The purpose of this article is to argue that sociologists, anthropologists, and historians have no need to invoke the, or a, concept of rationality in order either to report or to explain the beliefs of the individuals or groups whom they study. I do not dispute that they may invoke it, or that a range of other purposes can be served thereby. But I do dispute that they must.

« L'Amérique, il est vrai, découverte et conquise, la route par mer frayée aux Indes et aux Moluques sont des prodiges de courage et de succès qui appartiennent sans contestation aux Espagnols et aux Portugais ». L'intrépide Magellan, « rien ne put lui dérober la gloire d'avoir le premier fait le tour du globe. Encouragés par son exemple, les navigateurs anglais et hollandais trouvèrent de nouvelles terres et enrichirent l'Europe en l'éclairant ». C'est ainsi qu'en 1771 Bougainville, qui accomplit un des plus importants voyages scientifiques autour du monde, caractérisait l'œuvre des découvertes des XVe et XVIe siècles, à une époque où, comme l'écrit son compagnon de voyage, le prince de Nassau, « l'esprit des découvertes se ranime en Europe, les différents ouvrages qui se répandent dans le public y rappellent l'attention des particuliers. Ces nouvelles entreprises vont faire une mémorable époque dans le monde et nous parviendrons enfin à l'entière connaissance du globe. Ces nouveaux Colomb et Cortez ont des champs de gloire aussi vastes à parcourir, mais c'est le siècle de l'humanité, et il faut du moins espérer que les Européens ne veulent plus faire connaissance avec leurs frères de l'hémisphère austral que pour leur enseigner la vérité et les rendre heureux par la vertu ».

There is a particularly interesting, important, and, I think, generally unacknowledged cleavage within the study of the Geist, cultural history, Geisteswissenschaften, the human sciences, sociology or whatever term you employ. This deserves our consideraion.

Most expressions and symbols associated with the mafia—indeed, the term mafia itself—are made up of an almost surrealist cocktail of bogus and genuine sources, mythical and prosaic characters, fiction and reality. Already in 1876, Franchetti was puzzling over ‘the tendency to turn a mafioso into a legendary type, a feeling natural enough indeed in a professor of literature, but much harder to explain in wealthy landowners…’ (p. 34).

The question of how social norms and the rational pursuit of interests combine into social action continues to be one of the core puzzles of social theory. The essays by Jon Elster and Ralph Turner and the comments by Margaret Levi and Steven Lukes published in the following pages of the Archives are fine and, we believe, representative contemporary examples of how social scientists try to come to terms with this puzzle.

La catastrophe de Tchernobyl, en avril 1986, a réveillé brutalement dans le monde la terreur du nucléaire, un peu assoupie depuis l'accident de la centrale américaine de Three Mile Island, à Harrisburg, en 1979. Le passage du nuage radioactif au-dessus de plusieurs pays, les erreurs commises dans l'information du public et les mesures contradictoires prises par les gouvernements intéressés ont beaucoup contribué à troubler les esprits. Mais l'aspect le plus préoccupant de l'affaire est sans doute l'impréparation des autorités soviétiques et leurs errements dans l'alerte et dans celui de l'évacuation des populations immédiatement menacées. On ne saura probablement jamais où se situent les véritables responsabilités, mais il est acquis que, pendant plusieurs jours, le sort de dizaines de milliers de personnes s'est joué dans une grande confusion. D'après la presse soviétique elle-même, l'ordre de réunir les moyens d'évacuation aurait été donné dans la soirée du 26 avril, alors que 1'accident s'était produit dans la nuit du 25 au 26. Les premières évacuations eurent lieu dans l'après-midi du 27. Certaines localités proches de la centrale ne furent complètement évacuées que dans les premiers jours du mois de mai.

La pratique sacrificielle s'inscrit au cœur des traditions de toutes les sociétés africaines, dont elle a constitué la pierre d'angle. Rite omniprésent, nœud de visions du monde globales, elle fut associée jusqu'à l'impact colonial à tous les détours de la vie économique, sociale, politique de celles-ci. C'sest en partie pour cette raison que le colonisateur l'a souvent prise pour cible, pour le plus grand bénéfice des « religions du Livre » où sa place, bien que centrale, n'est plus que symbolique. La dissociation du « religieux », de l'économique, du politique, la diffusion de modèles nouveaux de « développement », la réduction des cultes ancestraux en ont réduit la portée en même temps que les normes éthiques « modernes » l'expurgeaient de ses aspects contraires à la sensibilité occidentale.

