RATIONAL RITUAL

CULTURE, COORDINATION, AND COMMON KNOWLEDGE

By Michael Suk-Young Chwe

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 2001 Princeton University Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-691-15828-0

Contents

List of Figures and Tables………………………………………….ixPreface…………………………………………………………..xiii1. Introduction……………………………………………………32. Applications……………………………………………………193. Elaborations……………………………………………………744. Conclusion……………………………………………………..94Appendix. The Argument Expressed Diagrammatically……………………..101Afterword to the 2013 Edition……………………………………….127Index…………………………………………………………….135

Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

What This Book Is Good For

How do individuals coordinate their actions? Here we consider”coordination problems,” in which each person wantsto participate in a group action but only if others also participate.For example, each person might want to take part inan antigovernment protest but only if there are enough totalprotesters to make arrests and police repression unlikely.People most often “solve” coordination problems by communicatingwith each other. Simply receiving a message,however, is not enough to make an individual participate.Because each individual wants to participate only if othersdo, each person must also know that others received a message.For that matter, because each person knows that otherpeople need to be confident that others will participate, eachperson must know that other people know that other peoplehave received a message, and so forth. In other words,knowledge of the message is not enough; what is also requiredis knowledge of others’ knowledge, knowledge ofothers’ knowledge of others’ knowledge, and so on—that is,”common knowledge.” To understand how people solve coordinationproblems, we should thus look at social processesthat generate common knowledge. The best examples turnout to be “public rituals,” such as public ceremonies, rallies,and media events.

Public rituals can thus be understood as social practicesthat generate common knowledge. For example, public ceremonieshelp maintain social integration and existing systemsof authority; public rallies and demonstrations are also crucialin political and social change. Social integration and politicalchange 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 necessarycommon knowledge. A public ritual is not just about thetransmission of meaning from a central source to each memberof an audience; it is also about letting audience membersknow what other audience members know.

This argument allows specific insights in a wide variety ofsocial phenomena, drawing connections among contexts andscholarly traditions often thought disparate. One explanationof how public ceremonies help sustain a ruler’s authorityis through their “content,” for example, by creatingmeaningful associations with the sacred. By also consideringthe “publicity” of public ceremonies—in other words, howthey form common knowledge—we gain a new perspectiveon ritual practices such as royal progresses, revolutionaryfestivals, and for example the French Revolution’s establishmentof new units of measurement. It is often argued thatpublic ceremonies generate action through heightened emotion;our argument is based on “cold” rationality.

Ritual language is often patterned and repetitive. In termsof simply conveying meaning, this can be understood as providingredundancy, making it more likely that a message getsthrough. But it also seems to be important that listenersthemselves recognize the patterns and repetition. In terms ofcommon knowledge generation, when a person hears somethingrepeated, not only does she get the message, she knowsit is repeated and hence knows that it is more likely thatothers have heard it. Group dancing in rituals can be understoodas allowing individuals to convey meaning to eachother through movement. But group dancing is also an excellentcommon knowledge generator; when dancing, each personknows that everyone else is paying attention, because if aperson were not, the pattern of movement would be immediatelydisrupted.

I then look at examples of people facing each other in circles,as in the kiva, a ritual structure found in prehistoricstructures in the southwestern United States, the seating configurationof various U.S. city halls, and revolutionary festivalsduring the French Revolution. In each of these examples,the circular form was seemingly intended to foster socialunity. But how? Our explanation is based on commonknowledge generation. An inward-facing circle allows maximumeye contact; each person knows that other peopleknow because each person can visually verify that others arepaying attention. I then look at how inward-facing circlesspecifically, and issues of public and private communicationgenerally, 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 morethe more popular it is. To get people to buy these “coordinationproblem” goods, an advertiser should try to generatecommon knowledge. Historical examples include the “halitosis”campaign for Listerine. More recently, the SuperBowl has become the best common knowledge generator inthe United States recently, and correspondingly, the greatmajority of advertisements on the Super Bowl are for “coordinationproblem” goods. Evidence from regular prime-timetelevision commercials suggests that popular shows are ableto 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 arealso seeing it). Companies that sell “coordination problem”goods tend to advertise on more popular shows and are willingto pay a premium for the common knowledge theygenerate.

