Most Helpful Customer Reviews
|
|
50 of 53 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A lighthouse in social science, April 4, 2001
This book begins with a dilemma around a group of men, caught in a cave by falling rocks. Starved of food they have to decide whether cannibalism would be acceptable. Douglas argues that there is no universal solution to this dilemma and that the different possible outcomes depend on the instituional relationships among the individuals.Mary Douglas admits in the early chapters of the text that this is the book she should have written first. Many of her earlier books, including Purity and Danger and Natural Symbols attracted critical acclaim but failed to make her theoretical orientations explicit. Her approach is in a minority position in contemporary social science and is informed by the sociology of Durkheim as practiced in anthropology in the first half of this century. As with all of her books, HIT is a great pleasure to read and she illuminates critical academic concerns with in a voice that is engaging. The book was written as a response to Olson's 'Logic of Action' and so focuses on demonstrating the contrary position that collective action does have rational foundations. This is a short text which serves as a useful introduction. It is impossible to understand the breadth of Douglas' profound insights without also reading 'Implicit Meanings', 'Purity and Danger' and 'Risk and Blame'.
|
|
|
2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Layman's notes, Where are you going? , February 23, 2008
Well, I am not a very penetrating reader, and neither do I have the intellectual resources to tackle the themes of this book. However, I found many chapters disappointing. For example, Chapter 5, "Institutions confer Identity" opens with one among many other questions, "How does one constructed analogy win over another? How does a system of knowledge get into orbit." Her argument wanders, and fails to provide an answer, and statements are not proven by example but a rather "just so" of elitist authorities. First, she delineates what a logical category is, and how it is derived. In sum, the derivation of logical sameness is not a quality inherent in the objects considered, but constructed from the side of theory, since "sameness is not a quality that can be recognized in the things themselves" (59). Arguments from the corpus of Quine and Nelson Goodman are cited as authorities. Then she critiques Quines "natural history" to account for the invention of scientific classification from simpler taxonomy. According to the honeycomb of Douglas, Quine's narrative failed since, it is inconsistent with earlier premises, a smooth deceptive narrative, and assumes the fact of the very principle it tries to explain. Then the march of Melanie Klein, and she provides a useful authority to explain the implicit question, "what is the simplest purpose behind perception of similarity and difference and why does it arrive? Thus we learn, 'the earliest social interaction lays the basis for polarizing the world into classes"(62). Does this answer why one classification is more successful then another? no, it simply defines the practical (means-end) purpose of inventing a classification.
Then, the argument "institutions bestow sameness". suppose in someone's everyday working taxonomy of the world, it is possible, that a hierarchal classification schema of ordered pairs along gender lines, culture, nature exists. Lets not forget this biased and institutional prejudice of Douglas in "even when the female gender is associated with the more esteemed side, it still can be used to justify the women carrying the heaviest physical burdens. " (64). The examples of these order pairs, prove "how the division of labor supplies authority to an analogy that locates a structured social situation firmly in nature." Thus social reality precedes, the invention of the justification for it. But whence the articulation of differences in the division of labor?
Well, after all this what is her answer to the opening question? "but when an analogy matches a structure of authority or precedence, then the social pattern reinforces the logical patterns and gives it prominence"(65). Huh? What is the meaning of this obtrusive sentence? In good form, she flashes us, and introduces a new term "structure of authority", no where mentioned previously in this chapter. A deluge of words falls upon us, and we are left wondering what it means!
|
|
|
2 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
We think alike , May 16, 2007
All the people that without notice thinks alike it is because they are under the power of the institucion,we can not escape that way of thinking sothe chance to choice is a dream is not real.We are not as free as we believe.
|
|
|
Most Recent Customer Reviews
|
by Erving Goffman
by Mary Douglas
by Douglass C. North
by Walter W. Powell
