[lit-ideas] Re: Today is May 19th
- From: Scribe1865@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 19 May 2004 09:20:31 EDT
In a message dated 5/19/2004 3:15:38 AM Eastern Daylight Time, writeforu2@ver
izon.net writes:
I can do this .......... can you???????
______
Can we? That would seem to depend, according to Michael Suk-Young Chwe, on
the notion of "common knowledge."
Eric
Wittgensteinian non-car (bicycle) owner
http://pup.princeton.edu/titles/7098.html
Rational Ritual:
Culture, Coordination, and Common Knowledge
*Michael Suk-Young Chwe*
How do individuals coordinate their actions? Here we consider
"coordination problems," in which each person wants to participate in a
group action but only if others also participate. For example, each
person might want to take part in an antigovernment protest but only if
there are enough total protesters to make arrests and police repression
unlikely. People most often "solve" coordination problems by
communicating with each other. Simply receiving a message, however, is
not enough to make an individual participate. Because each individual
wants to participate only if others do, each person must also know that
others received a message. For that matter, because each person knows
that other people need to be confident that others will participate,
each person must know that other people know that other people have
received a message, and so forth. In other words, knowledge of the
message is not enough; what is also required is knowledge of others'
knowledge, knowledge of others' knowledge of others' knowledge, and so
on--that is, "common knowledge." To understand how people solve
coordination problems, we should thus look at social processes that
generate common knowledge. The best examples turn out to be "public
rituals," such as public ceremonies, rallies, and media events.
Public rituals can thus be understood as social practices that generate
common knowledge. For example, public ceremonies help maintain social
integration and existing systems of authority; public rallies and
demonstrations are also crucial in political and social change. Social
integration and political change can both be understood as coordination
problems; I am more likely to support an authority or social system,
either existing or insurgent, the more others support it. Public
rituals, rallies, and ceremonies generate the necessary common
knowledge. A public ritual is not just about the transmission of meaning
from a central source to each member of an audience; it is also about
letting audience members know what other audience members know.
That is also required is knowledge of others'
knowledge, knowledge of others' knowledge of others' knowledge, and so
on--that is, "common knowledge." To understand how people solve
coordination problems, we should thus look at social processes that
generate common knowledge. The best examples turn out to be "public
rituals," such as public ceremonies, rallies, and media events.
Public rituals can thus be understood as social practices that generate
common knowledge. For example, public ceremonies help maintain social
integration and existing systems of authority; public rallies and
demonstrations are also crucial in political and social change. Social
integration and political change can both be understood as coordination
problems; I am more likely to support an authority or social system,
either existing or insurgent, the more others support it. Public
rituals, rallies, and ceremonies generate the necessary common
knowledge. A public ritual is not just about the transmission of meaning
from a central source to each member of an audience; it is also about
letting audience members know what other audience members know.
This argument allows specific insights in a wide variety of social
phenomena, drawing connections among contexts and scholarly traditions
often thought disparate. One explanation of how public ceremonies help
sustain a ruler's authority is through their "content," for example, by
creating meaningful associations with the sacred. By also considering
the "publicity" of public ceremonies--in other words, how they form
common knowledge--we gain a new perspective on ritual practices such as
royal progresses, revolutionary festivals, and for example the French
Revolution's establishment of new units of measurement. It is often
argued that public ceremonies generate action through heightened
emotion; our argument is based on "cold" rationality.
Ritual language is often patterned and repetitive. In terms of simply
conveying meaning, this can be understood as providing redundancy,
making it more likely that a message gets through. But it also seems to
be important that listeners themselves recognize the patterns and
repetition. In terms of common knowledge generation, when a person hears
something repeated, not only does she get the message, she knows it is
repeated and hence knows that it is more likely that others have heard
it. Group dancing in rituals can be understood as allowing individuals
to convey meaning to each other through movement. But group dancing is
also an excellent common knowledge generator; when dancing, each person
knows that everyone else is paying attention, because if a person were
not, the pattern of movement would be immediately disrupted.
I then look at examples of people facing each other in circles, as in
the kiva, a ritual structure found in prehistoric structures in the
southwestern United States, the seating configuration of various U.S.
city halls, and revolutionary festivals during the French Revolution. In
each of these examples, the circular form was seemingly intended to
foster social unity. But how? Our explanation is based on common
knowledge generation. An inward-facing circle allows maximum eye
contact; each person knows that other people know because each person
can visually verify that others are paying attention. I then look at how
inward-facing circles specifically, and issues of public and private
communication generally, appear in the 1954 feature film /On the
Waterfront./
Buying certain kinds of goods can be a coordination problem; for
example, a person might want to see a movie more the more popular it is.
To get people to buy these "coordination problem" goods, an advertiser
should try to generate common knowledge. Historical examples include the
"halitosis" campaign for Listerine. More recently, the Super Bowl has
become the best common knowledge generator in the United States
recently, and correspondingly, the great majority of advertisements on
the Super Bowl are for "coordination problem" goods. Evidence from
regular prime-time television commercials suggests that popular shows
are able to charge advertisers more per viewer for commercial slots,
because popular shows better generate common knowledge (when I see a
popular show, I know that many others are also seeing it). Companies
that sell "coordination problem" goods tend to advertise on more popular
shows and are willing to pay a premium for the common knowledge they
generate.
The pattern of friendships among a group of people, its "social
network," significantly affects its ability to coordinate. One aspect of
a network is to what extent its friendship links are "weak" or "strong."
In a weak-link network, the friends of a given person's friends tend not
to be that person's friends, whereas in a strong-link network, friends
of friends tend to be friends. It seems that strong-link networks should
be worse for communication and hence coordinated action, because they
are more "involuted" and information travels more slowly in them;
however, empirical studies often find that strong links are better for
coordination. We can resolve this puzzle by observing that, even though
strong links are worse for spreading information, they are better at
generating common knowledge; because your friends are more likely to
know each other, you are more likely to know what your friends know.
(rest of chapter available online)
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