Book Reviews

Giddens, A. 1990. The Consequences of Modernity. cial) preferences. By means of a complex Cambridge: Polity Press. laboratory enterprise that included obser- Giddens, A. 1999. ‘Risk and Responsibility.’ Mod- vation of behaviour in both experimental ern Law Review 62 (1): 1–10. and everyday life conditions, the contrib- Pesendorfer, W. 2006. ‘Behavioral Economics utors specifi ed two main goals for exami- Comes of Age: A Review Essay on Advances in Behavioral Economics.’ Journal of Economic nation. First, they aim to refute the homo Literature 44 (3): 712–721. economicus notion by showing that, when Rieskamp, J., J. Busemeyer and B. Mellers. 2006. considering collaboration with others, indi- ‘Extending the Bounds of Rationality: Evi- viduals across different societies are de fac- dence and Theories of Preferential Choice.’ to also guided by social preferences, includ- Journal of Economic Literature 44 (3): 631–661. ing strong reciprocity and fairness. Second, Stebbins, R. 1992. ‘Costs and Rewards in Barber- they aim to identify socio-cultural and eco- shop Singing.’ Leisure Studies 11 (2): 123–133. nomic conditions that shape self-interest and other kinds of social preferences. The homo economicus notion is em- Joseph Henrich – Robert Boyd – Samuel pirically refuted through an ambitious re- Bowles – Colin Camerer – Ernst Fehr search programme conducted by a group – Herbert Gintis (eds.): Foundations of of scholars from different social science Human Sociality: Economic Experiments disciplines, including economics, anthro- and Ethnographic Evidence from Fifteen pology, psychology, and evolutionary bi- Small-Scale Societies ology. This research programme mainly New York 2004: Oxford University Press, leans on game theory, including variations 472 pp. of the Ultimatum Game, Public Goods Game and Dictator Game. As reviewed in Like the other volumes reviewed in this Chapter 3 by Colin Camerer and Ernst section, this book addresses one of the ba- Fehr, these games generally assume that, sic social science questions: What kind(s) when trying to meet their goals and de- of human motivation underlie social col- sires, individuals weigh different alterna- laboration? Foundations of Human Social- tives (options) and their consequences and ity represents a far-reaching endeavour to maximise a preference function. However, challenge the notion of homo economicus, the book’s research makes a meaningful which has been the cement of many infl u- contribution by elaborating the following: ential social, economic, and political theo- First, it attempts to shed light on the issue ries, as well as game theory, rational choice of human motivation and social collabora- theory, and social exchange theory. This no- tion from an interdisciplinary perspective. tion entails a conception of human motiva- By crossing age-old disciplinary divides, tion whereby individuals are self-interest- the authors attempt to reach a more com- ed agents who strive to maximise their own prehensive understanding of the dynam- utility from a given interaction, expecting ics of relations between the individual and others to do the same. In other words, they society. This understanding is achieved not reveal a ‘self-regarding’ preference, or de- only by integrating different disciplinary sire, to collaborate with others only if the views but also by using different method- collaboration maximises their own utility ologies. Specifi cally, the chapters rely both gains. Against this understanding, Founda- on economic experiments and on ethnogra- tions of Human Sociality suggests that self- phy. This last method, which views culture regarding preferences cannot satisfactorily in a more holistic form, unveils socio-eco- account for frequent instances of pro-social nomic patterns of interaction in everyday behaviour, guided by ‘other regarding’ (so- life and was meant to ascertain to what ex-

