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Macro-economics and infant behaviour: a sociological treatment of the free-rider problem

Barry Barnes
Abstract
A number of general issues in the social sciences are currently being addressed through consideration of the free-rider problem, also known as the problem of collective action. Many different ways of cotnparing and evaluating cotrtpeting social theories can be co-ordinated as discussions of the problem. In attending to its relatively sitnple structure fundamental issues routinely arise, concerning the basis of social order, the nature of power, and the invariants of human nature itself, if such exist. In this paper I adopt a sociological perspective in defending the plausibility of one kind of solution to the problem, and then explore the general significance of that solution in a frankly speculative way.

Let us begiti with the familiar outlines of the free-rider probletn as it commonly arises, as a difficulty in rational decision theory (Olson, 1965; Hardin, 1982). Rational decision theory assumes, in common with game theory, many economic theories, and some forms of political theory, that people always operate as independent rational agents separately pursuing their own self-interest. If this is so, then there are a number of goods or benefits which, on the face of it, groups of people will fail to provide for themselves. Clean air may be counted a benefit by all the members of a group, and indeed every member may coutit it a benefit well worth the cost of a catalytic converter for his or her car-exhaust. Yet it may be that no member would rationally decide to purchase such a converter. For such a purchase would not in itself provide clean air. Only a number of purchases by nearly all the members of the group would provide that. Every individual converter makes a negligible difference to the air. Hence every individual is bound to reason that clean air is best left for everyone else to provide, that it
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Macro-economics and infant behaviour is best to free-ride on the actions of others, reaping their benefits but making no contribution to their costs. And hence no individual at all will purchase an exhaust converter, and clean air will not be provided.' Qean air is an example of a collective good. The overall cost of its provision may be far less than its overall benefit, once provided. The individual's portion of the overall cost may be far less than the benefit that individual receives. Yet the good will not be provided by rational, self-interested individuals because the incremental benefit from an individual's contribution to its provision cannot be confined to the contributing individual: the benefit is indivisible, and because it is indivisible individual self-interest is not coupled to the task of providing its cost. A collective good like clean air may, overall, be as profitable as investment as an individual good like a bottle of whisky, but rational self-interested agents would only invest in the latter: as to the former, if other group members do not provide it then the individual is helpless to provide it in any case, and if others do provide it then it is best to free-ride on what they are doing and save the cost of contributing to it. We can now specify the free-rider problem as an empirical problem.^ Rational, self-interested agents should not provide collective goods, and it must be emphasised that in very many cases indeed they do not. None the less, on the face of it, there appear to be innumerable cases where in fact they do so: people give blood; they volunteer for war; they go on strike instead of scabbing; they give donations to worthy causes; they may even voluntarily purchase expensive low-emission motor cars in preference to cheaper pollution-generating equivalents."' How is it, then, that these activities exist? Why do people, as it appears, act at times for the collective good instead of free-riding? The nature of the free-rider problem is liable to be perceived differently according to one's theoretical predilections. For the rational decision theorist, apparent failures to free-ride are anotnalies in need of rationalisation. What, on the face of it, is authentic collective action, directed to the collective good and only the collective good, must be made visible as really inspired by the good of the individual after all: the situation must be analysed more profoundly so that the underlying operation of self-interest is uncovered (OlM)n, 1965). Alternatively occasional minor lapses into irrationality or altruism may be acknowledged, sufficient to account for collective action as an occasional occurrence without calling into question rational, self-interested calculation as the

