Recap: spontaneous order

1. Recap: spontaneous order • Schelling shows predictable outcomes not necessarily desirous • Smithian social order requires institutional prerequisites (eg, private property, state to ensure contracts); doesn’t address effects of income inequality • Axelrod’s findings hold only under stringent conditions: • Games have clear, cardinal payoffs; • Payoffs are common knowledge; • Indefinite iterations of game w/ same players; • Only works for dyads or very small groups

3. Empirical Example of Spontaneous Order: “Shared Space” “Shared space is the idea that users of a roadway behave differently in a highly regulated, automobile-oriented environment than an unregulated, ‘social’ environment.  In a social environment (the shared space), a lack of traffic signals, markings, or physical separations forces automobile operators to pay close attention to what the users around them are doing, whether those be cyclists, pedestrians, or other drivers.  Right-of-way is established mostly by mostly visual communication.  All users become equal.  The inherent uncertainty causes drivers to slow down and look alive, lowering traffic casualty rates.  Shared spaces are meant to be coupled with a network of higher speed corridors to permit people and goods to flow in and out of the area in a reasonable amount of time.” http://www.greatcity.org/blog/shared-space-by-the-numbers

4. Hans Monderman: Shared Space -- Busy intersection in Drachten, Germany (before & after) -- Data indicate reduced traffic injuries where shared space has been implemented (eg, Kenstington St. in London), and even, in some cases, increased speed/ efficiency of traffic flow.

5. Shared Space in Seattle At Pike Place Market in Seattle, the fish-throwing vendors aren’t the only sign of barely contained chaos. Crowds of pedestrians also mingle alongside cars and trucks, creating a jumbled vibrant street scene at Pike Place and Post Alley. “The great thing about the market is nobody planned it,” says Lesley Bain, a partner at Weinstein AU, a Seattle architecture and urban-design firm. “You have a spontaneous overflow of people into the street.” --see also huge painted intersections in CD & Wallingford; roundabouts, etc. City of Seattle is discussing a shared space development for the area around the Beacon Hill light rail station, and the Blume Company plans to cast their Yale Avenue campus from a similar mold.  The Terry project, also in South Lake Union and the subject of an article in Metropolitan Magazine, attempted to apply European shared space principles to its corner of the neighborhood.  … Terry Ave North will lack traffic lights, and will be strive to create visual continuity between building faces.  The idea is that pedestrians feel encouraged to use the street much like we do on Pike Place down by the Market. http://www.greatcity.org/blog/shared-space-by-the-numbers

6. Clear Your Mind

7. Groups & networks • So far little attention paid to social structure • people belong to a variety of groups • Families, churches, clubs, firms, etc. • Groups related to social order in complex ways

8. 2 mechanisms by which group membership  social order • Ties across groups • Simmel • Granovetter • Gellner • Ties within groups • Tocqueville • Hechter • Hechter, Friedman and Kanazawa

9. Intragroup ties  social order • Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America • French aristocrat visits US in 1830’s • Compares American democracy to European aristocracy • Key question: How can democracy  order? (European leaders feared equality promoted excessive individualism & conflict)

10. Effects of Equality & Despotism • "Equality places men beside one another without a common bond to hold them.” • “Despotism raises barriers between [men] and separates them. It disposes them not to think of those like themselves, and for them it makes a sort of public virtue of indifference…”

11. Associationalism key to Social Order • "The Americans have combated the individualism to which equality gives birth with freedom, and they have defeated it. The legislators of America did not believe that, to cure a malady so natural to the social body in democratic times and so fatal, it was enough to accord to the nation as a whole a representation of itself; they thought that, in addition, it was fitting to give political life to each portion of the territory in order to multiply infinitely the occasions for citizens to act together and to make them feel every day that they depend on one another”. • “To give citizens responsibility for administering their own affairs, one interests them in the public good and makes them see the need they constantly have for one another in order to produce it.”

12. In democracies • To obtain political support, each person must help neighbors • People seek to attract neighbors’ esteem

13. Role of associations in combating individualism • In aristocratic societies, individual nobles can accomplish great things, because they can call on the aid of their dependents. In democratic societies, where all are roughly equal and weak, men must work together to achieve common goals (like Gellner on tribes) (321). • “The more that [government] puts itself in place of associations, the more particular persons, losing the idea of associating with each other, will need it to come to their aid: these are causes and effects that generate each other without rest (322).”

14. Role of associations, cont’d • “ [Citizens] learn to submit their will to that of all the others and to subordinate their particular efforts to the common action.” • “When citizens are forced to be occupied with public affairs, they are necessarily drawn from the midst of their individual interests, and from time to time, torn away from the site of themselves."

15. Tocqueville’s conclusion • “It is within political associations that Americans of all conditions, of all minds, and of all ages get the general taste for association daily and familiarize themselves with its use. There they see each other in great number, speak to each other, understand each other, and in common become animated for all sorts of undertakings. Afterwards, they carry into civil life the notions they have acquired and make them serve a thousand uses (327).” • Putnam on N. Italy • Putnam on social capital: those who belong to groups vote more, trust others more, etc.

16. How solidary groups  social order • Hechter, Friedman and Kanazawa based on theory of group solidarity • Michael Hechter (Professor Emeritus, UW) Principles of Group Solidarity (1987)

17. The Theory of Group Solidarity • Addresses two questions • Under what conditions do groups form? • Under what conditions are groups more or less solidary?

18. Group formation • People form groups only for a net benefit • Principal benefit of groups: • pooling of individually-held resources • Security • Insurance from natural disaster • social/informational access • People form groups to attain excludable goods that they can’t efficiently obtain on own

19. Group production • Members must comply with rules assuring production of joint goods • Compliance with rules costly • Members have incentive to free ride • Compliance = principal cost of group formation • Freeriding reduces goods produced, can lead to group dissolution

20. Solidarity increases with • dependence on group for goods • varies with value & availability of collective good • social control • varies with monitoring and sanctioning of group

21. The theory of group solidarity + Efficiency of Monitoring + Visibility of members Control Capacity (Probability of compliance) + Efficiency of Sanctioning + + Group solidarity Extensiveness (Extent of normative obligations) Dependence of members + +

22. Hechter, Friedman & Kanazawa • In heterogeneous societies, internalized norms should create deviance & social disorder • Key group function=enforce norms (social control) • Membership means benefits, but also obligations (on time, conformity to group norms, contributions, etc.) • State tolerates deviant groups unless they threaten its power, or unless they impose negative externalities on a group w/resources to resist

23. Hechter et al. Conclusions • members of groups produce local order to satisfy own private ends • Once produced, local order contributes to global social order • Order in heterogeneous societies d by existence of numerous but small solidary groups unable to threaten state • Social order d by freedom of association, especially at margins of society. Best way to produce global order is facilitate production of local solidarity • In contrast to Tocque’s emphasis on trust and cooperation, Hechter emphasizes social control aspects of how local groups  macro-level order

24. Critique • Discuss costs and benefits to behavioral definition of solidarity • Is Hechter’s theory of group solidarity and the Hechter et al. piece more a story of social control than of solidarity? • Do all associations have Tocquevillian effects? Are the effects limited to in-group members? May some groups contribute to societal discord or foster dependence?

25. Papers • Walk through Theory Summary instructions (give example of each part)

26. For Tuesday… • Simmel: make 2-columns comparing key characteristics and social consequences of concentric vs. juxtaposed groups. • Granovetter: How (under what conditions) do weak and strong ties  social order? • Gellner: Compare the effects on social order of city vs. arid lands. How is social order across groups maintained?