1205 Sociologický časopis/Czech Sociological Review, 2008, Vol. 44, No. 6 tent they fi t behavioural fi ndings obtained body of literature has been limited to dif- by the ‘artifi cial’ laboratory conditions of ferent types of industrial societies. In con- experimental games. trast, the unique contribution of the cur- Second, existent experimental games rent study lies in its attempt to move the have mainly been conducted among ho- focus of research related to motivation and mogenous populations of university stu- social collaboration from industrial socie- dents across industrial societies (see the ties to ‘truly’ non-Western small-scale so- review by Camerer [2003]). These stud- cieties. ies, which have unveiled relatively similar The book systematically shows viola- fi ndings broadly supportive of the self-in- tions of the self-regarding preference as- terest axiom, are likely to be biased because sumption, indicating that respondents in they characterise the ‘particular’ behaviour small-scale societies also care about fair- of relatively high-status young popula- ness and reciprocity in ways that devi- tions in industrial societies. To overcome ate from university student populations this limitation and ascertain the extent to [Camerer 2003]. For instance, when exam- which these fi ndings can be generalised to ining the dynamics of the Ultimatum Game other type of societies, Foundations of Hu- among responders in a rural foraging/hor- man Sociality adopted a far reaching cross- ticulturalist villages in Papua New Guinea cultural approach that included respond- (Indonesia), David Tracer (Chapter 8) fi nds ents across 15 non-Western and small-scale violations of the self-regarding preference societies which varied along a wide range that seem to correspond to daily life inter- of economic and social conditions. For in- actions in that region. In the Ultimatum stance, foragers go on multi-week forag- Game, the ‘proposer’ (fi rst player) is grant- ing (hunting) treks; horticulturalists rely ed a sum of money and s/he can offer any on agriculture, cultivating small gardens portion it to a ‘responder’ (second per- in combination with fi shing and gather- son). The responder then has the opportu- ing; and (agro)pastoralists rely on small- nity to accept the offer (s/he then receives scale sedentary agriculture and herding. the amount offered and the proposer re- Some of these societies are now seden- ceives the remainder) or to reject it (neither tary, while others are (semi)nomadic, mov- player then receives anything). Respond- ing frequently, staying a few days to a few ers in the Anguganak and Bogasip villag- months in a single location. es were willing to sacrifi ce their own gains The book broadens our understanding by showing high rejection rates (33%) even of pro-sociality by proving that the domi- to generous offers by the proposers (the nant self-interest axiom does not describe mean offer was almost 41%). This fi nding a part of human nature that is determined was interpreted as an outcome of the val- by ‘universal’ psychological and genetic or ues of generosity that players brought to evolutionary mechanisms. Rather, it is a the game from their daily life interactions. socially learned trait determined by ‘par- In these villages, a display of generosity ticular’ economic and socio-cultural condi- by giving out unsolicited gifts (in the form tions. A similar claim was suggested earlier of food, clothing, household goods, string by Morton Deutsch [1985] in related stud- bags, tools or money) is a valued form of ies of the justice motive and distribution interaction. Acceptance of a gift, however, preferences, which have been extensively binds the gift-giver and gift-acceptor in a examined from a cross-cultural social-psy- reciprocal relation, whereby the acceptor chological and sociological perspective (for is expected to repay the debt. In this un- a recent review see Sabbagh and Golden derstanding, unpaid debts or non-recip- [2007]). Yet the cross-cultural scope of this rocated gifts place acceptors in a subordi-

1206 Book Reviews nate status. Hence, even large gifts are fre- to enter cooperative exchanges in the form quently refused if the receiver is not sure of fairness and reciprocity. Thus, this type s/he will be able to reciprocate (see also of social preferences is likely to assist mar- Gintis et al.’s Moral Sentiments and Materi- ket exchange by ensuring proper behav- al Interests, reviewed in this section). This iour by participants, as also suggested by type of multidisciplinary approach enables Gintis et al.’s Moral Sentiments and Materi- the book not only to validate behavioural al Interests. This fi nding is applicable only fi ndings collected by different methods, when considering market exposure on the but also to provide plausible sociological group level. But it is worth noting that sev- or anthropological interpretations for often eral surveys have ascertained that indi- seemingly unintelligible behaviour. vidual-level variables do matter in this re- Moreover, fi ndings revealed a large spect [e.g. Wegener and Liebig 1995]. Even amount of cross-cultural group variation though the book does not elaborate this is- in distributional preferences, indicating sue further, it is important to provide a sat- that culture does seem to matter in shap- isfactory interpretation given the infl uence ing these preferences. This between-group of social structure on individual-level at- variation in experimental play is not ex- tributes (like being a woman or wealthy plained by means of individual-level at- person). Future research should determine tributes such as gender, age, education, whether these fi ndings are a result, for in- and relative wealth, all of which were stance, of method artefact (use of experi- found to have no effect on either propos- ments vs. survey) or the extent of variance er offers or the responders‘ likelihood of on individual-level attributes across differ- rejecting an offer. Rather, group member- ent types of societies (industrial vs. small- ship and key group-level attributes tied to scale) (e.g. individual-level attributes in in- the socio-economic structure of daily in- dustrial societies are likely to be more het- teraction, such as the pursuit of a liveli- erogeneous than in small-scale societies). hood and common governance, are found To conclude, Foundations of Human So- to play a more crucial role in determining ciality implies a contextualised conception these preferences. Two group-level dimen- of human motivation, whereby individu- sions of social and economic everyday in- als, when considering social collaboration, teraction are found to structure pro-social are not guided by generalised self-regard- behaviour. First, ‘pay-offs to cooperation’ ing or other-regarding (non-rational) pref- refer to economic life that transcends im- erences, but rather by preferences that are mediate kin and is refl ected in the presence context-specifi c – structured by particu- and importance assigned to the collabora- lar socio-cultural and economic conditions tion with extra-familial institutions. The that vary both within and between socie- second group-level dimension, ‘aggregated ties. In doing so, this book moves beyond market integration’, is composed of three a relatively narrow and micro-level view of different and interrelated aspects of daily rational economic man emphasising uni- socio-economic interactions: frequent en- versal human traits to a theory of institu- gagement in market exchange, socio-polit- tion-building that identifi es social struc- ical complexity or centralised extra-famil- ture conditions that may foster human mo- ial decision making, and settlement size. tivation and behaviour aimed at achieving Higher levels of payoffs to cooperation and collective objectives or common (public) aggregated market integration in a given goods on the basis of rules of fairness and society are found to increase pro-social be- reciprocity. This approach, in particular the haviour in experimental games, that is, the Payoff of Contribution dimension, is re- willingness to act beyond self-interest and markably consistent with Putnam’s [1993]

