Product Review: Getting Your Way: Strategic Dilemmas in the Real World

Life is full of strategic dilemmas. James Jasper identifies many of them in Getting Your Way: Strategic Dilemmas in the Real World, among which figure “The Risk Dilemma,” “The Commitment Dilemma,” “The Dilemma of Dirty Hands,” “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice Dilemma,” and “The Bystander Dilemma. ” Jasper explicates these dilemmas and others in clear and example-filled ways. For example, “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice Dilemma” illustrates how available and relied-upon means begin to shape the ways that one thinks about ends, with tools ultimately overpowering their masters. Many of us may be inclined to deny, shun, or ignore the challenges that these dilemmas pose, even as we are pulled into their force field—only a few of us will leap into the breach. This is because, according to Jasper, in this intelligent, provocative, and original exegesis of strategy as social interaction, “strategic actions—and especially the responses from others—are extremely stressful” (p. 20). I admit to having felt that stress in reading a book on strategy that imagines situations ranging from condominium board meetings to the positioning of nuclear weapons along the borders of nationstates. Jasper tracks strategic action from its inception points, through its articulation of goals and gathering of capacities, all the way to its engagement in specific arenas. The book is a truly sociological recuperation of strategic action, highlighting the work of choice, roles, and positions in complex intersubjective projects, even as strategy’s essential artfulness and emotional resonances (positive and negative) are fully appreciated. Getting Your Way stakes out its territory in explicit contrast to what Jasper calls the alternative social scientific approaches— “gamesters” and “situationalists. ” Gamesters err in their lack of realism, bracketing off an idealized, well-defined game from the social and cultural surround. Jasper makes the absolutely crucial point that “[m]ost social life consists instead of ongoing streams of action, institutionalized, supported by cultural and psychological expectations” (p. 2). Situationalists, in Jasper’s sense, view social life as almost entirely determined by the complex collaborative constructions of reality—with little or no room for choice. He views their concept of “practices” as an implicit kind of strategizing that gets collapsed into structure. Thus, while keen to the ongoing, contingent flow of interactive situations, Jasper nevertheless wants to carve out space (and time) for individuals to identify goals within them and to strategize ways of achieving these goals. The book is particularly strong in its deployment of military examples and issues, even as it identifies strategic interactions in more mundane circumstances. Perhaps this is because Jasper argues that fear of threats is the most common trigger for strategic interaction and threats of violence are among the most feared. Jasper has read widely in the literature on international relations and military strategy and he mobilizes these studies’ findings to analyze the changing roles and perceptions of alliances, the importance of defeats in instigating innovations in military practices, war declarations (and their withholdings), and oscillations of perception regarding the offensive or defensive nature of military weapons. Beyond military arenas, the multifold concepts of resources and goals are also fruitfully identified in a wide array of strategic projects. Resources include reputation, rhetorical abilities, physical resources, money, and brute power. Goals include reputation, sensual pleasures, command, and knowledge. Acknowledging the pragmatists’ refusal of explicit goals in social interaction, Jasper prefers to hold onto the possibility that goals can emerge (and change) as we go along. Time itself is interestingly highlighted in this regard. In the section titled, “Today or Tomorrow,” Jasper argues that time frames can be altered as trade-offs are assessed. In this regard, the short-run is not necessarily always less valuable than the long-run, forcing those of us practiced in delayed gratification to have a more flexible approach to time frames and goals. There is an inevitable tension in this book—strategy is respectfully dissected even as a certain diffidence toward it is maintained (back to the issue of stress). Strategy is saved