Name: Rational Ritual
ISBN: 9780691009490

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

Why do Internet, financial service, and beer commercials dominate Super Bowl advertising? How do political ceremonies establish authority? Why does repetition characterize anthems and ritual speech? Why were circular forms favored for public festivals during the French Revolution? This book answers these questions using a single concept: common knowledge. Game theory shows that in order to coordinate its actions, a group of people must form "common knowledge." Each person wants to participate only if others also participate. Members must have knowledge of each other, knowledge of that knowledge, knowledge of the knowledge of that knowledge, and so on. Michael Chwe applies this insight, with striking erudition, to analyze a range of rituals across history and cultures. He shows that public ceremonies are powerful not simply because they transmit meaning from a central source to each audience member but because they let audience members know what other members know. For instance, people watching the Super Bowl know that many others are seeing precisely what they see and that those people know in turn that many others are also watching. This creates common knowledge, and advertisers selling products that depend on consensus are willing to pay large sums to gain access to it. Remarkably, a great variety of rituals and ceremonies, such as formal inaugurations, work in much the same way. By using a rational-choice argument to explain diverse cultural practices, Chwe argues for a close reciprocal relationship between the perspectives of rationality and culture. He illustrates how game theory can be applied to an unexpectedly broad spectrum of problems, while showing in an admirably clear way what game theory might hold for scholars in the social sciences and humanities who are not yet acquainted with it. In a new afterword, Chwe delves into new applications of common knowledge, both in the real world and in experiments, and considers how generating common knowledge has become easier in the digital age.

Rachel

What did I just read? It felt like the introduction chapter was rewritten for each chapter hammering in the same points that were made in the first chapter. Not all that informative, explains metaknowing aka knowing others know and know they know others know too. Goes into some detail about how and why commercials work and why circular seating is ideal. That is about it and it just kept reexplaining this over and over again. The book’s examples are outdated, it was originally published in 2001 so its kind of expected but it was then republished in 2014 with a afterword that didn’t address social media and the internet at all.

Rational Ritual Culture, Coordination, and Common Knowledge

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