Civilization, Art, and Accounting: The Royal Danish Theater -- An Enterprise Straddling Two Institutions
Neoinstitutionalists concern themselves with the mechanisms that legitimate social practices, the social embeddedness of human arrangements, & the particular historical character of institutionalized practices. But neoinstitutionalism is not the only possible approach to social conduct. Drawing from Anthony Giddens's (eg, 1976) understanding of temporality & of the relationship between individual agency & institutionalized patterns of social conduct, the neoinstitutionalist approach is extended & qualified. These insights are then applied to a discussion of the constitution of two institutions, art & accounting, in the Royal Theater in Copenhagen, Denmark. It is argued that the dialect between art & accounting dramatizes the contradictory nature of modern civilization. 2 Tables. M. Maguire