Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-r5fsc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T21:51:29.007Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Not by rules or choice alone: a pragmatist critique of institution theories in economics and sociology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 2008

ANTTI GRONOW
ANTTI GRONOW*
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology, University of Helsinki, Finland
*
*Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The article discusses institutional theories in economics and sociology. The discussion adopts W. Richard Scott's classification into regulative, normative, and discursive theories. A fourth alternative, habitual institutionalism, is also presented because of the problems encountered with the other theories. Pragmatically inclined habitual institutionalism presents a consistent theory of action wherein conscious action is derived from habitual action, which is also the basis of institutionalization. In addition, habitual institutionalism portrays human rationality more extensively than economists and sociologists have traditionally done. For these reasons, the difficulties associated with other institutional theories can be avoided.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Institutional Economics , Volume 4 , Issue 3 , December 2008 , pp. 351 - 373
Copyright
Copyright © The JOIE Foundation 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Aranson, Peter H. (1998), ‘The New Institutional Analysis of Politics’, Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics, 154: 744–753.Google Scholar
Beckert, Jens (2002), Beyond the Market: The Social Foundations of Efficiency, Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Beckert, Jens (2003), ‘Economic Sociology and Embeddedness: How Shall We Conceptualize Economic Action?’, Journal of Economic Issues, 37: 769–787.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berger, Peter L. and Luckmann, Thomas ([1966] 1995), The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Bogdan, Radu J. (1994), Grounds for Cognition: How Goal-Guided Behavior Shapes the Mind, Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Bogdan, Radu J. (2003), Minding Minds: Evolving a Reflexive Mind by Interpreting Others, Cambridge, MA and London: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre (2000), Pascalian Meditations, Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Brette, Olivier (2003), ‘Thorstein Veblen's Theory of Institutional Change: Beyond Technological Determinism’, European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 10: 455–477.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brinton, Mary C. and Nee, Victor (eds) (1998), The New Institutionalism in Sociology, New York: Russel Sage Foundation.Google Scholar
Camic, Charles (1986), ‘The Matter of Habit’, American Journal of Sociology, 91: 1039–1087.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Camic, Charles (1987), ‘The Making of a Method: A Historical Reinterpretation of the Early Parsons’, American Sociological Review, 52: 421–439.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Denzau, Arthut T. and North, Douglass C. (1994), ‘Shared Mental Models: Ideologies and Institutions’, Kyklos, 47: 3–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dewey, John (1910), The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy: And Other Essays in Contemporary Thought, New York: Henry Holt.Google Scholar
Dewey, John (1922), Human Nature and Conduct, New York: Henry Holt.Google Scholar
DiMaggio, Paul J. and Powell, Walter W. (1991), ‘Introduction’, in Powell, Walter W. and DiMaggio, Paul J. (eds), The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, pp. 1–38.Google Scholar
Durkheim, Emile (1933), The Division of Labor in Society, Glencoe: The Free Press.Google Scholar
Eggertsson, Thráinn (1990), Economic Behavior and Institutions, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ensminger, Jean (1998), ‘Anthropology and the New Institutionalism’, Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics, 154: 774–789.Google Scholar
Feldman, Martha S. and Pentland, Brian T. (2003), ‘Reconceptualizing Organizational Routines as a Source of Flexibility and Change’, Administrative Science Quarterly, 48: 94–118.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Field, Alexander James (1981), ‘The Problem with Neoclassical Institutional Economics: A Critique with Special Reference to the North/Thomas Model of Pre-1500 Europe’, Explorations in Economic History, 18: 174–198.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fontana, Andrea, Tilman, Rick, and Roe, Linda (1992), ‘Theoretical Parallels in George H. Mead and Thorstein Veblen’, Social Science Journal, 29: 241–259.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Giddens, Anthony (1986), The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration, Cambridge:Polity Press.Google Scholar
Granovetter, Mark (1985), ‘Economic Action and Social Structure: The Problem of Embeddedness’, American Journal of Sociology, 91: 481–510.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Greif, Avnir (2006), Institutions and the Path to the Modern Economy: Lessons from Medieval Trade, New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gronow, Antti (2008), ‘The Over- or the Undersocialized Conception of Man? Practice Theory and the Problem of Intersubjectivity’, Sociology, 42: 243–259.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haack, Susan (1993), Evidence and Inquiry: Towards Recostruction in Epistemology, Oxford and Malden, MA: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Heiskala, Risto (2003), Society as Semiosis: Neostructuralist Theory of Culture and Society, Frakfurt am Main: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Heiskala, Risto (2007), ‘Economy and Society: From Parsons through Habermas to Semiotic Institutionalism’, Social Science Information, 46: 243–272.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heritage, John (1984), Garfinkel and Ethnomethodology, Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Hodgson, Geoffrey M. (2001), How Economics Forgot History: The Problem of Historical Specifity in Social Science, London and New York: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hodgson, Geoffrey M. (2004), The Evolution of Institutional Economics: Agency, Structure and Darwinism in American Institutionalism, London and New York: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hodgson, Geoffrey M. (2006), Economics in the Shadow of Darwin and Marx: Essays on Institutional and Evolutionary Themes, Cheltenham and Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hodgson, Geoffrey M. (2007), ‘Meanings of Methodological Individualism’, Journal of Economic Methodology, 14: 211–226.