Were They Pushed Or Did They Jump?

Individual Decision Mechanisms In Education

Diego Gambetta

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9781000011340
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Like few other decisions in life, educational choices must be made by virtually every-one growing up in industrial societies. The consequences of these choices for individual lives are momentous, yet decisions about schooling can be treacherous. They are made during the teen years, at a time when personal preferences are unstable and there is littl

1
The theoretical question

The basic theoretical question-which will provide a regulative idea around which the analysis presented in this book will be organized-can be stated as follows: to what extent can educational behaviour be represented as a product of intentional choice or, conversely, to what extent is it the result of processes which, in one way or another, minimize the scope for a socially meaningful choice at the individual level?

In this chapter I shall outline three major views of the individual agent, which will help in elaborating this question. According to two views, the individual agents are essentially inactive, since they are seen either as constrained by a lack of relevant alternatives or as pushed from behind by causal factors that escape their awareness; whereas in the third view they are regarded as capable of purposive action and of weighing the available alternatives with respect to some future reward. The two former views pertain to the realm of causality, the latter to intentionality. These three approaches have all been applied, often in mutual disregard or opposition, to educational choices as well as to many other choices of social relevance. They raise a great number of problems and are discussed in an equally wide field of literature. In the exposition that follows, therefore, I shall have to be selective and rely partially on the work of others who have already simplified the terms of a complex debate.¹

In the first section of this chapter I shall introduce the three approaches: the argument will be kept mainly at a theoretical level, using some examples outside the sociology of education. In the second section the controversy surrounding the three approaches will be considered as it applies to the latter field.

1.1 Three views of the individual agent

1.1.1 The structuralist view

The first view, which has been called structuralist (Elster 1979: 113), considers man’s action as channelled by external constraints which do not leave any substantial room for choice: people would not pick, but would grab what they could. This view has been presented in a variety of ways, only a few of which are theoretically acceptable. The main dividing-line separates the ‘strong’ version of the structuralist approach, which holds this to be a generalized, even ontological State of affairs, from the ‘weak’ one, which underlines its intrinsically contingent nature, the latter being a far more acceptable viewpoint. In other words, the structuralist approach cannot really claim to represent a generalized explanation of human action. At most it may work under particular circumstances.

One of the most extreme and assertive versions is provided by Louis Althusser, for whom subjects are to be seen merely as ‘supports’ of social practices, as their ‘occupants’ and ‘functionaries’ (Althusser & Balibar 1970:180). In Althusser’s vision there is no scope or relevance for beliefs, preferences and intentions, for these are not only pre-empted by constraints as in weaker versions of the structuralist approach, but are also shaped by the structure of society and by its fundamental system of relations of production. Although this view may have leaked out of scholarly circles to achieve some degree of popularity among a number of Marxist militants, it is not on the whole of any great importance in the social sciences. Few people have shaped their analysis of society on the basis of this conception, and even fewer have explicitly acknowledged its theoretical merits. Above all, the various criticisms-the most recent as well as the most lucid of which is provided by Susan James (1985)-have shown the flaws of Althusser’s approach and demolished its inescapable determinism.

A somewhat more common and less assertive-if still unacceptable-version of the structuralist approach, rather than boldly prescribing the theoretical value of ignoring people’s motives for action, takes the pragmatic line of ignoring them de facto. It can be seen as the tendency to focus on the fence rather than on what the cows do within it (Elster 1979: 114). Outstanding examples can be found in certain studies of the labour market, whether these are Marxist in methodology or treat the functioning of the economy as mainly shaped by macro-economic and institutional forces (Gordon 1972; Barbagli 1974; Edwards et al. 1975; Rubery 1978; Rubery and Wilkinson 1981).

