 5 to 14. At more advanced grades, instruction is delivered in English. The curriculum is modeled on that used in New Zealand schools but includes materials especially designed for a Pacific Islander context.
Higher Education. Postsecondary education at the university or technical college level is available only overseas. Students are selected for further training and supported by government scholarships and then return to take up government jobs, such as physicians or nurses, engineers, technicians, administrators and managers, teachers, and mechanics.
Niuean society is a gerontocracy based on obedience to and respect for those who are older than oneself, with special accord being given to males and those who are first-borns. Gifts (e.g., food, shell necklaces, money) are frequently exchanged informally as well as formally, signaling esteem and friendship, and are expected to be reciprocated at some later time.
The first missionaries to arrive in the mid-nineteenth century were Samoan. They were followed in 1861 by English representatives of the London Missionary Society. Most Niueans are Christian, with the majority (75 percent) being affiliated with the Protestant Church of Niue ( Ekalesia Niue ). In general, pastors are men trained in seminaries in Samoa or elsewhere who play a central role in village life as spiritual and civic leaders.
To varying degrees, most Niueans still embrace older religious ideas, believing in a supernatural world inhabited by aitu , spirits of dead ancestors or ghosts. Aitu keep a close eye on behavior and punish with misfortune, illness, or even death upon individuals who transgress social norms or flout cultural conventions. Death implies movement from this world to a parallel supernatural world inhabited by ghosts and ancestral spirits. Death is not necessarily instantaneous but rather a gradual transition, as implied by use of the same word, mate , to denote states distinguished in other cultures as delirious, unconscious, dying, and dead.
Any location at which an unexpected or violent death occurs will have a fono or prohibition placed on it, distancing the living from the revenge of ancestral sprits. Until the appropriate time for a pastor to lift this tapu (supernatural edict), people will not visit or will behave there in a very circumspect fashion. Caves or chasms with a history of importance in human affairs are named and treated with respect because of supernatural associations.
High-quality (Western) biomedical care is available free of charge. Emergency services and in-patient care for surgical conditions are provided at Lord Liverpool Hospital in Alofi. Patients requiring specialist care are sent by air to nearby countries. Outpatient care is available at several clinics, including a mobile one that regularly visits each village. Public health surveillance and the prevention of disease are a key aspect of health service delivery. This is accomplished through sanitary disposal of wastes, provision of potable water, rodent and mosquito control, and well-baby clinics and childhood vaccination programs.
Herbalists and traditional healers ( taulaatua ) address psychosocial issues that do not always respond well to other therapies as well as diseases that are deemed to be uniquely Niuean in origin and manifestation. Despite an official ban, there is underground support for and provision of this kind of care.
There are two official days of celebration: Peniamina's Day and Independence Day. Peniamina was a Niuean who went to Samoa in the mid-nineteenth century and later returned with Samoan missionaries. He is credited with bringing the Bible and beginning the modernization of Niue. Independence from New Zealand was granted on 19 October 1974, a process begun fourteen years earlier. Niueans resisted being hurried to independence even when the United Nations applied pressure. At stake was the fashioning of the world's first Compact of Free Association—a model used subsequently in independence agreements by other Pacific societies— which gave Niueans self-determination but continued New Zealand citizenship, monetary aid, and military protection.
Niueans do not have a strong interest in preserving their history by collecting artifacts or through oral storytelling or the recitation of genealogies. Traditional dances and songs are featured at important events such as weddings and official ceremonies. A recent surge of interest in history has resulted in the establishment of a small museum in Alofi and the revival of several handicrafts, such as the building of canoes by hand and the making of hiapo , a mulberry bark cloth.
Some returned migrants make a living through the arts, such as sculpture, writing, painting, and composing music. Such endeavors, however, are aimed more at an overseas commercial art market than at the local community. Most funding for the arts comes from overseas; the New Zealand government is interested in fostering and maintaining traditional Pacific arts and crafts.
Barker, Judith C. Social Organization of Health Services for Preschool Children on Niue Island, Western Polynesia , 1985.
