Cooperation Without Trust? and Rationality and the Ideology of Disconnection

Extract

Cooperation Without Trust? By Karen S. Cook, Russell Hardin, and Margaret Levi. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2005. 256p. $32.50.

Rationality and the Ideology of Disconnection. By Michael Taylor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. 238p. $75.00 cloth, $26.99 paper.

The two books under review differ sharply on the fruitfulness of rational choice theory. Karen Cook, Russell Hardin, and Margaret Levi posit that even trust is best understood as a product of rational, materialist calculations. On their “encapsulated interest” view, trust “exists when one party to [a] relation believes the other party has incentive to act in his or her interest or to take his or her interests to heart” (p. 2). But can incentives truly whisper to the heart? Michael Taylor decries the baleful consequences, both intellectual and practical, that stem from assimilating all reasoned decision making to the numerical weighing of material incentives and ignoring the role of heartfelt personal and moral commitments.