It Takes Two to Tango: We-Intentionality and the Dynamics of Social Norms

Margaret Thatcher’s “There is no such thing as society” is one of the defining statements of her premiership, describing a world in which only individuals exist and each and everyone needs to take responsibility for their own actions. The spirit of individualism also pervades the social sciences, starting with microeconomic theory but further invading other social sciences in the form of rational choice, exchange or game theory. It is futile to ask which came first, the individualisation of society or the victory of individualism in the social sciences. They feed back into each other like most social phenomena