——. "Health and Functional Status of the Elderly in a Polynesian Population." Journal of Cross-Cultural Gerontology 4: 163–194, 1989.
——. "Home Alone: The Effects of Out-Migration on Niuean Elders' Living Arrangements and Social Support." Pacific Studies 17 (3): 41–81, 1994.
——. "Between Humans and Ghosts: The Decrepit Elderly on a Polynesian island." In Jay Sokolovsky, ed., The Cultural Context of Aging: Worldwide Perspectives, rev. 2nd ed., 1997.
——. "Road Warriors: Driving Behaviors on a Polynesian Island." In Robert A. Hahn, ed., Anthropology in Public and International Health: Bridging Differences in Culture and Society . New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Chapman, Terry M. The Decolonization of Niue, 1976.
Connell, John C. Migration, Employment and Development in the South Pacific: Country Report Number 11—Niue, 1983.
Loeb, Edwin M. "History and Traditions of Niue." Bernice P. Bishop Museum Bulletin no. 32, 1926.
McBean, Angus. "Niue Today . . . " South Pacific Bulletin October 1962, pp. 33–37, 60–64.
McLachlan, Sue. "Savage Island or Savage History? An Interpretation of Early European Contact with Niue." Pacific Studies 6: 26–51, 1982.
Niue Government. Niue: A History of the Island, 1982.
Pollock, Nancy J. "Work, Wages and Shifting Cultivation on Niue." Pacific Studies 2: 132–143, 1979.
Scott, Dick. Would a Good Man Die? Niue Island, New Zealand and the Late Mr. Larsen, 1993.
Yarwood, Vaughn, with photographs by Glenn Jowitt. "Life on the Rock." New Zealand Geographic 37: 56– 86, 1998.
—J UDITH C. B ARKER


Western culture, sometimes equated with Western civilization, Western lifestyle or European civilization is a term used very broadly to refer to a heritage of social norms, ethical values, traditional customs, belief systems, political systems, and specific artifacts and technologies that have some origin or association with Europe, having both indigenous and foreign origin. The term has come to be applied by people of European ethnicity to countries whose history is strongly marked by European immigration, colonisation, and influence, such as the continents of the Americas and Australasia, whose current demographic majority is of European ethnicity, and is not restricted to the continent of Europe.
Western culture is characterized by a host of artistic, philosophic, literary, and legal themes and traditions; the heritage of Greek, Roman, Celtic, Germanic Jewish, and other ethnic and linguistic groups,  as well as Christianity, including the Roman Catholic Church and Orthodox Church, which played an important part in the shaping of Western civilization since at least the 4th century.    Also contributing to Western thought, in ancient times and then in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance onwards, a tradition of rationalism in various spheres of life, developed by Hellenistic philosophy, Scholasticism, humanism, the Scientific revolution and the Enlightenment. Values of Western culture have, throughout history, been derived from political thought, widespread employment of rational argument favouring freethought, assimilation of human rights, the need for equality, and democracy.
Historical records of Western culture in Europe begin with Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome. Western culture continued to develop with Christianisation during the Middle Ages, the reform and modernization triggered by the Renaissance, and with globalization by successive European empires, that spread European ways of life and European educational methods around the world between the 16th and 20th centuries. European culture developed with a complex range of philosophy, medieval scholasticism and mysticism, and Christian and secular humanism. Rational thinking developed through a long age of change and formation, with the experiments of the Enlightenment, and breakthroughs in the sciences. Tendencies that have come to define modern Western societies include the existence of political pluralism, prominent subcultures or countercultures (such as New Age movements), and increasing cultural syncretism resulting from globalization and human migration.
The West as a geographical area is unclear. There is some disagreement about what nations should or should not be included in the category, and at what times. Many parts of the Eastern Roman Empire are considered Western today, but were Eastern in the past. Geographically, the "West" of today would include Europe (especially the European Union countries) together with extraeuropean territories belonging to the Anglosphere, as well as the Hispanidad, the Lusosphere or the Francophonie in the wider context. Since the context is highly biased and context-dependent, there is no agreed definition what the "West" is.
