Showing papers in "Theory and Society in 2008"

Approaching adulthood: the maturing of institutional theory

Abstract: I summarize seven general trends in the institutional analysis of organizations which I view as constructive and provide evidence of progress in the development of this perspective. I emphasize corrections in early theoretical limitations as well as improvements in the use of empirical indicators and an expansion of the types of organizations included and issues addressed by institutional theorists.

Bourdieu and organizational analysis

Abstract: Despite some promising steps in the right direction, organizational analysis has yet to exploit fully the theoretical and empirical possibilities inherent in the writings of Pierre Bourdieu. While certain concepts associated with his thought, such as field and capital, are already widely known in the organizational literature, the specific ways in which these terms are being used provide ample evidence that the full significance of his relational mode of thought has yet to be sufficiently apprehended. Moreover, the almost complete inattention to habitus, the third of Bourdieu’s major concepts, without which the concepts of field and capital (at least as he deployed them) make no sense, further attests to the misappropriation of his ideas and to the lack of appreciation of their potential usefulness. It is our aim in this paper, by contrast, to set forth a more informed and comprehensive account of what a relational – and, in particular, a Bourdieu-inspired – agenda for organizational research might look like. Accordingly, we examine the implications of his theoretical framework for interorganizational relations, as well as for organizations themselves analyzed as fields. The primary advantage of such an approach, we argue, is the central place accorded therein to the social conditions under which inter- and intraorganizational power relations are produced, reproduced, and contested.

The citizen-consumer hybrid: ideological tensions and the case of Whole Foods Market

Abstract: Ethical consumer discourse is organized around the idea that shopping, and particularly food shopping, is a way to create progressive social change. A key component of this discourse is the “citizen-consumer” hybrid, found in both activist and academic writing on ethical consumption. The hybrid concept implies a social practice – “voting with your dollar” – that can satisfy competing ideologies of consumerism (an idea rooted in individual self-interest) and citizenship (an ideal rooted in collective responsibility to a social and ecological commons). While a hopeful sign, this hybrid concept needs to be theoretically unpacked, and empirically explored. This article has two purposes. First, it is a theory-building project that unpacks the citizen-consumer concept, and investigates underlying ideological tensions and contradictions. The second purpose of the paper is to relate theory to an empirical case-study of the citizen-consumer in practice. Using the case-study of Whole Foods Market (WFM), a corporation frequently touted as an ethical market actor, I ask: (1) how does WFM frame the citizen-consumer hybrid, and (2) what ideological tensions between consumer and citizen ideals are present in the framing? Are both ideals coexisting and balanced in the citizen-consumer hybrid, or is this construct used to disguise underlying ideological inconsistencies? Rather than meeting the requirements of consumerism and citizenship equally, the case of WFM suggests that the citizen-consumer hybrid provides superficial attention to citizenship goals in order to serve three consumerist interests better: consumer choice, status distinction, and ecological cornucopianism. I argue that a true “citizen-consumer” hybrid is not only difficult to achieve, but may be internally inconsistent in a growth-oriented corporate setting.

How to model an institution

Abstract: Institutions are linkage mechanisms that bridge across three kinds of social divides—they link micro systems of social interaction to meso (and macro) levels of organization, they connect the symbolic with the material, and the agentic with the structural. Two key analytic principles are identified for empirical research, relationality and duality. These are linked to new research strategies for the study of institutions that draw on network analytic techniques. Two hypotheses are suggested. (1) Institutional resilience is directly correlated to the overall degree of structural linkages that bridge across domains of level, meaning, and agency. (2) Institutional change is related to over-bridging, defined as the sustained juxtaposition of multiple styles within the same institutional site. Case examples are used to test these contentions. Institutional stability is examined in the case of Indian caste systems and American academic science. Institutional change is explored in the case of the rise of the early Christian church and in the origins of rock and roll music.

Technology and institutions: living in a material world

Abstract: This article addresses the relationship between technology and institutions and asks whether technology itself is an institution. The argument is that social theorists need to attend better to materiality: the world of things and objects of which technical things form an important class. It criticizes the new institutionalism in sociology for its failure to sufficiently open up the black box of technology. Recent work in science and technology studies (S&TS) and in particular the sociology of technology is reviewed as another route into dealing with technology and materiality. The recent ideas in sociology of technology are exemplified with the author's study of the development of the electronic music synthesizer.

