Social Theory
Q69. Define "coordination" and give five examples of coordination problems that you dealt with today.
Q70. If social order equals coordination and cooperation, provide some illustrations that support the authors' contention that "the problem of social order underlies questions of central concern to sociologists in substantive areas as diverse as crime and deviance, social movements, organizations, politics, religion, international relations, and the family" (xiii.1). Use this an opportunity to show you can distinguish cooperation and coordination and in general "get" the course. Perhaps add a category or two of your own.
Q150. Consider this passage and draft explication1. Work through it and suggest how you might improve it.
Q160. Comment on and improve upon the following text explication
Q161. Comment on and improve upon the following text explication
Q162. Explain this passage by Durkheim:
Q163. Work through this passage by Durkheim:
Q174. Consider this data on the thresholds in a population. Draw a frequency histogram and cumulative frequency diagram. How does this system behave when the expected number is 10? 20? 50? 60? 90?
Q193. In "Cosmos & Taxis" Friedrich von Hayek distinguishes two kinds of order. What does he call them? What are some synonyms for his terms? Demonstrate your understanding of the difference by giving examples of social order of each type.
Q194. Who wrote about the "invisible hand" and what does it mean for us?
Q195. Complete or paraphrase the passage that begins "It is not from the beneficence of the baker…." Who said it? In what context? What does it mean?
Q196. Explain this table:
Q197. Explain and give an example of a dominant strategy in a prisoner's dilemma game.
Q198. What is "tit-for-tat" and why, according to Robert Axelrod, is it so effective?
Q199. In the November 2012 general elections some sitting members of congress and the senate failed in their re-election effort and some opted not to run for re-election. After the election we describe those who are still in office but won't be in January as "lame ducks." Drawing on theoretical ideas and empirical ideas in the work of Robert Axelrod, make some predictions of how the dynamics of voting and deal making might be different during a lame duck session.
Q200. One of the most important concepts coming out of market, rational choice, and game theory models is "equilibrium." What do we mean by an equilibrium in game theory? Give an example and explain what we would mean if we said "get caught in a bad equilibrium."
Q201. (1) Explain what 'the allegory of the dying seminar' was in Thomas Schelling's work. (2) What (incorrect) conclusion about human behavior might observers draw from the dying seminar? (3) What other examples of this phenomenon does Schelling offer? (4) What generic phenomenon are these all examples of?
Q208. Explicate and comment:
One of our main contentions will be that very complex orders, comprising more particular facts than any brain could ascertain or manipulate, can be brought about only through forces inducing the formation of spontaneous orders (Hayek 1976: 143.5).
Q209. Explicate and comment.
The distinction of this kind of order from one which has been made by somebody putting the elements of a set in their places or directing their movements is indispensable for any understanding of the processes of society as well as for all social policy. There are several terms available for describing each kind of order. The made order which we have already referred to as an exogenous order or an arrangement may again be described as a construction, an artificial order or, especially where we have to deal with a directed social order, as an organization. The grown order, on the other hand, which we have referred to as a self-generating or endogenous order, is in English mosts conveniently described as a spontaneous order (Hayek 1976: 142.1-3).
Q210. Explicate and comment:
This means that, though the use of spontaneous ordering forces enables us to induce the formation of an order of such a degree of complexity (namely comprising elements of such numbers, diversity and variety of conditions) as we could never master intellectually, or deliberately arrange, we will have less power over the details of such an order than we would of one which we produce by arrangement. In the case of spontaneous orders we may, by determining some of the factors which shape them, determine their abstract features, but we will have to leave the particulars to circumstances which we do not know. Thus, by relying on the spontaneously ordering forces, we can extend the scope or range of the order which we may induce to form, precisely because its particular manifestation will depend on many more circumstances than can be known to us-and in the case of a social order, because such an order will utilize the separate knowledge of all its several members, without this knowledge ever being concentrated in a single mind, or being subject to those processes of deliberate coordination and adaptation which a mind performs (Hayek 1976: 145.5-7).
Q211. Explicate and comment:
To put this differently: in a social order the particular circumstances to which each individual will react will be those known to him. But the individual responses to particular circumstances will result in an overall order only if the individuals obey such rules as will produce and order. Even a very limited similarity in their behavior may be sufficient if the rules which they all obey are such as to produce an order. Such an order will always constitute an adaptation to the multitude of circumstances which are known to all the members of that society taken together but which are not known as a whole to any one person (Hayek 1976: 147.7).
