CULTURAL STUDIES DISCOVERS E-T-T-S^(*)

For Book Review No. 44, a quick look at Talk to the Hand, by Lynne Truss. Buried inside yet another lament about cell-phone gabblers, voice-mail hell, corporate "service improvements" that make consumers miserable, yobbish youth, reality television, and rampant individualism is an attempt at a case for respecting the common good. What she really does, however, is make the case that understanding social institutions is a task better left to economists than to cultural-studies wordsmiths. Toward the end she quotes a passage from The Society of Individuals.

The idea that in "reality" there is no such thing as a society, only a lot of individuals, says about as much as as the statement that there is in "reality" no such thing as a house, only a lot of individual bricks, a heap of stones.

Sure, but by what principles did a builder choose to use bricks rather than sticks, and did those same principles govern the selection of land for houses rather than coffee shops, and did those same principles lead to the emergence of neighborhoods or of cities? It is through such facile analogies that lame ideas such as "social construction" propagate.

There is a better passage earlier in the book.

Politeness is a signal of readiness to meet someone half-way; the question of whether politeness makes society cohere, or keeps other people safely at arms length, is actually a false opposition. Politeness does both, and that is why it is so frightening to contemplate losing it. Suddenly, the world seems both alien and threatening -- and all because someone's mother never taught him to say, "Excuse me" or "Please". There is an old German fable about porcupines who need to huddle together for warmth, but are in danger of hurting each other with their spines. When they find the optimum distance to share each other's warmth without putting each other's eyes out, their state of contrived cooperation is called good manners.

Put precisely, institutions evolve to reduce transaction costs. Incivility raises transaction costs. Incivility is inefficient. Per corollary, voice-mail hell is inefficient.

^(*)Explained here. Author Lynne Truss's predilection for four-word, four-syllable titles precludes that as her title, which is, however, a Springer show quotation.