Social exclusion and social capital: A comparison and critique

Abstract: Social exclusion and social capital are widely used concepts with multiple and ambiguous definitions. Their meanings and indicators partially overlap, and thus they are sometimes used interchangeably to refer to the inter-relations of economy and society. Both ideas could benefit from further specification and differentiation. The causes of social exclusion and the consequences of social capital have received the fullest elaboration, to the relative neglect of the outcomes of social exclusion and the genesis of social capital. This article identifies the similarities and differences between social exclusion and social capital. We compare the intellectual histories and theoretical orientations of each term, their empirical manifestations and their place in public policy. The article then moves on to elucidate further each set of ideas. A central argument is that the conflation of these notions partly emerges from a shared theoretical tradition, but also from insufficient theorizing of the processes in which each phenomenon is implicated. A number of suggestions are made for sharpening their explanatory focus, in particular better differentiating between cause and consequence, contextualizing social relations and social networks, and subjecting the policy ‘solutions’ that follow from each perspective to critical scrutiny. Placing the two in dialogue is beneficial for the further development of each.

Bringing Bourdieu’s master concepts into organizational analysis

Abstract: This article argues that while elements of Pierre Bourdieu’s sociology are increasingly employed in American sociology, it is rare to find all three of Bourdieu’s master concepts—habitus, capital, and field—incorporated into a single study. Moreover, these concepts are seldom deployed within a relational perspective that was fundamental to Bourdieu’s thinking. The article “Bourdieu and Organizational Analysis” by Mustafa Emirbayer and Victoria Johnson is a welcomed exception, for it draws on all three of Bourdieu’s pillar concepts to propose a relational approach to the study of organizations. It both reframes existing thinking about organizations, particularly from the neo-institutional and resource dependence schools, and indicates new directions for research in organizations to move. This paper evaluates their contribution calling attention to its many strengths and suggesting a few points that need future clarification and elaboration.

Bourdieu and organizations: the empirical challenge

Abstract: Emirbayer and Johnson critique the failure to engage fully Bourdieu’s relational analysis in empirical work, but are weak in giving direction for rectifying the problem. Following their recommendation for studying organizations-in-fields and organizations-as-fields, I argue for the benefits of analogical comparison using case studies of organizations as the units of analysis. Doing so maximizes the number of Bourdieusian concepts that can be deployed in an explanation. Further, it maximizes discovery of the oft-neglected links among history, competition, resources, sites of contestation and struggle, relations of dominance and domination, and reproduction of inequality. Perhaps most important, case studies can identify the connection between macro-, meso-, and micro-level factors in the formation and shaping of habitus. To support my claims empirically, I draw from case study research (Vaughan The challenger launch decision: Risky technology, culture, and deviance at NASA, 1996; Signals and interpretive work: The role of culture in a theory of practical action. pp. 28–56, 2002) that verifies Bourdieu’s as the “Theory of Practical Action” that supplies the micro-level component to the new institutionalism (DiMaggio and Powell, Introduction. pp. 1–41, 1991).

Two main problems in the sociology of morality

Abstract: Sociologists often ask why particular groups of people have the moral views that they do. I argue that sociology’s empirical research on morality relies, implicitly or explicitly, on unsophisticated and even obsolete ethical theories, and thus is based on inadequate conceptions of the ontology, epistemology, and semantics of morality. In this article I address the two main problems in the sociology of morality: (1) the problem of moral truth, and (2) the problem of value freedom. I identify two ideal–typical approaches. While the Weberian paradigm rejects the concept of moral truth, the Durkheimian paradigm accepts it. By contrast, I argue that sociology should be metaphysically agnostic, yet in practice it should proceed as though there were no moral truths. The Weberians claim that the sociology of morality can and should be value free; the Durkheimians claim that it cannot and it should not. My argument is that, while it is true that factual statements presuppose value judgments, it does not follow that sociologists are moral philosophers in disguise. Finally, I contend that in order for sociology to improve its understanding of morality, better conceptual, epistemological, and methodological foundations are needed.

Erotic habitus: toward a sociology of desire

Abstract: In the sociology of sexuality, sexual conduct has received extensive theoretical attention, while sexual desire has been left either unattended, or, analyzed through a scripting model ill-suited to the task. In this article, I seek to address two related aspects of the problem of desire for sociology—what might roughly be referred to as a micro-level and a macro-level conceptual hurdle, respectively. At the micro-level, the sociology of sexuality continues to reject or more commonly gloss the role of psychodynamic processes and structures in favor of an insulated analysis of interactions and institutions. At the macro-level, the sociology of sexuality has yet to provide an analysis of the structural antecedents of sexual ideation. Scripting theory, grounded in a social learning framework, cannot provide a proper conceptual resolution to these problems but, rather, reproduces them. By contrast, I argue that an effective sociological treatment of desire must incorporate a more penetrating conception of the somatization of social relations found in Bourdieu’s notion of ‘embodiment’ and his corresponding analysis of habitus. In this vein, I develop the sensitizing concepts erotic habitus and erotic work, and apply these to a cross-section of feminist and sociological literatures on desire. I argue that a framework grounded in embodiment, but complimented by scripting theory, provides a promising lead in the direction of an effective sociology of desire.

