«The Political Economy of Institutions and Decisions series focuses on two central questions: How do institutions evolve in response to individual incentives, strategies, and choices, and how do institutions affect the performance of political and economic systems? The series concentrates on answers to these questions based in methodological individualism. Its scope is comparative and historical rather than international or specifically American. Its focus is positive rather than normative, but many of the studies in the series offer analyses of informal institutional factors, such as social norms and culture, based on a rational-choice approach.»
Some of that seems (possibly) related to phatics. What I'm thinking here relates to the idea of a "gift economy", which exists in both ancient and modern forms: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gift_economy
E.g. here are some quotes from that article:
«Gift exchange thus has a political effect; granting prestige or status to one, and a sense of debt in the other. A political system can be built out of these kinds of status relationships. Sahlins characterizes the difference between status and rank by highlighting that Big man is not a role; it is a status that is shared by many. The Big man is "not a prince OF men," but a "prince among men." The Big man system is based upon the ability to persuade, rather than command.»
«Bowie sees [alms-giving to beggars] as an example of a moral economy ... in which the poor use gossip and reputation as a means of resisting elite exploitation and pressuring them to ease their "this world" suffering.»
«Engineers, scientists and software developers have created open-source software projects such as the Linux kernel and the GNU operating system. They are prototypical examples for the gift economy's prominence in the technology sector and its active role in instating the use of permissive free software and copyleft licenses, which allow free reuse of software and knowledge. Other examples include file-sharing and open access.»
Some questions are: (a) what do these topics have in common, and (b) is that thing-in-common related to phatics?
Not to be overly clever (see my recent post about Stiegler), but I think the thing in common is that there IS a "common thing"! The objects of reciprocal (or as Baudrillard puts it, "symbolic") exchange are effectively held-in-common *as an institution*, even when the individual objects are consumable items, like food.
Do these "common things" have phatic behavior at the core? I think it is likely that they do -- especially insofar as the state of being held-in-common-as-an-institution is a bit like being a "microlanguage" (albeit sometimes a language of physical objects rather than texts).
I'm not sure I can *prove* this point at the moment, but a few of the books from the series mentioned in the subject line here might help develop the case.
An interesting question is when and how the "mutuality" of a language breaks down into the "sidedness" of a market: again, Baudrillard's book "Symbolic Exchange and Death" deals extensively with that case (and further evolution/metastasization of "sidedness" in societies of control).
With this in mind, a few interesting titles from the series:
- The Dilemma of the Commoners: Understanding the Use of Common Pool
Resources in Long-Term Perspective
- Institutions and the Path to the Modern Economy: Lessons from
Medieval Trade
- Beyond the Miracle of the Market: The Political Economy of Agrarian
Development in Kenya
- The Politics of Oligarchy: Institutional Choice in Imperial Japan
- Making a Market: The Institutional Transformation of an African
Society
- Regulations, Institutions, and Commitment: Comparative Studies of
Telecommunications
- Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective
Action (by Nobel Prize winner Elinor Ostrom)
UPDATE
I did some work with Ostrom's formalism; I'm adding my poster summarising what I learned here. A preprint version of the paper is available here. The full-size poster is here (A1 format).
Some of that seems (possibly) related to phatics. What I'm thinking here relates to the idea of a "gift economy", which exists in both ancient and modern forms: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gift_economy
E.g. here are some quotes from that article:
«Gift exchange thus has a political effect; granting prestige or status to one, and a sense of debt in the other. A political system can be built out of these kinds of status relationships. Sahlins characterizes the difference between status and rank by highlighting that Big man is not a role; it is a status that is shared by many. The Big man is "not a prince OF men," but a "prince among men." The Big man system is based upon the ability to persuade, rather than command.»
«Bowie sees [alms-giving to beggars] as an example of a moral economy ... in which the poor use gossip and reputation as a means of resisting elite exploitation and pressuring them to ease their "this world" suffering.»
«Engineers, scientists and software developers have created open-source software projects such as the Linux kernel and the GNU operating system. They are prototypical examples for the gift economy's prominence in the technology sector and its active role in instating the use of permissive free software and copyleft licenses, which allow free reuse of software and knowledge. Other examples include file-sharing and open access.»
Some questions are: (a) what do these topics have in common, and (b) is that thing-in-common related to phatics?
Not to be overly clever (see my recent post about Stiegler), but I think the thing in common is that there IS a "common thing"! The objects of reciprocal (or as Baudrillard puts it, "symbolic") exchange are effectively held-in-common *as an institution*, even when the individual objects are consumable items, like food.
Do these "common things" have phatic behavior at the core? I think it is likely that they do -- especially insofar as the state of being held-in-common-as-an-institution is a bit like being a "microlanguage" (albeit sometimes a language of physical objects rather than texts).
I'm not sure I can *prove* this point at the moment, but a few of the books from the series mentioned in the subject line here might help develop the case.
An interesting question is when and how the "mutuality" of a language breaks down into the "sidedness" of a market: again, Baudrillard's book "Symbolic Exchange and Death" deals extensively with that case (and further evolution/metastasization of "sidedness" in societies of control).
With this in mind, a few interesting titles from the series:
- The Dilemma of the Commoners: Understanding the Use of Common Pool
Resources in Long-Term Perspective
- Institutions and the Path to the Modern Economy: Lessons from
Medieval Trade
- Beyond the Miracle of the Market: The Political Economy of Agrarian
Development in Kenya
- The Politics of Oligarchy: Institutional Choice in Imperial Japan
- Making a Market: The Institutional Transformation of an African
Society
- Regulations, Institutions, and Commitment: Comparative Studies of
Telecommunications
- Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective
Action (by Nobel Prize winner Elinor Ostrom)
UPDATE
I did some work with Ostrom's formalism; I'm adding my poster summarising what I learned here. A preprint version of the paper is available here. The full-size poster is here (A1 format).
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