Kirk Ludwig, "From Plural to Institutional Agency: Collective Action II."

Seumas Miller

doi:10.7202/1076215ar

Spitting in the Salad: Minor Rebellion as Institutional Agency

Organization Studies ◽

10.1177/0170840619831054 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 41 (4) ◽

pp. 543-561 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Liisa Välikangas ◽

Arne Carlsen

Keyword(s):

Social Network ◽

Collective Action ◽

Asset Management ◽

Hedge Fund ◽

Deleuze And Guattari ◽

Major Field ◽

Robin Hood ◽

Social Inquiry ◽

Institutional Agency ◽

Cultural Frames

How can a desire for rebellion drive institutional agency, and how is such desire produced? In this paper, we develop a theory of minor rebellion as a form of institutional agency. Drawing from the work of Deleuze and Guattari as well as from notions of social inquiry and the sociology of punk, we qualify and illustrate minor rebellion as a lived-in field of desire and engagement that involves deterritorializing of practice in the institutional field. Three sets of processes are involved: (i) minor world-making, through establishing the aesthetics and relations of an outsider social network within a major field, including the enactment of cultural frames of revolt and radicalism; (ii) minor creating, through constructing and experimenting with terms, concepts, and technology that somehow challenge hegemony from within; and (iii) minor inquiring, through problematizing social purposes and the related experiential surfacing of the desirable new. Minor rebellion suggests a new solution to the paradox of embedded agency by describing institutional agency as shuttling between political contest and open-ended social inquiry, involving anti-sentiments, but also being for something. The paper also contributes to recasting institutional agency as a process resulting from emergent collective action rather than preceding it. To illustrate our theorizing, we describe the emergence of Robin Hood Asset Management, a Finnish activist hedge fund. At the end of the paper we discuss how minor rebellion raises new questions about the multiplicities and eventness of desiring in institutional agency.

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The Division of Labor and Proxy Agency

10.1093/oso/9780198789994.003.0013 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Kirk Ludwig

Keyword(s):

Collective Action ◽

Division Of Labor ◽

Multiple Agents ◽

Institutional Action ◽

Institutional Agency ◽

The Right ◽

Proxy Agent ◽

Right Intention

Chapter 13 first lays out the problem of proxy agency. An example of a proxy agent is a spokesperson for an organization. When the spokesperson, appropriately authorized, in the right conditions, with the right intention and message, speaks, we count the group as announcing something. Thus, it appears that the group does something but only one of its members acts. Proxy agency appears then to be inconsistent with the multiple agents analysis of collective action. Chapter 13 provides an account of proxy agency, focusing on the case of a spokesperson, that draws on the notion of a status function and constitutive agency to show it can be compatible with the multiple agents account of institutional action. Then it clarifies and extends the account by defending it against objections. Finally, it discusses the systematic use of the same terms in different senses in relation to individual and institutional agency.

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From Plural to Institutional Agency

10.1093/oso/9780198789994.001.0001 ◽

2017 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Kirk Ludwig

Keyword(s):

Collective Action ◽

Methodological Individualism ◽

Strong Form ◽

Multiple Agents ◽

Group Agency ◽

Individual Agency ◽

Socially Constructed ◽

Nation States ◽

Institutional Agency ◽

Reductive Account

Can institutional agency be understood in terms of informal (plural) group agency? This book argues that the answer is ‘yes’, and more specifically that both can be understood ultimately in terms of the agency of individuals who are members of such groups and in terms of the concepts already at play in our understanding of individual agency. Thus, the book argues for a strong form of methodological individualism. It is the second part of a two-part project that extends the multiple agents account of plural agency in From Individual to Plural Agency (OUP 2016) to institutional agency. It argues that the key to understanding institutional agency is recognizing that the time-indexed institutional membership relation is socially constructed in the sense that it is a special type of status function, a status role, which is accepted by the agent who fills the role. The book analyzes constitutive rules in terms of essentially intentional patterns of collective action and status functions in terms of constitutive rules and conventions. It analyzes institutions as structures of interrelated status roles that can be successively occupied by different agents, and provides a reductive account of institutional action in terms of these roles and the notion of proxy agency, in which one agent or group acts through another who is authorized to act for them. The account is applied to both corporations and nation states.

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Advocacy Organizations and Collective Action. Edited by Aseem Prakash and Mary Kay Gugerty. (Cambridge University Press, 2010).

The Journal of Politics ◽

10.1017/s0022381611001307 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 74 (1) ◽

pp. E6 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Amanda Murdie

Keyword(s):

Collective Action ◽

Advocacy Organizations ◽

Cambridge University

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Ideas and Leaders in Contentious Politics: One Parish Priest in El Salvador's Popular Movement

Behavioral and Brain Sciences ◽

10.1017/s0140525x13009862 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 38 (01) ◽

pp. 76-101

Author(s):

PETER M. SANCHEZ

Keyword(s):

Collective Action ◽

El Salvador ◽

Liberation Theology ◽

Contentious Politics ◽

Religious Leaders ◽

Political Movement ◽

Parish Priest ◽

Historical Moment ◽

Resource Mobilisation ◽

The Church

AbstractThis paper examines the actions of one Salvadorean priest – Padre David Rodríguez – in one parish – Tecoluca – to underscore the importance of religious leadership in the rise of El Salvador's contentious political movement that began in the early 1970s, when the guerrilla organisations were only just beginning to develop. Catholic leaders became engaged in promoting contentious politics, however, only after the Church had experienced an ideological conversion, commonly referred to as liberation theology. A focus on one priest, in one parish, allows for generalisation, since scores of priests, nuns and lay workers in El Salvador followed the same injustice frame and tactics that generated extensive political mobilisation throughout the country. While structural conditions, collective action and resource mobilisation are undoubtedly necessary, the case of religious leaders in El Salvador suggests that ideas and leadership are of vital importance for the rise of contentious politics at a particular historical moment.

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