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nonnal and predominant basis of action (Hardin, 1982). For the critics of decision theory, however, and these include many sociologists, the existence of collective action has a more profound significance. It stands as an indication of the fundamental inadequacy of decision theory, a clear sign that its postulates are flawed. Decision theorists tend to be unimpressed by the formal sociological theories of human behaviour which stand in clear opposition to their own. Self-interest is subordinated to altruism in the early Durkheim; rational calculation is overridden by nonrational attachments to norms in Talcott Parsons' theories. But both of these postulates face even greater problems with empirical evidence than those of decision theory itself, or so decision theorists claim, and not without some justification." More promising alternative jjerspectives to that of decision theory may, however, be found implicit in some widely employed informal forms of sociological explanation, although these alternatives are not so eiBy to formulate as explicit postulates. Mutual sanctioning Decision theory uses a rationality postulate and a self-interest postulate. From an informal sociological perspective these postulates may generate unease not so much through what they assert as through what they assert it of: they refer to a problematic entity the independent individual. Informal sociological thought tends to operate at the group or collective level, and to move to the individual, if it moves that way at all, via the group and its interactions. The isolated, independent individual, whether rational or irrational, egoistic or altruistic, does not feature in the pattern of thought at all. The clash with decision theory here is hence not so much one of postulates (although perhaps it might be rationalised as such, ex post facto) as one of concepts: the concepts in terms of which the postulates of decision theory are formulated are concepts which serve to mislead. TTie isolated, atomised, independent individual is an illegitimate abstraction. From an informal sociological perspective individuals, if they are recognised at all, are recognised as interacting individuals. Hence, a natural intuitive response when confronted with the freerider problem is to presume that, in the couree of interaction, people will prevent each other from free-riding: scabs may be abused, or sent to Coventry, pacifists to prison; those who give
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Macro-economics and infant behaviour blood may receive honour; those who give cheques may receive honours. Simply put, members of the collective will sanction the collective good. They will solve the free-rider problem by means of mutual sanctioning. This naive conjecture does at least allow us to account for, or at least rationalise, the selective incidence of free-riding, the partial success of collective action. For rational decision theory there is too little free-riding; for traditional formal sociological theory there is far too much. But if mutual sanctioning is the prophylactic against free-riding then perhaps there is just as much as we should expect. Mutual sanctioning may be potent in some circumstances, less so in others. For mutual sanctioning requires interaction, and interaction may be frequent or infrequent, weak or strong, optional or essential, avoidable or inevitable. Where sanctions are readily applied, we may conjecture, collective goods will be provided; where this is not the case free-riding is correspondingly more likely. Needless to say, a detailed review of empirical materials would be necessary adequately to evaluate this conjecture, but it is, on the face of it, consistent with much that is currently known and to that extent can claim some plausibility. Unfortunately, despite its prima facie plausibility, reference to mutual sanctioning has not been taken seriously as a means of solving the free-rider problem. This is because it faces an apparently decisive formal objection. If sanctioning is to allow us to account for collective action then sanctioning must itself be accounted for. But sanctioning for the collective good is action which generates indivisible benefits, that is, it is itself a form of collective action, which action is precisely what we are trying to understand. On the one hand, if people are self-interested calculators who will always free-ride rather than act for the collective good, then they will free-ride on the sanctioning activity of others and sanctions themselves will be collective goods which people fail to provide. On the other hand, if people are not selfinterested but altruistic, and willing to sanction the collective good, then they will also be willing to provide the good directly and sanctioning becomes of minor significance. Either way, recourse to sanctions appears to contribute nothing to solving the fundamental problems of explanation. Yet it may be that mutual sanctioning is the key to the problem after all. Recent work by Barnes (1988) and Coleman (1988) points to special features of some kinds of mutual sanctioning which justify treating them as exceptional forms of collective
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Barry Barnes action. Coleman's arguments are designed to be compatible with rational decision theory and its individualistic frame of reference. They subject mutual sanctioning to cost-benefit analysis in order to demonstrate that self-interested individuals might rationally engage in it. Mutual sanctioning of a purely symbolic kind* - the example given is 'encouragement' - is remarkable in being extremely cheap for its instigators to produce and yet of such great value to its recipients that it may have far-reaching effects on their behaviour. The gearing involved here may be so great that even his sanctioning the collective good profits the individual: that tiny element of the indivisible benefit of his sanctioning which he himself receives may still be greater than the costs an individual must incur as a sanctioner. Hence sanctions may indeed account for the production of other collective goods: sanctioning may make such production individually rational, and itself be individually rational. In contrast, my own treatment of the problem is not offered as an application of rational decision theory, but as an argument for its modification. Like decision theory 1 assume that individuals adopt a calculative orientation in the course of social life, and I do not deny that self-interest occupies a prominent place in their calculations. Like Coleman, indeed Uke social scientists generally since the empirical evidence is overwhelming and the issue surely uncontroversial, I acknowledge the potent effects of mutual sanctioning, even of a wholly symbolic kind. 1 even develop a costbenefit analysis of mutual symbolic sanctioning very close in form to that of Coleman and substantially similar in its conclusions (Barnes, 1988; 137). But the analysis here m pro forma: it serves as an acknowledgement that symbolic sanctioning can be rationalised in terms of the cost-benefit framework, but also as a preliminary to a rejection of that framework itself. I seek to argue that mutual symbolic sanctioning is a special form of activity, not because of a fjeculiarly high ratio of benefits to costs, but because it cannot be assimilated into a cost-benefit framework in the first place. Suppose we do regard it as legitimate to enquire into the costs of mutual symbolic sanctioning. How in that case should we set about calculating them? With some forms of sanctioning we need expect no serious difficulties: law-enforcement is costly; violence is costly; trade embargoes are costly; all, for the most part, in some clear and straightforward sense. But what of the 'encouragement' considered by Coleman, or approval and disapproval, honour and dishonour, respect and contempt? It is not so much that 276

