What Makes Collective Goods a Shared Concern?

Annette Schnabel
Additional contact information
Annette Schnabel: Institut für Soziologie, Universität Bielefeld, Germany, annette.schnabel@mail.uni-bielefeld.de

Rationality and Society, 2006, vol. 18, issue 1, 5-34

Abstract: When dealing with collective phenomena, rational choice theories (RCT) focus mainly on the collective good problem. However, the question of how a collective good becomes a shared concern has not been considered up to now. This article demonstrates theoretical possibilities to answer this question within the frame of reference of RCT. It is argued that issues become shared ones if actors adapt socially shared situational definitions and valuations (e.g. ideologies). This can be understood as a rational choice between several options that provide individual benefits. Such an adaptation occurs only under particular circumstances that can be derived from RCT. At the same time, rational actors influence and shape situational definitions and valuations during the process of adapting them.

Keywords: collective goods; framing; ideology; rational choice; social movements (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1043463106060151 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:ratsoc:v:18:y:2006:i:1:p:5-34

DOI: 10.1177/1043463106060151

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Rationality and Society
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().