The large distinction at issue here is the contrast between rational actor models of the social world, in which the actor makes choices within a thin set of context-independent decision rules, and social actor models, in which the actor is largely driven by a context-defined set of scripts as he/she makes choices. The contrast is sometimes illustrated by contrasting neoclassical economic models of the market with substantivist models along the lines of Karl Polanyi's The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time, and it links to the debate in economic anthropology between formalists and substantivists.Read it at Understanding Society
Social embeddedness
by Daniel Little | Chancellor of the University of Michigan-Dearborn, Professor of Philosophy at UM-Dearborn, and faculty associate at the Institute for Social Research and the Center for Chinese Studies at the University of Michigan
1 comment:
The key concept is that of the 'actor'. Actors may act on any combination of any of Daniel's identified parameters, atomistic-ally or integrated. However an actor is someone who knows they are in a play. The play happens in the minds of the actors. If the play becomes 'real', the real existence of the actors is 'lost'. Actually - just forgotten. The actors will then search for something that has never been lost. That is when the play that could have been fun, becomes tragedy.
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