During the past two decades the use of rational decision models, especially those which assume self-interest motivation, has diffused widely throughout sociology, including the fields of collective behavior and social psychology. This trend is interesting as a datum for study in the sociology of sociology, for what it reveals about changing assumptions concerning the nature and dynamics of social behavior, and as a trend that is sometimes beneficial and sometimes deleterious. My objective is to raise questions based on these three kinds of interest, and to suggest some answers.

The Relationship between the market and the forum, between exchange and persuasion, between the public realm of the citizen and the private realm of the consumer, has been a central preoccupation of social thought since the days of Aristotle. For most of the post-war period, however, and in most western countries, the tensions inherent in that relationship appeared to have been resolved. Then came the ‘stagflation’ of the 1970s, the rise of the New Right, the associated rebirth of economic liberalism and a variety of more or less successful attempts to clip the wings of the post-war welfare state. Classic questions, which the post-war generation imagined it had answered, returned to the agenda—among them the questions of what citizenship means in a market economy, and of how the promise of citizenship is to be realised in complex modern societies. These questions are of significance to all advanced societies, of course; as the most cursory reading of Vaclav Havel's essays shows, they resonate with particular force in eastern Europe. Perhaps because she has been the chief European testing ground for New Right theory, however, they have also begun to resonate with unusual power in Britain; and it is plausible to imagine that the British case may be more relevant to the rest of the western world than are the various East European cases. Hence, this essay. It begins by looking at the British debate and the factors which have given rise to it, and then tries to clarify some of the issues it poses.

One of the most persisting cleavages in the social sciences is the opposition between two lines of thought conveniently associated with Adam Smith and Émile Durkheim, between homo economicus and homo sociologicus. Of these, the former is supposed to be guided by instrumental rationality, while the behavior of the latter is dictated by social norms. The former is ‘pulled’ by the prospect of future rewards, whereas the latter is ‘pushed’ from behind by quasi-inertial forces (Gambetta 1987). The former adapts to changing circumstances, always on the lookout for improvements. The latter is insensitive to circumstances, adhering to the prescribed behavior even if new and apparently better options become available. The former is easily caricatured as a self-contained, asocial atom, and the latter as the mindless plaything of social forces. In this paper I characterize this contrast more fully, and discuss attempts to reduce norm-oriented action to some type of optimizing behavior.

In the search for social cohesion there is a consistent tendency for some sociologists, both classical and contemporary, to become prophets manqués. They regularly affirm that there has been some fall from grace and that the morality of their times is confused and impoverished. The golden age of traditional morality is, typically, not very precisely described and nor, for that matter, are the future consequences for society of its ‘relinquished common morality’ (Wilson 1983: 332) specified very clearly. I do not want to spend much time in documenting this tendency but a few examples may illustrate well enough the position I have in mind.

Sociologists have traditionally tended to overstate the role of norms in explaining human behavior. Economists, on the other hand, have tended to downplay the role of norms. Increasingly, rational choice theorists have begun to explore the interaction between normative and instrumentally rational motivations. There are at least two major points at issue in these discussions. First, how does one conceptualize norms, especially in relation to rational action? Second, how does one go about studying the variation in the reliance on norms? Jon Elster's paper offers a controversial answer to the first question. Ralph Turner's paper offers some guidance for answering the second (1). Building on both Elster and Turner, I shall bring a somewhat different perspective to bear on both these issues.

Reflecting on the notion of responsibility, Václav Havel offers, in one of his Letters to Olga, what he calls a trivial illustration:

at night, I board the rear car of a tram to go one stop. The car is empty, and since the fare is paid by dropping a crown into a box, not even a conductor is present […] So I have the option of throwing the fare into the box or not: if I don't, no-one will see me, or ever find out: no witnesses will ever be able to testify to my misdemeanor. So I'm faced with a great dilemma, regardless of how much money I happen to have with me: to pay or not to pay.