Supplemental Readings
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