The Emergence of Institutions: An Aesthetic-Affective Perspective

✍ Scribed by Elke Weik

• Publisher: Springer
• Year: 2022
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 158
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

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 powersin their own right.
This book is for researchers interested in process theory, institutional and organisational studies, hermeneutics, and aesthetics.

✦ Table of Contents

Prologue
About the Book
Contents
About the Author
List of Figures
List of Tables
Chapter 1: Introduction
References
Chapter 2: The Case Study: Military Monasticism and the Order of the Knights Templar
2.1 The Historical Case
2.2 What Is a Miles? A Chronology
2.3 Ideas Encounter Other Ideas
2.4 Holy War
2.5 The Foundation and Rise of the Knights Templar
2.6 Discussion
References
Chapter 3: Institutions Between Culture and Agency
3.1 The Relationship Between Institutions and Culture
3.1.1 Six Candidates
3.1.2 The Fallacy of Conflation
3.1.3 Institutions and Organisations
3.1.4 Agency Versus Decision-Making
3.1.5 The Missing Core: Values and Concerns
3.1.6 The Expression of Values
3.2 Human Agency and Wirksamkeit in Institutional Emergence
3.2.1 Independence from Strategic Design
3.2.2 Significance and Semantics: Weber and the Cultural Meaning of an Idea
3.3 Summary
References
Chapter 4: Strong Process Theory: An Ontology for Institutions
4.1 Key Concepts from Whitehead´s Process and Reality´´ 4.1.1 The Basic Elements of Whitehead´s System 4.1.2 Enduring Objects 4.1.3 Causality 4.1.4 Ensuring Continuity in Process 4.2 From Whitehead to Institutions 4.2.1 How Can Institutions Be Processual Orderings? 4.2.2 Are Institutions Real or Nominal? 4.2.3 How Do Agency and Wirksamkeit Differ? 4.2.4 Emergence from a Process Perspective References Chapter 5: Presencing 5.1 Perception as Presencing 5.2 Presencing asSeeing as´´
5.2.1 A Note on ``Experience´´
5.2.2 Presencing in Phenomenological Philosophy
5.2.3 The Common Element
5.3 Multiplicity in Unity
5.4 Holism and Increase in Being
5.5 Summary
References
Chapter 6: Institutions as Dynamic Forms of Aesthetic-Affective Experience
6.1 Enter Intensity
6.2 Insights from Neurobiology: Feelings and Evaluations
6.3 Insights from the Philosophy of Mind: Feelings, Intensities and Dynamic Forms
6.3.1 Critical Pitch and Vagueness
6.3.2 Feelings as Expressions: An Invitation from the Arts
6.4 Harmony and Rhythm
6.4.1 The Generative Function: Harmony and Rhythm as Impressions
6.4.2 Harmony and Rhythm as Expressions
6.4.3 Dynamic Form
6.5 Institutions as Impressions and Expressions
6.5.1 Values
6.5.2 Feelings and Emotions
6.6 Experiencing Institutions
6.6.1 Templar Values and Emotions: An Illustration
6.6.2 Institutional Entrepreneurship
References
Chapter 7: Methodological Considerations
7.1 How to Study Emergence from an Aesthetic-Affective Perspective
7.2 Goethe´s Method of Studying Ideas as Dynamic Forms
7.2.1 Ideas as Dynamic Essences
7.2.2 Delicate Empirics
7.3 Shotter´s Method of Studying a Living Human World
7.3.1 Relationally-Responsive Understanding
7.3.2 Withness-Thinking
7.4 Hennion´s Method of Studying Taste
7.4.1 Taste
7.4.2 Studying Taste
7.5 The Study of Institutions from an Aesthetic-Affective Perspective
7.5.1 Common Points of Departure
7.5.2 Studying Institutions
References
Chapter 8: Contributions and Connections
8.1 My Contribution
8.2 Connections to Recent Discussions
8.2.1 Sensemaking and Multimodality
8.2.2 Institutional Aesthetics
8.2.3 Macro and Micro Foundations
8.2.4 Phenomenology and Symbolic Interactionism
References
Index