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 friendshiplinks are “weak” or “strong.” In a weak-link network, thefriends of a given person’s friends tend not to be that person’sfriends, whereas in a strong-link network, friends offriends tend to be friends. It seems that strong-link networksshould be worse for communication and hence coordinatedaction, because they are more “involuted” and informationtravels more slowly in them; however, empirical studies oftenfind that strong links are better for coordination. We canresolve this puzzle by observing that, even though stronglinks are worse for spreading information, they are better atgenerating common knowledge; because your friends aremore likely to know each other, you are more likely to knowwhat your friends know.

Finally, I consider Jeremy Bentham’s “panopticon” prisondesign, in which cells are arranged in a circle around a centralguard tower. Michel Foucault regards the panoptic on asa mechanism of power based on surveillance, as opposed tospectacle or ceremony. Foucault and most other observers,however, neglect the fact that Bentham’s design includes acentral chapel above the guard tower, so that the prisonerscan take part in service without having to leave their cells; inother words, the panopticon is to some extent also a ritualstructure. The panopticon generates common knowledge inthat each prisoner can see that other prisoners are under thesame kind of surveillance.

In considering this variety of applications, no attempt ismade to treat any single topic, writer, or text comprehensively.The goal instead is to explore unexpected connections,connections that span wide divisions in the social sciencesas currently disciplined. Ideas of rationality and cultureare often considered as applying to entirely different spheresof human activity and as having their own separate logic.This book argues instead for a broad reciprocal connection.To understand public rituals, one should understand howthey generate the common knowledge that the logic of rationalityrequires. To understand how rational individuals solvecoordination problems, one should understand public rituals.

This book draws on scholarly literatures that are subjectto ever increasing methodological specialization. I hope thatthe connections here suggest that an argument can bring togethernot only diverse subject matter but also diverse methodologies.This book considers, for example, new data (theprices of network television slots, Super Bowl advertising),suggests new explanations for existing empirical regularities(why “strong links” are better than “weak links”), offersnew interpretations of aspects of ritual practices (groupdancing, repetition, inward-facing circles) and cultural products(the film On the Waterfront), and compels a closer readingof classic texts (Bentham’s and Foucault’s panopticon).

After considering these applications, I briefly considercompeting explanations of how rituals affect action, eitherthrough direct psychological stimulation or through theemotions that come from being physically together withother people. Next I try to respond to the common objectionthat common knowledge is not really applicable to the “realworld” because people do not actually seem to think throughseveral layers of “I know that he knows that she knows” andso forth.

I then further elaborate on the basic argument. Althoughone of the main points of this book is that common knowledgegeneration is an interesting dimension of rituals thatcan be analytically separated from content, in practice contentand common knowledge generation interact in interestingways; I discuss some examples from marketing andsculpture and the “Daisy” television ad for Lyndon Johnsonin 1964. Common knowledge depends not only on meknowing that you receive a message but also on the existenceof a shared symbolic system which allows me to know howyou understand it.

Because common knowledge generation is important forcoordinated action, it is something people fight over; for example,censorship typically cracks down hardest on publiccommunications. Recently political struggles have adoptedtechniques of modern advertising; for example, in 1993, domesticviolence activists successfully pressured the NBC televisionnetwork for Super Bowl air time. The fact that commonknowledge generation is a real resource suggests that”symbolic” resistance should not be underestimated.

Common knowledge is generated not only by communicationbut also by historical precedent. Political protests andadvertising campaigns when trying to generate commonknowledge thus draw on history as a resource. Just as historycan help create common knowledge, common knowledgecan to some extent create history through mass ritualsand commemorations. Similarly, common knowledge notonly helps a group coordinate but also, to some extent, cancreate groups, collective identities, “imagined communities”in which, for example, each newspaper reader is aware ofmillions of fellow readers.

In sum, this book tries to demonstrate three things. First,the concept of common knowledge has broad explanatorypower. Second, common knowledge generation is an essentialpart of what a public ritual “does.” Third, the classicdichotomy between rationality and culture should be questioned.This third point is explored more fully in the conclusion.In an appendix, I look at a simple example that illustrateshow the argument is made mathematically.

