How Institutions Think

Author: Mary Douglas
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
ISBN: 9780815602064
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 164

Book Description
Do institutions think? If so, how do they do it? Do they have minds of their own? If so, what thoughts occupy these suprapersonal minds? Mary Douglas delves into these questions as she lays the groundwork for a theory of institutions. Usually the human reasoning process is explained with a focus on the individual mind; her focus is on culture. Using the works of Emile Durkheim and Ludwik Fleck as a foundation, How Institutions Think intends to clarify the extent to which thinking itself is dependent upon institutions. Different kinds of institutions allow individuals to think different kinds of thoughts and to respond to different emotions. It is just as difficult to explain how individuals come to share the categories of their thought as to explain how they ever manage to sink their private interests for a common good. Douglas forewarns us that institutions do not think independently, nor do they have purposes, nor can they build themselves. As we construct our institutions, we are squeezing each other's ideas into a common shape in order to prove their legitimacy by sheer numbers. She admonishes us not to take comfort in the thought that primitives may think through institutions, but moderns decide on important issues individually. Our legitimated institutions make major decisions, and these decisions always involve ethical principles.

How Institutions Think

Author: Paul O'Neill
Publisher: National Geographic Books
ISBN: 0262534320
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
Reflections on how institutions inform art, curatorial, educational, and research practices while they shape the world around us. Contemporary art and curatorial work, and the institutions that house them, have often been centers of power, hierarchy, control, value, and discipline. Even the most progressive among them face the dilemma of existing as institutionalized anti-institutions. This anthology–taking its title from Mary Douglas's 1986 book, How Institutions Think–reconsiders the practices, habits, models, and rhetoric of the institution and the anti-institution in contemporary art and curating. Contributors reflect upon how institutions inform art, curatorial, educational, and research practices as much as they shape the world around us. They consider the institution as an object ofienquiry across many disciplines, including political theory, organizational science, and sociology. Bringing together an international and multidisciplinary group of writers, How Institutions Think addresses such questions as whether institution building is still possible, feasible, or desirable; if there are emergent institutional models for progressive art and curatorial research practices; and how we can establish ethical principles and build our institutions accordingly. The first part, “Thinking via Institution,” moves from the particular to the general; the second part, “Thinking about Institution,” considers broader questions about the nature of institutional frameworks. Contributors include Nataša Petrešin Bachelez, Dave Beech, Mélanie Bouteloup, Nikita Yingqian Cai, Binna Choi and Annette Kraus, Céline Condorelli, Pip Day, Clémentine Deliss, Keller Easterling and Andrea Phillips, Bassam El Baroni, Charles Esche, Patricia Falguières, Patrick D. Flores, Marina Gržinić, Stefano Harney and Fred Moten, Alhena Katsof, Emily Pethick, Sarah Pierce, Moses Serubiri, Simon Sheikh, Mick Wilson

A Time to Build

Author: Yuval Levin
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 1541699289
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 230

Book Description
A leading conservative intellectual argues that to renew America we must recommit to our institutions Americans are living through a social crisis. Our politics is polarized and bitterly divided. Culture wars rage on campus, in the media, social media, and other arenas of our common life. And for too many Americans, alienation can descend into despair, weakening families and communities and even driving an explosion of opioid abuse. Left and right alike have responded with populist anger at our institutions, and use only metaphors of destruction to describe the path forward: cleaning house, draining swamps. But, as Yuval Levin argues, this is a misguided prescription, rooted in a defective diagnosis. The social crisis we confront is defined not by an oppressive presence but by a debilitating absence of the forces that unite us and militate against alienation. As Levin argues, now is not a time to tear down, but rather to build and rebuild by committing ourselves to the institutions around us. From the military to churches, from families to schools, these institutions provide the forms and structures we need to be free. By taking concrete steps to help them be more trustworthy, we can renew the ties that bind Americans to one another.

Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance

Author: Douglass C. North
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521397346
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 164

Book Description
An analytical framework for explaining the ways in which institutions and institutional change affect the performance of economies is developed in this analysis of economic structures.

Think Tanks in America

Author: Thomas Medvetz
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226517292
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 339

Book Description
Over the past half-century, think tanks have become fixtures of American politics, supplying advice to presidents and policy makers, expert testimony on Capitol Hill, and convenient facts and figures to journalists and media specialists. But what are think tanks? Who funds them? What kind of “research” do they produce? Where does their authority come from? And how influential have they become? In Think Tanks in America, Thomas Medvetz argues that the unsettling ambiguity of the think tank is less an accidental feature of its existence than the very key to its impact. By combining elements of more established sources of public knowledge—universities, government agencies, businesses, and the media—think tanks exert a tremendous amount of influence on the way citizens and lawmakers perceive the world, unbound by the more clearly defined roles of those other institutions. In the process, they transform the government of this country, the press, and the political role of intellectuals. Timely, succinct, and instructive, this provocative book will force us to rethink our understanding of the drivers of political debate in the United States.

