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This paper illuminates from a rational-choice perspective socialization as purposive commitment to certain patterns of social behavior. In particular, the paper provides from this perspective new theoretical insights into the Mertonian concept of anticipatory socialization, the concept of relative deprivation that Stouffer et al. introduced and Merton and Rossi elaborated, and a new related concept, anticipatory non-socialization. Using binary choice models, this paper clarifies for each of the three concepts, how interdependence of actions emerges and leads to different social consequences under different structural constraints on the possible consequences of actions and different initial conditions of population inequality/heterogeneity. Various unintended consequences of purposive action under such interdependence are deduced, some already known from empirical research, others presented as hypotheses to be tested in the future--several are paradoxical. This analysis of a set of interrelated social phenomena and a coherent set of choice models thus shows how the rational-choice perspective, not previously applied to anticipatory socialization and anticipatory non-socialization, can be a fruitful source of new insights about these phenomena. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article religion is viewed as a collectively produced good. Religious groups must, therefore, overcome collective action problems, namely, coordination. This problem is usually alleviated by entering into an agency relationship with an organizer whose job is to ensure efficient production of religious goods. This will lead to an increase in participation from congregants and an increase in quality of the religious goods. However, this relationship is open to the principal–agent problem. Using data from the American Congregational Giving Study this paper finds that the organizational structure of religious groups makes some groups more susceptible to principal–agent problems, which ultimately impacts participation levels. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper strengthens the basis for a key claim of contemporary economic sociology — that strong ties among capitalists cannot be reduced to rational considerations. Support for this claim has been limited by reliance on an external standard of rationality, whereby irrationality in commitment to a partner or network is based on an observer’s evaluation of an actor’s interests. In this article we address this limitation by developing an internal standard for assessing the rationality of an actor’s commitment, which is derived from Davidson’s (1980) definition of akrasia or ‘incontinence.’ In addition, we clarify the mechanisms that produce ‘akratic’ commitment among capitalists: (a) short-term emotions that overwhelm rational calculation; and (b) a sense of loyalty that leads one to incorporate others’ interests into one’s own. Finally, we provide systematic evidence of akratic commitment and the proposed mechanisms from studies of an industry peer network in the remodeling construction industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we study an endogenous cultural selection mechanism for cooperative behavior in a setting where agents are randomly matched in a one-shot interaction Prisoner's Dilemma, and may or may not have complete information about their opponent's preferences. We focus on an endogenous socialization mechanism in which parents spend costly effort to transmit directly their trait to their offspring, taking into account the impact of (oblique) societal pressures on cultural transmission. For various ranges of parameter values, this mechanism generates a polymorphic population with a long-run presence of cooperative agents, even where replicator and indirect evolutionary mechanisms would bring about a monomorphic population with non-cooperation. Further, under some circumstances, the long-run fraction of cooperative agents is shown to be larger under incomplete than complete information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates whether a family's access to social capital-defined here as perceived access to time and money help in an emergency from kin and friends--depends upon the family's past time and money investments in those kin and friends. It also examines the potential tradeoffs between money and time help from friends and relatives. Data come from parents of children under age 18 who responded to a supplement on time and money assistance included in the 1980 wave of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. The results suggest that while parents who invest primarily in friend-based help networks have greater potential access to assistance from friends, there is no significant link between investment in family and access to family-based assistance. Thus, while exchange describes social-capital linkages to friends, it does not describe family-based behaviors. Other findings are that time and money appear to be complements while investments in friends or family are substitutes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reconsiders James S. Coleman's concept of social capital. The concept has gained wide use and acceptance in sociology since its first publication, but, Coleman's own writings on the subject remain to date its most extensive analytic treatment. We make two contributions to social capital theory. First, we recast social capital theory to focus on benefits rather than forms. We identify three benefits that forms of social capital may confer: information, influence mid control, and social solidarity. In the context of a focus on benefits, we consider how a specific form of social capital may vary in the degree to which its benefits generalize to different kinds of goals, and how forms that are valuable for some purposes may be a liability for other purposes. Second, we emphasize social capital's origin in aspects of social structure that actors may appropriate to use in their interests. We suggest how changes in the social structure of which social capital is an aspect may affect tile emergence and persistence of forms of social capital and may condition the value of given forms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents parallels between network exchange experiments and N-person cooperative games with transferable utility, to show how game theory can assist network exchange researchers, not only in predicting outcomes, but in properly specifying the scope of their models. It illustrates how utility, strategy and c-games, concepts found in game theory, could be used by exchange theorists to help them reflect on their models and improve their research design. One game theoretic solution concept, the kernel, is compared to recent network exchange algorithms as an illustration of how easy it is to apply game theory to the exchange network situation. It also illustrates some advantages of using a game theory solution concept to model network exchange. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes controversies and misunderstandings about the notion of rationality based on the distinction between a rationality of frame and a rationality of inference. This paper adopts a distinction between two uses of the notion of rationality, the "rationality of frame" and the "rationality of inference." The notion of rationality is obviously very important for social science. This notion, however, is not easy to specify because it is polythetic and has different meanings according to paradigms and contexts in which it is used, but these meanings retain enough in common that a single word, "rationality," can take them all into account. Among theories of rationality in the different paradigms of the human sciences, two kinds can usefully be distinguished, those that study the rationality of choices between conceptual frames and those that study the rationality of these choices between rules of inference. The word "inference," here, is not restricted to logical or statistical operations. The former are theories of "rationality of frame" and the latter theories of "rationality of inference." There follow some examples that specify this distinction. The first is borrowed from economics and the other two from psychology.

In a previous paper, we tested a number of critical hypotheses derived from the three principal explanations of the sociology of Nazism. Our major finding was that the mass society, lower middle-class party of protest, and political confessionalism theses are empirically flawed. In this article, we apply an interest-based theory to the sociology of blue-collar Nazism. Using a sample of 15,006 workers who joined the Nazi Party between 1925 and 1932, we test the validity of our interest-based theory. The data demonstrate significant support for an interest-based account of Nazi Party working-class joining. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the author's reply to commentaries on her article which presented evidence against a class of rational choice models that explain the household division of labor in terms of gender-neutral logical relations. In my article the concept of symbolic exchange was exemplified by husbands' withdrawal from and wives' participation in women's work, where the action is primarily communicative and mean to convey one's essence as male or female. My focus also betrays my view of habits and routines as less sociologically interesting than strategic action, at least from a microsociological perspective. In any case, it is difficult for me to see how notions of habitual or scripted action would apply convincingly to the empirical case presented in my article, namely, breadwinning wives and economically dependent husbands. Three of the commentators argued that I did not adequately theorize why people are compelled to encode and display gender. Becker's theory accommodates deviations from a strict marginal productivity model; of course it does. Rather, my task was to analyze observed deviations to see if they were reconcilable with the theory, given the information at hand. I am unaware of any attempt to apply a framing model to problems in the field of gender stratification and doing so would no doubt prove challenging.

The Forum consists of comments on previously published papers and responses by authors. Unlike the Comment section in many other academic journals, the Forum includes solicited as well as unsolicited contributions. We encourage debates by actively seeking points of view contrary to those expressed in articles published in the journal. The Forum section is intended to promote an open and critical debate that contributes to the intellectual vitality and further development of rational-choice-based theory and research. Forum contributions should follow the form used by Rationality and Society and should not exceed five double-spaced pages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]