Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism

The present historical moment may seem a particularly inopportune time to review Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam's latest exploration of civic decline in America. After all, the outpouring of volunteerism, solidarity, patriotism, and self-sacrifice displayed by Americans in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks appears to fly in the face of Putnam's central argument: that \"social capital\" -defined as \"social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them\" (p. 19)'has declined to dangerously low levels in America over the last three decades. However, Putnam is not fazed in the least by the recent effusion of solidarity. Quite the contrary, he sees in it the potential to \"reverse what has been a 30to 40-year steady decline in most measures of connectedness or community.\"' As an example of how the current \"war on terrorism\" could generate a durable civic renewal, Putnam points to the burst in civic practices that occurred during and after World War II, which he says \"permanently marked\" the generation that lived through it and had a \"terrific effect on American public life over the last half-century.\" 3 If Americans can follow this example and channel their current civic

Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community

In 1974 an article appeared in Science magazine with the dry-sounding title “Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases” by a pair of psychologists who were not well known outside their discipline of decision theory. In it Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman introduced the world to Prospect Theory, which mapped out how humans actually behave when faced with decisions about gains and losses, in contrast to how economists assumed that people behave. Prospect Theory turned Economics on its head by demonstrating through a series of ingenious experiments that people are much more concerned with losses than they are with gains, and that framing a choice from one perspective or the other will result in decisions that are exactly the opposite of each other, even if the outcomes are monetarily the same. Prospect Theory led cognitive psychology in a new direction that began to uncover other human biases in thinking that are probably not learned but are part of our brain’s wiring.

Thinking fast and slow.

NUDGE: IMPROVING DECISIONS ABOUT HEALTH, WEALTH, AND HAPPINESS by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein Penguin Books, 2009, 312 pp, ISBN 978-0-14-311526-7This book is best described formally as a general explanation of and advocacy for libertarian paternalism, a term coined by the authors in earlier publications. Informally, it is about how leaders, systems, organizations, and governments can nudge people to do the things the nudgers want and need done for the betterment of the nudgees, or of society. It is paternalism in the sense that "it is legitimate for choice architects to try to influence people's behavior in order to make their lives longer, healthier, and better", (p. 5) It is libertarian in that "people should be free to do what they like - and to opt out of undesirable arrangements if they want to do so", (p. 5) The built-in possibility of opting out or making a different choice preserves freedom of choice even though people's behavior has been influenced by the nature of the presentation of the information or by the structure of the decisionmaking system. I had never heard of libertarian paternalism before reading this book, and I now find it fascinating.Written for a general audience, this book contains mostly social and behavioral science theory and models, but there is considerable discussion of structure and process that has roots in mathematical and quantitative modeling. One of the main applications of this social system is economic choice in investing, selecting and purchasing products and services, systems of taxes, banking (mortgages, borrowing, savings), and retirement systems. Other quantitative social choice systems discussed include environmental effects, health care plans, gambling, and organ donations. Softer issues that are also subject to a nudge-based approach are marriage, education, eating, drinking, smoking, influence, spread of information, and politics. There is something in this book for everyone.The basis for this libertarian paternalism concept is in the social theory called "science of choice", the study of the design and implementation of influence systems on various kinds of people. The terms Econs and Humans, are used to refer to people with either considerable or little rational decision-making talent, respectively. The various libertarian paternalism concepts and systems presented are tested and compared in light of these two types of people. Two foundational issues that this book has in common with another book, Network of Echoes: Imitation, Innovation and Invisible Leaders, that was also reviewed for this issue of the Journal are that 1 ) there are two modes of thinking (or components of the brain) - an automatic (intuitive) process and a reflective (rational) process and 2) the need for conformity and the desire for imitation are powerful forces in human behavior. …

Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness

The four Visegrad states — Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia (until 1993 Czechoslovakia) and Hungary — form a compact area between Germany and Austria in the west and the states of the former USSR in the east. They are bounded by the Baltic in the north and the Danube river in the south. They are cut by the Sudeten and Carpathian mountain ranges, which divide Poland off from the other states. Poland is an extension of the North European plain and like the latter is drained by rivers that flow from south to north west — the Oder, the Vlatava and the Elbe, the Vistula and the Bug. The Danube is the great exception, flowing from its source eastward, turning through two 90-degree turns to end up in the Black Sea, forming the barrier and often the political frontier between central Europe and the Balkans. Hungary to the east of the Danube is also an open plain. The region is historically and culturally part of western Europe, but its eastern Marches now represents a vital strategic zone between Germany and the core of the European Union to the west and the Russian zone to the east.

