Cooperation in Anonymity

In: Critical review: an interdisciplinary journal of politics and society, Band 1, Heft 4, S. 50-61

Abstract

A review essay on a book by Maurice Natanson, Anonymity: A Study in the Philosophy of Alfred Schutz (Bloomington: Indiana U Press, 1986 [see listing in IRPS No. 51]). Natanson's book explicates & elaborates the work of Alfred Schutz on how agents can successfully anticipate the actions of their fellow humans, focusing on how we are anonymous beings in social life: we all live, work, & interact with, & depend on, a multitude of others of whose thoughts, actions, & lives we possess few, if any, intimate details. Natanson argues that the process by which modes & motives of action are typified intensifies social anonymity, yet while he convincingly demonstrates that typification has a tendency to reinforce social anonymity, the degree of depersonalization is not as dramatic as he suggests. Natanson also focuses on the question of how the analyst of social action proceeds if the social world is a web of intersubjective typifications that are institutionalized through repeated social actions, & changed as actors assign new meanings to them. Social participants share a common social world through structures of intersubjective meanings, & are able to anticipate the actions & responses of others with some degree of confidence because each sees similar meanings in various circumstances & relationships. Categories like supply & demand can only be effectively applied in historical interpretation, contemporary analysis, or anticipatory forecasting when enriched & complemented by insight into the meaning structures within which economic laws function. F. S. J. Ledgister