Sociology 660 Advanced Topics: Conflict,
Change, and Institutions
Spring 2008
Wednesdays, 1:15 – 3:20, SISR 100
Tim Bartley
Office: Ballantine Hall 771
Email: bartleyt@indiana.edu
Phone: 856-1370
Office hours: Mondays 4:00-5:30 or by appointment
Description
Most sociological theory and research revolves around a tension between the durability of existing social arrangements and the possibilities for social change. The goal of this class is to generate some insight into this general issue by thinking about the relationships between social movements, processes of conflict and cooperation (within and among different types of organizations), and durable institutional arrangements.
We will begin by considering some fundamental questions about social change and social movements: Most generally, why is social change so difficult? Why do social structures so often persist, even in the face of discontent and mobilization? Why are social movements and other attempts to bring about change often frustrated? Under what conditions are social movements most likely to succeed? These questions will lead to an engagement with theories of social institutions and research on the emergence, solidification, reproduction, and change of institutional arrangements. Here we will consider a variety of issues, including different conceptions of “institutions,” the formation and evolution of organizational and cultural fields, institutional “effects” on material and cultural outcomes (especially related to stratification/inequality), the ways in which “history matters” in social scientific explanation, the relationships between collective action and institutions, and the processes by which social practices get created, institutionalized, and de-institutionalized.
The first half of the course will develop the theoretical and conceptual tools for analyzing stability and change from an institutionalist perspective. The second half of the course is organized around topics, which will allow us to apply and refine these tools while learning about a number of key institutional domains.
Books (available from the IU Bookstore and TIS):
Kuhn, Thomas S. 1962. The Structure of
Scientific
Revolutions.
Elster, Jon. 1989. Nuts and Bolts for the
Social Sciences.
Powell, Walter W. and Paul DiMaggio, eds. 1991. The
New Institutionalism in Organizational
Analysis.
Scott, W. Richard, Martin Ruef, Peter J. Mendel,
and Carol
A. Caronna. 2000. Institutional Change and Healthcare Organizations.
All other readings will be available electronically, through e-reserves, JSTOR, or Oncourse.
There are several other books that you might consider purchasing. The required sections will be available electronically, but if you plan on doing research in this area, I would recommend finding a copy of the entire book:
Berger, Peter and Thomas Luckmann.
1967. The Social
Construction of Reality.
Steinmo, Sven, Kathleen Thelen, and Frank
Longstreth,
eds. 1992. Structuring
Politics: Historical Institutionalism in Comparative Analysis.
Davis, Gerald F., Doug McAdam, W. Richard Scott,
and Mayer
N. Zald, eds. 2005. Social
Movements and Organization Theory.
Brinton, Mary C. and Victor Nee, eds.
1998. The
New Institutionalism in Sociology. Stanford:
Ostrom, Elinor. 1990. Governing the Commons:
The
Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action.
Knight, Jack. 1992. Institutions and Social
Conflict.
Thelen, Kathleen.
2004. How Institutions
Evolve: The Political Economy of Skills in
Edwards, Richard.
1979. Contested Terrain.
Requirements
1. Get a case.
I believe that the contribution of the theories presented in this class, as well as the differences in competing approaches, become clearest when viewed in relation to a substantive case that you care about. Within the first few weeks of class, you will be asked to develop (or continue) an interest in a particular case—a field, an institution, a movement, an industry, a policy domain, a particular kind of organization, etc.—to learn about during the course of the semester. You will need to locate and read relevant materials, “get your hands dirty” with the details, and grapple with the messiness of the case. I will ask each of you to meet with me in the first few weeks of class to discuss possibilities for your case.
Your case will serve as an empirical referent for your memos (see below) and will become an important part of your final paper (see below). More importantly, I hope this process will help you learn something new about the social world, appreciate the significance of theoretical debates that may initially seem arcane, develop new theoretical insights, and identify promising opportunities for dissertation and thesis research.
A portion of each class will be devoted to informal reports on students’ cases. The idea will be to periodically share what you’ve learned, what you hope to learn, and how it connects to the course—and to get feedback from others as you go.
