"This masterful collection illuminates many of the all-important interfaces between culture and economy. . . . These insights have never been more important." -W. Lance Bennett, author of News: The Politics of Illusion

The backlash against globalization and the rise of cultural anxiety has led to considerable rethinking among social scientists. This book provides multiple theoretical, historical, and methodological orientations to examine these issues.

While addressing the rise of populism worldwide, the volume provides explanations that cover periods of both cultural turbulence and stability. Issues addressed include populism and cultural anxiety, class, religion, arts and cultural diversity, global environment norms, international trade, and soft power. The interdisciplinary scholarship from well-known contributors questions the oft-made assumption in political economy that holds culture "constant," which in practice means marginalizing it in the explanation. The volume conceptualizes culture as a repertoire of values and alternatives. Locating human interests in underlying cultural values does not make political economy's strategic or instrumental calculations of interests redundant: The instrumental logic follows a social context and a distribution of cultural values, while locating forms of decision-making that may not be rational.

Foreword: Cultural Mediations and Political Economy
1. Introduction: Cultural Values in Political Economy
2. Culture and Preference Formation
3. Value and Values in Economics and Culture
4. Creating a Culture of Environmental Responsibility
5. Cosmopolitans and Parochials: Economy, Culture, and Political Conflict
6. Crossing Borders: Culture, Identity, and Access to Higher Education
7. Ideology, Economic Interests, and American Exceptionalism: The Case of Export Credit
8. Strangest of Bedfellows: Why the Religious Right Embraced Trump and What That Means for the Movement
9. Applying the Soft Power Rubric: How Study Abroad Data Reveals International Cultural Relations

J.P. Singh is Professor of International Commerce and Policy at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University and author of Sweet Talk: Paternalism and Collective Action in North-South Trade Negotiations (Stanford, 2017).