Common sense

by John Q on November 15, 2004

Kieran complains that

When you’re a Sociologist like me, and your field has no credibility, people just assume you’re stupid and don’t bother sending you their Final and Completely True Theory of X in the first place. On the other hand, it does invite people to assume the answer to any problem you are studying is simply obvious common sense.

But sociology is a victim of its own success here. All of the big insights of sociology, from its beginnings in the 19th century up to 1950s work like that of Erving Goffman are indeed common sense, not because they were already known, but because they have been incorporated into the intellectual baggage of everyone in Western societies, educated or not. No one, for example, would be accused of talking academic jargon if they raised the problem of “peer group pressure” at their local school, or made a reference to ‘social status’.

By contrast, almost nothing in economics has managed to become common sense. Something as basic as comparative advantage, a concept developed nearly 200 years ago, remains as counter-intuitive as quantum physics to most people. Opportunity cost also at least a century old, similarly requires years of intensive training before it becomes common sense rather than a memorised definition.

Yet it would be only a slight exaggeration to say that the basic analysis associated with these concepts is universally accepted by economists. Opponents of free trade would want to point out dangers in the uncritical use of comparative advantage as a guide to policy, and behavioral economists might observe that, in practice, people worry about sunk costs as well as, or instead of opportunity costs, but these qualifications do not affect the validity of the underlying analysis.

{ 14 comments }

1

Simstim 11.16.04 at 4:00 pm

“Market”, “cost/benefit analysis”, “capital”, “profit”? Sure, some people may disagree about their meaning/value, but would they still be used in the way they are if economics hadn’t existed?

2

Jim Harrison 11.16.04 at 5:05 pm

Though sometimes represented as the physics of money, economics is just a branch of sociology—what else could it be? Economists should show a llittle respect for the mother discipline from time to time.

By the way, have you guys ever decided whether your analyses of material culture should be emic or etic?

3

Ken Houghton 11.16.04 at 5:10 pm

That may be because economists desperately fight common sense on an intermittent basis.

“Comparative advantage” is what my broker uses to justify taking his normal fees when the portfolio only drops 5% while others are dropping 10%. (Similarly, “market forces” keep those -10%ers employed at high rates, on the delusion that a dart board, chimpanzee, or Indian national with a subscription to the online WSJ and some brokerage reports couldn’t do as well.)

Meanwhile, “opportunity cost” gets used to argue that one cannot do two things (op cit.Tyler Cowen’s you-can’t-both-vote-and-donate; but is too often considered on a strictly direct monetary basis. (One could work extra hours and theoretically make more money because of it, but there are likely to be intangible–and perhaps tangible, e.g., divorce–effects on the home life.)

4

Yarrow 11.16.04 at 6:15 pm

“these qualifications do not affect the validity of the underlying analysis.” The Banach-Tarksi paradox (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banach-Tarski_Paradox) doesn’t affect the validity of mathematics, but neither does anyone make policy recommendations based on the fact that one can divide a marble into a finite number of parts and reassemble those parts into a sphere the size of the sun.

The comparative advantage link contains a similar statement: “Models are, by their nature, simplifications of the real world and thus all economic models contain unrealistic assumptions. Therefore, to dismiss the results of economic analysis on the basis of unrealistic assumptions means that one must dismiss all insights contained within the entire economics discipline.” This implies that economists aren’t interested in refining models to make them more realistic. I’m sure that’s not so — that in the 200 years since the original model was published, economists have created models of comparative advantage in the presence of frictions like shipping costs. Yet a fairly lengthy web page, prominent enough to be linked to from here, says nothing at all about the results of more realistic models. Why not?

5

jackjumper 11.16.04 at 6:43 pm

My father, who is an anthropologist, is fond of refering to sociology as the “anthropology of white people”

6

John Quiggin 11.16.04 at 7:38 pm

I’ve always wondered how the distinction between anthropology and sociology could be sustained, in the absence of “primitive” people for anthropologists to study. Your father’s definition seems to be accurate in practise.

7

Fabio Rojas 11.16.04 at 8:38 pm

The charge is bogus – sociologists look at all cultures. Look at any decent soc dept and you see people studying Europe, Russia, Africa and China.

However, there are real differences in the social sciences. Consider the following:

– anthropology has a branch called “physical anthropology”, sociology has no such branch, heck, most sociologists refuse to acknowledge human beings are biological organisms

– anthropology deals much more intensely with meaning and language, this is less common, but not unheard of in sociology (see Garfinkle & co)

– sociologists routinely employ surveys, focus groups and do lab experiments; this is much less frequent in anthro

– anthropologists are much more concerned with the physical environment than sociologists

There are more differences. The fields are tightly related but are by no means identical in goals, theories and research methods.