It is difficult to determine which individuals fit into which category, and the East–West contrast is sometimes criticized as relativistic and arbitrary.   Globalism has spread Western ideas so widely that almost all modern cultures are, to some extent, influenced by aspects of Western culture. Stereotyped views of "the West" have been labelled Occidentalism, paralleling Orientalism — the term for the 19th-century stereotyped views of "the East".
As Europe discovered the wider world, old concepts adapted. The area that had formerly been considered the Orient ("the East") became the Near East, as the interests of the European powers interfered with Qing China and Meiji Japan for the first time, in the 19th century. Thus, the Sino-Japanese War in 1894–1895 occurred in the Far East, while the troubles surrounding the decline of the Ottoman Empire simultaneously occurred in the Near East. The term Middle East, in the mid-19th century, included the territory east of the Ottoman Empire but West of China - i.e. Greater Persia and Greater India, but is now used synonymously with: Near East in most languages.
The earliest civilizations which influenced the development of western culture were those of Mesopotamia; the area of the Tigris–Euphrates river system, largely corresponding to modern-day Iraq, northeastern Syria, southeastern Turkey and southwestern Iran: the cradle of civilization.
The Greeks contrasted themselves to their Eastern neighbours, such as the Trojans in Iliad, setting an example for later contrasts between east and west. In the Middle Ages, the Near East provided a contrast to the West, though it had been Hellenized since the time of Alexander the Great.
Concepts of what is the West arose out of legacies of the Western Roman Empire and the Eastern Roman Empire. Later, ideas of the west were formed by the concepts of Latin Christendom and the Holy Roman Empire. What we think of as Western thought today originates primarily from Greco-Roman and Germanic influences, and includes the ideals of the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, as well as Christian culture.
Western culture is neither homogeneous nor unchanging. As with all other cultures it has evolved and gradually changed over time. Nevertheless, it is possible to follow the evolution and history of the West, and appreciate its similarities and differences, its borrowings from, and contributions to, other cultures of humanity.
In Homeric literature, and right up until the time of Alexander the Great, for example in the accounts of the Persian Wars of Greeks against Persians by Herodotus, we see the paradigm of a contrast between the West and East.
Nevertheless, the Greeks felt they were the most civilized and saw themselves (in the formulation of Aristotle) as something between the so-called wild barbarians of most of Europe and the soft, slavish Middle-Easterners. Ancient Greek science, philosophy, democracy, architecture, literature, and art provided a foundation embraced and built upon by the Roman Empire as it swept up Europe, including the Hellenic World in its conquests in the 1st century BC. In the meantime however, Greece, under Alexander, had become a capital of the East, and part of an empire. The Celts also created some significant literature in the ancient world whenever they were given the opportunity (an example being the poet Caecilius Statius). They also developed a large amount of scientific knowledge themselves, as seen in their Coligny Calendar.
For about five hundred years, the Roman Empire maintained the Greek East and consolidated a Latin West, but an East-West division remained, reflected in many cultural norms of the two areas, including language. Although Rome, like Greece, was no longer democratic, the idea of democracy remained a part of the education of citizens.
Eventually the empire became increasingly split into a Western and Eastern part, reviving old ideas of a contrast between an advanced East, and a rugged West. In the Roman world one could speak of three main directions; North (Celtic tribal states nd Parthians), the East (lux ex oriente), and finally South, which implied danger, historically via the Punic wars (Quid novi ex Africa?) The West was peaceful – it contained only the Mediterranean.
Christianity emerged from Judaism on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean, and both spread around the Roman world, with Christianity being the more popular religion. With the rise of Christianity, much of Rome's tradition and culture were reshaped by that religion, and transformed into something new, which would serve as the basis for the development of Western civilization after the fall of Rome. Also, Roman culture mixed with Celtic, Germanic and Slavic cultures, which slowly became integrated into Western culture starting, mainly, with their acceptance of Christianity.
The Medieval West was at its broadest the same as Christendom, including both the "Latin" West, also called "Frankish" during Charlemagne's reign, and the Orthodox Eastern part, where Greek remained the language of empire.