Economy and Society

The huge corpus of work on consumption still lacks theoretical consolidation. This is most obvious when contemplating the situations of different disciplines, where there is very little common ground (see, for example, the review in Miller 1995). But the problem is no less great in individual disciplines like sociology, for example, where output seems to me to have been bipolar, generating either abstract and speculative social theory or detailed case studies. Moreover, case studies have been skewed towards favourite, but restricted, topics—fashion, advertising and some forms of popular recreational activity—with particular attention paid to their symbolic meanings and role in the formation of self-identity. These case studies, perhaps encouraged by prominent versions of the abstract theories which say that the consumer has no choice but to choose and will be judged in terms of the symbolic adequacy of that choice (e.g. Bauman 1988; Giddens 1991), very often operated with models of highly autonomous individuals preoccupied with symbolic communication. Believing that these approaches give a partial understanding of consumption, this chapter sketches an alternative, avoiding methodological individualist accounts of ‘the consumer’, which are concerned as much with what people do and feel as what they mean.

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Consumption and Theories of Practice

Drawing on the first systematic study of cultural capital in contemporary Britain, 'Culture, Class, Distinction' examines the role played by culture in the relationships between class, gender and ethnicity. Its findings promise a major revaluation of the legacy of Pierre Bourdieu's account of the relationships between class and culture.

Culture, Class, Distinction

Multi-disciplinary studies of consumption have proliferated in the last two decades. Heavily influenced by notions of ‘the consumer’ and tenets of ‘the cultural turn’, explanations have relied preponderantly upon models of voluntary action contextualised by webs of cultural meanings which constitute symbolic resources for individual choice. Arguably, the cultural turn has run its course and is beginning to unwind, a consequence of internal inconsistencies, misplaced emphases and the cycle of generational succession in theory development in the social sciences. Theories of practice provide a competing alternative approach which contests the colonisation of consumption by models of individual choice and cultural expressivism. To that end, this article explores the use of theories of practice as a lens to magnify aspects of common social processes which generate observable patterns of consumption. It is suggested that theories of practice might provide a general analytic framework for understanding consumption, one whose particular emphases capture important and relevant aspects overlooked by previously dominant approaches to consumption as culture. This article reviews reasons for the emergence of theories of practice and isolates some of their distinctive emphases. Strengths and weaknesses of the theory of practice as an approach to consumption are discussed.

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After taste: Culture, consumption and theories of practice

PART ONE: ISSUES OF TASTE Consumption, Taste and Social Change The New Manners of Food Trends and their Sociological Interpretation Measuring Change in Taste PART TWO: INDICATORS OF TASTE: CHANGING FOOD HABITS Novelty and Tradition Health and Indulgence Economy and Extravagance Convenience and Care PART THREE: INTERPRETATIONS OF TASTE The Reconstruction of Taste Theories of Consumption and the Case of Food

Consumption, Food and Taste: Culinary Antinomies and Commodity Culture

Eating Out, first published in 2000, is a fascinating study of the consumption of food outside the home, based on extensive original research carried out in England in the 1990s. Reflecting the explosion of interest in food, ranging from food scares to the national obsession with celebrity chefs, the practice of eating out has increased dramatically over recent years. Through surveys and intensive interviews, the authors have collected a wealth of information into people's attitudes towards, and expectations of, eating out as a form of entertainment and an expression of taste and status. Amongst other topics they examine social inequalities in access to eating out, social distinction, interactions between customers and staff, and the economic and social implications of the practice. Eating Out will be a valuable resource to academics, advanced students and practitioners in the sociology of consumption, cultural studies, social anthropology, tourism and hospitality, home economics, marketing, and the general reader.

Alan Warde

Papers

Consumption and Theories of Practice

Culture, Class, Distinction

After taste: Culture, consumption and theories of practice

Consumption, Food and Taste: Culinary Antinomies and Commodity Culture

Eating Out: Social Differentiation, Consumption and Pleasure