2. Four memos, 4-5
double-spaced pages each
Each memo should accomplish two things. First, it should provide a concise but rich review of the key arguments of the week’s readings, drawing out the similarities and contrasts between readings. Second, it should develop one of the following types of extensions or applications: (a) an analytical critique, (b) a set of hypotheses about your case that is motivated by one or more of the readings, or (c) a research design relevant to understanding your case that is motivated by one or more of the readings. Please make it clear which of these three options you are pursuing. The memos are due via email by 6 p.m. on Tuesday, so that I can use them to structure Wednesday’s class. Please also turn in a hard copy in class.
On weeks when you do not write a memo, you should submit one or two questions about the readings that can be used to structure class discussions. These may identify issues that need clarification or raise more probing analytical questions. Please send me your question(s) via email by 6 p.m. on Tuesday. I will compile and distribute them to the entire class by Wed. morning at the latest. Please plan to read through the compiled questions before class.
3. Final paper
The final product will be a paper (15-20
double-spaced
pages) that uses the theoretical tools of this class to analyze your
case. Although the paper can take multiple
forms,
it must include a substantial empirical analysis—that is, a
theoretically-informed argument about your case. In
most cases, the “data” for your analysis
will be secondary sources that you will have gathered and read
throughout the
semester. “Primary” data collection is not
required (although it is certainly allowed), but you will be expected
to have
learned enough about your case to come to some reasonable, albeit
tentative,
findings. The paper is due
by 5 p.m. on Friday, May 2nd.
Your final grade will be based on:
Memos (40%)
Final paper (40%)
Quality of class participation (20%)
Part I: Theoretical
and Conceptual Tools
Week 1: Orientation,
introductions
Week 2: The
production of social scientific knowledge
Questions: What do paradigms do? How do they change? To what extent do paradigm shifts represent scientific progress? To what extent are they socially constructed? What makes for a good puzzle? What makes some pieces of research significant and others trivial? Does sociology work in a Kuhnian fashion? Should it? Could it?
Kuhn, Thomas S. 1962. The
Structure of
Scientific Revolutions.
Davis, Murray S. 1971. "That's Interesting! Towards a Phenomenology of Sociology and a Sociology of Phenomenology." Philosophy of Social Science 1:309-344. [oncourse]
Recommended
(for future reference):
Little, Daniel. 1991. Varieties of Social Explanation.
“What’s Wrong with
Sociology?” Special issue of Sociological
Forum 9(2) June 1994 (esp.
contributions by Cole, Davis, Stinchcombe, Molotch)
Week 3: Institutions
Questions: What’s an institution? What does an institutional explanation look like? What’s not an institutional explanation? What’s gained and lost in the attempt to study some domain of social life “as an institution?” What kinds of evidence/data are best suited for studying something “as an institution?”
Martin, Patricia Yancey. 2004. “Gender as a Social Institution” Social Forces 82(4). [muse]
Meyer, John W. 1977. "The Effects of Education as an Institution." AJS 83:55-77. [jstor]
Jepperson, Ron. 1991. “Institutions, Institutional Effects, and Institutionalism.” In Powell and DiMaggio.
Carruthers, Bruce G. and Sarah Babb. 1996. “The Color of Money and the Nature of Value: Greenbacks and Gold in Postbellum America.” AJS 101:1556-91. [jstor]
Recommended:
Durkheim,
Emile. 1995 [1912] The
Elementary Forms of Religious Life.
Collins,
Randall. 1980. "Weber's Last Theory of Capitalism: A
Systematization." ASR 45:925-942.
Polanyi,
Karl. 1944. The
Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time.
Selznick,
Phillip. 1949. The TVA
and the Grassroots.
Sewell,
William H., Jr. 1992. "A Theory of Structure: Duality, Agency, and
Transformation." AJS 98:1-29.
Friedland,
Roger, and Robert R. Alford. 1991. "Bringing Society Back In: Symbols,
Practices, and Institutional Contradictions." In Powell and DiMaggio.