After the fall of Rome much of Greco-Roman art, literature, science and even technology were all but lost in the western part of the old empire. However, this would become the centre of a new West. Europe fell into political anarchy, with many warring kingdoms and principalities. Under the Frankish kings, it eventually, and partially, reunified, and the anarchy evolved into feudalism.
Much of the basis of the post-Roman cultural world had been set before the fall of the Empire, mainly through the integration and reshaping of Roman ideas through Christian thought. The Greek and Roman paganism had been completely replaced by Christianity around the 4th and 5th centuries, since it became the official State religion following the baptism of emperor Constantine I. Roman Catholic Christianity and the Nicene Creed served as a unifying force in Christian parts of Europe, and in some respects replaced or competed with the secular authorities. Art and literature, law, education, and politics were preserved in the teachings of the Church, in an environment that, otherwise, would have probably seen their loss. The Church founded many cathedrals, universities, monasteries and seminaries, some of which continue to exist today.
In a broader sense, the Middle Ages, with its fertile encounter between Greek philosophical reasoning and Levantine monotheism was not confined to the West but also stretched into the old East. The philosophy and science of Classical Greece was largely forgotten in Europe after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, other than in isolated monastic enclaves (notably in Ireland, which had become Christian but was never conquered by Rome). The learning of Classical Antiquity was better preserved in the Byzantine Eastern Roman Empire. Justinian's Corpus Juris Civilis Roman civil law code was preserved in the East and Constantinople maintained trade and intermittent political control over outposts such as Venice in the West for centuries. Classical Greek learning was also subsumed, preserved and elaborated in the rising Eastern world, which gradually supplanted Roman-Byzantine control as a dominant cultural-political force. Thus, much of the learning of classical antiquity was slowly reintroduced to European civilisation in the centuries following the collapse of the Western Roman Empire.
The rediscovery of the Justinian Code in Western Europe early in the 10th century rekindled a passion for the discipline of law, which crossed many of the re-forming boundaries between East and West. In the Catholic or Frankish west, Roman law became the foundation on which all legal concepts and systems were based. Its influence is found in all Western legal systems, although in different manners and to different extents. The study of canon law, the legal system of the Catholic Church, fused with that of Roman law to form the basis of the refounding of Western legal scholarship. During the Reformation and Enlightenment, the ideas of civil rights, equality before the law, procedural justice, and democracy as the ideal form of society began to be institutionalized as principles forming the basis of modern Western culture, particularly in Protestant regions.
In the 14th century, starting from Italy and then spreading throughout Europe, there was a massive artistic, architectural, scientific and philosophical revival, as a result of an increased interest for Classical antiquity. This period is commonly referred to as the Renaissance. In the following century, this process was further enhanced by an exodus of Greek Christian priests and scholars to Italian cities such as Venice after the end of the Byzantine Empire with the fall of Constantinople.
From Late Antiquity, through the Middle Ages, and onwards, while Eastern Europe was shaped by the Orthodox Church, Southern and Central Europe were increasingly stabilized by the Catholic Church which, as Roman imperial governance faded from view, was the only consistent force in Western Europe. In 1054 came the so-called Great Schism that, following the Greek East and Latin West divide, separated Europe into religious and cultural regions present to this day. Until the Age of Enlightenment, Christian culture took over as the predominant force in western civilization, guiding the course of philosophy, art, and science for many years.  Movements in art and philosophy, such as the Humanist movement of the Renaissance and the Scholastic movement of the High Middle Ages, were motivated by a drive to connect Catholicism with Greek and Arab thought imported by Christian pilgrims.   However, due to the division in Western Christianity caused by the Protestant Reformation and the Enlightenment, religious influence - especially the temporal power of the Pope - began to wane.
