Practice discovered organized norm diffusion before theory named it

Evidence

Melching’s key insight — that the Tostan program was effective not because of the information it transmitted but because of the deliberative process it facilitated — is the practitioner-side articulation of Bicchieri’s theoretical account. The chapter is significant for the history of norm-change theory because it demonstrates that the organized-diffusion mechanism was discovered empirically by a practitioner working in a specific cultural context, then subsequently recognized by social scientists as the practical expression of game-theoretic predictions. — , The Rod and the Child, 10755

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Bicchieri’s game-theoretic account of social norms and the Tostan material earlier in this book’s norm-change arc. — connects to: Mengmu’s three moves prefigure modern developmental psychology by centuries — , The Rod and the Child: A Global History…, 929; Social movements generate theory rather than merely applying it
• SEED: An article angle: how practitioner discovery often precedes and then gets re-described by formal theory — Tostan as a case study of knowledge flowing bottom-up.

Broader Connections

• Social movements generate theory rather than merely applying it #corroborates (0.75)