Supplemental Readings
The Problem of Social Order
Banfield, Edward C. 1958. The Moral Basic of a Backward Society. The Free Press.
Holldobler, Bert and Edward O. Wilson. 2008. The Superorganism: The Beauty, Elegance, and Strangeness of Insect Societies. W.W. Norton.
Nossiter, Adam. 2009. “Nation in Disarray Holds Few Hopes for Vote.” New York Times. June 28, 2009. Describes disorder in Guinea-Bissau, where the government is so weak and instability so great that even the drug traffickers have moved out.
Wrong, Dennis. 1994. The Problem of Order: What Unites and Divides Society. NY: The Free Press. Surveys various approaches to the problem of order.
What is Theory?
Hedström, Peter and Richard Swedberg, eds. 1998. Social Mechanisms: An Analytical Approach to Social Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Describes approaches to thinking about mechanisms.
Little, D. 1991. Varieties of Social Explanation: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Social Science. Boulder, Co: Westview Press.
Stinchcombe, A. L. 1968. Constructing Social Theories. New York: Harcourt Brace & World.
Motives and Mechanisms
Bunge, M. A. 1967. Scientific Research. Berlin and New York: Springer-Verlag.
1997. “Mechanism and Explanation.” Philosophy of the Social Sciences 27:410-65
2004. “How Does it Work?: The Search for Explanatory Mechanisms.” Philosophy of the Social Sciences 34: 182-210
Craver, C. F. 2001. “Role Functions, Mechanisms, and Hierarchy.” Philosophy of Science 68: 53-74.
Machamer, P., L. Darden and C. F. Craver. 2000. “Thinking About Mechanisms.”> Philosophy of Science 67: 1-25.
Elster J. 1983a. Explaining Technical Change: A Case Study in the Philosophy of Science . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
1989b. Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences.. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
1998b. “A Plea for Mechanisms”, in Social Mechanisms: An Analytical Approach to Social Theory, ed. P. Hedström and R. Swedberg. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
1999. Alchemies of the Mind: Rationality and the Emotions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hedström P., and R. Swedberg. 1996. “Social Mechanisms.” Acta Sociologica 39: 281-308
1998b. “Social Mechanisms: An Introductory Essay,” in Social Mechanisms: An Analytical Approach to Social Theory, ed. P. Hedström and R. Swedberg. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 1-31.
Individuals
The readings in this section focus on social meaning. The problem for these theorists lies not in overcoming individual self-interest, but in helping individuals to share the same understandings and, in turn, to be able to coordinate.
Becker, Howard S. 1953. “Becoming a Marihuana User.” American Journal of Sociology 59(3): 235-242.
Chwe, Michael Suk-Young. 2001. Rational Ritual: Culture, Coordination, and Common Knowledge. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. A game-theoretic analysis of meaning as the production of common knowledge.
Douglas, Mary 1966. Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. On the social construction of Hebrew dietary laws.
Henrich, Joseph, Robert Boyd, Samuel Bowles, Colin Camerer, Ernst Fehr, Herbert Gintis, and Richard McElreath. 2001. “Cooperation, Reciprocity and Punishment in Fifteen Small-scale Societies.” American Economic Review, 91:73-78. Presents the results of field experiments in 15 cultures. The data show that groups react to the same incentive structures differently. The authors argue that people make decisions about how to behave in the experiment by comparing the experimental situation to more familiar circumstances. Their interpretation of the experimental setting varies depending on the extent to which groups depend on cooperation for economic well-being, and the extent to which people are integrated into the market.
Mauss, Marcel. Seasonal Variations of the Eskimo: A Study in Social Morphology. A classic analysis of the influence of environmental factors on social construction by Durkheim’s nephew — a seminar theorist in anthropology.
Hierarchies
Bowles, Samuel. and Herbert Gintis. 1976. Schooling in Capitalist America. Argues that American schools both reflect and legitimate existing economic structures, thereby maintaining inequality. Provides an empirical illustration of Marx’s argument.
Cooney, Mark. 1997. “From Warre to Tyranny: Lethal Conflict and the State.” American Sociological Review 62: 316-338. Explicitly tests Hobbes’ theory of order by describing data regarding the relation between state strength and numbers of violent deaths. Straightforward empirical application.
Foucault, Michel. 1977. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. NY: Pantheon Books. Discusses the historical evolution of state-imposed sanctions.