Schneiberg,
Marc, and Elisabeth S. Clemens. 2006. "The Typical Tools for the Job:
Research Strategies in Institutional Analysis." Sociological Theory
24:195-227.
Hodgson,
Geoffrey M. 2006. “What
Are Institutions?” Journal
of Economic Issues 40(1)1-25.
Week 4: Power
and Collective Action
What images of collective action are presented in these readings? Are they contradictory or compatible? What theories of action do the readings employ—that is, what do they assume about human motivation and social context? Are they contradictory or compatible? What is power? What does it mean to take a multi-dimensional view of power? Based on these readings, under what conditions is social change most and least likely to occur?
Gaventa, John. 1982. “Power
and Participation.” From Power
and Powerlessness: Quiescence and Rebellion in an Appalachian Valley.
Elster, Jon. 1989. Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences (Chapters 1-3, 13, 16)
Olson, Mancur. 1965. “A
Theory of Groups and Organizations.”
From The Logic
of Collective Action.
Fantasia, Rick. 1988. “Union
Organizing and Collective Interaction: ‘Like a Thief in the Night.’” From Cultures
of Solidarity.
Recommended:
Marx
and Engels. “The 18th Brumaire of Louis
Bonaparte” and “The German Ideology.” In
The Marx-Engels Reader, edited by Robert C. Tucker.
Weber,
Max. “Class, Status, and Party.” In Economy
and Society vol. 2.
Lukes,
Steven. 1974. Power:
A Radical View.
Hardin,
Russell. 1982. Collective
Action.
Granovetter,
Mark. 1978. "Threshold Models of Collective Behavior." The
American Journal of Sociology 83:1420-1443.
Oliver,
Pamela, Gerald Marwell, and Ruy Teixeira. 1985. "A Theory of the
Critical
Mass. I. Interdependence, Group Heterogeneity, and the Production of
Collective
Action." AJS 91:522-556.
Claus
Offe and Helmut Wiesenthal, 1980. “Two
Logics of Collective Action.” Political Power and Social Theory:
67-115.
Week 5: Organized
Challenges: The Dynamics of Social
Movements
Questions: Under what conditions are social movements most likely to form? Under what conditions are they most likely to succeed? Why don’t they succeed more often? What does social movement “success” mean anyhow? What impacts do material, political, and cultural factors have on social movement mobilization and impact? How and why do social movement organizations change (or fail to change) over time?
Michels, Robert. 1962 [1915]. Political
Parties.
Jenkins, J. Craig and Charles Perrow. 1977. “Insurgency of the Powerless: Farm Worker Movements (1946-1972).” ASR 42:249-268. [jstor]
Ganz, Marshall. 2000. “Resources and Resourcefulness: Strategic Capacity in the Unionization of California Agriculture, 1959-1966.” AJS 105:1003-1062. [jstor]
Kurzman, Charles. 1996. "Structural Opportunity and Perceived Opportunity in Social-Movement Theory: The Iranian Revolution of 1979." ASR 61:153-170. [jstor]
Snow, David, E. Burke Rochford Jr., Steven K. Worden, and Robert D. Benford. 1986. "Frame Alignment Processes, Micromobilization, and Movement Participation." ASR 51:464-481. [jstor]
Recommended:
McAdam,
D. 1982. Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency,
1930-1970.
McAdam,
D., McCarthy, J.D. & Zald, M.N.
1996. “Opportunities, Mobilizing
Structures, and Framing Processes: Toward a Synthetic, Comparative
Perspective
on Social Movements.” In: McAdam, McCarthy, & Zald, eds. Comparative Perspectives on Social Movements.
Minkoff,
Debra. 1999. “Bending
with the Wind: Strategic Change and
Adaptation by Women’s and Racial Minority Organizations.”
AJS
104:1666-1703.
Clemens,
E.S. and
Snow,
David A., Sarah Soule, and Hanspeter Kriesi, eds. 2004. The Blackwell Companion to Social
Movements.
McAdam,
Doug, Sidney Tarrow, and Charles Tilly. 2001. Dynamics of Contention.
New York: Cambridge University Press.