8

John Quiggin 11.16.04 at 8:54 pm

If two groups of social scientists have the same subject matter, but different goals, theories and research methods I’d say they are best regarded as rival schools rather than as distinct disciplines.

9

fabio rojas 11.16.04 at 10:46 pm

Fair point and it is close to my own view of the social sciences. Right now, anthropology, sociology and economics all claim that they comprehensively study social behavior and group life. They all study the same sets of topics such as markets, families and states.

But I should employ an economic idea here: the disciplines aren’t completely rivals, they are also part of an intellectual division of labor. They don’t completely overlap and most social scientists would recognize that others do some valuable work that isn’t done in their own discipline.

Consider chemsitry and physics. The comparison raises interesting issues. They are both about atoms and molecules, but they aren’t considered rivals – it’s more like a division of labor. Chemists deal more with combinations of elements, rather than elements themselves. They also work on how such things are created. Physicists consider things like quarks and pure energy.

The state of physcial sciences is interesting – chemists and physicists rarely contradict each other. Social sciences routinely claim the other is completely wrong. It’s because social scientists study themselves at some level, so it is impossible to cede credibility to a scientific community whose view of human nature is so different than your own. But I should also note that social scientists tend to respect well done empirical work done by others, even if they disagree with the “why” of the analysis.

10

theogon 11.17.04 at 12:21 am

Sorry to veer overmuch off topic, but the real problem with comparative advantage as I’ve always understood is that in the real world economies need to diversified. In the Platonic World of Forms, the nation whose population takes to piano production ought specialize in it so fully as possible, but an actual country whose public policy encouraged it would be, upon the resurgence of Speed-Polka or collapse of the Acme company, totally fucked.

11

theogon 11.17.04 at 12:23 am

Sorry to veer overmuch off topic, but the real problem with comparative advantage as I’ve always understood is that in the real world economies need to diversified. In the Platonic World of Forms, the nation whose population takes to piano production ought specialize in it so fully as possible, but an actual country whose public policy encouraged it would be, upon the resurgence of Speed-Polka or collapse of the Acme company, totally fucked.

12

John Quiggin 11.17.04 at 12:58 am

theogon, as you imply, this isn’t really a point about comparative advantage as opposed to alternative concepts (absolute advantage, competitive advantage etc) but about the desirability of specialisation. That said, I generally agree with you.

13

Zack 11.17.04 at 7:13 am

Andrew Abbott has written an interesting book entitled Chaos of Disciplines which is all about which differences between the various social sciences are real and which are mereley insisted upon by their respective practitioners.

14

Dustin 11.17.04 at 7:09 pm

As an anthropologist and teacher of introcutory courses, I’ve grappled with the issue of what distinguishes anthro and soc for a while now, especially when a student taking both has the temerity to ask what the difference is. Someone brought up physical anthro, which points to anthro’s 4-field approach (we also include archaeological and linguistic analysis) but that’s not all there is. Having done time in graduate sociology courses and been totally baffled by some of the ideas I heard expressed and by the way some otherwise-familiar ideas were formulated, I’d say there’s a much deeper distinction than “the anthropology of white people” gets at. Part of it is, as someone suggested, a matter of division of labour: sociologists tend to be interested *primarily* in social organization, while anthropologists tend to be interested more in abstract beliefs, ideas, and so on — though the “primarily” and “tend to” are crucial modifiers, as these elements aren’t nearly as neatly sorted out as our language suggests. The other is a matter of disciplinary history — sociologists and anthropologists draw on, for the most part, totally different intellectual histories, despite the last couple decades’ flogging of “interdisciplinarity”. Few sociologists read Boas, Malinowski, Cushing, Tax, Fallers; few anthropologists read Simmel, Goffman, errr… well, it’s hard for me even to name the 2nd-string sociologists, because I haven’t read them!

In a sense, we are like two societies, each of which has, of course, to live in and understand the same physical reality, but which have each developed a worldview that is not entirely commensurate with the other’s. While we may be describing the same phenomenon, our perspectives are different enough that often we might not even recognize the other’s description as relating to the same thing at all. There’s downsides to this, but there’s positives, too — every now and again, some interpid interdisciplinarist plunges forth and brings back new ideas, new perspectives, or new methodologies which can end up enriching both disciplines. Think of it as a diverse ideational genepool.

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