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drs's review against another edition
challenging
informative
medium-paced
4.5
In How Institutions Think Mary Douglas outlines a double-stranded view of social behavior and the conventions of social institutions: one that incorporates both the individual demand for coherence and predictability and the individual utility-maximizing of Rational Choice Theory. She argues that institutions are entropy-minimizing entities that effectively encode models of the world. These models then place constraints on the thinking and behavior within a social group. Institutions are instantiated once a set of social relations and social conventions is legitimized by a naturalizing analogy. Once legitimized, the institution does the work of classifying (and filtering remembrance of) stuff in the world.
jm5004's review against another edition
4.0
A wonderful short read that incisively exposes the problems with modern rational choice theory. I swear, once you've realized the world isn't composed of rational, self-serving agents, you're ready to do critical analysis of a whole host of institutions. Douglas exposes many of the disparities and inequalities of academia, showing how much of social science is based on theories of the self that are coherent in the logic of academic institutions (i.e. fields of study) but fail to stand up to basic psychology and sociology. In this book economics and political economy mostly come under scrutiny.
What is especially helpful for the twenty-first century reader is Douglas's reinterpretation of Durkheim's notion of the sacred. In Durkheim's functionalist system, the sacred is that which is beyond reproach or question in a society and is not allowed to be profaned. This gives certain ideas, rules, and/or people justification for existence. Looking at institutions, Douglas understand's modernity as a project to bestow on individual experience Durkheimian sacral power but at the same time having institutions that are very much not based on individuals' wants and needs. The classic example is the problem of slavery in a country like the United States supposedly founded on universal notions of equality. Douglas would argue the institutions available to those early Americans did not support the kinds of justice thought up in the Declaration of Independence. This points to the need for critical engagement with institutions.
I don't know, in times like these where everything seems so hyper individualized, it is a godsend to have an invitation to think big picture. I know the problems inherent to structuralist thinking, but I applaud Douglas's efforts to shift the conversation from individual behavior to the nature and logic of institutions.
What is especially helpful for the twenty-first century reader is Douglas's reinterpretation of Durkheim's notion of the sacred. In Durkheim's functionalist system, the sacred is that which is beyond reproach or question in a society and is not allowed to be profaned. This gives certain ideas, rules, and/or people justification for existence. Looking at institutions, Douglas understand's modernity as a project to bestow on individual experience Durkheimian sacral power but at the same time having institutions that are very much not based on individuals' wants and needs. The classic example is the problem of slavery in a country like the United States supposedly founded on universal notions of equality. Douglas would argue the institutions available to those early Americans did not support the kinds of justice thought up in the Declaration of Independence. This points to the need for critical engagement with institutions.
I don't know, in times like these where everything seems so hyper individualized, it is a godsend to have an invitation to think big picture. I know the problems inherent to structuralist thinking, but I applaud Douglas's efforts to shift the conversation from individual behavior to the nature and logic of institutions.
ariel_bloomer's review against another edition
5.0
This book changed the way I think about everything. Best book I've ever been assigned in a class.
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