How to model an institution

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.

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John W. Mohr (Corresponding author)Email:

Harrison C. WhiteEmail:

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John Mohr   is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He received his Ph.D. in sociology at Yale University. He has a longstanding interest in using formal network methods to analyze cultural meaning systems. Along with Roger Friedland he is the organizer of the Cultural Turn Conference series at UCSB and the co-editor of Matters of Culture (Cambridge University Press 2004). He has published a number of articles on the formal analysis of meaning structures. His current research projects include a study of faculty change agents in higher education and the rise of nano-technology as a scientific project. Harrison White   is Giddings Professor of Sociology at Columbia University and most recently author of Identity and Control: How social formations emerge (2008) and Markets from Networks (2002), both from Princeton University Press. He is currently working on a variety of writings around sociology of meaning, including linguistics, with special focus around uncertainty and switchings. White has published numerous articles, both field studies and mathematical analyses of business firms and market operation. He is a founder of the joint doctoral program between sociology, psychology, and the business school at Harvard University and University of Arizona, and has served on the board of directors of an urban system consulting firm.