Identity, Interest and Action
Identity, Interest and Action
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This book offers an original combination of cultural and narratological analysis with an empirical study of identity and political action. A powerful critique of rational choice theory, it also provides a solution to the historiographical puzzle of why Sweden intervened in The Thirty Years' War. Arguing that people act for reasons of identity, more fundamental than reasons of interest, Erik Ringmar shows the Swedish intervention to have been an attempt on behalf of Swedish leaders to gain recognition for themselves and their country.
- Radically new theory of action, combining cultural and political approaches in the spirit of Alessandro Pizzorno
- Controversial critique of rational choice theory
- Offers a solution to the classic puzzle of why Sweden intervened in the Thirty Years War
Reviews & endorsements
"Erik Ringmar has done a neat job of comparing rational-choice models of decision making with cultural ones in Identity, Interest and Action....this is a powerful little study, smoothly written and tightly argued that sheds light on many different areas of sociology." James M. Jasper, Contemporary Sociology
Product details
March 2011Adobe eBook Reader
9780511835643
0 pages
0kg
2 maps
This ISBN is for an eBook version which is distributed on our behalf by a third party.
Table of Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: the beginning of the story
- Part I. A Narrative Theory of Action:
- 1. Historical and scientific explanations
- 2. The modern orthodoxy
- 3. A narrative theory of action
- Part II. Why Did Sweden Go to War in 1630?:
- 4. Historical and cultural preliminaries
- 5. Fighting for a national interest
- 6. Fighting for a national identity
- Conclusion: the end of the story?
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index.