Q212. Explicate and comment:
In any group of men of more than the smallest size, collaboration will always rest both on spontaneous order as well as on deliberate organization. There is no doubt that for many limited tasks organization is the most powerful method of effective co-ordination because it enables us to adapt the resulting order much more fully to our wishes, while where, becuase of the complexity of the circumstances to be taken into account, we must rely on the forces making for a spontaneous order, our power over the particular contents of this order is necessarily restricted.
That the two kinds of order will regularly coexist in every society of any degree of complexity does not mean, however, that we can combine them in any manner we like. What in fact we find in all free societies is that, although groups of men will join in organizations for the achievement of some particular ends, the co-ordination of the activities of all these separate organizations, as well as of the separate individuals, is brought about by the forces making for a spontaneous order. The family, the farm, the plant, the firm, the corporation and the various associations, and all the public institutions including government, are organizations which in turn are integrated into a more comprehensive spontaneous order (Hayek 1976: 149.5-7).
Q213. Explicate and comment:
What the general argument against 'interference' thus amounts to is that, although we can endeavor to improve a spontaneous order by revising the general rules on which it rests, and can supplement its results by the efforts of various organizations, we cannot improve the results by specific commands that deprive its members of the possibility of using their knowledge for their purposes (Hayek 1976:153.1).
Q214. Explicate and comment:
Akerlof generalized this model to a number of markets in which there is unequal information on the two sides - insurance companies know less than you do, usually, about whether you are accident prone, or susceptible to hereditary diseases, or are contemplating suicide. Life insurance rates for sixty-five-year-olds must allow for a large fraction who are not long for this world. And those who know they are healthy and have a family history of longevity and are exposed to few risks have to pay the same premium as the poorer risks; life insurance being unattractive [to them] at that price, few of them buys it. The average life expectancy of the customers goes down, the rates go up further, and the bargain now looks poor even to those of normal life expectancy. And so forth.
…. It is akin to, and sometimes coincides with, those situations in which the below average, or the above average, withdraw or won't join, causing some potential market or institution to unravel. Because people vary and because averages matter, there may be no sustainable critical mass; and the unraveling behavior, or initial failure to get the activity going at all, has much the appearance of a critical mass that is almost but not quite achieved (Schelling 1978: 159.5-7).
Q215. Explicate and comment:
The division of labour, from which so many advantages are derived, is not originally the effect of any human wisdom, which foresees and intends that general opulence to which it gives occasion. It is the necessary, though very slow and gradual consequence of a certain propensity in human nature which has in view no such extensive utility; the propensity to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another (Smith 1776: 171.8).
Q216. Explicate and comment:
But man has almost constant occasion for the help of his brethern, and it is in vain for him to expect it from their benevolence only. He will be more likley to prevail if he can interest their self-love in his favor, and show them that it is for their own advantage to do for him what he requires of them. Whoever offers to another a bargain of any kind, proposes to do this. Give me that which I want, and you shall have this which you want, is the meaning of every such offer; and it is in this manner that we obtain from one another the far greater part of those offices which we stand in need of. It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages (Smith 1776: 172.5).
Q217. Sociologists and anthropologists gripe endlessly about rational actor models, failing, over and over again, to understand that they are MODELS, not descriptions. Explicate and comment on this passage to show that you understand what the value of a model like prisoner's dilemma is for social theory.
The Cooperation Theory that is presented…is based upon an investigation of individuals who pursue their own self-interest without the aid of a central authority to force them to cooperate with each other. The reason for assuming self-interest is that it allows an examination of the difficult case in which cooperation is not completely based upon a concern for others or upon the welfare of the group as a whole. It must, however, be stressed that this assumption is actually much less restrictive than it appears. … So the assumption of self interest is really just an assumption that concern for others does not completely solve the problem of when to cooperate with them and when not to (Axelrod 1984: 177.2).
Q218. Explicate and comment:
The result was another victory for TIT FOR TAT! The analysis of the data from these tournaments reveals four properties which tend to make a decision rule successful: avoidance of unnecessary conflict by cooperating as long as the other player does, provocability in the face of an uncalled for defection by the other, forgiveness after responding to a provocation, and clarity of behavior so that the other player can adapt to your pattern of action.
These results from the tournaments demonstrate that under suitable conditions, cooperation can indeed emerge in a world of egoists without central authority (Axelrod 1984: 184.5).
