First Published in 1996. Volume 8 in the 8-volume series titled American Cities: A Collection of Essays. This series brings together more than 200 scholarly articles pertaining to the history and development of urban life in the United States during the past two centuries. Volume 8 discusses several institutions that are uniquely urban: voluntary associations, vigilance committees, and organized police forces. These articles attempt to consider race and ethnicity class, gender, and the various experiences of different groups of Americans.

A landmark work that will instigate vigorous and wide-ranging discussions on institutions in Western life, and the power of material culture to both enforce and negate cultural norms Institutions pervade social life. They express community goals and values by defining the limits of socially acceptable behavior. Institutions are often vested with the resources, authority, and power to enforce the orthodoxy of their time. But institutions are also arenas in which both orthodoxies and authority can be contested. Between power and opposition lies the individual experience of the institutionalized. Whether in a boarding school, hospital, prison, almshouse, commune, or asylum, their experiences can reflect the positive impact of an institution or its greatest failings. This interplay of orthodoxy, authority, opposition, and individual experience are all expressed in the materiality of institutions and are eminently subject to archaeological investigation. A few archaeological and historical publications, in widely scattered venues, have examined individual institutional sites. Each work focused on the development of a specific establishment within its narrowly defined historical context; e.g., a fort and its role in a particular war, a schoolhouse viewed in terms of the educational history of its region, an asylum or prison seen as an expression of the prevailing attitudes toward the mentally ill and sociopaths. In contrast, this volume brings together twelve contributors whose research on a broad range of social institutions taken in tandem now illuminates the experience of these institutions. Rather than a culmination of research on institutions, it is a landmark work that will instigate vigorous and wide-ranging discussions on institutions in Western life, and the power of material culture to both enforce and negate cultural norms.

Ahmed argues that a commitment to diversity is frequently substituted for a commitment to actual change. She traces the work that diversity does, examining how the term is used and the way it serves to make questions about racism seem impertinent. Her study is based in universities and her research is primarily in the UK and Australia, but the argument is equally valid in North America and beyond.

Using rare interviews with former inmates and workers, institutional documentation, and governmental archives, Claudia Malacrida illuminates the dark history of the treatment of “mentally defective” children and adults in twentieth-century Alberta. Focusing on the Michener Centre in Red Deer, one of the last such facilities operating in Canada, A Special Hell is a sobering account of the connection between institutionalization and eugenics. Malacrida explains how isolating the Michener Centre’s residents from their communities served as a form of passive eugenics that complemented the active eugenics program of the Alberta Eugenics Board. Instead of receiving an education, inmates worked for little or no pay – sometimes in homes and businesses in Red Deer – under the guise of vocational rehabilitation. The success of this model resulted in huge institutional growth, chronic crowding, and terrible living conditions that included both routine and extraordinary abuse. Combining the powerful testimony of survivors with a detailed analysis of the institutional impulses at work at the Michener Centre, A Special Hell is essential reading for those interested in the disturbing past and troubling future of the institutional treatment of people with disabilities.

First Published in 1996. Volume 8 in the 8-volume series titled American Cities: A Collection of Essays. This series brings together more than 200 scholarly articles pertaining to the history and development of urban life in the United States during the past two centuries. Volume 8 discusses several institutions that are uniquely urban: voluntary associations, vigilance committees, and organized police forces. These articles attempt to consider race and ethnicity class, gender, and the various experiences of different groups of Americans.

Introduction -- Early institutionalists -- Institutional theory meets organization studies -- Crafting an analytic framework I : three pillars of institutions -- Constructing an analytic framework II : content, agency, carriers, and levels -- Institutional construction -- Institutionalization -- Institutional processes and organizations -- Institutional processes and organization fields -- An overview and a caution.