Language and social ontology

Abstract: Tondokument des Vortrags von Prof. Dr. John Searle, gehalten am 2012-05-30. John Searl war auf Einladung des germanistischen Sprachwissenschaftlers Prof. Dr. Andreas Gardt an der Universitat Kassel.

The poverty of organizational theory: Comment on: “Bourdieu and organizational analysis”

Abstract: American organizational theorists have not taken up the call to apply Bourdieu’s approach in all of its richness in part because, for better or worse, evidentiary traditions render untenable the kind of sweeping analysis that makes Bourdieu’s classics compelling. Yet many of the insights found in Bourdieu are being pursued piecemeal, in distinct paradigmatic projects that explore the character of fields, the emergence of organizational habitus, and the changing forms of capital that are key to the control of modern organizations. A number of these programs build on the same sociological classics that Bourdieu built his own theory on. These share the same lineage, even if they were not directly influenced by Bourdieu.

Reshaping the social contract: emerging relations between the state and informal labor in India

Abstract: As states grapple with the forces of liberalization and globalization, they are increasingly pulling back on earlier levels of welfare provision and rhetoric. This article examines how the eclipsing role of the state in labor protection has affected state-labor relations. In particular, it analyzes collective action strategies among India's growing mass of informally employed workers, who do not receive secure wages or benefits from either the state or their employer. In response to the recent changes in state policies, I find that informal workers have had to alter their organizing strategies in ways that are reshaping the social contract between state and labor. Rather than demanding employers for workers' benefits, they are making direct demands on the state for welfare benefits. To attain state attention, informal workers are using the rhetoric of citizenship rights to offer their unregulated labor and political support in return for state recognition of their work. Such recognition bestows informal workers with a degree of social legitimacy, thereby dignifying their discontent and bolstering their status as claim makers in their society. These findings offer a reformulated model of state-labor relations that focuses attention on the qualitative, rather than quantitative, nature of the nexus; encompasses a dynamic and inter-dependent conceptualization of state and labor; and accommodates the creative and diverse strategies of industrial relations being forged in the contemporary era. Since the late 1990s, a literature designed to examine the variable effects of "globalization" has grown exponentially in the social sciences. 1 Within this literature, several scholars have bolstered the significance of globalization by arguing that the economic policies and the social forces that integrate national economies are

Experts, ideas, and policy change: the Russell Sage Foundation and small loan reform, 1909–1941

Abstract: Between 1909 and 1941, the Russell Sage Foundation (RSF) was actively involved in crafting and lobbying for policy solutions to the pervasive problem of predatory lending. Using a rich assortment of archival records, I build upon political learning theory by demonstrating how institutional conditions and political pressures – in addition to new knowledge gained through scientific study and practical experience – all contributed to the emergence and development of RSF experts’ policy ideas over the course of this 30-year period. In light of these findings, I suggest that policy ideas and political interests are mutually constitutive, and that the notion that ideas must be shown to operate independent of interests in order to “prove” that they matter in policymaking is misguided. Furthermore, I discuss the implications of the remarkable success of RSF’s policy proposals for current understandings of institutional change. In particular, I argue that the passage of RSF’s controversial Uniform Small Loan Law in 34 states suggests that political actors’ collective agency can produce significant policy reforms in a context of normal policymaking without the intervention of major destabilizing events.

