ANT207H1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Course Evaluation, Game Theory, Michel Foucault
Professor Tanya Li Oct. 13, 2016
ANT207 LECTURE 5
INDIVIDUAL & SOCIETY
THE TRAP
• Game theory → we are rational, selfish, atomistic, always strategizing (rat choice, rats in
mazes) – human as entrepreneur
- Apply numerical calculations to come up with the optimal course
• Cooperation, solidarity, are not rational – you can only loose (prisoner’s dilemma)
• Outcome of millions of individual choices more rational than any grand plans – so don’t
plan – can only be tyranny; arrogance of rulers and experts
• But led to new kind of plan
• Government can direct our behaviour through measurable targets and incentives
Ex. health service—wait times—so channel people quickly –or don’t accept
• Course evaluation – I should make it easy so you grade me high – incentive works thus –
so I act irrationally when challenge you in altruistic attempt to educate…; I build
incentives – grades, penalties
• Are we basically selfish or altruistic?
• Cold War argument → how do you stop the other guy from attacking you?
- How do you create an environment in which it is not in their best interest?
PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW
• One approach to → “what is a person?”
• Perception, cognition, motives, emotions
• Question → are they fixed or variable?
• Idea of individual collapses when you look at variations (cross-culture, age, gender, etc.)
BIOLOGICAL VIEW
• Genes, given in nature and/or respond to context
• Sex, gender, role, sexual orientation
• Given in nature
• Genes more complicated → they interact
• Cannot know how one will interact with another, with the environment
• Theories about how we are made up of many genes, some activated by certain events
SOCIOLOGICAL VIEW
• Social relations
• Networks, norms
• Socialization, culture
- How are we socialized? How we learn how to behave, etc.
• History, context
STRUCTURE AND AGENCY
• Structures →
- Institutions, ways of organizing social life, norms, roles
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