ABSTRACT
To illustrate some of the benefits of a historical approach, this chapter considers in some detail an exemplary work of history that has themes very relevant to the nature of institutional logics. Margaret Archer has drawn on the resources of critical realism to develop an approach to the study of social life that insists on the relationship between agency and structure. First broached in an essay in 1991 by Roger Friedland and Robert Alford, the institutional logics approach sought, in the words of their title, to 'bring society back in'. The chapter provides criteria that result in an alternative set of institutions: religion, play, knowledge, law, military, politics, economy, family and medicine. There is a tension between a careful discussion of culture as shaping and embodied in practices and culture as a rather vague and amorphous body of ideas standing somewhat apart from the productive economy. The chapter also presents an overview on the key concepts discussed in this book.
