Netroots organizing, from viral marketing to Barack Obama : how Berger and Luckmann's theory of institutionalization resolves the paradox of embedded agency
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- The present dissertation is a historical ethnographic case study of the emergence of the institution of netroots organizing in Democratic Party politics. It offers five contributions to the sociological study of institutions: First, the dissertation elucidates how Berger and Luckmann's (1967) theory of institutionalization and its constituent moments of internalization, externalization, and objectivation resolve the paradox of embedded agency that occurs when instititutional researchers focus on either the constraining or the empowering sides of institutions. Second, the dissertation shows how the theory explains institutional work—the reproduction, disruption, and change of existing institutions and the emergence of new ones—by means of problematization during the transition from internalization to externalization. Third, the dissertation illustrates that actions and meanings are involved in a continuous dialectical interplay such that researchers' understanding of institutional dynamics is incomplete without a prior understanding of habitual developments. Fourth, the dissertation reveals that institutional entrepreneurs are sometimes social constructions resulting from institutionalization, not the source of institutionalization. Rather, anarchic organizing—the application of existing habits and institutions to emerging probems—can serve as the impetus for novel institutionalization. Agents only construct interests once new habits and institutions prove valuable, and they then develop rationalized myths that ascribe the status of entrepreneurs to those perceived to have constructed these habits and institutions. Fifth, the dissertation demonstrates that Berger and Luckmann's (1967) theory shows the dynamics of delegitimation when the powerful and less powerful encounter each other and illustrates some of the options available to the less powerful when confronted with conflict.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic; electronic resource; remote |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Publication date | 2016 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Associated with | Companys, Yosem E |
|---|---|
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Management Science and Engineering. |
| Primary advisor | Barley, Stephen R |
| Primary advisor | Hinds, Pamela |
| Thesis advisor | Barley, Stephen R |
| Thesis advisor | Hinds, Pamela |
| Thesis advisor | Granovetter, Mark S |
| Thesis advisor | March, James G |
| Thesis advisor | McAdam, Doug |
| Advisor | Granovetter, Mark S |
| Advisor | March, James G |
| Advisor | McAdam, Doug |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Yosem E. Companys. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Management Science and Engineering. |
| Thesis | Thesis (Ph.D.)--Stanford University, 2016. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2016 by Yosem Eduardo Companys
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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