From the late 15th century to the 17th century, Western culture began to spread to other parts of the world through explorers and missionaries during the Age of Discovery, and by imperialists from the 17th century to the early 20th century. During the Great Divergence, a term coined by Samuel Huntington the Western world overcame pre-modern growth constraints and emerged during the 19th century as the most powerful and wealthy world civilization of the time, eclipsing Qing China, Mughal India, Tokugawa Japan, and the Ottoman Empire. The process was accompanied and reinforced by the Age of Discovery and continued into the modern period. Scholars have proposed a wide variety of theories to explain why the Great Divergence happened, including lack of government intervention, geography, colonialism, and customary traditions.
Coming into the modern era, the historical understanding of the East-West contrast – as the opposition of Christendom to its geographical neighbors – began to weaken. As religion became less important, and Europeans came into increasing contact with far away peoples, the old concept of Western culture began a slow evolution towards what it is today. The Age of Discovery faded into the Age of Enlightenment of the 18th century, during which cultural and intellectual forces in Western Europe emphasized reason, analysis, and individualism rather than traditional lines of authority. It challenged the authority of institutions that were deeply rooted in society, such as the Catholic Church; there was much talk of ways to reform society with toleration, science and skepticism.
Philosophers of the Enlightenment included Francis Bacon, René Descartes, John Locke, Baruch Spinoza, Voltaire (1694–1778), David Hume, and Immanuel Kant. influenced society by publishing widely read works. Upon learning about enlightened views, some rulers met with intellectuals and tried to apply their reforms, such as allowing for toleration, or accepting multiple religions, in what became known as enlightened absolutism. New ideas and beliefs spread around Europe and were fostered by an increase in literacy due to a departure from solely religious texts. Publications include Encyclopédie (1751–72) that was edited by Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d'Alembert. The Dictionnaire philosophique (Philosophical Dictionary, 1764) and Letters on the English (1733) written by Voltaire spread the ideals of the Enlightenment.
Coinciding with the Age of Enlightenment was the scientific revolution, spearheaded by Newton. This included the emergence of modern science, during which developments in mathematics, physics, astronomy, biology (including human anatomy) and chemistry transformed views of society and nature.      While its dates are disputed, the publication in 1543 of Nicolaus Copernicus's De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres) is often cited as marking the beginning of the scientific revolution, and its completion is attributed to the "grand synthesis" of Newton's 1687 Principia.
The Industrial Revolution was the transition to new manufacturing processes in the period from about 1760 to sometime between 1820 and 1840. This included going from hand production methods to machines, new chemical manufacturing and iron production processes, improved efficiency of water power, the increasing use of steam power, and the development of machine tools. These transitions began in Great Britain, and spread to Western Europe and North America within a few decades.The Industrial Revolution marks a major turning point in history; almost every aspect of daily life was influenced in some way. In particular, average income and population began to exhibit unprecedented sustained growth. Some economists say that the major impact of the Industrial Revolution was that the standard of living for the general population began to increase consistently for the first time in history, although others have said that it did not begin to meaningfully improve until the late 19th and 20th centuries.   The precise start and end of the Industrial Revolution is still debated among historians, as is the pace of economic and social changes.    GDP per capita was broadly stable before the Industrial Revolution and the emergence of the modern capitalist economy, while the Industrial Revolution began an era of per-capita economic growth in capitalist economies. Economic historians are in agreement that the onset of the Industrial Revolution is the most important event in the history of humanity since the domestication of animals, plants and fire.
The First Industrial Revolution evolved into the Second Industrial Revolution in the transition years between 1840 and 1870, when technological and economic progress continued with the increasing adoption of steam transport (steam-powered railways, boats and ships), the large-scale manufacture of machine tools and the increasing use of machinery in steam-powered factories.
Some cultural and artistic modalities are characteristically Western in origin and form. While dance, music, visual art, story-telling, and architecture are human universals, they are expressed in the West in certain characteristic ways.
In Western dance, music, plays and other arts, the performers are only very infrequently masked. There are essentially no taboos against depicting a god, or other religious figures, in a representational fashion.
The symphony, concerto, sonata, opera and oratorio have their origins in Italy. Many important musical instruments used by cultures all over the world were also developed in the West; among them are the violin, piano, pipe organ, saxophone, trombone, clarinet, accordion, and the theremin. The solo piano, symphony orchestra and the string quartet are also important performing musical forms.
