Ostracism, voice, and exit: The biology of social participation

A bewildering variety of social patterns can be described and analyzed as manifestations of ostracism and social rejection. Ostracism can be viewed as a coerced or involuntary rupture of social bonds, as distinguished from voluntary exit; both appear to be characteristic ways that animals use in relating to other members of the group. Based on Albert O. Hirschman's Exit, Voice and Loyalty , a general theoretical framework can be built on the realization that ostracism is far from a strange aberration—but that its excesses strike most moderns as uncivilized. This analysis presumes that active participation, flight, and bonding are general categories intrinsic to social behavior. It follows that, in different social contexts, the implications of ostracism vary greatly. Modern democratic systems, in which voluntary exit remains a possibility, resemble our hominid past more closely than authoritarian societies that place individuals in the unenviable position of being trapped in silence (with no legitimate right to exercise political voice, yet no possibility of escape). At the risk of Charges of valuative bias, the argument is made that democratic regimes may be—all things equal—closer to the center of our species-typical range of behavior than other kinds of centralized states or governmental systems.