Macro-economics and infant behaviour production costs here are low as that the very notion of production cost is obscure and problematic. The sanctions here are streams of symbols, verbal and non-verbal. It is wholly unconvincing to hold that their production involves a costly diversion of symbolgenerating competences away from some prior significant task: what is this prior task, and what evidence is there that it comes remotely close to demanding the full output of our symbolgenerating systems? It is just as unconvincing to speak of absolute production costs, as if every output of symbols somehow entails a consumption of scarce resources, a loss to the economy of the human body: this would suggest that the preferred state of the normal rational individual is something close to a coma, which is nonsense. There is no sensible way of costing outputs of symbols. Symbolic manipulation and symbolic communication cannot be treated in this way, as mere instrumentalities. Indeed, any attempt to assimilate them to rational decision theory by treating them in this way immediately encounters not just technical problems but general logical difficulties. The exercise merely reveals the fundamental limitations of decision theory itself. The individuals of rational decision theory are rational calculators with given preferences. If these individuals are to realise their preferences they must calculate appropriate ways and means in the light of what they know. But such calculations are manipulations of symbols. And the knowledge incorporated into such calculations is transmitted and received, exchanged and evaluated, stored and received, through the manipulation of symbols. If symbolic communications are costly then rational calculation is itself costly, and to make such a calculation is to incur a cost before one knows what the cost is - and to modify the cost every time one attempts to identify it and quantify it. If symbolic manipulations have costs then the rational calculator is faced with the impossible task of allowing for the costs of his own calculations, even as he makes them. If it is considered as a fundamental, fully comprehensive theory of human behaviour, rational decision theory immediately selfdestructs. It remains the case that we do generate and exchange sequences of symbols, and that much of the activity thus described is calculative activity. How then should we understand this general empirical fact about ourselves? We have to recognise, first, that our symbolising activity, including our calculative activity, can never be adequately reflexive: it can never satisfactorily be made
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Barry Barnes the independent object of itself as activity. And, second, we have to remember that something can only adequately be treated as instrumentality when it can be made the independent object of cakuiation. Calculation itself, and whatever is involved in calculation and essential to the existence of calculation, cannot be treated as a free variable within calculation itself. To note that we operate as calculative agents is to take calculation, and that which constitutes calculation, as given. If we are calculative agents, then in some sense we just do create and transmit sequences of symbols, evaluate and standardise them, share them and exchange them. And if this is so then mutual symbolic sanctioning must also be something which, in the same yet-to-be-defined sense, we just do. For mutual symbolic sanctioning is just another form of symbolic manipulation and communication. What this means for the free-rider problem is that mutual sanctioning is not simply a cheap resource, as Coleman argues, nor even a free resource. In the last analysis it is not a resource at ail, but something intrinsic to the social situations wherein the problem arises, something which just occurs in such situations. This implies that mutual sanctioning may be yet more potent in the generation of collective goods than Coleman's argument permits,*" although it will remain limited in effectiveness. The mutual sanctioning embodied in symbolic interaction will still have consequences dependent upon the conditions of that interaction: success or failure in the production of collective action will still depend upon circumstances. Moreover, to recognise that mutual sanctioning is ubiquitous is not to assume that any particular collectively beneficial action is going to be sanctioned, or that sanctions will be applied coherently and consistently so that they systematically favour specific projects. Major problems of coordination always have to be overcome in making collective sanctioning productive. The ubiquitous presence of symbolic interaction and mutual sanctioning makes the free-rider problem everywhere soluble, but does not ensure that it is everywhere solved (Barnes, 1988: Ch. 5). The nature of mutual sanctionii^ Let me list what I take to be the key points of the argument so far: 1. The crucial empirical claim is that in all groups and collectivities people enjoy some success in providing collective goods: to some 278