Towards a historical sociology of constitutional legitimacy

Abstract: This article has two primary objectives First, it sets out the methodological argument that the conventional antinomy between normative and sociological approaches to questions of state legitimacy depends on a series of false constructions, and that normative and sociological – or specifically historical–sociological – analyses of states and the processes by which they obtain legitimacy can be (and ought to be) mutually reinforcing This argument hinges on the claim that historical sociology should renounce some of its common presuppositions regarding the coercive functions of state power and reformulate itself as a normative social science, identifying and promoting models of statehood likely to obtain legitimacy in modern differentiated societies Second, it sets out the more substantive argument that the legitimization of states can be observed both as an evolutionary or adaptive dimension of state formation and as a process of theoretical self-reflection in which the societies where states are located construct and refine the most adequate form for the transmission of the power they designate as political In this respect, the article questions common assumptions about politics and legitimacy and makes a case for a change of paradigm in the analysis of these concepts Through this change of paradigm, politics itself and the methods used for securing legitimacy for politics are constructed as abstracted articulations of a society’s own needs and exigencies The article borrows elements from the systemic-functionalist sociology of Niklas Luhmann to develop the argument In this context, the article also uses historical case studies to outline a theory of constitutions and constitutional rights This theory explains how constitutions and constitutional rights help to generate legitimacy for states by enabling modern political systems, both normatively and functionally, to reflect and stabilize their position in society, to control the volume of politics in a society, and to elaborate socially adequate techniques for applying and restricting political power The article concludes by suggesting that historical–sociological analyses of the functions of rights and constitutions can provide a key to proposing both normatively and sociologically founded models of legitimate statehood

Theorizing the institution: foundations, duality, and data

Abstract: Although a central construct for sociologists, the concept of institution continues to elude clear and full specification. One reason for this lack of clarity is that about 50 years ago empirical researchers in the field of sociology turned their gaze downward, away from macro-sociological constructs in order to focus their attention on middle-range empirical projects. It took almost 20 years for the concept of the institution to work its back onto the empirical research agenda of mainstream sociologists. The new institutional project in organizational sociology led the way. Since then, scholars in this tradition have achieved a great deal but there is still much more to accomplish. Here, future directions for research are considered by reviewing how the concept of the institution has come to be treated by mainstream philosophers, sociologists of science and technology studies, and social network theorists.

Becoming citizens of empire: Albanian nationalism and fascist empire, 1939–1943

Abstract: This article uses the case of Albanian nationalism during the period of Italy’s occupation of Albania (1939–1943) to challenge prevailing conceptions of nationalism that define it primarily as a political doctrine that espouses national self-rule. Using archival research, the article discusses the nationalist discourse of Albania’s pro-Italian political and cultural elites during Italian domination and examines the discursive strategies employed by these elites in reconciling nationalism with foreign domination. Among other techniques, the article shows how both empire and fascism’s claim to universality enabled such reconciliation. More fundamentally, the article shows how nationalism’s historical power does not primarily lie in the enunciation of a political doctrine of national self-rule, but rather its constitution of the “inner” cultural sphere of the nation around the problem of split temporality, in which tradition and modernity co-exist disharmoniously. The resolution of this cultural problem requires the exercise of state power within both the political and cultural realms, a solution that Albanian nationalists saw in empire and fascism. A small race, left in a truncated state of only one million, surrounded by enemies and in an envious geographic location, could not survive without reliance on the force and protection of a friendly nation. History, reason and patriotism counseled Albanians that before the European clash, they rely on the Italian people, and therefore it was necessary, reasonable and secure for our redemption and national development that Albania enter into a personal union with Italy under the blessed Dynasty of Savoy. Tomori,

Social closure in American elite higher education

Abstract: Elite college admissions exemplify processes of social closure in which status-group conflict, organizational self-interest, the strategic use of cultural ideals of merit, and broader social trends and contingent historical events interweave to shape institutional power in the United States. The Chosen, Jerome Karabel’s monumental study of the history of college admissions at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton from 1900 to 2005, offers a political sociology of elite recruitment and a cultural and social history of the definition of merit that has guided these three schools and shaped much current thinking about college admissions. As Max Weber reminded us, the very definition of cultural ideals of an epoch bear the stamp of elite group domination: not cultural ideals but cultural interests and their strategic uses guide institutional power. The book provides an impressive empirical demonstration of that proposition: it identifies four different definitions of merit as organizational gatekeeping tools that have guided Harvard, Yale, and Princeton over the last hundred years and shows how these definitions were molded by status-group conflict and organizational interests. This essay outlines the central arguments of Karabel’s book; it identifies key contributions for our understanding of the history, culture, organizational interests, and politics of these three institutions; it highlights the social closure framework guiding the analysis; and it reflects on a fundamental ambiguity in Karabel’s thinking about meritocratic ideals as governing principles for modern stratified societies.

Religious nationalism and the making of the modern Japanese state

Abstract: This article explores the role of religious nationalism in the making of the modern Japanese state. We describe a process of adaptation featuring bricolage, as an alternative to imitation accounts of non-Western state formation that privilege Western culture. The Meiji state, finding it could not impose Shinto as a state religion, selectively drew from religio-nationalist currents and Western models for over two decades before institutionalizing State Shinto. Although we see some similarities to Europe, distinctive features of the Japanese case suggest a different path to modernity: a lack of separation between state and religion, an emphasis on ritual and a late (and historically condensed) development of popular religious nationalism, which was anchored by State Shinto disciplinary devices including school rituals and shrines deifying the war dead.