Week 6: Explaining
Persistence: Institutionalization and Path
Dependence
Why don’t things change more often? What roles do habits, vested interests, sunk costs, cultural schema, and overt conflict play in the reproduction of existing social arrangements? What is legitimacy and how does it matter? What would it take to convincingly demonstrate path dependence in a historical trajectory? What tools do these readings provide for explaining the lack of social change and the common frustration of social movements? (If you flip these readings on their head, can you identify conditions under which social change is likely to occur?)
Berger, Peter and Thomas Luckmann.
1967. The
Social Construction of Reality.
Zucker, Lynn. 1991 [1977]. “The Role of Institutionalization in Cultural Persistence.” In Powell and DiMaggio
David, Paul A. 1985. "Clio and the Economics of QWERTY." The American Economic Review 75:332-337. [jstor]
Pierson, Paul. 2004. “Positive Feedback and Path Dependence.” From Politics in Time: History, Institutions, and Social Analysis. Princeton University Press. oncourse
Recommended:
Bourdieu,
Pierre. 1977. Outline
of a Theory of Practice.
Douglas,
Mary. 1986. How
Institutions Think.
Steensland,
Brian. 2006. “Cultural
Categories and the American Welfare
State: The Case of Guaranteed Income
Policy.” AJS 111(5).
Meyer,
John W., and Brian Rowan. 1991 [1977]. "Institutional Organizations:
Formal Structure as Myth and Ceremony."
In Powell and DiMaggio.
Mahoney,
James. 2000. "Path Dependence in Historical Sociology." Theory and
Society 29:507-48.
McGuire,
Patrick, Mark Granovetter, and Michael Schwartz. 1993.
“Thomas Edison and the Social Construction of
the Early Electricity Industry in
Week 7: Explaining
Change: Challengers, Collective
Action, and Institutional Projects
Given the multiple factors promoting inertia in social life, how does institutional change ever occur? How do novel/innovative arrangements get created and institutionalized? Where do collective action and social movements fit into these processes? What is an “organizational field?” How do new fields come into existence? What empirical puzzles and theoretical holes have generated the literatures represented by these readings?
DiMaggio, Paul. 1991. "Constructing an
Organizational
Field as a Professional Project:
Campbell, John L. 2005. "Where
Do We
Stand? Common Mechanisms in Organizations and
Social
Movements Research." Pp. 41-68 in Social Movements and Organization Theory,
edited by Davis, McAdam, Scott, and Zald.
Rao, Hayagreeva,
Calvin Morrill and Mayer Zald. 2000. “Power
Plays: How Social Movements and Collective Action Create New
Organizational
Forms.” Research in
Organizational Behavior 22: 237-81. [oncourse]
Recommended:
Fligstein,
Neil. 2001. "Social Skill and the Theory of Fields." Sociological
Theory 19:105-25.
Armstrong,
Elizabeth A. 2005. "From Struggle to Settlement: The Crystallization of
a
Field of Lesbian/Gay Organizations in San Francisco, 1969-1973." Pp.
161-187 in Social Movements and Organization Theory, edited by
Davis,
McAdam, Scott, and Zald. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Haveman,
Heather, Hayagreeva Rao and Srikanth Paruchuri.
2007. “The winds of change: the
Progressive movement and the bureaucratization of thrift.”
ASR
72:117-42.
Rao,
Hayagreeva. 1998. "Caveat Emptor: The Construction of Nonprofit
Consumer
Watchdog Organizations." AJS 103:912-61.
Morrill,
Calvin. "Institutional Change and
Interstitial Emergence: The Growth of Alternative Dispute Resolution in
American Law, 1965-1995." Unpublished manuscript, available at
http://webuser.bus.umich.edu/organizations/smo/protected/resources/morrill.pdf
Schneiberg,
Marc. 2006. "What's on the Path? Path dependence, organizational
diversity
and the problem of institutional change in the US economy, 1900-1950 "
Socio-Economic Review 4.
Strang, David, and John Meyer. 1993.
"Institutional Conditions for Diffusion." Theory and Society
22: 487-511.
