Abstract
Synopsis : Having argued that individuals are intrinsically social, we now address the question of the organisational implications of these conclusions. As one of the key elements in modern economic analysis is the separation of the spheres of economic and social interactions, we ask whether or not the kind of sociality we identified in the previous chapter lends itself to such a conception of society. By the separation of the spheres we mean that it is possible to analyse economic interactions without any reference to the specificity and diversity—across cultures—of social interactions in other spheres of social life. Needless to say, this is a necessary condition for any attempt at retaining a position of social neutrality.
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Notes
- 1.
I am referring here to what has become known as ‘economic imperialism’, where other social science disciplines like sociology or politics use economic methods—and in particular the rational utility maximiser—as the backbone of their analysis. But there are also economists who delve into areas outside what may appear to be a strictly economic domain. See, for instance, Akerlof and Yellen (1990), Becker (1996), Benabou and Tirole (2006a, b) and Bernheim (1994), to name just a few.
- 2.
This point is of some importance and we will discuss it further later in the book, but the notion that there is a difference between planned action and its execution is something which has dogged economic analysis for a while. To some extent, a distinction along these lines may help understand why it is that experimental results in economics are so often in conflict with the prediction of the model. As I will argue later, in itself this is not something which invalidates the model. The fact that reality diverges from the abstraction should not come as a surprise to anyone. The test of a discipline is the way in which it is being dealt with. We discussed some of it in Chap. 2 but we will return to it later in connection with the question of whether game theory can help socialise the rational utility maximiser.
- 3.
We will explore this question further in the next chapter.
- 4.
Recall that the agent works on commission, and we assume that no matter how crippling the financial deal may be, there is insurance to ensure the payments.
- 5.
For an interesting discussion of the different ways in which the concept has been used, please consult: Seligman, A. B., (2000), Civil Society as Idea and Ideal, in Alternative Conceptions of Civil Society Chambers, S. and W. Kymlicka (eds), Princeton University Press: 13–33.
- 6.
It is important to stress that only one of the three principles (liberty) can be viewed as an individualistic idea: to protect the freedom of every person. The other two—equality and fraternity—are both collective ideas; they are ideas about the relationship between individuals and not about what some may consider as the ‘rights’ of the individual.
- 7.
To a great extent, all societies are functional as they serve a purpose. My distinction here is between a functionality which is transferrable and one which is not. Extreme functionality is when we have complete social laissez-faire in the sense that everyone does what is best for themselves. Society has no explicit objective of its own. Equally, however, a Hobbesian society is also functional; the purpose of society is merely to remove the obstacles from the pursuit of one’s own interest (the lack of security). At the other end, society which is not functional may still have a purpose. The Lockean society is driven, among other things, by ‘the love and want of society’ (Treaties 2, p. 101), which may encapsulate a purpose that cannot be achieved without the collective. Another example could be both the Platonic Republic and the Aristotelian democracy: both societies as institutions are aimed at explicitly achieving that which, presumably, each of its citizens want—a just society, or the good life (eudemonia). Though there are institutional differences between the kind of society each of them prescribes, the difference is more a result of their different epistemological position. Both of them attribute a role to society which has as an objective to promote the social aspects of human life.
- 8.
This is particularly true to immigrant societies like the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, which are all, interestingly, Anglo-Saxon in character.
- 9.
They may indeed think of themselves as liberal civic societies but the meaning of the term in different places may vary. In part, some of these differences are manifested in the willingness of society to let people fend for themselves. Hence, fewer protective labour laws and low level of support outside work could be more symptomatic of a more functional society, whereas greater social expenses may correspond to a society which is interested in providing its members with more than just a framework within which to pursue their own affairs. It may be of some significance to note that most Anglo-Saxon economies are also, as we said before, immigrant societies (like the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand). But the UK, for other reasons which need exploring elsewhere, too is predominantly a civic society as is, in a more planned manner, Singapore.
- 10.
See the Appendix to this chapter for some basic data.
- 11.
The Social Brain Hypothesis.
- 12.
In the literature on the concept of nation in political thinking, the dichotomy is similar between primordial and modern civility. See, for example, a discussion in Geertz (1963), Eller and Coughlan (1993) and Grosby (1994). In our case, we do not need to resort to primordialism as the nature of relatedness is open and can become cognitive and even rational (though not in a consequentialist sense).
- 13.
Recall that one way of looking at it was by borrowing Hamilton’s concept of inclusive fitness. Accordingly, a social act is an act which is performed when \( {c}_i<{r}_{ij}(C)\cdot {b}_j \), which means that the cost to the actor is lower than the expected benefit to the person who, as it were, is being acted upon. What determines this is the strength of r which is both the probability of relatedness between the two agents as well as the cognitive strength of their relationship. Stronger r(C) means that there will be more social acts between any two agents as well as more agents who may become the objects of such acts.
- 14.
