Ulysses in the culture jungle: how empirical is Schwartz's model?

Against the prevailing tendency to identify values with norms, beliefs, etc. and of studying values by way of direct observation, Hutcheon proposed to view values as operating criteria that direct behaviour while remaining invisible to agents and, for that reason, unaccountable. We find Hutcheon's conjecture amazingly keen except that we find support in Glaser's version of grounded theory. We defend the GT against some criticisms and employ theoretical coding to test the claim of the model of Schwartz to having grounded its findings in observations. We find that respondents' answers do not support the way model interprets them. Responses failed to back the three important claims Schwartz's model makes, i.e. (1) that values are accountable and, therefore, are beliefs, (2) that respondent's experiences can be categorized in terms of choice or preference, (3) that responses to questions about likeness to some exemplary displays of values-laden behaviour are responses about the significance of values. The example of Glaser's theoretical coding employment on the data we bring in, is meant to substantiate the GT's claim to managing the capacity of discovering emergent structures of knowledge (the rarest chiasmus in our case). Such structures may analytically lead to values that guide humans in organizing their experiences.