The idea that societies have economic cultures as well as aesthetic, literary, and artistic cultures is well-embedded in a number of major studies attempting to identify the origins of national wealth and progress. From Adam Smith' s recognition of the role of moral sentiments, to the recent acknowledgement by Nobel prize-winning economic historian Douglass North that culture plays a key role in economic progress, there has always been awareness that it needed to be understood more completely. That it still is not speaks more to its complexity as a question than to the efforts devoted to its understanding.

Explanation in this field has to meet the challenge of the great number of factors in the equation, and the parallel challenge that many disciplines find culture hard to handle – too fuzzy, not visible or measurable enough, a residual perhaps after all the other more tangible things have been counted. Our aim here is to place it more centrally, not by further theoretical speculation, but by presenting evidence from several parts of the changing world about how the realm of the spirit affects the economy. The evidence comes from recent studies in Europe, Asia, Africa, Russia, and the US. The book is not entirely without theory, but its main intent is the presentation of new findings from the fields.

The initiative for this collection of work began with a collaboration between the Metanexus Institute, Pennsylvania, and the Institute on Culture, Religion and World Affairs of Boston University.