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Institutional arrangements, while constituting subject positions, also relegate others to inhabit unlivable abject positions. Such a perspective on identity begs the question on the possibilities of institutional reform given that abjects must seek recourse, if any, from the very institutions that marginalized them. One source for reform can be found in the functioning of institutional forums vested with performative powers, such as the Supreme Court. But how do these institutional forums legitimately bring about social transformation given that precedents bind them? To address this puzzle, we analyzed two Supreme Court rulings that showcase the performativity of institutions in materializing subject/abject positions, and the reforms that are possible. One is the 2015 US Supreme Court ruling providing marriage rights to same-sex couples. The other is the 2014 Indian Supreme Court ruling that legalized a third gender. An analysis of these two rulings and a comparison across them highlights the historical yet contingent nature of identity. The analysis also highlights “citational grafting” as a key mechanism underlying institutional reform, i.e., citations to earlier instances of social transformation serving as precedents for bringing about additional changes given new circumstances.

This double volume presents a collection of 23 papers on how institutions matter to socio-economic life. The papers delve deeply into the practical impact an institutional approach enables, as well as how such research has the potential to influence policies relevant to critical institutional changes unfolding in the world today. In Volume 48A, the focus is on the micro foundations of institutional impacts. In Volume 48B, the focus is on the macro consequences of institutional arrangements. Our introduction provides an overview to the two volumes, identifies points of contact between the papers, and briefly summarizes each contribution. We close by noting avenues for future research on how institutions matter. Overall, the volumes provide a cross-section of cutting edge institutional thought and empirical research, highlighting a variety of fruitful directions for knowledge accumulation and development.

Gramophony of an Application for ‘Recognition of a Condition of Permanent Desire’ is a collage of theoretical arguments, creative writing and audio performances that examines notions of (life) writing, voice and subjectivity from a poststructuralist feminist perspective. By engaging in what Smith and Dean (2009) describe as the interwoven processes of ‘practice‐led research’ and ‘research‐led practice’ I combined conceptual research with creative practice and produced a form of hybridised text that blurs traditional binaries of ‘fact’/‘fiction’, ‘creative’/‘critical’ and ‘speech’/‘writing’. Following Smith (1995), I suggest understanding Gramophony as an example of ‘performative autobiography’ that challenges traditional discourses of identity and representation.

In this paper, I compare Theodore Schatzki’s practice theory, the existential phenomenology of Martin Heidegger upon whom Schatzki drew in its formation, and my own theory of institutional logics which I have sought to develop as a religious sociology of institution. I examine how Schatzki and I both differently locate our thinking at the level of practice. In this essay I also explore the possibility of appropriating Heidegger’s religious ontology of worldhood, which Schatzki rejects, in that project. My institutional logical position is an atheological religious one, poly-onto-teleological. Institutional logics are grounded in ultimate goods which are praiseworthy “objects” of striving and practice, signifieds to which elements of an institutional logic have a non-arbitrary relation, sources of and references for practical norms about how one should have, make, do or be that good, and a basis of knowing the world of practice as ordered around such goods. Institutional logics are constellations co-constituted by substances, not fields animated by values, interests or powers.

Because we are speaking against “values,” people are horrified at a philosophy that ostensibly dares to despise humanity’s best qualities. For what is more “logical” than that a thinking that denies values must necessarily pronounce everything valueless? Martin Heidegger, “Letter on Humanism” (2008a, p. 249).