Week 8: Varieties
of Institutional Theory pt.
1—Economic and Rational Choice Approaches
How and why did economists begin to care about institutions? How do they define “institution?” What kinds of problems can institutions solve? Under what conditions are institutional solutions most and least likely to arise? How do the accounts of institutional emergence and evolution presented in these readings compare to the accounts of collective action that we read earlier in the class? How do the accounts of rationality and decision-making compare to those from earlier in the class?
Shepsle, Kenneth. 1989. “Studying institutions: some lessons from rational choice.” Journal of Theoretical Politics 1:131-47. [oncourse]
Elster, Jon. 1989. Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences (Chapters 4-5, 15)
Ostrom, Elinor.
1990. Governing
the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action.
Knight, Jack. 1992. Institutions
and Social Conflict.
Recommended:
Nee,
Victor, and Paul Ingram. 1998. "Embeddedness and Beyond: Institutions,
Exchange, and Social Structure." Pp. 19-45 in The New
Institutionalism
in Sociology, edited by Mary C. Brinton and Victor Nee.
Ingram,
Paul, and Karen Clay. 2000. "The Choice-Within-Constraints New
Institutionalism and Implications for Sociology." Annual Review of
Sociology 26:525-46.
Keohane,
Robert O. 1984. After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the
World
Political Economy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
North,
Douglass C. 1990. Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic
Performance.
Greif,
Avner. 2006. Institutions and the Path to the Modern
Economy. Cambridge
University Press.
Acemoglu,
Daron, Simon Johnson, and James A. Robinson. 2001. "The Colonial
Origins
of Comparative Development: An Empirical Investigation." American
Economic Review 91:1369-1401.
Rodrik,
Dani. 2007. One
Economics,
Many Recipes: Globalization, Institutions, and Economic Growth. Princeton University Press.
Week 9: Varieties
of Institutional Theory pt.
2—Cultural and Historical Approaches
Why have “institutional” theories risen to prominence across the social sciences? (Does this follow a Kuhnian logic?) How much common ground is there between the different traditions of institutionalism? Do they share more than a name? What are the typical concepts and explanatory accounts in each tradition? What kinds of questions tend to get privileged/foregrounded by each tradition? What kinds of questions get neglected?
Paul J. DiMaggio and Walter W. Powell. 1991. “Introduction.” In Powell and DiMaggio.
Hall, Peter A. and Rosemary C.R. Taylor. 1996. "Political Science and the Three New Institutionalisms." Political Studies 44:936-57. [oncourse]
DiMaggio, Paul, and Walter W. Powell. 1991. "The Iron Cage Revisited: Institutional Isomorphism and Collective Rationality in Organizational Fields." In Powell and DiMaggio.
Immergut, Ellen M.
1992. "The
Rules of
the Game: The Logic of Health Policy-Making in France, Switzerland, and
Sweden."
Pp. 57-89 in Structuring Politics: Historical
Institutionalism in Comparative Analysis, edited by Sven Steinmo, Kathleen Thelen,
and
Frank Longstreth.
Recommended:
Scott,
W. Richard. 2001. Institutions and Organizations.
Powell, Walter W.
1991. “Expanding the Scope of
Institutional Analysis.” In Powell and
DiMaggio.
Mizruchi, Mark and Lisa Fein.
1999.
“The Social Construction of Organizational Knowledge: A Study in the Use of Coercive, Mimetic, and
Normative Isomorphism.” Administrative
Science Quarterly 44:653-84.
Clemens, Elisabeth, and James Cook. 1999.
"Politics
and Institutionalism: Explaining Durability and Change." Annual
Review
of Sociology 25:441-66.
Greenwood, Royston, Christine Oliver, Kerstin
Sahlin-Andersson and Roy Suddaby (eds.).
Forthcoming. The
Handbook of Organizational Institutionalism. SAGE.
March,
James G. and Johan P. Olsen. 1983. “The New Institutionalism: Organizational
Factors in Political Life.” APSR
78:734-49.