Macro-economics and infant behaviour extent people choose to engage in collective action where they could equally well free-ride. 2. This claim is prima facie inconsistent with the postulates of rational decision theory and hence with the numerous social, political and economic theories which accept those postulates. 3. Recourse to mutual symbolic sanctioning is conjectured to be the means by which in actual practice successful collective action is sustained. 4. Mutual symbolic sanctioning cannot be satisfactorily accounted for as itself the outcome of rational, self-interested calculation. It is an essential, ubiquitous feature of social activity which cannot be satisfactorily analysed as an implication of rational decision theory. Opponents of rational decision theory may perhaps regard all this as a laborious and unnecessary way of exposing the defects of an obviously inadequate position. But there is much to be gained from beginning one's attempts to understand human behaviour with a clear theory, even if it is clearly inadequate. When decision theory is systematically developed and applied it runs into difficulties of a quite specific form, which encourages the search for equally specific solutions. To recognise the irreducible importance of symbolic interaction and mutual sanctioning is one such specific solution. We can imagine calculative human beings - even calculative self-interested human beings - successfully sustaining collective actions, if we assume that they operate against a given backdrop of mutual symbolic sanctioning. Otherwise, such action remains dauntingly problematic. But what precisely is implied by talk of 'a given backdrop'? In what sense is mutual symlwlic sanctioning 'given'? We should take it as given rather as breathing is taken as given. Primarily, we do these things because we are innately disposed to do them. The dangers of making reference to the innate are very well recognised in the social sciences, to the extent that the mere appearance of the word in a text may, for some, serve as grounds for dismissal of its entire contents. To call something innate is often seen as an abdication of the task of studying it, or worse, as an acknowledgement that it is fixed and unchangeable, a standing refutation of the sociological assumption of the plasticity of the human subject. But all theories of human behaviour imply some assumption about inherent human characteristics, even if it is only the assumption of plasticity. Nor, given the current state of the
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Barry Barnes human sciences, should there be any longer a tendency to equate the innate with the immutable, or to regard it as inaccessible to reputable empirical study. References to innate proclivities may be more or less plausible in specific instances but they should no longer evoke anxiety in themselves.^ One advantage of such a reference in the present context is that it permits a link to be made with empirical work in psychology. A vast body of empirical materials is now available as a consequence of psychological studies of cognitive development in very young children. As might be expected, this material is interpreted in a number of different ways. Psychologists are no more successful in the achievement of consensus and uniformity of judgement than are social scientists. Cognitive development is variously attributed to innate propensities, individual-environment interaction, and social interaction. Different traditions of explanation are discemible, in particular those deriving from Piaget, on the one hand, and Vygotsky, on the other. Without denying this manifest diversity, however, it is probably fair to say that the social basis of cognition is currently receiving more and more attention, in a field which previously had been dominated by individualism and nativism. Work in developmental psychology now has a very considerable sociological significance, and some of it is of direct relevance to the argument unfolding here. I shall cite the work of Trevarthen, which is especially favourable to my case. But this is not just to select an author whose thinking matches my theoretical needs. It is to refer to someone who documents extensive observations of young children, accumulated over many years, and to a large extent preserved for further examination by use of the video-recorder.'* And it is to cite papers which not only describe the methods and results of an ongoing empirical research programme but also identify and take account of many related studies in their field. There is no question here of solving sociological problems by use of accepted psychological wisdom, nor, as an outsider, do I presume to identify the 'best' psychological account of cognition. But I do claim to be referring to well-supported psychological work of good standing, the conclusions of which deserve to be given some weight.^ Trevarthen's views are interesting in being very strongly nativist, yet not at all individualistic. He interprets his empirical studies as demonstrating the existence of a complex array of innate proclivities and competences in the child (Trevarthen, 1988;
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Macro-economics and infant behaviour Trevarthen and Logotheti, 1987, 1989). These innate characteristics, however, are the prerequisites not of isolated, autonomous behaviour but of co-operative social interaction. Their existence suggests a conception of man as essentially a social agent, of learning as irredeemably bound up with social interaction, and of knowledge as collective achievement. Indeed, Trevarthen presents his findings in a way which directly supports the sociological solution to the free-rider problem propo^d above, so that the import of what follows might be said to be that observations on infant behaviour illuminate problems in macro-economics. It may be best to begin by stressing the differences of view between Trevarthen and one of the most widely accepted sociological orientations to child learning, the 'social behaviourism' of G.H. Mead (1934). For Mead learning is mainly a matter of 'biological' motions being assumed to be meaningful by parents and teachers, and rewarded until their 'social' significance is grasped by the child and their role in social life mastered. Children become competent members of cultures because they are quick learners, because they are susceptible to reward, and because adults treat them as if they intend meaning with their various motions. For Trevarthen, this involves an unduly simple account of the initial state of the child: it is incompatible with evidence that even prior to any socialisation the child must be taken to be a complexly motivated active agent (Trevarthen, 1988: 80). 'Human beings show preferential responses to persons from before birth' (p. 41). As infants they exhibit 'potent control behaviours . . . that stimulate a particular diet or syllabus of supportive and instructive behaviour from caretakers' (p. 37). This leads Trevarthen to an account of how children acquire competence in the use of symbols and the deployment of knowledge which is replete with nativism yet profoundly sociological. Symbols are not inserted into the child purely by external agency, and their standard meanings impressed and enforced on a chaotic mentality by social control. The child, innately, is a 'meaning' seeker, pre-formed as a potential communicator with an innate self-other scheme available from the start as the basis for communication. The child actively seeks communication and actively co-ordinates his use of symbols with their use by others in the course of communication. Indeed the child has an ^enthusiasm for communicating with symbols' (Trevarthen and Logotheti, 1989: 51, my italics), and for co-operating in practices wherein his use of symbols can be co-operatively developed in conjunction 281

Barry Barnes with that of others and co-ordinated with theirs. It is indeed this activity of co-operation and co-ordination which, considered as a whole, sustains the meaning of symbols as the product of a collective communicative interaction, and hence sustains culture and society as a whole.'" Analogously, knowledge is not a standardised version of the world which a society impresses upon new members. New members have from the start a 'primary motivation to gain an evaluation of experience that has interpersonal and communal validity' (Trevarthen and Logotheti, 1987: 77). They are born with an 'inherent readiness to link their subjective evaluations of experience with those of other persons' (Trevarthen, 1988: 37), and with a 'self-regulating strategy for getting knowledge by negotiation and cooperative action' (p. 39). Thus, the child actively connives in the transmission, evaluation and application of the knowledge teachers make available: he does not merely assimilate. Presumably, it is existing knowledge which the child acquires and perpetuates, not because the child is passive and the teacher active, but because existing knowledge represents the prominent solution to a problem of co-ordination recognised by two active agents. The child is innately predisposed to become a 'competent member'," an agent able to participate in the public realm of communicative interaction. This is a well-exemplified and reasonably precise notion but is not easy to formulate in a utilitarian terminology. It does not mean that the child is altruistically oriented to his culture, or irrationally committed to participation in his culture, since the very notions of altruism and irrationality lack grip in the contexts being considered: paradigm examples of altruistic or irrational activity stand in no obvious analogy to the cases of communicative interaction at issue. Similarly, care is needed when formulating the notion in a sociological framework. An inherent readiness to align cognition and co-ordinate activity is not an inherent inclination to conformity, whether it is conformity to rules, or routines, or to the demands of others. Nor is it a matter of being inclined to agree with others unless the agreement referred to here is the kind of agreement which makes both agreement and disagreement possible, the very general form of agreement in practice which makes it possible to formulate agreement and disagreement of opinion. Even references to innate co-operativeness need careful interpretation. Trevarthen, if I read him aright, is not suggesting that every child is a latent assembly-line worker, inexplicably attracted 282