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hodgson, Geoffrey M. and Knudsen, Thorbjorn (2006), ‘Why We Need a Generalized Darwinism, and Why Generalized Darwinism is Not Enough’, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 61: 1–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Joas, Hans (1993), Pragmatism and Social Theory: Chicago and London, University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Joas, Hans (1996), The Creativity of Action, Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Kilpinen, Erkki (2000), The Enormous Fly-Wheel of Society: Pragmatism's Habitual Conception of Action and Social Theory, Research Reports No. 23, University of Helsinki: Department of Sociology.Google Scholar
Kilpinen, Erkki (2003), ‘Does Pragmatism Imply Institutionalism?’, Journal of Economic Issues, 37: 291–304.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kilpinen, Erkki (2004), ‘How to Fight the “Methodenstreit”? Veblen and Weber on Economics, Psychology and Action’, International Review of Sociology, 14: 413–432.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kloppenberg, James T. (1996), ‘Pragmatism: An Old Name for Some New Ways of Thinking?’, Journal of American History, 83: 100–138.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lakoff, George and Johnson, Mark (1999), Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and its Challenge to Western Thought, New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Liebhafsky, E. E. (1993), ‘The Influence of Charles Sanders Peirce on Institutional Economics’, Journal of Economic Issues, 27: 741–754.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McCormick, Ken (2006), Veblen in Plain English: A Complete Introduction to Thorstein Veblen's Economics, New York: Cambria Press.Google Scholar
Mead, George Herbert (1934), Mind, Self, and Society: From the Standpoint of a Social Behaviorist, Edited by Morris, C.W., Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Meyer, John W. and Rowan, Brian (1991), ‘Institutionalized Organizations: Formal Structure as Myth and Ceremony’, in Powell, Walter W. and DiMaggio, Paul J. (eds), The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, pp. 41–62.Google Scholar
Nee, Victor (1998), ‘The Sources of the New Institutionalism’, in Brinton, Mary C. and Nee, Victor (eds), The New Institutionalism in Sociology, New York: Russel Sage Foundation, pp. 1–16.Google Scholar
Nee, Victor and Ingram, Paul(1998), ‘Embeddedness and Beyond: Institutions, Exchange, and Social Structure’, in Brinton, Mary C. and Nee, Victor (eds), The New Institutionalism in Sociology, New York: Russel Sage Foundation, pp. 19–45.Google Scholar
North, Douglass C. (1990), Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Parsons, Talcott ([1937] 1949), The Structure of Social Action: A Study in Social Theory with Special Reference to a Group of Recent European Writers, New York: The Free Press of Glencoe.Google Scholar
Perraton, Jonathan and Tarrant, Iona (2007), ‘What Does Tacit Knowledge Actually Explain?’, Journal of Economic Methodology, 14: 353–370.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Quellette, Judith A. and Wood, Wendy (1998), ‘Habit and Intention in Everyday Life: The Multiple Processes by Which Past Behavior Predicts Future Behavior’, Psychological Bulletin, 124: 54–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reckwitz, Andreas (2002). ‘Toward a Theory of Social Practices: A Development in Culturalist Theorizing’, European Journal of Social Theory, 5: 243–263.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rizza, Robert (2006), ‘The Relationship between Economics and Sociology: The Contribution of Economic Sociology, Setting out from the Problem of Embeddedness’, International Review of Sociology, 16: 31–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rochberg-Halton, Eugene (1986), Meaning and Modernity: Social Theory in the Pragmatic Attitude, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Rutherford, Malcolm (1996), Institutions in Economics: The Old and the New Institutionalism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Scott, W. Richard (2001), Institutions and Organizations (2nd Edition), Thousand Oaks: Sage.Google Scholar
Selznick, Philip (1966), TVA and the Grass Roots: A Study in the Sociology of Formal Organization, New York: Harper&Row.Google Scholar
Sperber, Dan (1996), Explaining Culture: A Naturalistic Approach, Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Sugden, Robert (1995): ‘The Coexistence of Conventions’, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 28: 241–256.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Swedberg, Richard and Granovetter, Mark (2001), ‘Introduction to the Second Edition’, in Swedberg, Richard and Granovetter, Mark (eds), The Sociology of Economic Life (2nd Edition), Boulder: Westview Press, pp. 1–28.Google Scholar
Turner, Brian S. (1991), ‘Preface to the New Edition’, in Parsons, Talcott, The Social System, London: Routledge, pp. xviii–xlv.Google Scholar
Veblen, Thorstein (1914), The Instinct of Workmanship and the State of the Industrial Arts, New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Veblen, Thorstein (1919), The Place of Science in Modern Civilization and Other Essays, New York: Huebsch.Google Scholar
Velthuis, Olav (1999), ‘The Changing Relationship between Economic Sociology and Institutional Economics: From Talcott Parsons to Mark Granovetter’, American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 58: 629–649.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Whitford, Josh (2002), ‘Pragmatism and the Untenable Dualism of Means and Ends: Why Rational Choice Theory Does Not Deserve Paradigmatic Privilege’, Theory and Society, 31: 325–363.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Williamson, Oliver E. (1985), The Economic Institutions of Capitalism: Firms, Markets, Relational Contracting, New York and London: The Free Press.Google Scholar
Wood, Wendy, Quinn, Jeffrey M., and Kashy, Deborah A. (2002), ‘Habits in Everyday Life: Thought, Emotion, and Action’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83: 1281–1297.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed