Institutional Spaces
Lisa Richards
The institutional space of an organizational field consists of those dually ordered sets of social practices and symbolic or classificatory systems which, in the aggregate, constitute a recognized area of institutional life. This space is structured as a series of discontinuous, topologically arrayed, dimensional regions in which particular constellations of socially recognizable institutional tasks are located. John W. Mohr
are located. Under stable conditions, these sites correspond to areas of social life which are administered to by those organizational forms with have staked out legitimate jurisdictional claims upon the social resources which correspond to those institutional tasks. Consider the field of commu“The institutional space of an organizational field consists of nity social welfare, a region of institutional life in which those dually ordered sets of collective (organizational) social practices and symbolic or classificatory systems which, solutions are directed toward addressing community needs in the aggregate, constitute a recognized area of institutional and problems, especially those associated with poverty. Two life. This space is structured tightly inter-connected sets of as a series of discontinuous, symbolic systems operate in topologically arrayed, dimenthis arena — one that serves sional regions in which particular constellations of socially to distinguish among the types recognizable institutional tasks of people who are clients and
another that serves to differentiate among the types of needs which those clients may have. Each of these symbolic systems consists of multiple levels of moral discourse. At one level are various, often hotly contested, interpretative narratives about the nature of the social world. These narratives usually include stories about what exists, accounts of why it exists, and opinions as to how we should regard this state of affairs. At another, deeper level are the classification schemes which hierarchically order the principle objects that are described (and constituted) at the narrative level.� John W. Mohr (1998)
Photography and design copyright © Lisa Richards 2015. All rights reserved. Text by John W. Mohr in ‘Differentiation of Institutional Space’ (1998).