Thelen,
Kathleen, and Sven Steinmo. 1992. "Historical Institutionalism in
Comparative Politics." Pp. 1-32 in Structuring Politics: Historical
Institutionalism in Comparative Analysis, edited by Steinmo,
Thelen, and Longstreth.
Streeck,
Wolfgang, and Kathleen Thelen. 2005. Beyond Continuity:
Institutional Change
in Advanced Political Economies. New York: Oxford University Press.
Part II: Topics
and Applications
Week 10: The
Rise of the Corporation
How did the corporation become the dominant organizational form of American capitalism? Is this process better explained by efficiency, power, culture, or something else? What kind of evidence would it take to convincingly show that one of these factors mattered more than another? Could things have turned out differently? If so, how? What’s the difference between a functionalist and historicist argument? Are all efficiency theories doomed by functionalist logic?
Williamson, Oliver. 1981. “The Modern Corporation: Origins, Evolution, Attributes.” Journal of Economic Literature 19(4):1537-68.
(feel free to skip pp.1557-1563) [jstor]
Dobbin, Frank.
1999. “Why
the
Economy Reflects the Polity: Early Rail Policy in Britain, France, and
the
United States.” Pp.401-24
in The Sociology of Economic Life,
edited by Mark Granovetter and Richard Swedberg.
Recommended:
Chandler,
Alfred D. 1977. The
Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business.
Coase,
Ronald H. 1937. “The
Nature of the Firm.” Economica
4:386-405.
Marglin,
Stephen. 1974. “What
Do Bosses Do? The Origins and Functions of
Hierarchy in
Capitalist Production.” Review
of Radical Political Economics 6:60-112.
Roy,
William. 1997. Socializing
Capital: The Rise of the Large Industrial Corporation in
Dobbin,
Frank. 1994. Forging Industrial Policy:
The
Perrow,
Charles. 2002. Organizing
Sabel,
Charles and Jonathan Zeitlin. 1985. “Historical Alternatives to Mass
Production.” Past & Present
108:133-176.
Fligstein,
Neil. 1990. The Transformation of Corporate Control. Cambridge,
MA:
Harvard University Press.
Freeland,
Robert F. 1996. “The
Myth of the M-Form? Governance, Consent,
and Organizational Change.” AJS
102:483-526.
Week 11: The
Formation and Evolution of Labor Market
Institutions
What explains the emergence of legalistic/bureaucratic procedures within the workplace? In what historical and political contexts did such procedures emerge? What (if anything) do the institutionalist approaches allow us to see that we would miss if we only followed Edwards’ lead? What is gained and lost in the use of event history analysis and other quantitative models of adoption to analyze institutional processes?
Edwards, Richard.
1979. Contested
Terrain.
Sutton, John R., Frank Dobbin, John W. Meyer, and W. Richard Scott. 1994. "The Legalization of the Workplace." AJS 99:944-971. [jstor]
Edelman, Lauren B., Christopher Uggen, and Howard Erlanger. 1999. "The Endogeneity of Legal Regulation: Grievance Procedures as Rational Myth." AJS 105:406-54. [jstor]
Kelly, Erin and Frank Dobbin. 1998. “How Affirmative Action Became Diversity Management.” American Behavioral Scientist 41:960-84. [proquest]
Recommended:
Burawoy,
Michael. 1979. Manufacturing
Consent.
Sutton,
John R. and Frank Dobbin. 1996. “The Two Faces of Governance: Responses
to
Legal Uncertainty in American Firms, 1955-1985.” ASR 61:
794-811.
Edelman,
Lauren B. 1992. “Legal
Ambiguity and Symbolic Structures:
Organizational Mediation of Civil Rights Law.”
AJS 97:1531-76.
Kelly,
Erin. 2003. "The Strange History of Employer-Sponsored Child Care:
Interested Actors, Uncertainty, and the Transformation of Law in
Organizational
Fields." AJS 109:606-49.
Kalev,
Alexandra, Frank Dobbin, and Erin Kelly. 2006. "Best Practices or Best
Guesses? Assessing the Efficacy of
Corporate Affirmative Action and Diversity Policies." American
Sociological Review 71:589-617.
