Collective Action by Russell HardinReview by: Pamela OliverContemporary Sociology, Vol. 12, No. 6 (Nov., 1983), pp. 670-671Published by: American Sociological AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2068040 .

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670 BOOK REVIEWS

art. Art history's problem is "What is good art?" Sociology's problem is "What is art?" One consequence of looking at the ar- rangements for the production and distribution of- art is the relativization of art history's search for esseritialist criteria. This is the problem Wolff explores.

It- is not a -new problem. The sociology of knowledge, particularly the Mannheimian ver- sion, left sociology with this legacy:. If one could show that an argument could be reduced to the motivations, class bias, andl ideological views of the persons making the claims, then one does not have to deal with the "truth value" of their assertions. Wolff has taken this general issue and applied it in the -domain of aesthetics and art.

Wolff reviews both the sociological and philosophical debates. Her'greatest strength is her ability to make accessible other people's points of view. She has a logician's keen mind coupled with a social historian's breadth of knowledge, and the final product- is formidable indeed. She distills the views of such thinkers as Kant, Luka'cs, Marcuse, Bourdieu, Eagle- ton, Althusser, Williams, and others so- that the reader can understand the position of each with respect to the debates, and then shows how it all fits together. The writing is abso- lutely -superb.

Wolff ends on a very "up" note, showing that the sociology of art need not negate nor invalidate aesthetics but, rather, that the two can coexist if we apply the concept of "rela- tive autonomy." Sociology can grant that art has a life of its own-its own internal rules, logic, and discourse-and, at the same time, show that it is socially and historically deter- mined. Her final chapter is an attempt at com- promise in which she utilizes the concept of relative autonomy to smooth over differences that she has polarized (perhaps for heuristic reasons) in the previous sections. Her solution is to move the discourse from "either/or" to "both/and." While Wolff's appreciation of the complexities attendant to these issues broadens our understanding, the reader still must decide if her solution sheds more light or blurs important distinctions.

Collective Behavior and Social Movements Collective-Action, by RUSSELL HARDIN. Bal-

timore: Johns Hopkins University -Press, 1982. 248 pp. $24.00 cloth. $9.00 paper.

PAMELA OLIVER University of Wisconsin-Madison

At least parts of this book by political sci- entist Hardin are. likely to prove useful to any sociologist working in the resource mobiliza- tion perspective. The work pulls together the theoretical literature arising from Mancur Ol- son's formulation of the illogic of collective action -and the extensive gaming literature on the prisoner's dilemma and related problems. It combines the thoughtful analysis that can come only from a deep, immersion in the tech- nical problems of this literature combined with a wide-ranging literacy in general political theory.

It is essential for sociologists to get beyond Olson's incomplete and misleading assertion that collective action is irrational. The first three chapters provide a literature introduc- tion to Olson's problem and the prisoner's di- lemma. The next five chapters offer always thoughtful and frequently original and in- sightful discussions of variations, and com- plexities in collective action problems although the specialist will doubtless disagree with Hardin's conclusions at times, and the nonspecialist who is unfamiliar with the in- tricacies of some of the technical issues may wonder what the point is.

The second half of the book develops the idea of conventions, Hardin's proposed reso- lution -of the collective dilemma, adapted from Lewis's work. The idea is admittedly ill de- fined but is, basically, a norm or agreement that. everyone will act in a cooperative way because everyone will benefit from doing so. The possibilities and limits of conventions as solutions to collective dilemmas are discussed in the remaining chapters.

Hardin is certainly correct- about the im- portance, of conventions and has some valu- able contributions to make to our under- standing; however, his analysis in this part of the book is often constrained by too great a reliance on the metaphor of the prisoner's di- lemma. For example, he blurs, the distinction between contingent defection and external punishments and thus fails to recognize that punishing the lone defector in a large group may not be problematic if an external punish- meht is available. He also fails to consider rewards for cooperation as incentives; the structure of the prisoner's dilemma requires punishments but other dilemmas do not,.

