Nonlinear thermodynamics and social science modeling: fad cycles, cultural development and identificational slips

American Journal of Economics and Sociology, The, Oct, 1995 by Elias L. Khalil

Roth fails to differentiate abrupt and erratic changes in the membership of a group from the effectiveness of such a group as a revitalization movement. It is true that effectiveness, the central axis of the spiral, could only advance with the rise of the group membership. But such a rise could be the result of a fad which would quickly evaporate. Roth confuses the long-term issue of effectiveness and development with cyclical fads when he labels the rise of group membership as pushing "society far from equilibrium."

There is nothing wrong about borrowing techniques from the natural sciences to model human phenomena. To wit, such borrowing could open new vistas of research (see passim Khalil & Boulding, 1996). The question is rather whether the nonlinear dynamics metaphor borrowed from physics is suited for the study of fluctuation of group membership or for the study of successful revitalization movement? The discontinuity revealed by the nonlinearity metaphor borrowed from physics would become useful once one clarifies the difference between the two social phenomena. At the intuitive level, a revitalization movement, like puritanism or current fundamentalism, cannot spread and persist unless it appeals to some substantive and deep need necessitated by the life of a community. In contrast, gyrating group membership does not refer to what the group stands for because it stems from imitation. Whether someone joins a certain club or church depends, as in the cases of the spread of diseases, on the behavior of his or her immediate relatives, friends, and so on. The utility derived from joining a club is similar to that derived from the wearing of fashionable clothes.

What is considered fashionable arises, in fact, from two separate effects. The two effects, as Malcolm Rutherford (1987) shows, are amalgamated and inadequately differentiated in the well-known concept "conspicuous consumption" advanced by Thorstein Veblen (1979). Veblen's concept combines the effect afforded by "affiliation good" with effect furnished by "status good" (Khalil, 1996). The affiliation effect, stressed by Ken McCormick (1983), entails the bandwagon or demonstration utility arising from the want to emulate the fashionable inclinations of one's affiliation group in order to produce conversation and socialization. The status effect, emphasized by Harvey Leibenstein (1950), involves the snob effect as it relates to the positive sloping demand curve for status goods (Ng, 1987). In this regard, John Rae (1834, 266) anticipated Veblen: The "enjoyment afforded by the [vain] articles consumed must evidently have arisen, almost altogether, from the high price they cost." Rae further wrote:

The things to which vanity seems most readily to apply itself are those of which the use or consumption is most apparent, and of which the [genuine vs. non-genuine] effects are most difficult to discriminate. Articles of which the consumption is not conspicuous are incapable of gratifying this passion. The vanity of no person derives satisfaction from the sort of timber used in the construction of the house he occupies, because the wood work is usually concealed by paint or something else (Rae, 1834, p. 267).