Individual Interests and Collective Action: Studies in Rationality and Social Change

This is a collection of the papers published by James Coleman over the past twenty years. Coleman's work has formed a consistent and highly distinguished attempt to find an account of the workings of social and political processes rooted in the rationality of the individual participants. The volume is organised in three parts. The essays in Part I address the problem of social choice as a fundamental problem of the functioning of social systems. Those in Part II deal with relations of power as a crucial aspect of the relations between individual actions and their social consequences. Part III considers the question of the creation of collectivities and the rights that are allocated under them. As a whole, the volume demonstrates the integration and force of the views Coleman has developed.Coleman, James S. is the author of 'Individual Interests and Collective Action: Studies in Rationality and Social Change', published 1986 under ISBN 9780521303477 and ISBN 0521303478.