Q232. Durkheim lived in an age when the role and existence of “god” as ultimate source of right and rule and order was under question. Rather than choose between “the human” and “the divine” Durkheim stared religion in the face, so to speak, and showed how what we think of as divine/sacred is in fact human (social). How do the following passages convey Durkheim’s theory of the special power of social norms and his idea about society as god and the notion that the individual, with norms and values of society internalized, can be a source of social order?
Q233. Hobbes sees social order as impossible without hierarchy. Address both the question of coordination and cooperation (to see the cooperation here, we might think about Adam Smith’s notion of bartering as a means by which two actors can both get what they want) as you explain how Hobbes gets from his assumptions about human nature to the need for a “Leviathan” if human-kind is to achieve social order.
Q234. Hayek is sometimes taken to be saying that the modern world throws up problems that are too complex to be handled by planning and policy making. Some things can be handled that way, but big and complex things cannot. What are the differences between the two types of order and the limitations and possibilities Hayek suggests each has and how does he get from there to social order?
Q235. Schelling’s piece, “Micromotives, Macrobehaviors,” is included because it demonstrates some specific conditions under which market interactions may lead to coordination but not cooperation. What are his two examples and what are the conditions that can affect whether market interactions lead to cooperation? Explain the role they play, perhaps using our class chairs and offices simulation as a point of reference, in limiting the optimism of Smith and Hayek for markets as a source of social order.
Q236. In a prisoner’s dilemma game, the rational thing for both players is to defect. This makes mutual defection an equilibrium, though it is not a preferred one (the collective would be better off with another outcome). In other words, in a single game of prisoner’s dilemma, cooperation is “impossible.” But cooperation does happen in the world.
Q237. In "The Emperor's Dilemma," Centola, Willer, and Macy talk about “the popular enforcement of unpopular norms.” What does that mean? Why is it a puzzle? What is (are) the mechanism(s) that they think explains it?
Q238.
Q333. Consider each of the actions listed in the left column of this table. Thinking like Max Weber, in the other columns of each row, give a short explanation of how the action could be oriented in each of four ways (instrumentally rational, value rational, affectual, traditional). In some cases, you might conclude that it is simply too far fetched for an action to be subject to a particular orientation; these can be noted with an "X."
Q334. Describe, with examples, the policy implications of a theory that has individuals and their shared meanings as the main source of social order.
Q335. Consider Marx on the production of consciousness. How important does the kind of work seem to be as over against the kinds interaction among people who do the same kind of work for Marx? Compare, perhaps, Uber drivers and fast food workers. Would Marx expect less or a different kind of shared consciousness among the one or the other?
Q336. What does Ludwick Fleck mean by a "thought collective"?
Q337. In "Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact" Ludwik Fleck starts out with the bold statement that "cognition is the most socially-conditioned activity…." Why is this a bold statement? What conventional assumption is he contradicting at the outset?
Q338. "As an entity [a thought collective] is even more stable and consistent than the so-called individual, who always consists of contradictory drives" (57.8). Explain what Fleck means.
Q339. Ludwik Fleck wrote: "what actually thinks within a person is not the individual himself but his social community" (Hechter & Horne 59.5). Explain what Fleck's theory of thought collectives is all about by explaining what this means.
Q340. Explain sociological wholism (vs. methodological reductionism) and sociological realism (vs. nominalism)
Q341. Explain what George Herbert Mead means when he describes "self consciousness" as becoming aware of oneself as an object for others. How is it that this is what gives rise to the "social self"?
Q342. With which theorists do we associate this diagram? Explain what it means in the context of their work.
Q343. Dov Cohen and Joe Vandello report on several lab experiments in the article on cultures of violence. One experiment involved "annoying" subjects who thought they were doing an experiment on "art therapy." Describe the design of this experiment, its findings, and their relevance to the theoretical ideas explored in Cohen and Vandello's article.
Q344. Cohen and Vandello offer a number of supporting findings in their work on culture of honor violence in the American south. Explain what's going on in each of these four summary tables and how this fits in with their analysis.
Q345. Explicate and explain this selection from Cohen and Vandello's "Meanings of Violence":
As Reed has suggested, Southerners "actually don't see much of the violence around them, don't register it as 'lawlessness,' because it isn't 'lawless.' It is lawful violence in the sociological if not the legal sense: more-or-less predictable, more-or-less expected, (in consequence) more or less taken for granted. It's effectively invisible-something like wallpaper." (Reed 1981)
Q346. Cohen and Vandello describe a world that may not be politically or morally attractive to you. And yet we read it in a section of the course where we are saying that collective beliefs can be a source of coordination and social order. How does this article illustrate the theoretical points being made by Marx, Durkheim, Mead, and Fleck, indeed of the entire section of the course, that shared meanings can produce order?
