The Harvard study of values: mirror for postwar anthropology.

In 1949, social scientists at Harvard University began a long-range, multidisciplinary research project called the Comparative Study of Values in Five Cultures. The topic of values had been hotly debated since the 1920s, a debate that was renewed with vigor in the postwar period. When Clyde Kluckhohn, an anthropologist well known for his work among the Navajos, designed the Values Study research, he thus focused on a topic of much interest. This essay describes how this little-known project had roots in the debate on values and cut a trajectory through a quickly changing intellectual environment.