Many forms of popular music have been derived from African-Americans, and their innovations of jazz and blues serve as the basis from which much of modern popular music derives. Folklore and music during 19th and 20th centuries, initially by themselves, but later played and further developed together with White and Black Americans, British people, and Westerners in general. These include jazz, blues and rock music (that in a wider sense include the rock and roll and heavy metal genres), rhythm and blues, funk, Hip-Hop, techno as well as the ska and reggae genres from Jamaica. Several other related or derived styles were developed and introduced by Western pop culture such as pop, metal and dance music.
Jan van Eyck, among other renaissance painters, made great advances in oil painting, and perspective drawings and paintings had their earliest practitioners in Florence. In art, the Celtic knot is a very distinctive Western repeated motif. Depictions of the nude human male and female in photography, painting and sculpture are frequently considered to have special artistic merit. Realistic portraiture is especially valued.
Photography, and the motion picture as both a technology and basis for entirely new art forms, were also developed in the West.
The ballet is a distinctively Western form of performance dance. The ballroom dance is an important Western variety of dance for the elite. The polka, the square dance, and the Irish step dance are very well known Western forms of folk dance.
The soap opera, a popular culture dramatic form, originated in the United States first on radio in the 1930s, then a couple of decades later on television. The music video was also developed in the West in the middle of the 20th century.
While epic literary works in verse such as the Mahabharata and Homer's Iliad are ancient and occurred worldwide, the prose novel as a distinct form of storytelling, with developed, consistent human characters and, typically, some connected overall plot (although both of these characteristics have sometimes been modified and played with in later times), was popularized by the West in the 17th and 18th centuries. Of course extended prose fiction had existed much earlier; both novels of adventure and romance in the Hellenistic world and in Heian Japan. Both Petronius' Satyricon (ca 60 CE) and the Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu (ca 1000 CE) have been cited as the world's first major novel but they had very limited long-term impact on literary writing beyond their own day until much more recent times.
Tragedy, from its ritually and mythologically inspired Greek origins to modern forms where struggle and downfall are often rooted in psychological or social, rather than mythical, motives, is also widely considered a specifically European creation, and can be seen as a forerunner of some aspects of both the novel and of classical opera.
Important Western architectural motifs include the Doric, Corinthian, and Ionic columns, and the Romanesque, Gothic, Baroque, and Victorian styles are still widely recognised, and used even today, in the West. Much of Western architecture emphasizes repetition of simple motifs, straight lines and expansive, undecorated planes. A modern ubiquitous architectural form that emphasizes this characteristic is the skyscraper, first developed in New York, London, and Chicago.
See main article: Western media.
The Western media refers to the news media of the Western world. It is mainly characterized by the freedom of the press, and has gradually expanded into developing countries. In recent years, many Western media outlets have seen their circulation figures stagnate. Despite the slowing of its growth, the mainstream Western media continues to be perceived as a fair, independent and objective medium of news reporting.
The roots of the Western media can be traced back to the late 15th century, when printing presses began to operate throughout Western Europe. The emergence of news media in the 17th century has to be seen in close connection with the spread of the printing press, from which the publishing press derives its name.
The western media has gradually expanded into developing countries, with significant news coverage focused on various human rights issues in Africa, America, Asia, Europe and Oceania. In authoritarian regimes, exposure to Western media is generally considered to be a measure of political openness.
The native religions of Europe were polytheistic but not homogenous – however they were similar insofar as they were predominantly Indo-European in origin. Roman religion was similar to but not the same as Hellenic religion - likewise the same for indigenous Germanic polytheism, Celtic polytheism and Slavic polytheism. Western culture, for at least the last 1000 years, has been considered nearly synonymous with Christian culture. Before this time many Europeans from the north, especially Scandinavians, remained polytheistic, though southern Europe was predominantly Christian from the 5th century onwards.
As in other areas, Judaism is found in the Western world. Minority groups, and Jews in particular, often had to contend with discrimination and persecution. This could include being subjected to violence and/or destruction of property (this may be referred to as a pogrom) as well as being expelled or banned from various polities, hoping to find havens in other places.