The Argument

In some situations, called “coordination problems,” eachperson wants to participate in a joint action only if othersparticipate also. One way to coordinate is simply to communicatea message, such as “Let’s all participate.” But becauseeach person will participate only if others do, for the messageto be successful, each person must not only know aboutit, each person must know that each other person knowsabout it. In fact, each person must know that each otherperson knows that each other person knows about it, and soon; that is, the message must be “common knowledge.”

This truism is a fact of everyday social life and is thisbook’s central argument. It has come up in many differentscholarly contexts, from the philosophy of language to gametheory to sociology. David Lewis (1969), influenced byThomas Schelling ([1960] 1980), first made it explicitly;Robert Aumann (1974, 1976) developed the mathematicalrepresentation that makes it elementary (see the appendix). Itis best expressed in an example.

Say you and I are co-workers who ride the same bushome. Today the bus is completely packed and somehow weget separated. Because you are standing near the front doorof the bus and I am near the back door, I catch a glimpse ofyou only at brief moments. Before we reach our usual stop, Inotice a mutual acquaintance, who yells from the sidewalk,”Hey you two! Come join me for a drink!” Joining this acquaintancewould be nice, but we care mainly about eachother’s company. The bus doors open; separated by thecrowd, we must decide independently whether to get off.

Say that when our acquaintance yells out, I look for youbut cannot find you; I’m not sure whether you notice her ornot and thus decide to stay on the bus. How exactly does thecommunication process fail? There are two possibilities. Thefirst is simply that you do not notice her; maybe you areasleep. The second is that you do in fact notice her. But I stayon the bus because I don’t know whether you notice her ornot. In this case we both know that our acquaintance yelledbut I do not know that you know.

Successful communication sometimes is not simply a matterof whether a given message is received. It also depends onwhether people are aware that other people also receive it. Inother words, it is not just about people’s knowledge of themessage; it is also about people knowing that other peopleknow about it, the “metaknowledge” of the message.

Say that when our acquaintance yells, I see you raise yourhead and look around for me, but I’m not sure if you manageto find me. Even though I know about the yell, and Iknow that you know since I see you look up, I still decide tostay on the bus because I do not know that you know that Iknow. So just one “level” of metaknowledge is not enough.

Taking this further, one soon realizes that every level ofmetaknowledge is necessary: I must know about the yell, youmust know, I must know that you know, you must knowthat I know, I must know that you know that I know, and soon; that is, the yell must be “common knowledge.” The term”common knowledge” is used in many ways but here westick to a precise definition. We say that an event or fact iscommon knowledge among a group of people if everyoneknows it, everyone knows that everyone knows it, everyoneknows that everyone knows that everyone knows it, and soon. Two people can create these many levels of metaknowledgesimply through eye contact: say that when our acquaintanceyells I am looking at you and you are looking at me.Thus I know you know about the yell, you know that Iknow that you know (you see me looking at you), and so on.If we do manage to make eye contact, we get off the bus;communication is successful.

The key assumption behind this example is that we mainlyenjoy each other’s company: I want to get off only if you getoff and you want to get off only if I get off. For example, saythat instead of an acquaintance it is your boyfriend yelling; Icare only about your company, but you would rather joinhim than me. I would thus get off if I knew that you hear theyell, but I need not care if you know that I hear it, becauseyou will get off regardless of whether I do. Situations like theacquaintance example are called “coordination problems”:each person wants to act only if others do also. Anotherterm is “assurance game,” because no person wants to actalone (Sen 1967). The boyfriend example is not a coordinationproblem because one person wants to act regardless ofwhether anyone else does.

In coordination problems, each person cares about whatother people do, and hence each person cares about whatother people know. Hence successful communication doesnot simply distribute messages but also lets each personknow that other people know, and so on. Two examples illustratethis further.

Rebelling against a regime is a coordination problem: eachperson is more willing to show up at a demonstration ifmany others do, perhaps because success is more likely andgetting arrested is less likely. Regimes in their censorshipthus target public communications such as mass meetings,publications, flags, and even graffiti, by which people notonly get a message but know that others get it also (Sluka1992, Diehl 1992). For nearly thirty years, the price of a loafof bread in Egypt was held constant; Anwar el-Sadat’s attemptin 1977 to raise the price was met with major riots.

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(Continues…)Excerpted from RATIONAL RITUAL by Michael Suk-Young Chwe. Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University Press. Excerpted by permission of PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS.
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