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• Sunday, May 11, 2008 05:46 PM

  @LWM

  This slim volume (link at sig) was written by my dissertation supervisor and mentor, a guy named Michael Taylor who was well known in some very small circles but invisible outside them. He started out as a math prof at Essex, did another PhD in political philosophy at Yale, and came to the US later (much to my benefit). At Essex, he lived on a commune 20k or so outside of town and ran to and from class every day. Great guy (for a Brit). (Just kidding, Rowan). He had a very strong influence on me, and we had some great conversations about 'nested communities' within hierarchical organizations (like the army).

  His previous book, "Anarchy and Cooperation" (later reprinted as "The Possibility of Cooperation"), was a technical and largely game theoretic examination of cooperative collective action. This one has more history and anthropology added in, and its more accessible (though still kind of turgid).

  Taylor was also part of the circle of scholars who developed the 'social capital' idea first articulated by Glenn Loury, formalized by James Coleman and then monetized (:>) by Robert Putnam. The crowd included Douglass North and a handful of other notables who gathered under a grant that Putnam facilitated. Coleman died shortly after they started meeting.

  I don't think Taylor was a big believer in 'social capital', or even anarchy, by the tail end of his career, but it was another piece of the puzzle (along with transactions costs, for example) that he was trying to wrestle with.

  The first book is out of print, but this one is still kicking. Recommend you give it a gander ...

  —quickstrategy Read quickstrategy's other letters
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