Religion has waned considerably in Europe, where many are today irreligious, agnostic or atheist and they make up about 18.2% of the European population. In terms of irreligion, over half of the populations of the Czech Republic (79.4% of the population was agnostic, atheist or irreligious), the United Kingdom (~25%), Germany (25-33%), France (22-35%)   and the Netherlands (39–44%) are agnostic, atheist, or otherwise non-religious.
However, per another survey by Pew Research Center from 2011, Christianity remains the dominant religion in the Western world where 70% are Christians, According to this survey, 76% of Europeans described themselves as Christians,   and about 86.0% of the Americas population consider themselves Christians, (90% in Latin America and 77.4% in North America). And 73.3% in Oceania are self-identify as Christian.
Throughout the Western world there are increasing numbers of people who seek to revive the indigenous religions of their European ancestors, such groups include Germanic, Roman, Hellenic, Celtic and Slavic, polytheistic reconstructionist movements, likewise, Wicca, new age spirituality and other neo-pagan belief systems enjoy notable minority support in Western nations.
Since classical antiquity, sport has been an important facet of Western cultural expression. A wide range of sports were already established by the time of Ancient Greece and the military culture and the development of sports in Greece influenced one another considerably. Sports became such a prominent part of their culture that the Greeks created the Olympic Games, which in ancient times were held every four years in a small village in the Peloponnesus called Olympia. Baron Pierre de Coubertin, a Frenchman, instigated the modern revival of the Olympic movement. The first modern Olympics were held at Athens in 1896.
The Romans built immense structures such as the Colisseum in Rome to house their festivals of sport. The Romans exhibited a passion for blood sports, such as the infamous Gladiatorial battles that pitted contestants against one another in a fight to the death. The Olympic Games revived many of the sports of Classical Antiquity - such as Greco-Roman wrestling, discus and javelin.The sport of bullfighting is a traditional spectacle of Spain, Portugal, southern France, and some Latin American countries. It traces its roots to prehistoric bull worship and sacrifice and is often linked to Rome, where many human-versus-animal events were held. Bullfighting spread from Spain to its Central and South American colonies, and in the 19th century to France, where it developed into a distinctive form in its own right.
Jousting and hunting were popular sports in the Western Europe of the Middle Ages, and the aristocratic classes of Europe developed passions for leisure activities. A great number of the popular global sports were first developed or codified in Europe. The modern game of golf originated in Scotland, where the first written record of golf is James II's banning of the game in 1457, as an unwelcome distraction to learning archery. The Industrial Revolution that began in Britain in the 18th Century brought increased leisure time, leading to more time for citizens to attend and follow spectator sports, greater participation in athletic activities, and increased accessibility. These trends continued with the advent of mass media and global communication. The bat and ball sport of cricket was first played in England during the 16th century and was exported around the globe via the British Empire. A number of popular modern sports were devised or codified in Britain during the 19th Century and obtained global prominence – these include Ping Pong, modern tennis, Association Football, Netball and Rugby.
Football (also known as soccer) remains hugely popular in Europe, but has grown from its origins to be known as the world game. Similarly, sports such as cricket, rugby, and netball were exported around the world, particularly among countries in the Commonwealth of Nations, thus India and Australia are among the strongest cricketing nations, while victory in the Rugby World Cup has been shared among the Western nations of New Zealand, Australia, South Africa and England.
Australian Rules Football, an Australian variation of football with similarities to Gaelic football and rugby evolved in the British colony of Victoria in the mid-19th century. The United States also developed unique variations of English sports. English migrants took antecedents of baseball to America during the colonial period. The history of American football can be traced to early versions of rugby football and association football. Many games known as "football" were being played at colleges and universities in the United States in the first half of the 19th century  American football resulted from several major divergences from rugby, most notably the rule changes instituted by Walter Camp, the "Father of American Football". Basketball was invented in 1891 by James Naismith, a Canadian physical education instructor working in Springfield, Massachusetts in the United States. From these American origins, basketball has become one of the great international participation sports.
