Originally published in 1994. In The Institution of Theory, Murray Krieger examines, at once sympathetically and critically, the process by which theory has become institutionalized in the American academy and the consequences of theory as an academic institution. He traces the transformation of literary theory into critical theory and relates it to changes in the place of literature within questions about discourse at large. And he faces the costs as well as the gains of the recent denial of privilege to the literary. To support his view of the issues at stake in current theoretical debates, Krieger surveys both the history of American criticism and the general history of literary theory in the West. He sees divisions in each of them that foreshadow the current debates: in the first a conflict between the social and the aesthetic functions of literature, and in the second a conflict between the treatment of literature as a reflection of a culture's ideology and the treatment of literature as a subversion of that ideology. To what extent, he asks, are our debates new and to what extent are they merely refashioned versions of those we have always had?

Comprehensively collects the essential theoretical ideas of 'sociological neo-institutionalism', one of the leading approaches in social theory.

At the turn of the millennium there has been a major growth of interest in institutional theory and institutional analysis in political science. This book identifies these approaches to institutions, and provides a frame of reference for the different theories. In the past decade there has been a major growth of interest in institutional theory and institutional analysis in political science. There are, however, a variety of different approaches to the new institutionalism and these approaches rarely address the same issues. This book identifies the various approaches to institutions, and then provides a common frame of reference for the different theories. In this updated and expanded edition, Peters argues that there are at least seven versions of institutionalism, beginning with the March and Olsen "normative institutionalism", and including rational choice, historical and empirical approaches to institutions and their impact on public policy. For each of the versions of institutionalism a set of identical questions is posed. Including the definition of institutions, the way in which they are formed, how they change, how individuals and institutions interact, and the nature of a "good institution". Peters discusses whether there are really so many different approaches to institutionalism, or if there is sufficient agreement among them to argue that there is really one institutional theory.

The concepts of practice and institution are of longstanding importance across the social sciences, that have been too disconnected. Bringing together novel theoretical statements and empirical studies that bridge these social worlds, these two volumes provide a major touchstone for scholars interested in the study of practice and institution.

This classic study is concerned with the impact of the sociology of knowledge on the classical theory of knowledge. First issued in a limited edition in 1956, the book has since attracted what can only be termed a cult following. In his own quite original way, Taylor considers knowledge as a product of group life in an institutional and cultural context. In his emphasis on the sociological rather than the psychological or individual, he reveals a sharp break with the empiricist and rationalist traditions of epistemology as such. This makes the work path-breaking. Taylor maintains that the sociology of knowledge began its career as a simple distrust of exact knowledge that betrayed its social origins. But the field is now at a point at which as a discipline it is in charge of the systematic formulation of the pervasive features of a culture. The growth of symbolism, relativism, and institution-building as such has transformed the study of knowledge itself. In this insight, he anticipates the development of knowledge as an area of study unto itself, apart from the information or ideology underlying claims to knowledge. This edition includes three newly discovered essays by Taylor-on the sociology of art; the role of choice in human life; and the connection between history and the written word. The essays complete his lifelong search for the institutional frames of ideological belief. Taylor, whose career began as a teacher of sociology at the University of Texas and Dubuque University, takes up in systematic order the history of philosophical disputations on knowledge, moving from individualism, positivism, and historical relativism. He goes beyond criticism into a view of the "concept" as an organizing principle of action, and as a statement of propositions of how the world can be examined in future states.

Constructing Social Theory discusses the nature of social theory and theoretical orientations. Organized by forty-three theoretical orientations in seven domains--exchange, power, adaptation/reinforcement, social bond, altruism, functionalism, and identity--the text includes a tutorial on how to identify an appropriate theoretical orientation and create a theory given a particular research question. Bell separates the theoretical orientation of causal logic from theory itself, illuminating the mechanisms of scientific revolutions where new theoretical orientations are created, and the procedures of normal science, in which theories are developed using the logic of existing theoretical orientations.

Between 1970 and 2000, Stanford University enabled and supported an interdisciplinary community of organizations training, research, and theory building. This title summarizes the contributions of the main paradigms that emerged at Stanford in those three decades, and describes the sociological conditions under which this environment came about.