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This book presents an experiential, aesthetic-affective approach to the study of institutions. Drawing on institutional sociology, hermeneutics, phenomenology and process philosophy, it conceptualises institutions as collective experiences with their own self-promoting and self-propelling powers. Instead of seeing institutional emergence, change and decline as the result of actors interests and manipulations, this book re-establishes the importance of factors beyond human design and intervention. Drawing on process theory, it shows how ideas, norms and values can form self-stabilising configurations that affect people without conscious realisation. It complements current thinking about institutions by showing how institutions constitute people long before people constitute them. With the help of authors as diverse as Antonio Damasio, A.N. Whitehead, J.W. von Goethe and Max Weber, Elke Weik crafts a perspective that allows us to understand institutions as aesthetic and affective powers in their own right. This book is for researchers interested in process theory, institutional and organisational studies, hermeneutics, and aesthetics.

Cover -- Contents -- List of Figures and Tables -- Notes on Contributors -- 1 Introduction -- 2 Institutional Forgetting/Forgetting Institutions: Space and Memory in Secure Forensic Psychiatric Care -- 3 Disgust and the Institutions of Cleanliness and Purity in Organizations -- 4 Don't Be Unhappy, You Can Be Perfect! The Institutionalization of Aesthetic Surgery -- 5 Recursiveness: Relations between Bodies, Metaphors, Organizations and Institutions -- 6 Incorporating Embodiment -- Index

Much has been written in institutionalist theory about the need to address and conceptualise action within its theoretical framework. For conceptual as well as political reasons, understanding how agency is related to institutions is indispensable to the study of institutions. In this paper, I will take the creative action theory developed by the German sociologist Hans Joas (1996) in his book "The Creativity of Action" and apply it to some unresolved problems in institutionalist literature. I have chosen Joas because he represents, in my view, one of the most sophisticated action theories currently available in sociology. Joas argues against rational actor models and bases his action theory on four concepts: creativity, situation, corporeality and sociality. If applied to institutionalist theory I believe his theory, centred on the notion of creativity, could help fight the pervasive rational-cognitive bias in institutional analysis, add more depth to concepts already discussed (such as skilled agents), resolve hitherto unresolved issues (such as the paradox of embedded agency), and open up some new avenues of thought (such as the inclusion of the corporeality of actors or institutional ecstasy).

Why and how do institutions endure? The most characteristic feature of institutions—their longevity—seems to be a neglected topic in current institutional analysis, which overwhelmingly is conducted as an analysis of institutional change. This article, in contrast, attempts to answer some basic questions about institutional endurance and reproduction, most notably how institutional reproduction can be distinguished from institutional endurance, how institutions manage to "bind" time and space, and which role structures "out of time and space" play in this. I explore the processual nature of three theories institutionalist authors draw on (Berger and Luckmann's theory of social construction, Giddens's structuration theory, and Bourdieu's theory of field and habitus) to identify elements and explanations of endurance. I then elaborate on these insights by introducing Roger Friedland's notion of institutional substance and ideas from the process philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead.

Much has been written in institutionalist theory about the need to address and conceptualise action within its theoretical framework. For conceptual as well as political reasons, understanding how agency is related to institutions is indispensable to the study of institutions. In this paper, I will take the creative action theory developed by the German sociologist Hans Joas (1996) in his book "The Creativity of Action" and apply it to some unresolved problems in institutionalist literature. I have chosen Joas because he represents, in my view, one of the most sophisticated action theories currently available in sociology. Joas argues against rational actor models and bases his action theory on four concepts: creativity, situation, corporeality and sociality. If applied to institutionalist theory I believe his theory, centred on the notion of creativity, could help fight the pervasive rational-cognitive bias in institutional analysis, add more depth to concepts already discussed (such as skilled agents), resolve hitherto unresolved issues (such as the paradox of embedded agency), and open up some new avenues of thought (such as the inclusion of the corporeality of actors or institutional ecstasy). ; Publisher Version

In this article, I propose a middle way between current process and substance theorizing as I argue that both 'pure' views are fraught with theoretical problems. I base my proposal on the ontologies of Aristotle and A.N. Whitehead, who both maintain that being and becoming are equally important for a comprehensive analysis of change processes. Drawing on their insights, I develop a conceptual frame that distinguishes between change and becoming, and proposes to use the pairs of potentiality-actuality and activity-relationality as notions that are less fraught with conceptual baggage and more relevant empirically than the distinction between substance and process.