SOCIOLOGY 133

COOPERATION & COLLECTIVE ACTION

SPRING 2006

Professor	Peter Kollock
Office	102 Haines Hall
Email	kollock@ucla.edu

TA:   Angela Jamison ajamison@ucla.edu

TA:  David Cort dcort@ucla.edu

CLASS WEBSITE

READINGS:   There is one book required for this course: The Evolution of Cooperation by Robert Axelrod (available at the ASUCLA bookstore). All other readings will be made available online. Readings are to be done prior to the week in which they are discussed.

GRADING:  I will be using a non-competitive grade scale. In other words, the grade you get will not depend on how well others in the class have done. Your grade is based on your mastery of each of the required tasks; you decide for yourself how hard you want to work. I am willing to give every person in this class an "A" if she or he masters the material. Your performance in this course will be based on two non-overlapping exams, two projects, and participation in discussion sections.  The class assignments will be weighted as follows:

Assignment	Points	Due Date
PROJECT 1	30	Week 4: Thursday, April 27
EXAM 1	60	Week 5: Thursday, May 4
PROJECT 2	60	Week 11: Wednesday, June 14 (3 pm)
EXAM 2	60	Week 11: Wednesday, June 14 (3-5 pm)
PARTICIPATION	30
TOTAL	240

INTRODUCTION

Week 1

    The Problem of Cooperation

Reading

• The Problem of Cooperation. (Axelrod 1984, pp. 3-24)

DILEMMAS INVOLVING TWO ACTORS

Week 2

    The Prisoner's Dilemma

Reading

• The Success of TIT FOR TAT in Computer Tournaments. (Axelrod 1984, pp. 27-54)
• The Chronology of Cooperation. (Axelrod 1984, pp. 55-69)

Week 3

   Solving Social Dilemmas I

Reading

• The Live-and-Let-Live System in Trench Warfare in World War I. (Axelrod 1984, pp. 73-87)
• How to Choose Effectively. (Axelrod 1984, pp. 109-123)
• How to Promote Cooperation. (Axelrod 1984, pp. 124-141)

Week 4

   Beyond Tit For Tat – Generosity and Forgiveness

Reading

• ‘An Eye for an Eye Leaves Everyone Blind’: Cooperation and Accounting Systems. (Kollock 1993)
  
  

· Optional: Cooperation in an Uncertain World: An Experimental Study. (Kollock 1993)

· Optional: How to Overcome the Detrimental Effect of Noise in Social Interaction: The Benefits of Generosity. (Van Lange et al. 2002)

Week 5

    Beyond Tit For Tat – Reputations

Reading

• The Social Structure of Cooperation. (Axelrod 1984, pp. 145-168)
• The Production of Trust in Online Markets. (Kollock 1999)

[Midterm Study Guide]

[Midterm Sample Answers]

DILEMMAS INVOLVING MANY ACTORS

Week 6

    The Tragedy of the Commons

Reading

• The Tragedy of the Commons. (Hardin 1968)
• The Tragedy of the Commons Revisited. (Crowe 1969)
  
  

· Optional: Free Riders En Route to Disaster. (Edney 1979)

· Optional:  Living on a Lifeboat. (Hardin 1974)

Week 7

    Solving Social Dilemmas II

Reading

• Social Dilemmas. (Orbell and Dawes 1981)
• Social Dilemmas: The Anatomy of Cooperation. (Kollock 1998)
• Effects of Group Identity on Resource Use in a Simulated Commons Dilemma. (Kramer and Brewer 1984)
  
  

· Optional:  Solving Social Dilemmas. (Messick and Brewer 1983)

Week 8

    Case Studies – Fish and Crime

Reading

• A Malaysian Tragedy of the Commons. (Anderson 1987)
• The Lobster Fiefs Revisited: Economic and Ecological Effects of Territoriality in the Maine Lobster Industry. (Acheson 1987)
• Mafia: The Price of Distrust. (Gambetta 1988)
  
  

· Optional: The Industry of Protection: The Market (Gambetta 1993)

· Optional:  Analyzing Long-Enduring, Self-Organized, and Self-Governing Common-Pool Resources. (Ostrom 1990)

Week 9

   Case Studies – Linux and Communes

Reading

• The Economies of Online Cooperation: Gifts and Public Goods in Cyberspace. (Kollock 1999)
• Communes and the Logic of the Commons. (Bullock and Baden 1977)
  
  

· Optional:  Managing the Virtual Commons: Cooperation and Conflict in Computer Communities.   (Kollock and Smith 1996)

CONCLUSION

Week 10

    What is to be done? 
    Community and Cooperation

Reading

• Commons and Community: The Idea of a Public. (Boulding 1977)
• Psychology, Ideology, Utopia, and the Commons. (Fox 1985)
  
  
  

[Term Paper Guidelines]

[Sample Paper 1 – Water]

[Sample Paper 2 – Antibiotics]

[Sample Paper 3 – Class Gift]

[Sample Paper 4 – Blood Bank]

[Writing Guide]

[Final Study Guide]

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeing new landscapes, but in having new eyes. – Marcel Proust

Ask yourself what you need to know to make this the kind of world you would like to live in. Demand that your teachers teach you that. – Pytor Kropotkin

What should students expect from a teacher? Students should expect nothing less than freedom from a teacher. – Thich Nhat Hanh

Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and immoral. It is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all. The old law of an eye for an eye leaves everyone blind. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding; it seeks to annihilate rather than convert. Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love. It destroys community and makes brotherhood impossible. It leaves society in monologue rather than dialogue. Violence ends by defeating itself. It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers. – Martin Luther King, Jr.