Nan Lin, Chapter 11: Institutions, Networks, and Capital Building--Societal Transformations

8/2/2019 Nan Lin, Chapter 11: Institutions, Networks, and Capital Building--Societal Transformations

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Stanton-Salazar [Please cite Prof. Nan Lin or Stanton-Salazar when appropriate] 1

Nan Lin, Chapter 11Institutions, Networks, and Capital Building: Societal Transformations

(from Social Capital: A Theory of Social Structure and Action, 2001. Cambridge UniversityPress)

[p. 194] Networks as Vehicles for Institutional Transformation [RSS: in the urban schoolsystem] [text in brackets attributed to RSS]

[RSS: Radical school reform will depend on asocial movement, which begins when enoughactors come together into a networkand begin to accumulate various types of resources]

It is possible that organizational or even individual actors (DiMaggio 1988: institutional

entrepreneurs) may trigger transformations. [RSS: agents of transformation; see Fischman &McLaren www site]

The more interesting and powerful indigenous transformation process, I argue, begins with

social networking. [vs. charismatic leaders] When a number of actors share alternative rules or values and begin to connect, the

network may sustain their shared interests through solidarity and reciprocalreinforcement.

For example, actors perceived as deprived or actually deprived of opportunities to acquire[the dominant groups] human or institutional [cultural] capital may form networks and

forge a collective identity. Whether such deprivation [oppression] is based on gender, ethnic, religious, class,

family origin, or other institutional criteria, networking is the first and essential step indeveloping collective consciousness. [RSS: my emphasis]

As the network expands and the number of participating actors increases, the pool ofsocial capital increases [resources shared and exchanged within the new collectivity]. As shared resources grow, there is an increasing likelihood of a social movement, aprocess that can transform one or more prevailing institutions.

[Teaching Effective Rebellion in Teacher Education, incorporating the study of social

movements into teacher education, RSS]

One straightforward way of generating institutional transformation by way of a socialmovement is to turn the movement directly into a rebellion

a social movement can quickly generate overwhelming participation leading directlyto the overthrow of prevailing institutions.

[however] the usual goal is not to reject prevailing institutions, but rather to substitutethe alternative institution for the prevailing one or incorporate the alternative institution

into the configuration of prevailing institutions.

o e.g., [1960s & 70s] ethnic studies, women studies as part of the standardundergraduate curriculum

o 1970s: desegregation of center-city schools (social movement-generated, andeventually, court mandated)


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[social networking, rebellion, transformation of institution: (urban school reform); educators astransformative institutional agents (Fischman & McLaren)

organizing willing actors into a network that exhibit a certain degree of closure, yetporous enough to continuously recruit new members, and establish bridges to

sympathetic and supportive networks, organizations, and institutions

developing new, alternative institutional capital among new network of radicaleducators,

develop alternative curricula; political strategies for institutionalizing [andnormalizing] this curricula;

strategies for infiltrating existing institutionalizing organization (Lin, 203); i.e., teachereducation program trains teachers to infiltrate existing schools and educational

organizations, including organizing and recruiting new members

strategies for neutralizing the resistance and restabilizing efforts and agendas ofmembers of thestatus quo (e.g., [1970s] early and concerted opposition to ethnic studies

andgender studies within academia)

A social movement can be sustained by turning the shared resources into capital and generatingreturns.

That is, the movement must develop its own institutionalizing organizations in whichalternative values and rituals are taught and new members are indoctrinated.

Further, it must build or persuade organizations to recruit and retain the actors whohave acquired such capital[i.e., alternative values, alternative political discourse, criticalconsciousness, new identities, skill-sets, and rituals (RSS)] .Through these processes,

the movement can then sustain itself and challenge existing institutions.

[RSS: review the economic-political rules of capital, Bourdieu; S-S, 1997]

The mounting and sustaining of alternative programs in either existing or alternativeinstitutionalizing organizations may generate and process alternative capital for actors.