For instance, in some of the literature about the Italian labour market and particularly the ‘black economy’, workers tend to be seen as ‘victims’ of particularly nasty features of capitalism, or at least as passive components in the demand side of the economy, while their active behaviour and motivations are completely neglected.² People’s behaviour in general seems to be mechanically deducible from the structure of the economy and from the decisions of government and employers.³ I am obviously not suggesting that this is never the case, but rather that the social sciences should not neglect the more intriguing question of why people put up with such conditions, in this case why workers accept and very often actively look for jobs in the ‘black economy’. The structuralist view usually avoids the problem of making hypotheses about models of man, although of course it must be based on assumptions about how people behave and what they want. These assumptions, which are often left implicit, seem sometimes obvious, for example the view that no one spends more money than his budget permits or that unemployment is always an unpleasant State; however, as we shall see later, there are cases when these assumptions, once spelled out, can be highly problematic and at least worthy of specific attention.

If we focus instead on a weaker version of the structuralist approach we can conceivably State that-under given circumstances in the outside world as it presents itself to the individual-it is possible that either (1) the feasible set of alternatives is reduced to one outstanding option only or that (2) the available alternatives are not alternatives at all, that is to say that with respect to the important attributes each altemative is like the other(s), so that they tend to collapse into one outstanding course of action only, as in (1).

The first statement is exemplified by Marx’s words that proletarians ‘are forced to sell themselves’ (Marx & Engels 1930:34). It seems difficult to understand this kind of statement as literally meaning that there is no choice. Unless one is directly treated as an object, notional alternatives always exist. It seems more plausible to interpret them as referring to the lack of minimally acceptable alternatives. If the alternatives are of an extreme kind, such as death, starvation, prison and the like, we can plausibly expect most people to choose to avoid them and we can sensibly describe their choices as largely forced, even though many counter-examples in which people choose the ‘worst’ alternative suggest that this statement cannot be taken literally.

The second statement stresses the lack of relevant rather than of acceptable alternatives. It can be exemplified by offering someone the old choice of which way they would like to die; this underlines paradoxically that, in given circumstances, one’s preferences can only be expressed about details while the final outcome of each alternative remains unchanged and out of one’s control. A good sociological example is provided by Blackburn & Mann (1979). These authors, with respect to the choice of occupation of manual workers in England, show that the scope for choice and meaningful trade-offs among jobs that are available for unskilled workers is very restricted and that according to a range of attributes all jobs look very much the same.

In both cases-i.e. whether there are no acceptable alternatives or whether those that there are do not differ substantially from one another-the number of relevant alternatives and the extent to which they can be sensibly distinguished very much depend on how (and by whom) the problem is defined, namely on which alternatives are thought to be unacceptable and on which attributes are thought to be insufficiently discriminating to make alternatives really distinct. Thus, for instance, if we consider the selling of our labour power as the crucial social event, then the amount for which it is sold and whether we sell it as school-leavers or as university graduates, in so far as we are selling it, will become relatively irrelevant. On the other hand, even choosing how to die can be very important if what we value is not merely the final result.

The judgements of the actors involved and those of the outside observers are often in conflict with one another, as in the case of Blackburn and Mann, whose workers do not subjectively perceive the lack of relevant differences among the alternatives at their disposal and ‘no matter how restricted the choice, they treat it as real’ (p. 288). Whenever such conflict occurs the observers are tempted to postulate the presence of some degree of ‘false consciousness’, whereby some causal mechanism prevents people from seeing that the choice is not quite ‘real’.⁴ The result, in other words, is that of combining the structuralist view with some of the difficult notions related to the second general view-the pushed-from-behind view-which we shall consider below.

In conclusion, to say that there is no choice seems to be too easy a way out, and I believe one should not treat actors as structural puppets: the structuralist view-by focusing on the constraints of behaviour rather than on behaviour itself-tends, so to speak, to shortcircuit the agent and attribute, often implicitly, a zero weight a priori to his preferences, expectations, and decision mechanisms. True, there are cases where the circumstances themselves-rather than the view-shortcircuit the agent, but such cases can be detected, and the conclusion that there is no choice reached, only after empirical work has been able to show the presence neither of acceptable nor of relevant alternatives. To adopt such a conclusion is not logically incompatible with considering individuals as potentially rational actors. It does not constitute an alternative to the rational theory of action: the point being that, in some but not all circumstances, the agents may have very little chance to show their rationality in action, since constraints channel their behaviour to a large extent.