The book includes a great deal of fascinat- ing empirical data from published sources,

Contemporary Sociology, November 1983, Volume, 12, Number 6

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BOOK REVIEWS 671

mostly on the environmental movement and much of it drawn from Robert Cameron Mitchell's research. For example, he cal- culates that each dollar contributed to the en- vironmental movement brought two thousand dollars in pollution abatement (because of the strategy of using- laws to force industries to bear the actual cost of reforms), and that even if these benefits are assumed to be uniformly distributed across the, population, each Sierra Club member personally obtained three dol- lars in benefits for each dollar contributed. The author claims that the women's, move- ment and civil rights movements are also treated, but I noted only passing- references. Hardin's discussion of the 'importance of face-to-face contact - in maintaining con- ventions would tie in with the extensive sociological literature on the importance of social networks in movement mobilization but this is not cited. In general, the sociological literature in social movements is not reviewed.

To summarize, I profited from reading this book and recommend it to others.

Shifting Involvements: Private Interest and Public Action, by ALBERT 0. HIRSCHMAN.

Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982. .138 pp. $14.50 cloth. $5.95 paper.

CECIL E. GREEK

New School for Social Research

Hirschman here presents us with an intrigu- ing theory for interpreting the major trends of the past thirty years. He posits the exis- tence of a repetitive cycle from concern with private gain and consumption to interest in public affairs and political causes, returning to private concerns. Thus-, the materialism of the 1-950s, the student revolt of the 1960s, and the narcissism of the 1970s can be interpreted as the most recent in a long series of shifts from private interest to public action and back that were first set in motion with the emergence of our modern capitalistic consumer society.

Although Hirschman is an economist, one of his stated goals is to improve theory in the field of economics by employing the more "common sense" assumptions of sociology, and psychology. He argues that "as a result of a long process of refinement, economic analysis has moved so far away from common sense that to reestablish contact between eco- nomics and common sense while still using the concepts of economics is sometimes no simple matter" (pp. 80-81). Probably the best exam-

ple of Hirschman's use of sociology is his re- liance on a Durkheimian presupposition about human nature: It is always molded by, the cultural milieu in which human beings are situated.

One of the most pronounced traits of the modem -phase of Western civilization, ac- cording to Durkheim and Hirschman, is in- satiability. It seems that modem human beings appear never to be satisfied. From this prem- ise, Hirschman concludes that the insatiability leads to inevitable society-wide disap- pointments with the private consumption of goods and services. When these disap- pointments become pronounced enough, people switch their goals. In the modern Oc- cident consumer disappointment has been channeled into political activism- Of cQurse, the turmn to public action is not the only possi- ble alternative to material consumption. How- ever, traditional alternatives such as religion, the search for truth, or escape into the aes- thetic sphere do not seem to hold the same mass appeal in the modemr world, making political involvement a more frequently chosen option. But, social activism has its own built-in disappointments (it is extremely time consuming and does not often produce its in- tended results) that gradually return the populace to private concerns.

The major shortcoming of Hirschman' s work is its completely abstract theoretical dis- cussion. The book would be more valuable if its theories had been illustrated with actual historical examples. For instance, the qualita- tive difference between the goods-oriented consumption patterns of the 1950s and the more narcissistic "experience-oriented" con- sumerism of the 1970s could be-pointed out. Case studies of individuals or groups who ac- tually made dramatic shifts from private to public concerns or vice versa also would -have been helpful. For example, Jerry Rubin's various alternations from social activist, to psychological guru, to finance capitalist would have lent more qredence to the author's the- sis. Finally, Hirschman never documents the previous cycles at all. Except for a discussion of the ambivalence about materialism in the writings of Adam Smith and Rousseau, the reader is left to figure out for herself or himself how to categorize the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries in terms of the author's cycles. Such historical data are neces- sary to prove or disprove Hirschman's model of social change. Such a study awaits to be written.

Contemporary Sociology, November 1983, Volume 12, Number 6

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