Vibewire 4: Collectives, Institutions, Hyperinstitutions?

The Vibewire e-Festival of Ideas fora are really taking off now. In response to my post about new forms of organisation the other day, Tim Grey, Vibewire's National Editor, asked for clarification on exactly what I meant by 'institutions'. Here's my reply:

Tim, I think the question about what exactly we mean by 'institutions' is a really good one, too. I do agree that there are many differences between the different institutions you mention (government, NGOs, parties, corporations, etc.), but I think many of them are ideological or procedural rather than fundamental.

To clarify what I mean by institutions - let me start from the definition that my colleague John Hartley and his co-authors offer in their book Key Concepts in Communication (I'm working off the 1989 reprint I used during my undergrad days - it may have changed since then): for them, institutions are

Those enduring regulatory and organising structures of any society, which constrain and control individuals and individuality.

The operative words for our purposes here are 'regulatory' and 'organising' - and the way I would define institutions as I use the term (regardless of whether they're government bodies, parties, or whatever) is that they're structured collections of individuals which are organised and regulated - often quite strictly so.

That may sound a little abstract, but what it essentially means is that there is a clear organisational structure, usually a hierarchy, with 'leaders' and 'followers' and a clearly defined boundary to membership. Roles in these institutions are determined in different ways (through election, employment, etc.) but remain relatively fixed and are governed by the institution's regulations (laws, charters, policies, etc.). Boundaries to participation are determined by employment, paid or unpaid membership, and other means, but again, you have to be a member (join the party, get a job for the corporation, volunteer for the NGO) to participate.

Where do collectives fit into this? Well, traditionally most emerging collectives eventually turned into institutions themselves. As I said in my earlier post, for example, the environmentalist movements in many countries eventually turned into Greens parties with party charters, elected leaders, paid-up members, and all the other trappings of institution (and even where they didn't, they often became NGOs with their own regulations and internal hierarchical structures.

Where this didn't happen, collectives often crumbled under their own increasing size - the fate of many Indymedia groups is instructive here. Most Indymedia Centres could operate as flat, rule-less collectives only when they were small and everyone knew everyone else (enabling non-hierarchical, direct-democratic forms of decision-making); but as soon as there were too many people and too many different viewpoints to find a consensus between them, IMCs either managed to change their organisation and become more conventional institutions again, or disbanded in acrimony (like the Brisbane IMC did, for example).

Again, all of this comes back to sustainability. Collectives in their traditional sense have been very successful as a challenge to power, and in operating tactically through guerilla-style action, but throughout history, whenever they managed to become successful (i.e. attract larger numbers of participants, or even take over power outright) they've been forced to reshape themselves into more conventionally organised institutions in order to manage this larger body of members and exercise that power effectively.

Now, as Mark points out - and again, I agree -, a new form of organisation now appears to be available which does not require an all-out metamorphosis into an institution of the conventional type, but maintains a great deal of the non-hierarchical, ad hoc organisation and fluid, opt-in participation that is possible outside of institutional frameworks. These are the kind of 'conversational institutions' Martin highlights (following Stephen Coleman), and what in extension of Mark's language we could call 'hyperinstitutions'.

For me, the question in that context is this, though: are these hyperinstitutions a new form of organisation in their own right? (Can something like Anonymous or MoveOn exist in that form on a permanent basis, for example?) Or, alternatively, do they simply constitute a more clearly defined step on the pathway from loose gatherings of individuals to conventionally organised institutions? In other words, for nascent social and political movements, is there now a choice between becoming a conventional organisation (say, a political party) and becoming a new-style hyperorganisation (like MoveOn), or will they simply undergo a process of increasing formalisation and solidification, becoming first a hyperorganisation and then gradually shedding the 'hyper' and returning to a more conventional structure?

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