Institutions in Economics

Author: Malcolm Rutherford
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521574471
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 244

Book Description
This book examines and compares the 'old' institutionalism of Veblen, Mitchell, Commons, and Ayres, with the 'new' institutionalism developed from neoclassical and Austrian sources.

Ideology and International Institutions

Author: Erik Voeten
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 069120733X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 260

Book Description
A new theoretical framework for understanding how social, economic, and political conflicts influence international institutions and their place in the global order Today’s liberal international institutional order is being challenged by the rising power of illiberal states and by domestic political changes inside liberal states. Against this backdrop, Ideology and International Institutions offers a broader understanding of international institutions by arguing that the politics of multilateralism has always been based on ideology and ideological divisions. Erik Voeten develops new theories and measures to make sense of past and current challenges to multilateral institutions. Voeten presents a straightforward theoretical framework that analyzes multilateral institutions as attempts by states to shift the policies of others toward their preferred ideological positions. He then measures how states have positioned themselves in global ideological conflicts during the past seventy-five years. Empirical chapters illustrate how ideological struggles shape the design of international institutions, membership in international institutions, and the critical role of multilateral institutions in militarized conflicts. Voeten also examines populism’s rise and other ideological threats to the liberal international order. Ideology and International Institutions explores the essential ways in which ideological contestation has influenced world politics.

Open Knowledge Institutions

Author: Lucy Montgomery
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262542439
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 177

Book Description
The future of the university as an open knowledge institution that institutionalizes diversity and contributes to a common resource of knowledge: a manifesto. In this book, a diverse group of authors—including open access pioneers, science communicators, scholars, researchers, and university administrators—offer a bold proposition: universities should become open knowledge institutions, acting with principles of openness at their center and working across boundaries and with broad communities to generate shared knowledge resources for the benefit of humanity. Calling on universities to adopt transparent protocols for the creation, use, and governance of these resources, the authors draw on cutting-edge theoretical work, offer real-world case studies, and outline ways to assess universities’ attempts to achieve openness. Digital technologies have already brought about dramatic changes in knowledge format and accessibility. The book describes further shifts that open knowledge institutions must make as they move away from closed processes for verifying expert knowledge and toward careful, mediated approaches to sharing it with wider publics. It examines these changes in terms of diversity, coordination, and communication; discusses policy principles that lay out paths for universities to become fully fledged open knowledge institutions; and suggests ways that openness can be introduced into existing rankings and metrics. Case studies—including Wikipedia, the Library Publishing Coalition, Creative Commons, and Open and Library Access—illustrate key processes.

Understanding Institutions

Author: Francesco Guala
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691171785
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 254

Book Description
A groundbreaking new synthesis and theory of social institutions Understanding Institutions proposes a new unified theory of social institutions that combines the best insights of philosophers and social scientists who have written on this topic. Francesco Guala presents a theory that combines the features of three influential views of institutions: as equilibria of strategic games, as regulative rules, and as constitutive rules. Guala explains key institutions like money, private property, and marriage, and develops a much-needed unification of equilibrium- and rules-based approaches. Although he uses game theory concepts, the theory is presented in a simple, clear style that is accessible to a wide audience of scholars working in different fields. Outlining and discussing various implications of the unified theory, Guala addresses venerable issues such as reflexivity, realism, Verstehen, and fallibilism in the social sciences. He also critically analyses the theory of "looping effects" and "interactive kinds" defended by Ian Hacking, and asks whether it is possible to draw a demarcation between social and natural science using the criteria of causal and ontological dependence. Focusing on current debates about the definition of marriage, Guala shows how these abstract philosophical issues have important practical and political consequences. Moving beyond specific cases to general models and principles, Understanding Institutions offers new perspectives on what institutions are, how they work, and what they can do for us.

The Future of Thinking

Author: Cathy N. Davidson
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262266539
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 317

Book Description
How traditional learning institutions can become as innovative, flexible, robust, and collaborative as the best social networking sites. Over the past two decades, the way we learn has changed dramatically. We have new sources of information and new ways to exchange and to interact with information. But our schools and the way we teach have remained largely the same for years, even centuries. What happens to traditional educational institutions when learning also takes place on a vast range of Internet sites, from Pokemon Web pages to Wikipedia? This report investigates how traditional learning institutions can become as innovative, flexible, robust, and collaborative as the best social networking sites. The authors propose an alternative definition of “institution” as a “mobilizing network”—emphasizing its flexibility, the permeability of its boundaries, its interactive productivity, and its potential as a catalyst for change—and explore the implications for higher education. The Future of Thinking reports on innovative, virtual institutions. It also uses the idea of a virtual institution both as part of its subject matter and as part of its process: the first draft of the book was hosted on a Web site for collaborative feedback and writing. The authors use this experiment in participatory writing as a test case for virtual institutions, learning institutions, and a new form of collaborative authorship. The finished version is still posted and open for comment. This book is the full-length report of the project, which was summarized in an earlier MacArthur volume, The Future of Learning Institutions in a Digital Age.