Robert O’Harrow, Jr., No Place to Hide (2005), an authoritative and vivid account of the emergence of a “security-industrial complex” that seeks to monitor Americans’ consumption behavior for material — and potentially — political ends. Approaches Orwell’s telescreen technology, if not surpassing it.
Taylor, Michael. 1976. Anarchy and Cooperation. NY: Wiley. Argues that the state weakens community — thus weakening alternative sources of order and making itself more necessary.
Useem, Bert., and Jack A. Goldstone. 2002. "Forging Social Order and its Breakdown: Riot and Reform in US Prisons." American Sociological Review 67:499-525. An empirical study of the determinants of prison riots. Two cases of prison reform in the 1990s had widely divergent results. New Mexico privatized several prisons and these prisons were quickly beset by multiple riots. By contrast, New York's publicly run Rikers Island prison adopted reforms that quelled violence. A state-centered (cf. Hobbes) theory of social order explains both cases, showing how prison administrators and state and national governments can create the conditions under which social order breaks down or is restored. Since prisons do not permit exit however (unlike most countries) , this study may not be readily generalizable to most other kinds of social order.
Links
Campbell, Duncan, “Inside Echelon,” a description of the National Security Agency’s project to intercept and process international communications passing via communications satellites. It is one part of a global surveillance system that is now over 50 years old. Shades of Orwell’s 1984 (http://www.heise.de/bin/tp/issue/r4/dl-artikel2.cgi?artikelnr=6929&mode=html&x=8&y=8).
Markets
In our treatment of spontaneous order in the reader, we focus on theories that describe how the interactions of self-interested actors produce predictable, and sometimes desirable, social outcomes. The spontaneous order approach, however, incorporates a variety of evolutionary arguments.
One type of argument focuses on the evolution of physical traits. For evolutionary psychologists, the brain, like any other body part, is subject to evolution. Thus, by thinking about the environment in which human beings evolved, we can gain insight into how the brain works. Those traits that were adaptive in the environment in which the bulk of human evolution occurred were selected for and can be observed in people today (though they are no longer necessarily adaptive). With better understanding of these traits, we can develop superior explanations of social behavior. Here, biological/genetic evolution is used to explain universal human characteristics that in turn can help to understand social phenomena.
Other scholars take the mechanisms at work in genetic evolution and apply them to explain social phenomena. Just as physical traits that are not adaptive die out, so do social practices. Those practices that are adaptive persist, those that are not fade. The extent to which these kinds of arguments apply to groups and not simply to individuals is disputed. Traditionally, genetic evolutionary arguments treat the individual as the unit of selection. Those individuals who carry non-adaptive traits die. Those individuals with adaptive traits survive and reproduce, thus passing on their traits to the next generation. Some researchers argue that a similar approach can also explain group traits. That is, those groups that have adaptive practices will survive while those whose practices are dysfunctional will fail.
Finally, some scholars argue that social practices can better be explained by models of cultural evolution — not by transplanted genetic evolution arguments. For these scholars, practices and ideas are transmitted from person to person. In a pure genetic model, individual actors are “born” with a trait; those with non-adaptive traits die. In cultural models, individual actors learn and change over the course of their life. As a result of their interactions, they may shift from holding non-adaptive beliefs, practices, and so forth to adhering to others that produce superior outcomes. While genetic and cultural models have many similarities, they may produce different predictions.
Each of these types of evolutionary explanations falls within the family of spontaneous order approaches. The list of supplemental reading includes examples.
Alchian, Armen. 1950. "Uncertainty, Evolution and Economic Theory." Journal of Political Economy 58:211-221. Argues that profit maximization is impossible under uncertainty. Hence, social scientists ought not to rely on internal states (motives) for their analysis; instead, in the face of uncertainty, success is most likely attained by imitating those who are already successful.
De Waal, Frans. 1996. Good Natured: The Origins of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other Animals. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Argues that norms arise in the course of biological evolution.
Friedman, BenjamIn M. 2005. The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Argues that economic growth increases generosity and is essential for healthy society.
Henrich, Joseph and Natalie Henrich. 2007. Why Humans Cooperate: A Cultural and Evolutionary Explanation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Johnson, Steven. 2001. Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software. New York: Scribner. Describes many contexts in which interaction leads to predictable patterns.
Lyall, Sarah, 2005. “A Path to Safety with no Signposts,” New York Times, January 22: 4 Discusses the work of Hans Monderman, a Dutch traffic engineer who uses principles of spontaneous order to create designs that improve traffic conditions in Friesland. His ideas are being adopted in a number of European countries.