1207 Sociologický časopis/Czech Sociological Review, 2008, Vol. 44, No. 6 social capital theory, which shows that so- the face of the evolutionary logic in which cial collaboration is built on social networks material advantages can be achieved by that underlie norms of reciprocity and trust- adopting self-interested preferences? worthiness. The development of these pro- social dispositions is in turn enabled in so- Clara Sabbagh cieties that further extra-familial ties and University of Haifa disregard or transcend purely ‘amoral fa- [email protected] milist’ interactions [Banfi eld 1958]. This research project nevertheless References leaves several unresolved problems. First, Banfi eld, Edward C. 1958. The Moral Basis of a Backward Society. Glencoe, IL: Free Press. there is the problem of causality, which de- Camerer, Colin F. 2003. Behavioral Game Theory. rives from a major theoretical dilemma in New York: Russell Sage. the social sciences. To what extent are pro- Deutsch, Morton. 1985. Distributive Justice. New social dispositions the result of structur- Haven: Yale University Press. al constraints, such as market integration, Giddens, Anthony. 1997. Sociology. Cambridge, or rather an active element in structuring UK: Polity Press. these constraints [Giddens 1997]? Joseph Putnam, Robert D. 1993. Making Democracy Work. Henrich (Chapter 2) discusses this prob- Civic Traditions in Modern Italy. Princeton, NJ: lem on a theoretical level by explaining the Princeton University Press. different mechanisms through which the Sabbagh, Clara and Deborah Golden. 2007. ‘Jux- structure of interaction affects preferences. taposing Etic and Emic Perspectives: A Refl ec- tion on Three Studies on Distributive Justice.’ Yet only future longitudinal research will Social Justice Research 20: 372–387. be able to empirically ascertain to what Wegener, Bernd and Stefan Liebig. 1995. ‘Domi- extent, and under which conditions, so- nant Ideologies and the Variation of Distribu- cial structure shapes human motivation/ tive Justice Norms: A Comparison of East preferences. Second, the book relies on the and West Germany and the United States.’ questionable idea that the any given indi- Pp. 239–259 in Social Justice and Political Change: vidual is guided by a consistent and uni- Public Opinion in Capitalist and Post-Communist valent body of motives. This entirely dis- States, edited by J. R. Kluegel, D. S. Mason, and B. Wegener. New York: Aldine de Gruyter. regards the possibility that people weigh several (not necessarily consistent) motives at the same time and combine them in var- ious ways in order to arrive at trade-offs in Herbert Gintis – Samuel Bowles – their distribution preferences, and that they Robert Boyd – Ernst Fehr (eds.): Moral do so differently in different situations. Fu- Sentiments and Material Interests. ture research should allow for the possibil- The Foundations of Cooperation ity of ambivalent motives and identify the in Economic Life conditions that give salience to different Cambridge, Massachusetts 2005: types of motives and trade-offs. The inno- MIT Press, xii + 404 pp. vative use of the ethnographic (qualitative) methods in this book, which may unveil Imagine a situation in which you are a different sorts of motives that remain un- member of a group of four. Each member detected by quantitative methods, should has a monetary endowment of €10. Your therefore be deepened in future studies. Fi- task is to decide how much of the money nally, as suggested by Henrich, the book’s to contribute to a common group project, fi ndings stimulate an evolutionary puz- while you keep for yourself what you do zle to be more fully addressed in future not contribute. After everyone has made work: Why do unselfi sh motives evolve in his decision, all contributions to the project

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