Jurassic technology? Sustaining presumptions of intersubjectivity in a disruptive environment

Abstract: While the problem of intersubjectivity has motivated a great deal of sociological research, there has been little consideration of the relationship between intersubjectivity-sustaining practices and the physical environment in which these are enacted. The Museum of Jurassic Technology (MJT) is a strategic site for exploring this relationship. With its labyrinthine layout and bewildering exhibits, the MJT provides a natural “breaching experiment” in which concrete elements of the space disrupt normal competencies for sustaining presumptions of intersubjectivity. Using ethnographic data on visitor interaction, this article specifies two disruptive aspects of the physical environment and identifies four methods of repair on which visitors rely to reestablish presumptions of intersubjectivity. The analysis of spatially situated processes of intersubjective disruption and repair in an extreme case such as the MJT is a first step toward “emplacing” the intersubjectivity problem in more everyday settings.

Polarization and convergence in academic controversies

Abstract: Not many years ago both anthropology and political science experienced internal disputes—in the first case over the publication of a book accusing a noted anthropologist of endangering indigenous subjects and in the second over the nature of the field. While the first led to polarization, the second produced a partial convergence and modest reforms. This article examines the two processes and seeks the key mechanisms that produced those differences, closing with a call for broadening the study of contentious politics to cover non-public controversies like the ones examined in this article.

Sequence and strategy in the secession of the American South

Abstract: Secession and the civil war that followed are often regarded as having exclusively structural determinants, expressed in political cleavages. From this point of view, these events are explained, variously, by the rise of abolitionism in the North or sectionalism in the Union or some cultural attribute of the South. This focus gets us part of the way in understanding the events that led to secession, the creation of a Southern Confederacy, and civil war, but this interpretation says too little about precisely how these events and processes played out. Secession occurred in time, sequentially and dynamically, with one state leading and other states following. This article offers a processual specification of the conditions of Southern secession and the creation of a Southern Confederacy. It does so by focusing on mobilization within the vanguard state, South Carolina, and the consequences of this activity for other Southern states.

The once and future information society

Abstract: In the late twentieth century, many social scientists and other social commentators came to characterize the world as evolving into an “information society.” Central to these claims was the notion that new social uses of information, and particularly application of scientific knowledge, are transforming social life in fundamental ways. Among the supposed transformations are the rise of intellectuals in social importance, growing productivity and prosperity stemming from increasingly knowledge-based economic activity, and replacement of political conflict by authoritative, knowledge-based decision-making. We trace these ideas to their origins in the Enlightenment doctrines of Saint Simon and Comte, show that empirical support for them has never been strong, and consider the durability of their social appeal.

The social meaning of money and intimacy: Review of Viviana A. Zelizer, The Purchase of Intimacy

Abstract: There has always been fear that the market's penetration into every aspect of people's daily lives will corrupt the ethical and moral foundation of our society. However, Viviana A. Zelizer in her latest book, The Purchase of Intimacy, reassures us that economic activities and intimate relations can be well mingled. Such mixing only becomes dangerous when third-party organizations are involved and lead to the abuse of power. To some extent, The Purchase of Intimacy continues the same theme from the author's earlier book, The Social Meaning of Money: Pin Money, Paychecks, Poor Relief and Other Currencies (1994, New York, NY: Basic Books), that society is not transformed into a commodity market, and economic transactions are filled with social meanings designated by people involved in them. The book starts with a legal case dating from the 1840s in which the heirs of a land owner, Samuel Miller, sued his emancipated slave and sexual partner, Patsy, for the possession of promissory notes given to her by the deceased. The case pivoted on the definition of Patsy's relationship to Miller at the time of the gift: whether she was a slave, a concubine, or a wife (though the Catahoula jury, applying the more liberal laws of Missouri, declared the gift legal, the Supreme Court of Louisiana repealed the initial verdict, and ruled in favor of the heirs in condemnation of interracial concubinage). Zelizer goes on to consider more recent cases of compensation disputes among relatives of the victims in the 9/11 tragedy, revealing that the legal system constantly gets involved in situations where economic transactions and intimate relations intersect. She then poses three sets of questions that the book attempts to answer: when and how do people intertwine economic transactions with intimate relations and with what consequences for third parties; why and how do they create elaborate stories and