Nelson,
Robert L., and William Bridges. 1999. Legalizing Gender Inequality:
Courts,
Markets and Unequal Pay for Women in
Week 12: Health Care
What accounts for changes in the structure of American health care in the 20th century? What accounts for stability in these arrangements? What’s an institutional logic and how would you measure it? Through what process does one institutional logic replace another? How does Scott et al.’s account of institutional change compare to those from previous weeks? What would you expect to find if you expanded this study to include cross-national variation?
Scott, W. Richard, Martin Ruef, Peter J. Mendel,
and Carol
A. Caronna. 2000. Institutional Change and Healthcare Organizations.
Recommended:
Starr,
Paul. 1982. The
Social Transformation of American Medicine.
Pescosolido,
Bernice and Jack K. Martin. 2004. “Cultural Authority and the Sovereignty of
American Medicine: The Role of Networks, Class, and Community.” Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law
29:735-756
Steinmo, Sven, and Jon Watts. 1995. "It's the
Institutions, Stupid! Why Comprehensive National Health Insurance
Always Fails
in America." Journal of Health Politics Policy and Law 20:329-372.
Week 13: Models
of Education: Origins and Diffusion
What explains the expansion of mass education? Who are the key actors in this process? In what ways do “institutional factors” seem to matter? Through what mechanisms do models of education diffuse? Does this diffusion affect conditions “on the ground” or is it merely a symbolic process? Are cultural-institutional approaches and those that pay more attention to power and inequality contradictory or complementary?
Bowles, Samuel and Herbert Gintis.
1976. Schooling
in Capitalist America.
Meyer, John W., Francisco O, Ramirez, and Yasemin N. Soysal. 1992. “World Expansion of Mass Education, 1870-1980.” Sociology of Education 65:128-49. [jstor]
Brint, Steven, and Jerome Karabel.
1991. "Institutional Origins and Transformations: The Case of American
Community Colleges." In
Powell and DiMaggio.
Walters, Pamela Barnhouse, Holly J. McCammon, and David R. James. 1990. "Schooling or working? Public education, racial politics, and the organization of production in 1910." Sociology of Education 63:1-26. [jstor]
Ramirez, Francisco O. 1990. "Institutions and interests: A critical comment on Walters, McCammon, and James." Sociology of Education 63:142-144. [jstor]
Walters, Pamela Barnhouse, David R. James, and Holly J. McCammon. 1990. "Accounting for racial inequality in southern education: A reply to Ramirez." [jstor] Sociology of Education 63:145-150.
Recommended:
Collins,
Randall. 1979. The
Credential Society.
Kraatz,
Matthew S., and Edward J. Zajac. 1996. "Exploring the Limits of the New
Institutionalism: The Causes and Consequences of Illegitimate
Organizational
Change." American Sociological Review 61:812-836.
Hallett,
Tim. 2007. "The Myth Incarnate: Recoupling Processes, Turmoil, and
Inhabited Institutions in an Urban Elementary School." Working paper,
Dept. of Sociology, Indiana University.
Shofer,
Evan and John W. Meyer. 2005.
“The Worldwide Expansion of Higher Education
in the Twentieth Century.” ASR
70:898-920.
Owen-Smith,
Jason. 2005. "Trends
and Transitions in the
Institutional Environment for Public and Private Science."
Journal
of Higher Education 49(1-2): 91-117.
Binder,
Amy. 2002. Contentious Curricula: Afro-Centrism and Creationism in
American
Public Schools. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Week 14: Work
and Politics: Cross-national and temporal
variation in
labor markets
How do people get jobs (or how do jobs get people)? What is the mainstream economic view and what are its alternatives? In what ways do labor markets vary cross-nationally? What historical processes have generated diversity in national labor markets? How should the formation and maintenance of these diverse labor market regimes be explained? What are the consequences (for workers, firms, political processes, etc.) of labor market institutions? Drawing on the case of labor markets, what can we say about how institutions change over time? How does Thelen’s account of institutional change compare to those from previous weeks?
