(i)Vnnovation as Crossroads

What are social institutions? The answer depends on your perspective(s). In my hometown of Nazareth, PA, Mario Andretti is a social institution. He's an icon and as lasting (at least if we include his legacy) as the local love of high school wrestling. He isn't a custom, but we could consider him to be an institution. The high school he lived next to for years is another social institution, one in brick and mortar as well as nationwide or wider. In my opinion, we can consider the custom of political debate and voting to also be social institutions or established customs. All of these "institutions" are somewhat different or distinguishable from the social functions which they perform. From my perspective, Mario Andretti is as established as Nazareth Area High School and almost as significant in my life because he gave out LOTS of candy at Halloween (he's supposedly important in racing too).

Part of what distinguishes an institution for me is that people assume it. Part of what we tend to assume is that institutions will remain. Part of what I am focusing on here is that these institutions need upkeep, and assuming allows us to do the upkeep without recognizing just how much work goes into supporting institutions. The school needs upkeep, the Andretti name needs upkeep, the habit of voting needs upkeep--social investment and active maintenance. We can easily recognize that a new wing built onto the school is "innovative" in some way, it involves what some people consider to be significant progress. But, if the same tired old teaching occurs in the new wing, we could also consider it to be a continuation of the Same Old Shit. Whatever the perspective, it didn't build itself; it takes investment to maintain institutions, and one way or another, those institutions keep up with progress.

Think about it like this. One biologist I listened to pointed out that every simple fungi on the planet is as evolved as we are. The process of each specie's evolution is as long as ours. So that mushroom in your salad may not be as complex as you, but you can consider it to be as evolved. It has taken a lot of mushrooms over the millennia doing what mushrooms do to complete your salad, ravioli sauce, soup, or whatever. But we tend to assume that mushrooms will keep doing that. It is like growth is an ecological custom and law, and fungi are an institution.

Institutions are animate. The legal system does not function without constant human input. Each courthouse itself could be apartments or an office building if not for what happened in it. Corporations have become easily recognizable social institutions, but they did not exist as we know them four hundred years ago. America as the most powerful country on earth is an assumed reality right now, but it won't always be so. My point is that, if we want to improve social processes or social inputs to ecological processes, we might trip over our assumptions if we don't consider our overall investments.

My experience with old-school social criticism (like second wave feminism and Foucault's structural stuff) has often come through (or with) analyses of power positions and resources. So this sort of critical impetus for change often involves looking at measurable chunks (like whether I have more gold than you) and showing the connection between the Haves, their Havings, and status quo relationships that allow the Haves to not become Have-nots. Liberals tend to assume, at this point in history, some familiarity with social criticism and some degree of identification with "marginalized populations". They also most often seem to assume that the center will hold (that majority-supported institutions will last or that at least their functions will remain). Liberals tend to assume that they are revolutionary, which makes it difficult to see to what extent liberal ideals have become common custom. If "liberal" now means revolutionary, then liberal also means fundamentalist, as neo-fundamentalism is a powerful revolutionary force against the neo-liberal world order. But Promise-Keepers are clearly not socially liberal; they simply assume a liberal social context that allows their right to choose an interesting brand of minority values.

When self-proclaimed liberals support abortion rights, they are supporting a social custom that has lasted for over thirty years. How long does it take to invest something with the label "social institution"? This is not a question that has a right answer, but something we must agree on if we want to communicate about it. The actual high school is just a pile of stones with electrical wire and plumbing running through it, but the idea of high schools and universal public education will probably last long after that pile has ceased to function.