Macro-economics and infant behaviour toward complex co-ordinated activity. Rather, the child jxissesses competences which permit rapid co-ordination of cognition and co-operative interaction. In practising and perfecting these competences the child is enthusiastically developing powers which lie under his own active control. In putting these powers to use in relations with others the child is not subordinating himself to, but rather constituting, social relationships. Innate propensities are not the constraints which bind the child into a given social order; they are the resources which facilitate his participation in a form of life.'2 Precisely what innate propensities allow the child effectively to engage himself as a participant in a form of life will continue to be the subject of further investigation and analysis.'^ But for the needs of the present paper it suffices to advance just a few modest and highly plausible claims. First, as an inborn communicator the child lives normally and naturally in a medium of symbolic exchange, transmitting and receiving messages, much as he lives in a medium of metabolically crucial gases, inhaling and exhaling. Although any particular output of symbols may have the status of a consciously chosen speech act, it is incorrect to imagine that the economics of choice and preference can be applied to the production of symbols generally. Secondly, both as an inborn communicator and as an agent whose primary motivation is 'to gain an evaluation of experience that has interp>ersonal and communal validity', the child has the capacity and the motivation to align and standardise the use of symbols. Without standardisation there is no shared meaning, no shared knowledge, and no communication. But a motivation to standardise implies a disposition to influence others in symbolic interaction and a susceptibility to the influence of others in such interaction. There can be no symbolic exchanges without mutual regulation of the use of symbols, no communicative interaction without mutual susceptibility between those who interact. Where there is symbolic interaction, there must be mutual sanctioning. Mutual symbolic sanctioning must be a part of what is normal and natural to us if Trevarthen's vision is correct. That which sociology has to take as given to solve the free-rider problem, psychology confirms as being inherently present.

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Barry Barnes Sanctioning the collective good If man is by nature an active communicator, then we are entitled, as it were, to help ourselves to symbolic sanctioning as we attempt to account for the generation of collective goods. The basic fact of the existence of such sanctioning requires no rationalisation in economic-instrumental terms. Indeed, our conception of what is instrumental in a given context could not be sustained in the absence of our natural proclivity for symbolic manipulation and communication. This is why it will not do to admit the role of symbolic sanctioning but to retain an overall economic-instrumental framework. Coleman does this when he identifies mutual symbolic sanctioning as instrumental action with the special feature of having extremely low production costs. The error is a fundamental one. It is a denial of the authenticity of symbolic sanctioning which flies in the face of experience. If activities like 'encouragement', 'approval', 'honouring' and so forth were mere instrumentalities, cheap to produce but worth a great deal to consumers, then a more than adequate supply of them could readily be obtained through exchange. We should all find it easy to exist upon pinnacles of selfesteem, as members of mutual adoration societies, satiated with approval. But we do not. For honour or approval offered out of expediency in this way, merely as the payment for reciprocated honour or approval, are by that very fact drained of value and made worthless: they are no longer honour or approval.''' To understand the incidence and effect of mutual symbolic sanctioning we have, of course, to recognise that it operates in the context of a vast range of instrumental considerations, and that it is conditioned by them.'^ But we have to resist the temptation to subsume the sanctioning itself wholly to the instrumental framework. Acting directly for the collective good may be acting purely as means: acting to sanction the collective good never is. The analogy between the two kinds, of action must be resisted. There is indeed a clear sense in which it is unprofitable, and to that extent irrational, to contribute to the direct provision of a collective good. On the face of it, it seems analogously irrational to sanction the provision of the good, but on further consideration we should reject that analogy in favour of another. We should recognise that sanctioning the collective good is no more irrational than the truly analogous symbolic activities of defining and 284

Macro-economics and infant behaviour categorising the good, of establishing it as a generally recognisable and recognised good in a collective in the first place. Indeed, it will be a rare situation wherein we are able to identify two distinct sets of symbolic activities, one which makes the collective good visible and another which encourages its realisation. That a communication is a sanction does not mean that it must be a sanction and nothing else. Indeed it is probably typical of symbolic sanctions that they are something else at the same time, that without necessarily losing effectiveness or efficiency they may simultaneously be related to a number of ends of which sanctioning is just one."* A mother need not identify a child's action as a good action, go on to point out the good it furthers, and then express approval of the child: a single remark may approve action and performer, and suggest the grounds for such approval. 'That is nice and clean' may at once be a part of the business of teaching what cleanliness is, a part of its identification as a good, and a sign of approval for the child who, deliberately or inadvertently, has just done the 'cleaning'. Similarly, when people consider the merits of striking or returning to work, of voting this way or that or not at ali, of enhsting for war or desisting from enlisting, they are generally at one and the same time identifying, constituting and sanctioning the collective good. The normal natural symbolic activity which establishes the collective good in the collective understanding at the same time sanctions it and encourages its realisation. If there is anything left of the free-rider problem here, is it not a problem of cognition as much as action? Why trouble to think the collective good: why not let others think it on our behalf? It may indeed be that this is a question nol altogether devoid of interest, but nobody to date has proposed a rational decision theory of cognition. Decision theorists are right to question the ability of rational agents, acting independently, to supply collective goods. But they are wrong to imagine that such agents are unable to overcome the problem by interacting together. Mutual sanctioning allows the problem to be solved. And mutual sanctioning is, I believe, what does generally solve the problem, in those cases where it is solved in actual practice. This is to give an immense significance to mutual sanctioning, for the free-rider problem is no marginal difficulty in need of tidying up, but a fundamental issue at the core of social theory. All societies have to produce a range of public goods, including systems of norms and conventions which are public rather than individual goods. The production of many individual 285