Macy, Michael W. and John Skvoretz. 1998. “The Evolution of Trust and Cooperation among Strangers: A Computational Model.” American Sociological Review 63(5): 638-660. Uses a genetic evolution approach to explore the emergence of cooperation and trust among strangers.
Macy, Michael W. and Robert Willer. 2002. “From Factors to Actors: Computational Sociology and Agent-Based Modeling.” Annual Review of Sociology 28: 143-166. Reviews the sociological use of agent-based models (computer simulations) to explain emergent social structure and social order.
Mark, Noah. 2003. “The Cultural Evolution of Cooperation.” American Sociological Review 67(3): 323-344. Uses a cultural evolution approach to explain cooperation.
Polanyi, Karl. 1943. The Great Transformation. Boston: Beacon Press. Classic theoretical and empirical critique of the theory of spontaneous order as applied to the laissez-faire policies of early nineteenth-century Britain.
Scott, James C. 1998. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. Argues that state-led attempts to engage in social engineering -- to rationalize and deconstruct spontaneous orders, replacing them with planned orders -- are doomed to fail.
Wilson, David Sloan. Darwin’s Cathedral: Evolution, Religion, and the Nature of Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Supports group selection approaches. Argues that religion — that is, a complex system of norms -- is adaptive for groups and that it results from evolutionary pressures.
Links
The Santa Fe Institute. www.santafe.edu/index.html. A multidisciplinary research center with a focus on emergence processes.
Human Behavior and Evolution Society. www.hbes.com. An interdisciplinary group of scholars who rely on evolutionary approaches to understand human nature.
Society for Evolutionary Analysis of Law (S.E.A.L.) http://law.vanderbilt.edu/seal/. An interdisciplinary group of scholars with an interest in law, biology, and evolution.
http://www.princeton.edu/~icouzin/. Iain Couzin looks at how the actions of individuals intersect to produce macro-level patterns across species.
Groups
Anderson, Elijah. 1999. Code of the Street: Decency, Violence, and the Moral Life of the Inner City. NY: WW Norton. Argues that violence in the inner-city is regulated by a “code of the streets.” In order to survive, kids must learn and comply with this code.
Angier, Natalie. 2002. “Why We’re So Nice: We’re Wired to Cooperate.” New York Times. July 23, 2002. Discusses research showing that cooperation stimulates the same part of the brain that responds to positive things like good food and money. The original study can be found in James K. Rilling, David A. Gutman, Thorsten R. Zeh, Giuseppe Pagnoni, Gregory S. Berns, and Clinton D. Kilts. 2002. “A Neural Basis for Cooperation.” Neuron 35(2): 395-405.
Benedict, Ruth. 1946. The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese Culture. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Discusses two alternative solutions to the problem of order. Shame societies (such as Japan) rely extensively on external sanctions to promote compliance; guilt societies (such as the USA) rely much more on internalized norms to promote compliance. Note that shame societies would have to presuppose low privacy, and low monitoring costs. Guilt societies would be better adapted to societies that place a greater value on privacy (hence: have higher monitoring costs). The Protestant Reformation probably increased the value of privacy (cf. Durkheim’s Suicide). Benedict’s analysis was carried out in order to aid the American occupiers of Japan in their efforts to bring about social order in the immediate postwar period. See http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/19/arts/19RUTH.html?ex=1059636574&ei=1&en=246a59522daeee7c for a discussion of the relevance of her book to the task of bringing social order to contemporary Iraq.
Bicchieri, Cristina. 2007. The Grammar of Society: The Nature and Dynamics of Social Norms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Braithwaite, John. 1989. Crime, Shame and Reintegration. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Attempts to explain why Japan has so little crime. He argues that shaming is pervasive in Japan (as Benedict claims), but that there are at least two forms of shaming. Japanese society offers deviants a means of reintegration after they have taken responsibility for their deviance. This is in contrast to the USA, where shaming is stigmatized.
