of Giddens, but it is somewhat easier than later statements on structuration.)11 Giddens, Anthony. 1990. The Consequences of Modernity. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. (Like many of Giddens’s works on radicalized modernity, this is written in an accessible style. Giddens here develops many of his earlier arguments into a broad consideration of modernity.)
12 Giddens, Anthony. 1991. Modernity and Self-Identity. Stanford, CA. Sandford University Press.
13 Giddens, Anthony. 1992. The Transformation of Intimacy. Stanford, CA. Sandford University Press.
14 Giddens, Anthony. 1994. Beyond Left and Right. Cambridge; Polity Press.
15 Giddens, Anthony. 1998. The Third Way. Cambridge; Polity Press.
16 Granovetter, Mark. 1985. Economic Action and Social Structure: The Problem of Embeddedness. American Journal of Sociology, 91(3), 481–510.
17 Hechter, Michael. 1975. Internal Colonialism: The Celtic Fringe in British National Development 1536–1966. Berkeley: University of California Press: 1975.
18 Hechter, Michael. 1983. The Microfoundations of Macrosociology. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. (An early collection of works on purposive action approaches)
19 Hechter, Michael. 1987. Principles of Group Solidarity. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. (Among the strongest statements of an individualist approach to social solidarity, that forms the foundation for much of the work that follows.)
20 Hechter, Michael. 2019. Rational Choice Sociology: Essays on Theory, Collective Action, and Social Order. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar.
21 Hechter, Michael and Steven Pfaff. 2020. The Genesis of Rebellion: Governance, Grievance and Mutiny in the Age of Sail. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.
22 Leifer, Eric. 1988. “Interaction Preludes to Role Setting: Exploratory Local Action.” American Sociological Review 53: 865–78. (With the introduction of the concept of local action, Leifer shows the difficulty of actors attempting to follow a rational choice framework for action.)
23 Morh, John W. 2000. “Introduction: Structures, institutions, and cultural analysis.” Poetics 27:57–68 (A special issue on structural modeling of meaning.)
24 Putnam, Robert D. 2000. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York: Simon & Schuster. (Putnam describes trends and changes in the national distribution of social capital, conceived of as involvement in secondary associations.)
25 White, Harrison 1961. “Management Conflict and Sociometric Structure”. American Journal of Sociology. 67 (2): 185–199.
26 White, Harrison. 1963. An Anatomy of Kinship: Mathematical Models for Structures of Cumulated Roles. Englewood-Cliffs, NJ. (An early piece that sets the mathematical stage for much later work in social networks.)
27 White, Harrison. 1992. Identity and Control: A Structural Theory of Social Action. Princeton, NJ; Princeton University Press. (This book is known to be difficult going, but provides a theoretical model for linking networks to the key questions of institutions and action. The second edition (2008) is really a distinct book, and a major re-thinking of the ideas.)
28 White, Harrison. 2004. Markets from Networks: Socioeconomic Models of Production. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. (White’s ultimate statement of his model for markets. A key text to build a sociological extension of market models.).
Chapter 4 A Theory of Group Solidarity [1987]
Michael Hechter
Consider the following situation. A large number of tent–dwellers live in an isolated and relatively unpopulated valley. Land is plentiful and free for the taking. Life is good, save for one recurring problem. The tent–dwellers are intermittently victimized by a roving band of outlaws who abscond with their crops and stored food. Each incident causes severe losses to a large number of households. To forestall this threatened loss, a majority of the tent–dwellers decides to form a protective association. The association determines that two measures must be taken to provide for the members’ security. All the members’ tents must be concentrated in one part of the valley. And members must participate in round–the–clock watches along the perimeter of the new settlement. Under this plan members alone will receive protection; those who choose not to join will remain unprotected.
Yet the ability to reach agreement on this set of rules does not guarantee adequate security. The security of these tent–dwellers is very much a joint good; its production is only assured when each member lives up to the obligation to stand watch. The member who neglects to do so in order to dally with the neighbor compromises the security of the whole encampment. Will the members comply with their obligation to stand watch? How solidary will the protective association be?
An adequate theory of group solidarity must be able to explain variation in the extensiveness of corporate obligations and in a group’s capacity to induce its members to honor these obligations.
The Extensiveness of Corporate Obligations
All rational choice explanations start with explicit behavioral assumptions; usually actors are considered to be rational egoists. Strangely, a similar assumption is smuggled into much classical sociological analysis, albeit implicitly. As the normativists observed, sanctions exist even in the most solidary of groups. Why? Because there is often a conflict of interest between the individual and the group.
True, at those times when groups encourage their members to pursue their private interests to the hilt, no such conflict need arise (Young 1979: 51–66). And not all compliance to norms need be costly to individuals (Coleman 1966; G. S. Becker 1974; Barry 1970: 44–46). Some norms – which are also called conventions (Lewis 1969) – enable individuals to make decisions about a host of matters that defy rational solution (Durkheim 1951 [1897]: 254–56). These are rules that designate appropriate standards of conduct in diverse situations (“one should always drive on the right side of the street”), and people may comply with them simply because it is not costly for them to do so (Stigler and Becker 1977: 82; Thibaut and Kelley 1959: 127–200). In the driving example, noncompliance is in fact the more costly choice. Yet even though conventional behavior imposes few costs, the violation of conventions always brings forth sanctions (Goffman 1959). Naturally, conflicts of interest between the individual and the group increase whenever group members seek predictable and consistent levels of normative compliance from one another, not just fitful compliance when it suits the member’s fancy.
Whenever people are faced with two divergent courses of action ‒ one in pursuit of some individual end, the other in pursuit of some collective end ‒ I will assume that they will invariably choose the former. Since the obligations imposed by membership in a group generally interfere with and deflect from the members’ pursuit of their own goals, they can be likened to a membership tax. Once a group’s obligations are considered as if they were a tax, it is possible to predict how extensive, or costly, they will be in different circumstances.
The obligations of some groups can only be satisfied when members part with a rather large proportion of their private resources, whereas the obligations of others can be satisfied by substantially less onerous contributions. For example, the members of intentional communities like the Bruderhof (Zablocki 1971) face far more extensive obligations than the employees of General Motors. What accounts for variations in the extensiveness of obligations among different groups? The first answer has to do with the nature of the joint