Barry Barnes goods is dependent upon the prior production of public goods: in modem societies the voting of representatives is the key example of this relationship. Even the production and reproduction of the collective itself may be collective action, not individually advantageous action: the boundary around the collective has to be maintained by work, and any individual, however much he benefits from the boundary, may be tempted to let others do the work of boundary maintenance. Individualistic styles of thought, of which decision theory is a paradigm example, tend to obscure the truly profound significance of collective action and interaction. Implications for decision theory Tliis paper has argued that a well-recognised empirical anomaly for rational decision theory is indeed indicative of a genuine insufficiency in the theory. The anomaly is an excess of collective action; the cause is a form of symbolic activity which cannot be subsumed into the existing structure of the theory. The effect of the argument is to show that decision theory cannot stand as a general and comprehensive theory of human behaviour. The theory is insufficient as an account of symbolic interaction and the mutual sanctioning which is part and parcel of symbolic interaction. Should we then treat economics, game theory and other theories which rely upwn the individualistic assumptions of decision theory as theories of limited scope, valid in their appropriate domain, but properly applicable only to certain kinds of action? Should we restrict them to the realm of profane, instrumental actions and allow that sociology and other holistic social sciences should be used to account for communicative interaction, discourse and conversation, the generation of images, ideas and cultural artefacts, the performance of rites and ceremonies? Certainly, this would nicely sustain the modus vivendi between the two different kinds of social sciences, and ensure that in explaining the operation of any given society both kinds would gain, as it were, a piece of the action. Such an approach is wholly misconceived, notwithstanding. The provision of collective goods is, after all, a part of what is generally taken to be the instrumental activity of any society: if a theory fails here, it fails as economics. Indeed part of the importance of the foregoing discussion is that it challenges the widespread presumption that a clear empirical distinction can 286

Macro-economics and infant behaviour be made between systems of instrumental action and symbolic interaction. Decision theory is constructed in a way which makes the independent, isolated human being paradigmatic. This renders it inadequate as a sociological theory and ipso facto as an economic theory. There is nothing to be said against a sociological theory making reference to individual human beings, but such beings are, paradigmatically, intensely susceptible to those other human beings with whom they are invariably engaged in symbolic interaction. Individual agents must be perceived, not as islands, but as points in a field of influences and pressures constituted by other agents. Decision theorists claim that their theory as it stands is successful in accounting for an impressive amount of data, but success of this kind does not justify retention of the theory. There will always be particular cases where interpersonal pressures are low, or where they reinforce self-interest, and hence there will always be cases where an incorrect general assumption of the nonexistence of interptersonal pressures will yield the 'right' answer. There is nothing strange in 'wrong' theories sometimes, or even mostly, yielding 'right' answers in this kind of way, and no case for retaining such theories unchanged on these grounds.'^ None the less, it would be wrong simply to abandon the entire approach represented by decision theory. Note that the specific criticism directed against it, although a fundamental one, does not directly challenge either of the two explicit postulates initially presented as characteristic of the theory. Indeed I am not at all sure that the postulates of rationality and self-interest should be directly challenged. Perhaps some version of them should actually be retained even after the move from an individualist to an interactionist frame of thought, although quite how the postulates might best be reformulated to sit consistently in the new framework I am not sure. Nothing asserted here straightforwardly contradicts a postulate of rationality. Symbolic interaction cannot be entirely the consequence of rational calculation, but the existence of symbolic interaction, sui generis as it were, does not imply any lapse from rationality or willingness to act against the indications of rational calculation. The analogy has been made between symbolic communication and breathing: breathing is not irrational, nor, given its beneficial consequences, is it in any clear sense nonrational. It could be argued that breathing is involuntary and hence necessarily non-rational, but the response would be that 287

Barry Barnes breathing is susceptible of voluntary, conscious control: every breath we take is a matter of choice if we wish to make it so, just as is the case with every communication we make, every sequence of symbols we put forth. We may consistently continue to think of individuals as rational agents, and there are strong grounds for doing so. In all the social sciences at the present time, from psychology, through sociology and ethnomethodology, to economics, empirical evidence is becoming increasingly difficult to reconcile with a view of human actions as passive, unmediated responses to 'external' promptings, whether these promptings are located in the general physical environment or in the immediate environment of the body itself. Individuals initiate actions. And where their actions are responsive, the responses are the outcome of complex processes involving manifestly planful, future-oriented, richly-informed cognition. This is often expressed in the assertion that individuals are active agents. And there is an intimate connection between the notion of an active agent and the postulate of rationality. Deny the role of rational calculation in the planning and appraisal of action and one denies the possibility of activity itself, in the full sense of the term. Thus, we should probably retain the postulate that individual actions are in some sense rationally calculated, as a part of the attempt to understand interacting individuals as active agents, although it must be acknowledged that many difficulties surround the question of what precisely might be meant by 'rational calculation' here. As with the rationality postulate so with that of self-interest: nothing asserted here straightforwardly contradicts it. And again there are empirical grounds for retaining the postulate, or rather some modified version of it. First of all, it is worth pointing to the almost complete absence, as empirical phenomena, of the most unproblematic forms of altruistic behaviour. It is difficult to identify even prima facie cases of behaviour patterns wherein individual members act to the systematic benefit of non-members, to the detriment of themselves and other members. There is no significant empirical problem of altruistic action in this sense. This suggests that the very real empirical problem of collective action is distinct from the wider problem of altruism, and should be solved without any essential dependence on altruistic dispositions or proclivities. And indeed precisely this is a feature of the solution proposed here: it holds that mutual sanctioning may induce individuals to contribute to the indivisible a)l!ective good without 288

