3 - Tracing Normative Transformations

Summary

In Chapter 3, I propose three causal mechanisms to explain the normative transformations I investigate: convention reorientation, technological revision, and network synthesis. These capture the causal role played by processes of discursive contestation, technical development, and bureaucratic politics. Crucially, I propose that these mechanisms interweave, in an arrangement of reciprocal reinforcement. I also propose a three-stage analytical process for analysing cases such as the ones in this book: de-reification, attributing agency, and tracing transactions. This process allows investigators to ‘break down’ supposed norms into their constitutive and unfolding relations, locate sources of transformative power, and trace how that power operated to

produce a change. I contextualise both the mechanisms and the analytical method with reference to relational sociology, practice theory, and scholarship on institutions.