ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the work of Margaret Archer in social theory. Her work is a rich source of concepts and frameworks that can then be brought into play to look at institutional theory in general and institutional logics in particular. Roy Bhaskar was a British philosopher widely taken to be the key figure in the development of the philosophical tradition that has come to be known as critical realism. Critical realism is a philosophy that places ontology centre stage. Margaret Archer has produced an influential series of books from the 1990s onwards that draw upon the resources of critical realism to develop and apply a framework for social analysis. Archer seeks to challenge this focus on homogeneity by bringing the same tools of emergence and analytical dualism to bear on culture as she deploys on social structure. She sets the development of ideas about culture in the context of anthropology, where mistaken notions of cultural homogeneity were developed.