[alternative institutional capitalalternative cultural capital (RSS): alternative values and

ideology, behavioral norms, new rituals, new organizational rules, alternative political discourse,critical consciousness, new identities, skill-sets; when they are performed or exhibited,

actor becomes entitled to resources:prestige/reputation within organization or network, controland authority over organizational resources, specialprivileges, decision-making power,influence

over others,privilege information,close ties with other actors who control resources]

As the number of actors equipped with the alternative institutional capital increases,along with the growingpooled social capitalthrough networking, the likelihood that

other organizations may recognize the need to take the alternative institution into accountin their actions increases. (p. 195)


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This recognition triggers the need to recruit and retain workers with the knowledge andskills to perform tasks dictated by the alternative institution.

o [RSS: the need to recruit and retain teachers, other educators, and administratorswith the consciousness, knowledge, and skills necessary to implement a

radicalized urban school reform agenda]o [RSS: including networking skills and organizingskills]

[Nan Lin illustrates with a short history of how women studies became institutionalized inacademia in the 1970s & 80s] p. 196

The civil rights movement and the womens liberation movement found sympathy and synergy

on American campuses, as antiwar and anti-draft activities were generalized into questions andchallenges to the status quo. (p. 197)

The most innovative element was the distribution and sharing of course syllabi, initiated by

Sheila Tobias (first at Wesleyan and then at Cornell)o conference on women in the winter of 1969, she collected the syllabi of seventeen

womens courses and distributed the list at the annual meetings of professionalassociations in 1970

o A third element in developing and institutionalizingwomens studies in Americancolleges was the resources provided by a number of private foundations to support

students, programs, and centers. (p. 198)

o Finally, the networking approach adopted by many womens studies faculty andprograms is also worth noting.


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Educators, Youth Workers, & Informal Mentors as Institutional Agents (RSSTheoretical/Conceptual Notes) Stanton-Salazar

educators, youth workers, and informal mentors become institutional agents when theymobilize or directly provide resources to a student or youth that significantly enables the

latter to effectively navigate and exert control over the principal environments withinwhich he or she is embedded (Nov. 21); when a student or youth accesses or is receptive tothese resources from the agent, these resource become social capital

o to safely navigate the potentially harmful ecological aspects of neighborhood,community, school, and society, while reaping the benefits of those aspects that

are developmentally empowering (see Garcia Coll; many other sources)o to effectively navigate, integrate, and experience success within the educational

institution and within other youth/student-oriented organizations

resources via an institutional agent are always embeddedwithin social relations and thecomplex dynamics between the student/youth and the institutional agent;

in turn, these relations are almost always subject to one or more, and sometimes,contradictory institutionalizing forces (e.g., Boykin): rooted in the immediate network theymay both participate in, the immediate encompassing organization, and/or the implicated

institutions.

educators, youth workers, and informal mentors also become institutional agents whenthey mobilize or directly provide resources to one more other institutional actors that either

enables them to effectively actualize the role of institutional agent on behalf a student oryouth, or enables these actor/agents to collaborate in empowering in some significant way a

student or youth. Here again, the relations among institutional agents are almost alwayssubject to institutionalizing forces.

the provision and utilization of resources rarely operates in a cultural or political vacuum;this is to say that this provision and utilization are embedded within a institutionalizingorganization or network; the provision or mobilization of resources occurswhether tacitly

or explicitly--in the context ofsocialization agendas: into values and ideology, behavioralnorms rituals, organizational rules, political discourse, forms of consciousness, and

identities.

Thus, institutional agents are also socialization agents.


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Teacher Education, Urban Education, and Social Movement Theory (SMT)

http://www.ccc.nps.navy.mil/si/2005/May/chandlerMay05.asp

SMT factors:

1) political opportunity,2) social networking and resource mobilization,3) and framing.

Nan Lin, Chapter 11: Institutions, Networks, and Capital Building--Societal Transformations

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