Professionalism in sport in the West became prevalent during the 20th Century, further adding to the increase in sport's popularity, as sports fans began following the exploits of professional athletes through radio, television, and the internet—all while enjoying the exercise and competition associated with amateur participation in sports.
A notable feature of Western culture is its strong emphasis and focus on innovation and invention through science and technology, and its ability to generate new processes, materials and material artifacts with its roots dating back to the Ancient Greeks.
It was the West that first developed steam power and adapted its use into factories, and for the generation of electrical power. The electrical motor, dynamo, transformer, and electric light, and indeed most of the familiar electrical appliances, were inventions of the West. The Otto and the Diesel internal combustion engines are products whose genesis and early development were in the West. Nuclear power stations are derived from the first atomic pile constructed in Chicago in 1942.
Communication devices and systems including the telegraph, the telephone, radio, television, communication and navigation satellites, mobile phone, and the Internet were all invented by Westerners. The pencil, ballpoint pen, CRT, LCD, LED, camera, photocopier, laser printer, ink jet printer, plasma display screen and world wide web were also invented in the West.
Ubiquitous materials including concrete, aluminium, clear glass, synthetic rubber, synthetic diamond and the plastics polyethylene, polypropylene, PVC and polystyrene were invented in the West. Iron and steel ships, bridges and skyscrapers first appeared in the West. Nitrogen fixation and petrochemicals were invented by Westerners. Most of the elements, were discovered and named in the West, as well as the contemporary atomic theories to explain them.
The transistor, integrated circuit, memory chip, and computer were all first seen in the West. The ship's chronometer, the screw propeller, the locomotive, bicycle, automobile, and aeroplane were all invented in the West. Eyeglasses, the telescope, the microscope and electron microscope, all the varieties of chromatography, protein and DNA sequencing, computerised tomography, NMR, x-rays, and light, ultraviolet and infrared spectroscopy, were all first developed and applied in Western laboratories, hospitals and factories.
In medicine, the pure antibiotics were created in the West. The method of preventing Rh disease, the treatment of diabetes, and the germ theory of disease were discovered by Westerners. The eradication of smallpox, was led by a Westerner, Donald Henderson. Radiography, Computed tomography, Positron emission tomography and Medical ultrasonography are important diagnostic tools developed in the West. Other important diagnostic tools of clinical chemistry including the methods of spectrophotometry, electrophoresis and immunoassay were first devised by Westerners. So were the stethoscope, electrocardiograph, and the endoscope. Vitamins, hormonal contraception, hormones, insulin, Beta blockers and ACE inhibitors, along with a host of other medically proven drugs were first utilized to treat disease in the West. The double-blind study and evidence-based medicine are critical scientific techniques widely used in the West for medical purposes.
In mathematics, calculus, statistics, logic, vectors, tensors and complex analysis, group theory and topology were developed by Westerners. In biology, evolution, chromosomes, DNA, genetics and the methods of molecular biology are creatures of the West. In physics, the science of mechanics and quantum mechanics, relativity, thermodynamics, and statistical mechanics were all developed by Westerners. The discoveries and inventions by Westerners in electromagnetism include Coulomb's law (1785), the first battery (1800), the unity of electricity and magnetism (1820), Biot–Savart law (1820), Ohm's Law (1827), and the Maxwell's equations (1871). The atom, nucleus, electron, neutron and proton were all unveiled by Westerners.
Westerners are also known for their explorations of the globe and outer space. The first expedition to circumnavigate the Earth (1522) was by Westerners, as well as the first journey to the South Pole (1911), and the first moon landing (1969). The landing of robots on Mars (2004 and 2012) and on an asteroid (2001), the Voyager explorations of the outer planets (Uranus in 1986 and Neptune in 1989), and Voyager 1's passage into interstellar space (2013) were significant recent Western achievements.
Western culture has developed many themes and traditions, the most significant of which are:
Elements of Western culture have had a very influential effect on other cultures worldwide. People of many cultures, both Western and non-Western, equate modernization (adoption of technological progress) with Westernization (adoption of Western culture).