« L'Amérique, il est vrai, découverte et conquise, la route par mer frayée aux Indes et aux Moluques sont des prodiges de courage et de succès qui appartiennent sans contestation aux Espagnols et aux Portugais ». L'intrépide Magellan, « rien ne put lui dérober la gloire d'avoir le premier fait le tour du globe. Encouragés par son exemple, les navigateurs anglais et hollandais trouvèrent de nouvelles terres et enrichirent l'Europe en l'éclairant ». C'est ainsi qu'en 1771 Bougainville, qui accomplit un des plus importants voyages scientifiques autour du monde, caractérisait l'œuvre des découvertes des XVe et XVIe siècles, à une époque où, comme l'écrit son compagnon de voyage, le prince de Nassau, « l'esprit des découvertes se ranime en Europe, les différents ouvrages qui se répandent dans le public y rappellent l'attention des particuliers. Ces nouvelles entreprises vont faire une mémorable époque dans le monde et nous parviendrons enfin à l'entière connaissance du globe. Ces nouveaux Colomb et Cortez ont des champs de gloire aussi vastes à parcourir, mais c'est le siècle de l'humanité, et il faut du moins espérer que les Européens ne veulent plus faire connaissance avec leurs frères de l'hémisphère austral que pour leur enseigner la vérité et les rendre heureux par la vertu ».

Most expressions and symbols associated with the mafia—indeed, the term mafia itself—are made up of an almost surrealist cocktail of bogus and genuine sources, mythical and prosaic characters, fiction and reality. Already in 1876, Franchetti was puzzling over ‘the tendency to turn a mafioso into a legendary type, a feeling natural enough indeed in a professor of literature, but much harder to explain in wealthy landowners…’ (p. 34).

The question of how social norms and the rational pursuit of interests combine into social action continues to be one of the core puzzles of social theory. The essays by Jon Elster and Ralph Turner and the comments by Margaret Levi and Steven Lukes published in the following pages of the Archives are fine and, we believe, representative contemporary examples of how social scientists try to come to terms with this puzzle.

During the past two decades the use of rational decision models, especially those which assume self-interest motivation, has diffused widely throughout sociology, including the fields of collective behavior and social psychology. This trend is interesting as a datum for study in the sociology of sociology, for what it reveals about changing assumptions concerning the nature and dynamics of social behavior, and as a trend that is sometimes beneficial and sometimes deleterious. My objective is to raise questions based on these three kinds of interest, and to suggest some answers.

One of the most persisting cleavages in the social sciences is the opposition between two lines of thought conveniently associated with Adam Smith and Émile Durkheim, between homo economicus and homo sociologicus. Of these, the former is supposed to be guided by instrumental rationality, while the behavior of the latter is dictated by social norms. The former is ‘pulled’ by the prospect of future rewards, whereas the latter is ‘pushed’ from behind by quasi-inertial forces (Gambetta 1987). The former adapts to changing circumstances, always on the lookout for improvements. The latter is insensitive to circumstances, adhering to the prescribed behavior even if new and apparently better options become available. The former is easily caricatured as a self-contained, asocial atom, and the latter as the mindless plaything of social forces. In this paper I characterize this contrast more fully, and discuss attempts to reduce norm-oriented action to some type of optimizing behavior.

Sociologists have traditionally tended to overstate the role of norms in explaining human behavior. Economists, on the other hand, have tended to downplay the role of norms. Increasingly, rational choice theorists have begun to explore the interaction between normative and instrumentally rational motivations. There are at least two major points at issue in these discussions. First, how does one conceptualize norms, especially in relation to rational action? Second, how does one go about studying the variation in the reliance on norms? Jon Elster's paper offers a controversial answer to the first question. Ralph Turner's paper offers some guidance for answering the second (1). Building on both Elster and Turner, I shall bring a somewhat different perspective to bear on both these issues.

Reflecting on the notion of responsibility, Václav Havel offers, in one of his Letters to Olga, what he calls a trivial illustration:

at night, I board the rear car of a tram to go one stop. The car is empty, and since the fare is paid by dropping a crown into a box, not even a conductor is present […] So I have the option of throwing the fare into the box or not: if I don't, no-one will see me, or ever find out: no witnesses will ever be able to testify to my misdemeanor. So I'm faced with a great dilemma, regardless of how much money I happen to have with me: to pay or not to pay.