ABSTRACT
Institutionalism deals with the evolution of institutions (Dugger 1988, 1989a). So in institutionalism the concept of class means more than a statistical interval such as all families with incomes in, say, the $50,000 to $75,000 range of a table. The number or proportion of families receiving an income within a particular range can rise or fall without evolution taking place. Such rises and falls are important, but usually represent mere mechanical movement—mere rises and falls in the positions of families within a stable institutional structure, not evolution of that structure. So to understand institutional change, class must be thought of as a social relation, not as a statistical interval (Dugger 1996).
