Logic of Collective Action and Common Good
Critical mass and the theories behind it help us to understand aspects of humans as they act and interact in a larger social setting. Certain theories, such as Mancur Olson's Logic of Collective Action or Garrett Hardin's Tragedy of the Commons work to help us understand why humans do or adopt certain things which are beneficial to them, or, more importantly, why they do not. Much of this reasoning has to do with individual interests trumping that which is best for the collective whole, which may not be obvious at the time.
Oliver, Marwell, and Teixeira tackle this subject in relation to critical theory in an 1985 article published in the American Journal of Sociology. In their essay, they define that action in service of a public good as "collective action". "Collective Action" is beneficial to all, regardless of individual contribution. By their definition, then, "critical mass" is the small segment of a societal system that does the work or action required to achieve the common good. The "Production Function" is the correlation between resources, or what individuals give in an effort to achieve public good, and the achievement of that good. Such function can be decelerating, where there is less utility per unit of resource, and in such a case, resource can taper off. On the other hand, the function can be accelerating, where the more resources that are used the bigger the payback. "Heterogeneity" is also important to the achievement of a common good. Variations (heterogeneity) in the value individuals put on a common good or the effort and resources people give is beneficial, because if certain people stand to gain more, they are willing to give or pay more.
Read more about this topic: Critical Mass (sociodynamics)
Famous quotes containing the words logic, collective, action and/or common:
“Somebody who should have been born
is gone.
Yes, woman, such logic will lead
to loss without death. Or say what you meant,
you coward . . . this baby that I bleed.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“One of the weaknesses in the cooperative is that it has never been sufficiently leavened by the imagination. This is a quick-silver faculty, and likely to be a cause of worry to any collective settlement.”
—Edward Dahlberg (1900–1977)
“Strange goings on! Jones did it slowly, deliberately, in the bathroom, with a knife, at midnight. What he did was butter a piece of toast. We are too familiar with the language of action to notice at first an anomaly: the ‘it’ of ‘Jones did it slowly, deliberately,...’ seems to refer to some entity, presumably an action, that is then characterized in a number of ways.”
—Donald Davidson (b. 1917)
“A constitutional statesman is in general a man of common opinions and uncommon abilities.”
—Walter Bagehot (1826–1877)