IS RATIONAL CHOICE THE BEST CHOICE FOR BATES,ROBERT - AN ANTHROPOLOGISTS READING OF BATES WORK

The paper examines critically the contribution of rational choice and Robert Bates to three areas of interest to anthropologists: individual choice and rationality, institutions and culture. While methodological individualism with its focus on narrow material interests can provide situational logic which illuminates the strategy of actors at a point in time, it is not very successful in depicting the social and cultural dynamics of groups over time. Institutions in all their richness are reduced to sets of rules which are largely used as instrumental means and ends of individuals. Finally Bates presents culture as instrumental signs and signals which reduces a wide range of meanings, motivations and social circumstances to a single register of economic logic or material advantage.