The book addresses the problem of institutionalised order in modern capitalist societies with highly developed division of labour. Via thorough critique and reconstruction of neo institutionalist theory, classical social theories, and critical ideology theory, The Invisible Order introduces the first relational theory of social institutions to explain in detail how individuals end up encountering institutions as objective. Thus synthesising integrative and conflicting social relations, the work calls into question deeply rooted understandings in which society is variously construed as spontaneous equilibrium, solely conflict-driven, or a set of agent-based constructions. It offers a new take on the age-old questions of classical and critical social theory and on the fundamentals of institutional and organisational theory alike. This timely and useful relational examination of social institutions reveals how complex societies can keep functioning even though their orders are constantly contradicted by multiple disordering endeavours and tendencies.
Author(s): Olli Herranen
Series: Palgrave Studies in Relational Sociology
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 275
City: Cham
Acknowledgements
Contents
About the Author
Abbreviations
List of Figures
List of Tables
Chapter 1: Introduction: In Search of Invisible Order
The Problem of Order
The Structure of the Book
References
Chapter 2: The Relational Structure of Social Institutions
Everything Is Related… So What?
Placing the Structural-Relational Question: Social Facts as Institutions
Conclusion: Institutions as Associations
References
Chapter 3: Institutions in Neo-institutionalism
From Old to New: The Origin of Neo-institutionalism and the Reconciliation Agenda
The Main Forms of Neo-institutionalism
Conclusion: No Reconciliation in Sight
References
Chapter 4: Historical Institutions
Historical Causation
Institutions from the Perspective of Historical Institutionalism
Conclusion: Historical Institutions Reconstructed
References
Chapter 5: Institutions as Ideas
The Ideas Themselves
Ideas with Causal Force
Discursive Institutionalism
Conclusion: Ideas as Lifeworlds of Agents
References
Chapter 6: The Social as a System
Preconditions for the Social System
The Social System
The Cultural and the Personality System
The Integration Compromise and Institutional Change
Conclusion: Theory of Peaceful Reproduction of Society
References
Chapter 7: A Lifeworld as an Institution
Crusoe and Friday ‘in Nucleo’ in the Institutionalisation Process
Trouble in an Island Paradise
The End of the Causal Rope
Beyond the Worldly Dough?
Conclusion: The Social Construction of Reality and Beyond
References
Chapter 8: Capitalist Social Order
The Historical Condition of Capitalism
Defining Capitalism
The System Dimension of Capitalist Conditions: Competitive Relations
The Lifeworld Dimension of Capitalist Conditions: Commodity Fetishism
Conclusion: The Social Condition of Capitalist Production
References
Chapter 9: Ideology in Capitalist Societies
Critical Ideology Theory
The Ideological as an Alienated Socialisation from Above
The Spontaneous Subject
Contradiction, Resistance, and Change
Conclusion: Ideological Institutions of a Capitalist Society
References
Chapter 10: Conclusion: The Invisible Order
References
Index