Macro-economics and infant behaviour any necessary conflict with self-interest, and hence without need for altruism; and conversely it accepts that mutual sanctioning may fail if it is insufficient to effect the required transformation of selfinterest. The crucial grounds for the citation of mutual sanctioning are first that it is plausible empirically, but second that it spares us the need to explain why individuals should coherently and systematically act in opposition to their own self-interest. In other words, the very plausibility of mutual sanctioning as an explanation of collective action derives in part from a recognition of the importance of self-interest. Once more, however, it is necessary to add a proviso, and to emphasise the many difficulties involved in specifying what might be meant by 'self-interest' here, in conditions where people are indissolubly bound together, in thought, feeling and future, by symbolic interaction. Human beings everywhere operate in ways which manifest caiculative skills and strong concern with self: possibly it is legitimate to characterise them as self-interested, rational calculators. But, equally, human beings everywhere are interacting human beings, constitutively communicative human beings intensely susceptible to each other through communication: for them to be characterised as rational and self-interested the meanings of these terms must be developed and modified until they are compatible with the inalienably social nature of the individual, his existence as a participant in a form of life. If such an enriched conception of the individual were to be satisfactorily articulated and disseminated, the conflict between individualistic and holistic traditions in the social sciences might be much alleviated. Further consideration of collective action and the free-rider problem could well have an important part to play in developments of this kind. Science Studies Unit University of Edinburgh 34 Buccleuch Place Edinburgh EH8 9JT Received 18 April 1989 Finally accepted 17 July 1989

Acknowledgments In 1987 I attended a conference on Cognition and Social Worlds at the University of Keele which proved an invaluable preliminary to the writing of this paper. I want to express my appreciation to Angus Gellatly, Don Rogers and John Sloboda for their efforts to 289

Barry Barnes bring together psychologists and sociologists in the context of that event. The original text has been improved in response to specific suggestions from David Bloor, Gianfranco Poggi, and a referee of Sociological Review. 1 aiso wish to thank Colwyn Trevarthen for an extremely useful discussion of his ideas, but at the same time it is important to emphasise that he bears no responsibility for the way in which his work is used, or misused in the above. Notes
1 Hardin (19S2) analyses at length the precise circumstances in which the postulates of rational decision theory imply tree-riding. 2 [ speak of the empirical problem in contrast to what is sometimes regarded as the logical problem raised by free-riding: how is it that self-interested rational behaviour by the individuals in a group is not the optimal behaviour for furthering the self-interest of those individuals? 3 Although Hardin (1982) is inclined to minimize the significatsce of cases wherein free-riding is overcome, his careful survey of what is known empirically provides many examples of successfui collective action and leaves no room for doubt that it is of profound importance. One particulariy interesting pr/ma/ade case of collective action is, of course, voting. 4 E)ster (1984, IIJ) cites strong empirical evidence relevant to his preference for decision theory as opposed to some 'sociological' alternatives. Note also that those sociological theories which stress either altruism or a non-rational commitment to social norms face a kind of inverse free-rider problem even more serious than the original: they must explain why there is so much freeriding, and why successfui collective action is often extremely difficult to achieve. 5 By 'purely symbolic" sanctioning 1 mean sanctioning which involves no change in the physical condition of the sanctioned agent, and no gain or loss of his recognised rights, obligations or powers, either as manifest action or as genuine threat, Physical coercion and economic inducement are thereby excluded. What remain, in effect, are communication sequences, elements of which signify or 'symbolically represent' the regard or lack of regard of others. The overall argument of this paper actually requires agents to possess some basic, inherent competence in the perception of sign/signified relationships and in the direct apprehension of the regard or Sack of regard of others. But it is difficult to see how any account of socialisation might avoid making analogous requirements. 6 It should be possible to identify and check specific differences in the empirical expectations generated by Coleman's approach and my own. One such difference may be that, whereas on my approach mutual sanctioning may sustain the production of collective goods for groups of unlimited size, with Coleman this apparently is not so. 7 References to innate propensities are still often closely coupled with biological evolutionary perspectives, and these in tum are still sometimes developed in close association with political polemics, so that they operate as ideologies legitimating policies and doctrines. But both these connections are eontingent

