ABSTRACT
AIDS service organizations emerged from the analysis as a vehicle for extending hegemonic power into constitutive communities. This analysis has, if sometimes implicitly, relied on elements of discourse analysis, neo-corporatism, the sociology of emotions and neo-institutionalism. This chapter develops an organization theory that allows us to focus on individual organizers and how they relate to power structures and emotion laden discourses. It argues that both neo-corporatism and neo-institutionalism are of little help in addressing the lacking micro-foundation of third sector theorizing. The notion of private interest government was particularly useful to bring power processes in the field of AIDS organizing into focus. The chapter argues that Weick's sensemaking approach can help address the problem of a dynamic image of organizations that are reproduced or changed through the meaningful interactions of their members. Only gradually acknowledged in neo-institutionalism, environmental ambiguity is precisely the point of departure for Weick.
