Institutions and the Entrepreneurial Self

Phil Agre
http://dlis.gseis.ucla.edu/pagre/

Version of 19 December 2001.
9000 words.


Although reviews of my column about how-to's were generally kind,
sociologists demurred from some of my generalizations about their
field's treatment of the relationship between the institution
and the self. The issue, you might recall, is the extent to which
institutions define us. Everybody occupies locations in several
institutions: professional, political, medical, educational, family,
religious, and so on. And every one of those institutions offers
us a personality: language, beliefs, habits, artefacts, interactional
style, and so on. The question is, do institutions completely
remake us in their image, or do we remain to some degree ourselves?
It is not an easy question, since it could mean several things.
Even if we know what the question means, it is not entirely clear
how we could know the answer. For example, we can study doctors and
conclude that they walk and talk exactly the way that the institution
of medicine wants them to, but that proves nothing until we determine
whether they had already believed in the institution and consciously
chose to acquire its ways. We would also have to confront the
fact that we are all shaped by numerous institutions: since no one
institution defines who we are, do we thereby transcend them all?
These are important questions for us now because of the tremendous
power of information technology to facilitate institutional change.
As institutions change, people change too. We need to know how we're
changing and what choice we have.