Institutionalists on Power: Social Ontology and Intersectionality

Original Institutional Economics (OIE) has always addressed power. Thorstein Veblen referred to the vested interest. William Dugger argued that power is wielded by persons in particular social roles within an institution. Still, the power and its justification are attached to the role, not the individual in the role. Tony Lawson and the Cambridge Social Ontology Group have created a theory, Social Positioning Theory (SPT), which posits that social relations are constituted by individuals who are connected by being occupants of social positions that each contain a set of matched rights and obligations to one another. Often, these are power relations. This theory seems similar to Dugger’s discussion of roles. Additionally, William Dugger, in several publications, explored the problematic and corrupting consequences of race, gender, ethnicity, class, and nationality embedded in our institutions. However, Dugger did not consider what today is referred to as intersectionality, where these invidious distinctions are deeply intertwined within our social institutions. We intend to explore how the contributions of OIE, SPT, and Intersectionality can be integrated into a richer explanation of institutions and human conduct within them.