Note that the diagram is merely a schematic representation and not a specific functional form. It simply captures the relationship between R and social distance without identifying a specific functional form which could represent the relationship between R and social distance.
- 15.
An interesting question which I feel is worth pursuing but will not do so here is whether in the process of enlarging circles of association through complex cognition and abstract language the notion of sociality is transferred from the individuals to the idea. Hence, people may have strong feelings and be willing to perform social acts in the name of their group (say, the nation, or religion), yet when they do so it has nothing to do with any particular individual. They may become committed to the abstract.
- 16.
One can think of this as the difference between the developments of two categories of human understanding: humanities and natural sciences. There is a more systematic and well-defined progress in our understanding of the physical world but much less so in our understanding of our own humanity and its various expressions.
- 17.
An interesting indirect piece of evidence on this can be found in Easterly et al. (1999). To some degree the level of public expenditure is a reflection of the collective spirit of the community and, hence, can be considered, to some degree, as a measure of social distance or social cohesion. They find ‘that certain public goods—such as education, roads, sewers—supplied by U. S. cities are inversely related to ethnic fragmentation in those cities’ (p. 1243).
- 18.
Recall that in this case we noted that it is difficult to distinguish between the strength of emotions in different natural groups (determined by R) but we identified two opposing forces which may explain this and they are the strength of relatedness (which would reduce social distance) and number of individuals (which would increase it).
- 19.
Hamilton (1975) discusses the effects on relatedness of expansions of social groups in animals and primates. As there are no technological development, changes in group’s size or composition are a result of movement of individuals across groups. He claims that ‘the less migration there is the more relatedness will build up within a group’ (p. 338). While his model refers to animals, and therefore, to a more instinct (rather than cognitive) sense of relatedness, this is very similar to the story we were telling on the shift from the extended family to the village or from the village to the city (though in the case of the animals it is a change of composition rather than expansion is size but the two, in my view, can be viewed as equivalences). The moment your reference group (the group on which you depend for life’s necessities) expands to include individuals who until now were not part of your initial group, the level of relatedness within the extended group will fall. What Hamilton is not taking into consideration is the possibility that with the technological expansion there may be a parallel cognitive development which will reduce the distance between new members on the basis of a new connecting ideas. But he does take into account that much of the effects depends on the nature of what binds people together and he claims that among some groups of animals, newcomers are more tolerated though they go through a period of probation.
- 20.
It may be interesting to note in this connection the work by Henry Maine, who was a historian of law who wrote at the time of Darwin and attempted to formulate an evolutionary analysis of social development. Maine’s main claims which are relevant to our discussion here are the ones he developed in Ancient Law from 1861 and The Early History of Institutions 1875. Accordingly, society, at the original stage, was not made up of individuals but rather it was an aggregation of families. The main social bond, accordingly, was that of blood kinship. In opposition to the more dominant line following the Enlightenment according to which individuals create society (i.e. the purely functional approach), he held the view that it is more likely that it was society that created the individual (Maine 1920 [1861], Chaps. 1 and 2). Historical changes—and in particular, the settling on land—led to changes in the nature of kinship which, in turn, led to social changes too. The key component in Maine’s analysis is the role of property which he claims was originally collective and then was disentangled into private one. He concludes in his analysis that what typified the shift from the more blood kinship base of sociality to more cognitive ones (like, common ancestry) was a move away from a hierarchical (status based) form of social organisation to a contractual one. This, in terms of our discussion, corresponds to the move from organic to more functional form of social organisation.
- 21.
The reason we suppose the line to be less steep is that the effect of cognitive development is bound to be greater on those with greater cognitive ability than on those with lower such ability.
- 22.
This, of course, is the Becker agenda.
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Appendix
Appendix
In a purely functional society where individuals gather together to serve their own individual interests, it is likely that the level of social spending will be lower than in a society where the public expects the collective to uphold certain collective ideas (a society of people with intrinsic sociality). If we therefore look at the crude measure of gross social spending as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP), we will find the following:
Where the AS column represents the Anglo-Saxon societies which seem to be greater adherents of the modern notion of civic society and include the USA, the UK, Ireland, Canada, Australia and New Zealand (four of which are immigrant societies where it is more likely to expect a more functional form of social organisation). Continental countries include France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Finland, Sweden and Denmark (the result would not have been different if we included more countries). These are countries where one is more likely to find a more organic form of social organisation which is due to common and local unique language, history and culture.
The left-hand side columns depict the average of gross social spending per year per country as a percentage of GDP between 1990 and 2001. The right-hand pair of columns depicts the situation in 2011. One can clearly see that there is a significant difference between the amounts of public social spending between these two types of countries. Both blocks are advanced economies yet there is nonetheless a difference between the ways these societies perceive the role of the collective which is manifested in the level of social spending.
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Witztum, A. (2019). Human Sociality II: Intrinsic Sociality, Self-interest and Social Organisation. In: The Betrayal of Liberal Economics. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-10671-3_2
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