Explaining Emergent
Social Formations
If we take boundedly rational individual action
in pursuit of interests as a fundamental principle,
how are macro- and meso-social processes
and structures to be explained (Archer&Tritter
2000, pp. 7–9)? Interest-oriented actions of individuals
may simply be aggregated to account
for larger social processes, a view that many sociologists
assume, despite theoretical commitments
to some version of interactional or structural
emergence. But this “parallel play” version
of social action does not itself explain interaction
or institutions.Another possibility is that interaction—
between individuals or groups—may be modeled
strategically, as in prisoner’s dilemma
games, in which interest-oriented action depends
fundamentally on the actions of others.
But as Swedberg (2005, p. 83) points out, this
approach begs questions about the rules of the
game and “the importance of institutions for
the realization of interests.” So, for instance, in
a creative rapprochement between game theory
and cultural theory, Chwe (2001) argues that
rituals function to resolve coordination problems
in interest-oriented action by establishing
common knowledge; here, cultural processes
become conditions for strategic action.
In the least reductionist view, agency
theory—in which principal-agent relations
align actors’ interests with interactional tradeoffs
of rights and resources—can be developed
to generate accounts of meso- and macro-level
structures and processes (Kiser 1999, Shapiro
2005). Linked chains of principal-agent relations,
along with the monitoring, compliance,
and resistance relations they entail, may
coalesce into significant institutional patterns,
such as states, bureaucracies, and corporations
(Coleman 1990). In this way, self-interested
agency could ultimately build enduring but
historically dynamic structures (Levi 1988,
Hechter & Kanazawa 1997, Kiser & Bauer
2005).
However, as Adams (1999) among many
others argues, agency theory assumes theories
of valuation, affect, and signification. Coleman
(1990) brackets these problems with his robust
utilitarian assumptions about coherent hedonic
selves, but they reemerge for theorists such as
Sen and Elster who challenge the reduction of
rational choice mechanisms to egoism and argue
for preference neutrality. So understanding
emergent interactional and macro-structural
processes ultimately seems to require an independent
account of the higher-order origins
of relevant goals and preferences. Similarly,
as we saw above, the postulate of preference
neutrality can be empty or incoherent without
attention to meaning; and a focus on rational
choice processes, rather than preferences,is also quickly qualified by an attention to
meaning, both theoretically and empirically.
As a result, many scholars argue that we must
ask, “Why do people want what they want?”
The self in self-interest is plural and historical,
and to use the concept of self-interest, “it is
necessary to know how individuals construct
a self who figures out what action and/or
objective is in their interest[;] . . . the interest
of the self depends on the cultural context”
(Wildavsky 1994, pp. 131, 140; cf. Douglas
1992, ch. 12; Swidler 2001; Adams 2010).
These issues of variable meaning-making
and the social construction of the self emerge
from some of the core assumptions of the discipline;
how they are resolved shapes professional
identities, normative practice, policy, and
research programs. Many scholars view the
oppositions between rational choice and culture,
methodological individualism and structural
emergence, as fundamental. But are these
conceptual contrasts really contradictory?
In fact, different theorists on both sides
of the divide propose similar ways forward,
although an emerging consensus is rarely
recognized. They argue that the significance
and explanatory power of rational choice
mechanisms rely on institutional conditions
much more particular than originally considered,
but nevertheless that certain conditions
give those mechanisms for understanding
interest-oriented action an important place.
Satz & Ferejohn (1994, p. 72) argue that
rational choice theory “gets its explanatory
power from structure-generated interests and
not from actual individual psychology,” so the
actions of firms or political parties are more
easily explained with rational choice postulates
than are those of consumers or voters. Kiser
& Bauer (2005, p. 244) suggest specifying
“conditions under which noninstrumental
motivations are likely to be important,” and
Adams (2010, p. 254) suggests historicizing
conditions of agency theory. Smelser (1998,
p. 13) argues that rational choice mechanisms
operate in restricted circumstances where
“relative freedom of choice reigns,” whereas
psychological ambivalence operates in otherinstitutional contexts. Wagner (2000, p. 33)
sees rational choice mechanisms operating
only in extreme conditions lacking “a common
register of moral-political evaluation.”
All these scholars from widely different
backgrounds suggest that specific institutional
conditions affect the explanatory power of
interest-oriented action, so identifying those
conditions will rescue what they might variously
describe as the full potential or the
grain of truth in rational choice explanations.
Interestingly, they offer different and perhaps
even conflicting views of the conditions that
make interest-oriented action important. For
instance, whereas Smelser argues that rational
choice explains action best when choice is
possible and dependence minimized, Wagner
suggests that it emerges in social crisis when
no other coordinating options are available.
This difference and others suggest that theorizing
and exploring conditions for rational
choice and interest-oriented action will be
fruitful.
Understanding the social conditions for
interest-oriented action is even more important
if, as some social psychologists argue,
self-interest is an influential norm, rather than
a universal motive. Miller (1999, p. 1059)
concludes that “people act and sound as though
they are strongly motivated by their material
self-interest because scientific theories and
collective representations derived from those
theories convince them that it is natural and
normal to do so” (see also Holmes et al. 2002;
cf. Eliasoph 1998, pp. 81–84), an argument
illustrated by research showing that economics
students learn to act in more self-interested
ways than others (Marwell & Ames 1981,
Frank et al. 1993). Simpson et al. (2006) suggest
that cognitive dissonance theory provides
a better explanation of such findings than
does conformity to norms, but even so this
reinterpretation presumes that conditions for
interest-oriented action are important.
Social exchange theory and its related
research programs make up another important
scholarly tradition delving further
into the interactional and normative shapingof interest-oriented action, while retaining
micro-level presuppositions.