Brosnan, Sarah F. and Frans B. M. De Waal. 2003. “Monkeys reject unequal pay.” Nature 425: 297—299. Shows that female capuchin monkeys resist unequal rewards in an experimental setting. “A monkey willing to perform a task for a cucumber may refuse to do so if its partner is given a tasty grape. "It's not fair," the complaint of children the world over, is the message. In balking at this unequal pay, the monkey is surely being irrational, rejecting food that is on offer. But the negative emotion of "unfairness" and the refusal to accept inequitable situations has been a positive influence in the long-term development of human society, and the same evolutionary pressures seem to have prevailed in other primates as well (taken from the abstract).” On this basis, the authors suggest that the norm of fairness is evolved, rather than socially constructed. For a description of this research, see
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/18/science/18MONK.html?ex=1064897764&ei=1&en=3730e53e5f5b6e3a
For an eloquent statement of the normative basis of social order, see Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790; many modern editions in paperback).
Cancian, Francesca M 1975. What are Norms? A Study of Beliefs and Action in a Maya Community. NY: Cambridge University Press. Argues that norms are statements about identities and examines the actions that are appropriate for those identities.
Coleman, James S. 1988. “Social Capital in the Creation of Human Capital.” American Journal of Sociology 94: S95-S120. Describes the concept of social capital and the conditions that create it.
De Waal, Frans. 1996. Good Natured: The Origins of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other Animals. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. An examination of norms among higher animals.
Durkheim, Émile. “Value Judgments and Judgments of Reality.” In Sociology and Philosophy 90-97.
Durkheim, Emile. [1893]. 1984. Preface to the Second Edition of The Division of Labor in Society.
Elias, Norbert. [1939] 1994. The Civilizing Process. Provides an interesting discussion of the evolution of manners from late medieval Europe to the age of Absolutism.
Ellickson. Robert C. 1991. In Order without Law: How Neighbors Settle Disputes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Shows how cattle ranchers in Shasta County, California resolve disputes according to informal norms without turning to the law.
Elster, Jon. 1989. The Cement of Society. New York: Cambridge University Press: 125-151. Presents the controversial idea that norms are more than commonplace incentives affecting individual action because they exercise a particularly strong grip on the mind.
Erikson, Kai. 1994. “The Ojibway of Grassy Narrows.” In A New Species of Trouble: Explorations in Disaster, Trauma, and Community. NY: WW Norton. Environmental degradation and government policies lead to community breakdown. Illustrates Durkheim’s theory of suicide.
Garfinkel, Harold. 1967. Studies in Ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Ch. 2 presents a method (&lsquobreaching experiments’) of uncovering the taken-for-granted norms that govern informal social interactions. An intriguing analysis of the normative issues involved in changing one’s sex and gender identity is in Ch. 4.
Gintis, Herbert. 2003. "Solving the Puzzle of Prosociality." Rationality and Society 15:155-187. Attempts to provide a formal (e.g. mathematical) model that explains the internalization of norms. A rather technical presentation.
Hechter, Michael. 1987. Principles of Group Solidarity. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Identifies characteristics of groups that lead to greater solidarity.
Hechter, Michael and Karl-Dieter Opp. 2001. Social Norms. NY: Russell Sage. Includes overview chapters describing sociological, legal, economic, and game theoretic approaches to understanding social norms. Also includes chapters providing explanations for a variety of substantive norms ranging from polygamy to national self-determination.
Horne, Christine. 2009. The Rewards of Punishment: A Relational Theory of Norm Enforcement. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press. Identifies factors and mechanisms that lead people to enforce social norms.
Kanazawa, Satoshi. 2001. “De Gustibus Est Disputandum.” Social Forces 79(3): 1131-1162. Argues that evolutionary psychology may provide an explanation for the origin of universally held values.
Mackie, Gerry. 1996. "Ending Footbinding and Infibulation: A Convention Account." American Sociological Review 61:999-1017. Discusses the reproduction of norms. Whereas female genital mutilation in Africa persists despite modernization, public education, and legal prohibition, in China, footbinding lasted for 1,000 years but ended in a single generation. Mackie shows that each of these practices is a norm that is maintained by interdependent expectations on the marriage market.
Miller, Allan and Satoshi Kanazawa. 2000. Order by Accident. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. pp. 23-37. Explains the relatively high degree of social order in contemporary Japan by the high solidarity of its constituent groups.
Miller, William Ian. 1990. “Feud, Vengeance and the Disputing Process.” In Bloodtaking and Peacemaking: Feud, Law, and Society in Saga Iceland. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Describes how group loyalties contribute to the maintenance of order in the context of a minimal state in 13th century Iceland.
