On structural change: practice organizations and institutional logics

Abstract

This essay explores structural changes in practices through a convergence between a particular version of the institutional logics approach in institutional theory and my own account of social practices. Part one presents these approaches as contemporary versions of the idea that objective, or common, contentful orientations govern social practices. The discussion elucidates logics and practice organizations as arrays of such orientations and explores how they shape human activity, criticizing the cognitivism of institutional logics in the name of a more practical account of the relationship between structuring contents and practices. Part two describes how both accounts treat human activity as responsible for changes in governing orientations. Whereas institutional logicians focus on types of action concatenations and the conditions under which action concatenations bring about such changes, my account highlights the sorts of nexuses of activity chains and materiality responsible.