which cooperative norms are chosen to be enforced and how does this come about?
Pointer from Tyler Cowen. Read her whole post.
Joseph Henrich, in The Secret of our Success, emphasizes the role of prestige. I can think of some examples. Joel Mokyr points out that prestigious scientists, particularly in the UK, were able to change the way people approached many issues during the Enlightenment. Another example would be the way that prestigious people, particularly in arts and entertainment, were able to quickly change attitudes about homosexuality in the United States. Another example would be the way that prestigious people, again particularly in arts and entertainment, began in the 1960s to use four-letter words in public with increasing frequency, leading to the breakdown of the norm against doing so. Another example would be racism and eugenics, which were popular among intellectuals one hundred years ago and became very unpopular more recently.
Another source of changes in norms is general upheaval, in which many people lose wealth or status. I am thinking of the changes in norms that took place in Germany after the first World War, producing political street violence and
Still, it is exceptional for social norms to change rapidly. Many attempts to change social norms are not successful. And I think that you have to allow for a lot of idiosyncratic factors.
A good example to keep in mind is the emergence and influence of the Beatles. I think it is a mistake to view every aspect of that phenomenon as if it were pre-ordained somehow. Beatle haircuts? Quite accidental, if you ask me.
Sure, maybe somebody else comes along and combines gritty R&B instrumentation with vocal harmonies, but do they go to India? Turn drug use into a high-status activity?
Finally, to say that people with prestige determine which norms get enforced invites the question: how do certain individuals or classes of people come to have high prestige?
Some of it has to do with their idiosyncratic abilities. Lennon and McCartney had a gift for cultivating pop stardom. Samuelson had a gift for making other economists feel like lesser mortals.
Some of it also has to do with where individuals fit in the entire status cosmos. Lennon and McCartney benefited from disc jockeys and others trying to raise their own status in the nascent world of teenagers listening to transistor radios. Samuelson benefited from young mathematically-oriented economists eager to raise their status within the profession.
In short, I would recommend studying the issue of how people obtain high prestige and how that in turn enables them to affect the larger society.
When thinking about the Beatles, it is forgot how incredible their story really was:
1) They grew from the working class arm-pit of England
2) Spent months playing 7 hour session in working class arm-pit of Germany
3) Played what was considered degenerate American Hill-Billy/Race music. (If you go back to Youtube, they used much worse language.)
4) They an incredible love and ability to play American RnR/R&B. Nobody could play Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Carl Perkins, Buddy Holly and 1960s Girl Groups in the same set. (Even their Elvis and Ray Charles covers were credible!)
It is almost certain another pop group (and not Rolling Stones) would come along and bring the same elements together but like Elvis, their impact would have not been as great. While there was something accidental about the Beatles, there was something special about them as well.
In terms of dangerous language, it is true the level of Four Letter words have diminished a lot while the usage of racial slang has completely become taboo. (I grew up in 1970s working class Maryland the and the usage of N*****, “G***”, and even in the 1980s “F** were consider acceptable language.)
I don’t think the origins of prestige are all that mysterious, mostly having to do with power very broadly conceived, and the usually accurate instinctive perception that one is better off signaling affiliation with those who posses that power than with those who don’t.
A much more interesting and important question is how is prestige (status, respect, etc.) *distributed*. This is related to the distribution of income, but also distinct and, I’d argue, of even higher social importance, and the prestige distribution has probably become even more unequal and skewed than income has over the last 40 years.
“Another example would be the way that prestigious people, particularly in arts and entertainment, were able to quickly change attitudes about homosexuality in the United States.”
Did they? Or because attitudes were changing, they got the room they needed to reveal their preferences without being ruined or without being subject to more pressure than they could stand? Fewer Rock Hudsons and Liberaces. After all, England had Noel Coward and Ivor Novello – yet, at the height of their carreers homossexualism was plain, old illegal. Evidently, putting beloved faces upon the generic gay, immigrant, Muslim or whatever must have some influence on how those groups are seen, but if there isn’t some basic sympathy to begin with, all you get is disgraced public personalities.