In 2002, nine miners were trapped underground for days in a collapsed coal mine in Pennsylvania. Their rescue was little short of miraculous, and their rescuers were lauded by a grateful nation. Shortly less than a year afterward, one of the lead rescuers committed suicide. For a recent, dramatic illustration of anomic suicide, see the following article from the New York Times Magazine, 7/27/03. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/19/arts/19RUTH.html?ex=1059636574&ei=1&en=246a59522daeee7c
For an example of how norms strongly differ even across advanced industrial societies, see the description of the Finnish norm of stoicism in http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/11/international/europe/11HELS.html?ex=1080019516&ei=1&en=6684daba9e029fd6. This article shows, for example, that whereas 90% of American women opt to use epidurals during childbirth (thereby minimizing pain), 80% of Finnish women do not.
Parsons, Talcott. 1935. “The Place of Ultimate Values in Sociological Theory.”
Portes, Alejandro. 1998. “Social Capital: Its Origins and Applications in Modern Sociology.” Annual Review of Sociology 24: 1-24. Discusses the concept of social capital and its origins. Identifies ways in which social capital may lead to undesirable outcomes rather than contribute to group welfare.
Putnam, Robert. 1993. Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Uses the concept of social capital to explain regional variation in political and economic well-being.
Sampson, Robert J., Stephen W. Raudenbush, and Felton Earls. 1997. “Neighborhoods and Violent Crime: A Multilevel Study of Collective Efficacy.” Science 277:918-924. Argues that neighborhoods with “collective efficacy” are better able to control criminal behavior.
Tsai, Lily L. 2007. Accountability without Democracy. Cambridge University Press. Explains how groups like temples, churches, and lineages, contribute to the ability of villages to provide services — roads, schools, running water, and so forth.
Ullmann-Margalit, Edna. 1977. The Emergence of Norms. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Develops a game theoretic account of norm emergence.
Weber, Steven. 2004. The Success of Open Source. Harvard University Press. Suggests that the development of open source software (such as Linux) suggests the poverty of conventional rational choice accounts of social order that rely on incentives (flowing from property rights) to motivate contributions.
Links
The Norms and Preferences Network. www.umass.edu/preferen
An interdisciplinary team of economists and anthropologists are conducting experiments in cultures around the world. Their work shows that people from different cultures respond differently to the same material incentive structures.
The Bowling Alone Website (contains data on trends in voluntary association membership in the United States). http://www.bowlingalone.com
Networks
A contemporary version of the groups and networks approach focuses on the importance of social capital. Social capital and related concepts such as collective efficacy and cohesion are used to explain a range of social phenomena — educational outcomes, economic well-being, political vitality, crime, and so forth. The list of supplemental readings includes pieces focusing specifically on social capital, as well as other work relevant to the groups and networks approach more generally.
Bearman, Peter S., James Moody, and Katherine Stovel. 2004. “Chains of Affection: The Structure of Adolescent Romantic and Sexual Networks.” American Journal of Sociology 110(1):44-91.
Blau, Peter and Joseph Schwartz. 1997. Crosscutting Social Circles: Testing a Macrostructural Theory of Intergroup Relations. Transaction Publishers.
Burt, Ronald S. 2004. “Structural Holes and Good Ideas.” American Journal of Sociology 110:349-399.
Collins, Randall. 1998. The Sociology of Philosophies. Belknap Press.
An article from the New York Times explains that the American army has asked tribal leaders in the Sunni Triangle of Iraq to help them provide social order. However, after Saddam Hussein destroyed indirect rule — the network of tribal groups that was historically responsible for the maintenance of much social order in Iraq — tribal leaders no longer have the authority to control their members. Thus, they claim that they are unable to help.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/11/international/middleeast/11FALL.html?ex=1069565839&ei=1&en=3e1e5cd32633703a
McPherson, Miller, Lynn Smith-Lovin, and Matthew Brashears. 2006. “Social Isolation in America: Changes in Core Discussion Networks over Two Decades.” American Journal of Sociology 71(3):353-375.
Putnam, Robert. 2000. Bowling Alone. NY: Simon and Schuster. Pp. 18-24. Discussion of bridging and bonding social capital.
Varshney, Ashutosh. 2002. Ethnic Conflict and Civic Life. New Haven, Yale University Press. Provides evidence that cross-cutting ties foster social order by showing that Hindu/Muslim violence is minimized in Indian cities in which there is intergroup participation in voluntary associations, and maximized in Indian cities having segregated membership in voluntary associations.
Watts, Duncan. 2004. Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age. W.W. Norton.