Norms and Values: The Role of Social Norms as Instruments of Value Realization

Abstract

This collection increases the understanding of how norms work (and fail to work) in aligning people's behavior with the values they are socially supposed to serve, suggesting how norms should and could change in light of changing circumstances. The resources of analytical philosophy, evolutionary economics, empirical political science, social psychology, and sociology have been combined to address a range of theoretical questions: the conceptual and empirical relations between norms and values; the internal aspect of norms; the evolution, maintenance, and alteration of norms; norms, voluntary control, and guidance; norms and the emotions; norms and irrationality; the role of 'deficient' norms; and the social embedding of norms and values. The editors' ambition revolves around the desire to develop a unified account of the bridging functions of norms, employing a perspective that is both philosophical and social scientific at one and the same time. The distinctive feature of the contributions lies in the multi-level and multidisciplinary approach to the phenomenon of normative solutions to the problem of 'bridging' between values and conduct. The book comprises papers and comments that were presented and discussed at the conference "Norms and Values" at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research (ZiF), held at Bielefeld University in May, 2008. Show more