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28 November 2009

Cookbooks and constitutions

Slightly off-topic insights from Adam Gopnik:

All this is true, and yet the real surprise of the cookbook, as of the constitution, is that it sometimes makes something better in the space between what's promised and what's made...Between the rule and the meal falls the ritual, and the real ritual of the recipe is like the ritual of the law; the reason the judge sits high up, in a robe, is not that it makes a difference to the case but that it makes a difference to the clients. The recipe is, in this way, our richest instance of the force and the power of abstract rules.

There's a research agenda somewhere in those sentences, I believe. Rules lead to rituals and yet rules are simply codified rituals. A small point, perhaps a bit obvious, yet it speaks more broadly to social science research. And highlights where qualitative scholars get it right: looking for correlations between rules (or structure?) and outcomes often averages out the most intriguing part of the story.

(hat tip, MR)

Posted by Matt Blackwell at November 28, 2009 2:47 PM