WEST-EUROPEAN, EAST-EUROPEAN AND NORDIC COUNTRIES: WHERE DO LATVIAN VALUES STAND?

Social inequalities, cleavages caused by restrictions imposed by the government to reduce the Covid 19 pandemic, and the rise of political populism pose new questions regarding the values and value change in different societies. In this article the authors attempt to analyse cultural values, using the theoretical and methodological approach developed by R. Inglehart and colleagues, and locate the values of the Latvian people on two dimensions: secular-rational values vs. traditional values and survival values vs. self-expression values. The article provides a comparison of values in four countries: Latvia, Norway, Poland, and Great Britain. The analysis is based on the data from the fifth wave of the European Values Survey, which in Latvia, was carried out in 2021. The data analysis was performed within the project “Value (trans)formation in uncertain times: social cohesion and neoliberal ethos in Latvia” (Nr. lzp-2020/2-0068).