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and should not be allowed to engender a generalised hostility to any reference to the innate. 8 Trevarthen's papers give great emphasis to the presentation of empirical materials, something obscured by mji use of selected quotations and concentration upon general conclusions. I make no attempt to provide a detailed evaluation of these empirical materials here, or to assess their relevance to the conclusions they are used to justify. Not only do I lack space for the task and the competence to perform it, there is the further difficulty that much of the evidence must be looked at, not read about. I must emphasize also that Trevarthen uses his findings to support a great number of conjectures, only a few of which are of central relevance here. 1 have been highly selective in the use of his material, ordering and interpreting it to maximize its relevance to matters at hand, probably at the cost of obscuring some of its author's original priorities, possibly at the cost of weakening or distorting some of his arguments. 9 My citation of material which I am not fully competent to evaluate is, I hope, justified by the inter-disciplinary context and the difficuity of operating in such a context in any other way. There istoolittle transfer of findings and theories between disciplines: it needs to be encouraged. 10 It would probably be worthwhile to attempt some improvement of vocabulary here. The terms 'meaning* and 'symbol', used in references to children who have not yet acquired symbols or understood meanings, could in some circumstances lead to difficulty. The notion of the child as a 'meaning seeker' could be misunderstood in a teleological sense. The notion that one individual's use of symbols may be co-ordinated with Ihat of another individual coutd be taken to imply that symbols are individual and not collective possessions. Perhaps it would be better to speak of the child's inherent enthusiasm for "constituting symbols' and 'generating meanings' in conjunction with others, and then to offer some behavioural account of such activities. However, for the limited purposes of the present discussion I hope the present text will serve. 11 The ethnomethodologieal notion of 'competent member' comes as close as anything in the social sciences to what is needed here. See Garfinkel (1967). 12 Wittgenstein's (1968) notion of'participation in a form of life" is as close as anything in philosophy to what is required, and is very close to the notion of competent membership. The work of Alfred Sehutz (1964) is also seminal to any attempt to develop such notions. Continental philosophy and social theory, of which Arendt and Habermas are the most obvious examples, offer an extended literature abounding in closely related ideas. 13 The formation of groups, with associated member/stranger or insider/outsider distinctions; the formation of hierarchies, with associated superior/subordinate distinctions; and the formation of exchange relationships, with generalised reciprocity and co-operation, are other topics of importance in macro-social theory where the identification of innate proclivities by developmental psychologists could be of profound importance. 14 This is not to claim that the professional flatterer and toady cannot hope for success, but only that he will not obtain it if he explicitly acknowledges himself as such. Sycophancy is, of course, an extremely important form of activity which precisely stands as testimony to the potency of symbolic sanctioning. 15 Although the point has been made more than once already, it cannot be emphasised too often that symbolic sanctioning offers only the potential for a solution to the free-rider problem, not an actual solution in every given case.

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Symbolic sanctioning may always be possible or even actual, but it must also be coherent, and inescapable, and strong enough to incite the action at issue. Often it will not be enough, which from a theoretical point of view is as it should be, since collective action so often fails (Barnes, 1988: Ch. 5). 16 A very important kind of communication,whichldo not consider here, operates at the level of explicit meaning to transmit empirical infonnation, whilst simultaneously operating implicitly to communicate approval, respect, regard, or their ofqxKites. In some contexts sanctioning may be almost entirely implicit, carried free of charge by the spare capacity of the main information transmission system. 17 There is no hard and fast distinction to be made between the replacement of a theory and its development and adaptation. See Barnes (1982), where the case is made in relation to natural scientific theories. In the present context this allows a choice. My argument may be taken, according to taste, as an attempt to improve decision theory, or as an attempt to overthrow it.

Bibliography
Barnes. B., (1982). T.S. Kuhn and Social Science, London. Macmillan. Barnes, B., (1988), The Nature of Power, Cambridge, Polity Press. Coleman, J.S., (1988), "Free riders and zealots'. Sociological Theory, vol. 6, pp. 52-7. Elster, J., (1984), Ulysses and Ike Sirens, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Garfinkel, H., (1967), Studies in Elhnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, Prentice Hail. Hardin, R., (1982). Collective Action. Baltimore. Johns Hopkins University Press. Mead, G.H., (1934), Mind, Self and Society, Chicago, Chicago University Press. Olson, M., (1%5), The Logic of Collective Action. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press. Schelling, T.C., (1960), The Strategy of Confiict, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press. Sehutz, A., (1964), Stttdies in Social Theory. Collected Papers. The Hague, Nijhoff. vol. 2. Trevarthen, C , (1988), 'Universal cooperative motives: How infants begin to know language and skills of culture', in Ethnographic Perspectives on Cognitive Development. (edsG. Jahoda and 1. Lewis) Beckenham, Kent, Croom Helm. Trevarthen, C. and Logotheti, K., (1987), "First symbols and the nature of human knowledge', in Symbolism and Knowledge. Cahiers de la Foundation Jean Piaget, No. 8 (ed. J. Montangero), Geneva, Archives Piaget. Trevarthen, C. and Logotheti, K., (1989), 'Chiid and culture: genesis of cooperative knowing', in Cognition and Social Worlds, (eds A. Gellatly, D. Rogers and J. Sloboda), Oxford, Oxford University Press. Wittgenstein, L., (1968), Philosophical Investigations, Oxford, Basil Blackwell.

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