Michael Suk-Young Chwe

Game theory shows that in order to co-ordinate its actions, a group of people must form "common knowledge". This text applies this insight to analyze a range of rituals across history and cultures, from Super Bowl advertising to the circular forms favoured during the French Revolution.

Culture, Coordination, and Common Knowledge

Rational Ritual

Game theory is one of the most popular technical approaches in social science today. This book suggests that Jane Austen explored game theory's core ideas in her six novels roughly two hundred years ago. This book shows how this beloved writer theorized choice and preferences, prized strategic thinking, argued that jointly strategizing with a partner is the surest foundation for intimacy, and analyzed why superiors are often strategically clueless about inferiors. With a diverse range of literature and folktales, this book illustrates the wide relevance of game theory and how, fundamentally, we are all strategic thinkers. Although game theory's mathematical development began in the Cold War 1950s, Chwe finds that game theory has earlier subversive historical roots in Austen's novels and in "folk game theory" traditions, including African American folktales. Chwe makes the case that these literary forebears are game theory's true scientific predecessors. He considers how Austen in particular analyzed cluelessness, the conspicuous absence of strategic thinking, and how her sharp observations apply to a variety of situations, including U.S. military blunders in Iraq and Vietnam.

Michael Suk-Young Chwe

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