1.1.2 The pushed-from-behind view

The second general view arrives at the same conclusion, namely that individual decisions are of minimal importance. It does so, however, by a different route, and makes much stronger assumptions about human nature. Broadly speaking, it assumes that a given piece of behaviour follows from causes, either social or psychological, that are opaque to the individual consciousness and, by acting behind their backs, push the agents towards a given course of action. Many views can be fitted in with this general conception: from unconscious behaviour to conditioned reaction to stimuli, from ‘traditiona’ behaviour to internalization of social norms and constraints. In one way or another an individual’s actions are seen as propelled (Elster 1979:137; Elster 1978:161) by forces that are not within the immediate reach of his or her conscious State. The point here is not to examine how many alternatives there really are for the individual; he or she does not weigh them and choose, but tends to select the course of action according to some inner mechanism, either behaving as if the feasible set were more restricted than it is objectively or, more frequently, acting independently of it.⁵

In other words, here the agents do not clearly perceive the alternatives they face-however many there may be-but are moved by causes that act independently of their awareness. According to the structuralist view it is largely irrelevant whether people are or are not aware of the constraints governing them, whereas the present approach assumes some limitation to consciousness: it is the inverse of Sartre’s words that ‘II n’y a pas de Finertie dans la conscience.’

The standard social example of this approach is perhaps that of people becoming criminals as a consequence of ‘subculture-specific norms that more or less inexorably force some individuals into crime’ (Elster 1979: 137).⁶ Within sociology, which is the area where the pushed-from-behind view has been developed most explicitly, the father of this approach is probably Emile Durkheim. Although there is no general agreement as to how much emphasis he places on the individual as an intentional actor, it seems fair to trace to some of his writings the origins of the passive view of homo sociologicus,⁷ which has been mainly though not exclusively developed by functionalism, notably through the work of Parsons.⁸ As A. Giddens has recently pointed out,⁹ ‘a common tendency of many otherwise divergent schools of sociological thought is to adopt the methodological tactic of beginning their analysis by discounting agents’ reasons for their action… in order to discover the “real stimuli” to their activity, of which they are ignorant’.

My point here is that it is not necessarily wrong to think of some forms of behaviour as caused by forces that are not perceived by the subject, but that it would be mistaken to think of all relevant social behaviour as explicable in this way and, even more so, to discount people’s reasons for action a priori. We might conclude that under given circumstances people tend to behave like ‘automata’, but it is not something that can be assumed.¹⁰

Here there is also a logical and perhaps ethical fallacy which deserves to be mentioned: every time outside observers show that somebody else’s behaviour follows from causes that are somehow unknown to the person, they assume at the same time that their view is superior to that of the observed person,¹¹ and this is a very strong assumption indeed. The sole logical ground on which in normal circumstances such an assumption can be justified is of an informative and contingent character, and it does not have a substantive and ontological status. More simply this is only justified if the observers can say that if the observed person had the same amount of information they have, the person would significantly alter his self-knowledge and perhaps modify his behaviour accordingly. In this connection one of the sound reasons that has been suggested as a ground for claiming the contingent superiority of the social scientists’ viewpoint with respect to ordinary people is that they can actually observe a much wider range of behaviour and therefore of variance than ordinary people conceivably can (Marsh 1983).

Binmore¹² has raised a similar criticism in a rather witty manner with respect to behaviourism:

Man does often behave like a laboratory rat and the examination of this type of behaviour is clearly a worthwhile and absorbing activity and to this extent it is possible to have some sympathy with the views of its followers. But to claim that the whole truth can be incorporated within this viewpoint is a travesty. Not only can a man reason, he can also read. In particular he can read the work of Psychologists and modify his behaviour as a result of what he reads there.

Binmore’s argument suggests that the causality affecting ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• List of figures
• Introduction
• 1 THE THEORETICAL QUESTION
• 2 INSTITUTIONAL CONSTRAINTS AND EDUCATIONAL CHOICES
• 3 WERE THEY PUSHED?
• 4 OR DID THEY JUMP?
• Conclusions
• Appendix 1 The high school pupils survey
• Appendix 2 The youth unemployment survey
• Appendix 3 Independent variables
• Appendix 4 Logit models: summary tables
• References
• Index of names
• About the book and author