Q347. George Herbert Mead writes of "taking the attitude of the other" as a necessary part of social life.
"…the complex co-operative processes … organized human society are also possible only in so far as every individual involved in them … can take the general attitudes of all other such individuals … and can direct his own behavior accordingly" (61.5).
Q348. At 63.2 (in Hechter and Horne reader) Mead says there are two stages in the development of the social self. First the organization of particular attitudes of particular others toward oneself. Second is characterized by "an organization of the social attitudes of the generalized other or the social group…." Although we usually interpret this in terms of the development of a social self in children, we can use it to describe our joining of any new group or social environment. Explain what this means using an example of an individual's socialization into some concrete scene of your own conjuring.
Q349. Language is the paramount example of a SOCIAL phenomenon - the "code system" of language exists in our collective, shared consciousness and anyone who wishes to communicate has to participate in this. Use language and the acquisition and use of language to explain Mead's idea of taking the role of the other, the generalized other, etc.
Q350. Some people summarize Durkheim's "theory of religion" by saying that he discovered that "god is society." Explain the logic of this.
Q351. Define cooperation and give five examples where you have seen it (or its absence) recently.
Q352. Explain what Hedstrom ("Dissecting the Social") meant when he said "differences in some social states or events are considered explained if the decomposition eliminates them" (13.8)?
Q353. In "Dissecting the Social," Hedstrom suggests that "a statistical analysis is a test of an explanation, not the explanation itself" (13.9). Explain this distinction.
Q354. In "Dissecting the Social," what does Hedstrom mean by "realism" (14.9)? How is does this compare to Durkheim's dictum to "treat social facts as things"?
Q441. Explain the scientific logic behind Durkheim's suggestion that the three propositions on suicide varying with integration in religious, domestic, and political society lead to the suggestion that social integration is the property behind the variation in suicide rates.
Q442. Explain what Durkheim is talking about when he suggests that egoism is the opposite of social.
Q443. Define:
supra-physical (234.5)
raison d'être (234.7)
(instinct) acquits (itself) (234.8)
(collective) asthenia (236.2)
Q444. Tocqueville writes that "Americans combat individualism with free institutions" (246). Explain what he means.
Q445. What is the mechanism behind Tocqueville's endorsement of involvement in local politics as a way of building "the social" into citizens?
Q446. Walk us through Tocqueville's contrast of aristocratic society where citizens are bound to, say, their local noble, and democratic society where citizens are independent. He wants to say that the latter can't get anything done unless they know how to organize and associate.
Q447. What is Tocqueville's argument that associations help to stabilize democratic regimes?
Q448. Why is the Tocqueville selection in the "groups as a source of social order" section of the text?
Q449. What does Hechter mean by "the extensiveness of corporate obligations"?
Q450. Centola, et al. describe a process whereby people collectively "produce" something that is contrary to their individual beliefs/interests/preferences. Thomas Schelling, similarly, described a process whereby socially irrational results emerged from individually rational action. Identify points of similarity and difference, using it as an opportunity to show what you know about the two thinkers' ideas as well as your ability to compare markets and groups as generators of social order.
Q451. If the phenomenon described by Centola et al. is common, what are the implications for Schelling's critical mass and tipping models?
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Q454. Consider the essay you wrote for the warm-up assignment at the start of this course on a film or book in which social order "disappeared." How would you re-write it in a manner that would show off some of what you learned in this course?
Q455. Think about the articles by Fehr & Gintis and Centola et al. Show what you take away from these articles by talking about how norms can support cooperation and social order and how they can support an order that might be high on coordination but low on the benefits of cooperation.
Q456. Provide a high level comparison of shared meaning, hierarchy, markets, and groups as sources of social organization understood as coordination and cooperation.
Q457. The overall logic of the final section of the course was that groups can promote social order through internalization of norms and provision of incentives. Explain how each of these work and what the difference is using at least one thinker to illustrate each.
Q458. If you are doing a thesis this year or have a general topic in mind for one in the future, pick two theorists, each from a different section of the course, and show what you have learned about their ideas by "applying" them to your research topic.
Q459. What, to your mind, was the best article of the course - the one you really understood or that really clicked for you or that you've taken to explaining to friends and family it's so awesome. Describe it in a manner that shows the depth of your understanding.