Clash! ─ 8 Cultural Conflicts That Make Us Who We Are

What kind of person are you?

Are you independent—individual, unique, and in control of your world? Are you interdependent—relational, similar to others, and good at adjusting to situations?

Or are you both?

In Clash!, leading cultural psychologists Hazel Rose Markus and Alana Conner show us how our cultural backgrounds create and reflect these two basic ways of being a self, which then shapes everything from how we run our governments to how we raise our children.

Markus and Conner also demonstrate how clashes between independence and interdependence fuel many of today’s most pressing conflicts, including tensions between East and West, the Global North and Global South, men and women, blacks and whites, conservative and liberal, religious groups, rich and poor, and businesses, governments, and nonprofits.

Provocative and entertaining, Clash! offers solutions to many of the problems that plague our workplaces, schools, and relationships. For readers of The Culture Code by Clotaire Rapaille and The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki, it doesn’t just explain who we are, it also envisions who we could become.

Hazel Rose Markus, Ph.D., is the Davis-Brack Professor in the behavioral sciences at Stanford University.

Alana Conner, Ph.D., is a Stanford-trained cultural psychologist and science writer based in San Francisco.