6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
fascinating but a little disappointing, May 9, 2005
All of Mike Chwe's papers are on line--including all those included in this book. That's really the only reason that this gets four, rather than five stars.
The book (and Chwe's work in general) breaks fascinating ground where economics, with its hyperrationalistic bias, has often refused to tread: the realm of culture, customs, and norms. He argues, convincingly, that these seemingly irrational behaviors often have very rational foundations, specifically due to problems posed by scarce information and inferrence. This isn't necessarily shocking to various subtopics in economics--Condorcet Jury Theorem comes to mind as a classic example, as are recent advances in behavioral finance--but Chwe's approach takes it to far more commonplace varieties of social interactions than, for example, the economics of financial market bubbles and manias.
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A new way of thinking, June 3, 2003
By A Customer
This book has the potential to open the minds of economists to the relationship between culture and economic action, and anthropologists-sociologists and political scientists to the power of game theory. It lays the path towards a new, more intergrated social science, which helps reconcile the collectivist notions of Durkheim with the individualists notions of neo-classical economics, and does this much more effectively - within its realm - than social capitalists like James Coleman and Robert Puttnam. Chwe's ideas are much deeper than theirs - and more better expressed -- he writes very well. Since "Rational Ritual" is more deep than flashy, its real impact will be felt in time.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
great overview but needs more substance, March 10, 2010
What purpose do rituals serve? How can people coordinate behavior when many solutions exist? Michael Chwe's book hopes to answer these questions from the perspective of knowledge. He contends that community rituals and education are a means to form common knowledge and initiate individuals into the group. Most interactions are not zero-sum games of conflict: instead, individuals must understand how to coordinate behavior when there are many potential ideal equilibria. Hence, believing that information is the same across individuals can help when attempting to choose amongst multiple equilibria. Chwe offers insight into how these rituals can help separate equilibria, however he falls a bit shy of the mark when he attempts to address counter points to his arguments. Despite this shortcoming, his book offers an interesting overview of the significance of common knowledge and rituals that is short, accessible, and easy to read.
Chwe shows that rational behavior motivates individuals to seek common knowledge if they hope to interact in any form of group environment (in which coordination/cooperation is needed). Often in these interactions, individual behavior is conditioned not upon an individual's knowledge, but what that individual perceives others to know. Rituals are one means of generating common knowledge and the specific behavior within the rituals is designed to lay a basic foundation for future interactions. Alternatives to these rituals are costly in that they would require explicit communication on the individual level, or small-group level, but again not everyone could be certain of the knowledge others possess. Chwe uses examples to explain how agents are able to coordinate, showing that many cultural practices are about reinforcing what they already know.
Chwe's focus is upon coordination problems in which each person's desire to participate is contingent upon the behavior of others (only wants to participate when others do). He argues that others focus upon different equilibria while the means of coordinating behavior can shed the most light on human behavior. The common solution to coordination problems is some form of ritual, rally or ceremony in which common knowledge necessary for the coordination is generated. Cultural practices coordinate behavior among citizens and create a display in which all are aware that everyone else is participating (and thus legitimizing) the authority. Here, the significance is public attitude and display, not private emotions or ideas of participants: each individual agent could have private thoughts about the illegitimacy of the regime, but unless s/he knows others' thoughts, s/he is likely to continue participating as a loyal constituent (or may try to rebel and create a new group of common knowledge).
The framework Chwe creates allows the reader to gain a new understanding of many common features of society quite easily while developing an appreciation for the significance of culture. The first portion of the book reads as though he is setting up a big reveal--an explanation for why society is as it is--but this is not quite borne out in the second half. Once he transitions to information networks and information, it seems as though he either loses steam or expertise. Chwe theorizes that strong-link networks allow individuals to create common knowledge through the redundancy in connections in a way that weak-link networks cannot, despite their increased ability to spread information rapidly. However, it seems more a notion than a claim. As he addresses alternate explanations of rituals, he again offers observations and explanations that counter existing understandings, but he lacks the thorough analysis he employed in the first portion of the book.
Chwe could strengthen his position by developing his arguments against those who claim common knowledge is not possible and by recognizing the limitations of common knowledge (and whether the existence of common knowledge can drive the population to less-than desirable outcomes). With respect to limitations of common knowledge, he does mention that that there are limitations of what individuals can know or how 'meta' brains can go, but this needs to be more fully developed. A nice extension would include examples of how much individuals really are aware of common knowledge, or some analysis of an important ritual and what it conveys. He uses an example regarding how children do seem to be aware of some forms of common knowledge, but it is a bit thin. He could really expand here (and perhaps has in subsequent works) with an integration of his explanation of meaning and common knowledge in the following section.
Publicity and common knowledge generation, he explains, must be considered in understanding cultural practices but content and publicity are never completely separable (and in fact, may interact). This may be partially true because content and publicity both have an implied audience. If he included a discussion on symbols and their tie to rituals (for example, rings with marriage, or the message conveyed by visible and hidden tattoos), he would have provided more ground for himself. Individuals often choose to access common knowledge banks when they engage in symbolic behavior, which would indicate that there is an awareness of common knowledge that is called upon when interacting with others. Such ideas would bolster his claims and add additional depth to his arguments.
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