Western, Bruce. 1998. "Institutions
and the Labor Market." Pp. 224-243 in The
New
Institutionalism in Sociology, edited by Mary C. Brinton
and Victor Nee. Stanford:
Rothstein, Bo. 1992. "
Labor Market Institutions
and
Working Class Strength." Pp. 33-56 in Structuring Politics:
Historical
Institutionalism in Comparative Analysis, edited by Sven Steinmo,
Kathleen
Thelen, and Frank Longstreth. New York: Cambridge University Press.
[oncourse]
Thelen, Kathleen. 2004. How
Institutions Evolve: The Political Economy of Skills in Germany,
Britain, the
United States, and Japan.
Western, Bruce and Katherine Beckett. 1999. “How Unregulated is the U.S. Labor Market? The Penal System as a Labor Market Institution.” AJS 104(4):1030-60. [jstor]
Recommended:
Brinton,
Mary C. and Takehiko Kariya. 1998. “Institutional Embeddedness in Japanese Labor
Markets.” In Brinton, Mary C. and Victor
Nee, eds. 1998. The
New Institutionalism in Sociology. Stanford:
DiPrete,
Thomas A., and Patricia A. McManus. 1996. "Institutions, Technical
Change,
and Diverging Life Chances: Earnings Mobility in the
Hall,
Peter A., and David Soskice. 2001. "An Introduction to Varieties of
Capitalism." Pp. 1-68 in Varieties of Capitalism: The Institutional
Foundations of Comparative Advantage, edited by Peter A. Hall and
David
Soskice.
Iversen, Torben.
1999. Contested
Economic Institutions : The Politics of Macroeconomics and
Wage Bargaining in Advanced Democracies.
Cambridge University Press.
Kenworthy,
Lane. 2008. Jobs with Equality.
Oxford University Press.
Week 15: Globalization
and Governance
What is “globalization” and how does it shape the emergence, solidification, and change of institutions? How similar are the various conceptions of globalization presented here? How similar are the conceptions of “institutions?” Where do systems of global governance come from? Are the accounts of this process that are presented here complementary or contradictory? Where do social movement dynamics fit into theories of governance?
Frank, David John, Ann Hironaka, and Evan Schofer. 2000. "The Nation-State and the Natural Environment over the Twentieth Century." ASR 65:96-116. [jstor]
Buttel, Frederick H. 2000. “Comment: World Society, the Nation-State, and Environmental Protection.” ASR 65-117-121. [jstor]
Frank et al. 2000. “Reply: Environmentalism as a Global Institution.” ASR 65:122-127. [jstor]
Keohane,
Robert O. 2001. “Governance
in a Partially Globalized World.” American
Political Science Review 95(1):1-13. [jstor]
Bartley, Tim. 2007. “Institutional Emergence in an Era of Globalization: The Rise of Transnational Private Regulation of Labor and Environmental Conditions.” AJS 113(2): 297–351.
Recommended:
Schofer,
Evan, and Ann Hironaka. 2005. "The Effects of World Society on
Environmental Protection Outcomes." Social Forces 84:25-47.
Djelic,
Marie-Laure, and Kerstin Sahlin-Andersson (Eds.). 2006. Transnational
Governance: Institutional Dynamics of Regulation. New York:
Cambridge
University Press.
Campbell,
John L. 2004. Institutional Change and Globalization.
Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press.
Keck,
Margaret, and Kathryn Sikkink. 1998. Activists Beyond Borders:
Trans-National
Advocacy Networks in International Politics.
Fligstein,
Neil. 2005. "The Political and Economic Sociology of International
Economic Arrangements." In Handbook of Economic Sociology,
edited
by Neil Smelser and Richard Swedberg.
Gereffi,
Gary. 2005. “The
Global Economy: Organization,
Governance, and Development.” In Handbook
of Economic Sociology, edited by Neil Smelser and Richard Swedberg.
Beth
A. Simmons, Frank Dobbin, and Geoffrey Garrett.
2006. “The International
Diffusion of Liberalism.” International
Organization 60: 781-810.