From: Nobuhiro Hiwatari
>
> Date: 2012/08/25
>
> Reading somewhat tersely the posts and thus probably
missing the main
> point, I cannot but feel like I am looking at a group
of people who
> are huddled around a combustion engine engine
wondering what good it
> does.

To Prof. Hiwatari--Great image--something like this?
http://www.cartoonstock.com/newscartoons/cartoonists/tm
c/lowres/tmcn2188l.jpg
And in the spirit of cartooning each others'
approaches--culturalist
vs. rational choice--I must be the one in the hat.

And I much agree with what I take to be your point: a theory must be evaluated as a function of what you want to explain, or what you are willing to accept as having "explained" a given set of circumstances.

But I am losing some of my resolve in reading Prof.
McKean's
explanations: I thought it was anthropology, not political science or economics, that sought to reveal the underlying logic of social behavior, at least as long as we understand that logics or rationalities--in the plural, as always--are not exhausted by the ends-means utilitarianism that are too often assumed in dastardly perversions of rational choice theory.

And of course, all of us natives are "rational;" the trick is to define which rationality is at work, when and how.

David Slater
Sophia U.