“Clash!” by Hazel Rose Markus and Alana Conner – Cultural Background and Identity

Researchers have for a very long time now posed the question as to how a person’s mind comes to be formed. How much of the process can be attributed to genetics? How much of it can be attributed to the environment which nurtures that person? Does one’s cultural background and place of birth play a role in it?

Naturally, questions such as these are hard to answer and will require many more years of research to produce conclusive answers, but Hazel Rose Markus and Alana Conner take a stab at it anyways in their book titled Clash!:8 Cultural Conflicts That Make Us Who We Are.

More precisely, Clash! explores the idea that our cultural background influences who we are. It should be mentioned that Markus and Conner are both cultural psychologists, both having tons of experience in their field.

As you can guess, their stance is that our cultural background does influence us, and they go even further than that, arguing that it can shape everything we do and all the decisions we make, from finding an answer to a simple dilemma all the way to running a country. In addition, they also look at how different cultural clashes serve to fuel many of the major conflicts in the world today, pitting people from all walks of life against each other.

Clash! by Hazel Rose Markus and Alana Conner (Book cover)
Though it may sound like it from the description I gave of the book, it is far from being styled as a factual document; Markus and Conner are not only psychologists, but they are also writers, and they do their job quite well. I found the book to be pretty funny and entertaining times, especially when reading the examples the authors to use to describe many of the problems or phenomena we experience on a daily basis. 

In the end, I thought this book to be a light and entertaining read, but one that is nevertheless driven by well-supported arguments, reason, logic and facts. It brings up a lot of interesting concepts and ideas in relation to our identity as human beings and our role in society, and while it does not provide conclusive answers, it sure brings us closer. I can do nothing but recommend this book to those who are interested in learning about what makes us who we are.

Hazel Rose Markus (Author)

Hazel Rose Markus


Hazel Rose Markus is a rather prominent social psychologist, considered by many to be a pioneer of cultural psychology. In addition to being an author, she teaches behavioral sciences at Stanford University, where she also conducts research in regards to culture, ethnicity, identity formation, the self, and more.
Alana Conner (Author)

Alana Conner


Personal site

Though most know Alana Conner for her book, Clash!, she as, at heart at least, a cultural psychologist and a science communicator who aims to study the world in all of its beauty, bringing to us her many findings that help us to shape our understanding of each other.



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