Good will corrupting: social norms and the trouble of intervention

How are social norms constructed? How do they shape implicit and explicit ‘codes of conduct’? How do they affect social interaction and go on to become the ‘building blocks of social order’ (p. 3)? And how do these codes and norms of social relations become implicated in the structures, institutions and processes of world-making? In Good will corrupting: social norms and the trouble of intervention, Adam Moe Fejerskov addresses these questions and many more as he unpacks the politics of goodwill that underpins development interventions and the way they intersect with the workings of a global order imprinted with histories and legacies of colonial rule and imperialism.This far-reaching book takes as its point of departure the social norms movement, with its foundations in behavioural sciences in the United States. This movement is rooted in the belief that ‘interindividual dynamics’ (rather than the individual) should be the ‘basis for explaining social behavior’ (pp. 36–7). In the US, it was concerned with reducing alcohol consumption in colleges. Yet Fejerskov reveals that its purview was never limited to the laboratory, the offices of the ‘Ivy League professors of psychology, behavioral studies, or game theory’ (p. 67), or the spatial bounds of the college campus. Rather, the social norms movement went on to underpin development interventions and became the basis of ‘doing good’, shaping the work of aid organizations and programmes keen to alter existing norms and ‘nudge’ positive behaviours across communities in the global South.