Bromley and Santos make a cultural argument that situates nonprofit organizations within the broader context of organization itself. Due to the ascendancy of organization as an emergent category of social structure, the authors suggest that all types of organizations (government, business, nonprofit) are becoming increasingly similar. As the divisions between them (e.g., for-profit organization vs. nonprofit organization, etc.) become less prominent, the sector in need of explanation is the organizational one, writ large. Thus, rather than explaining the nonprofit sector, per se, the authors argue that the nonprofit sector is just one manifestation of organization and that it is organization that deserves our attention. In this sense, sector theory as traditionally understood (as narrow attention to the nonprofit sector in comparison to other sectors) diverts attention from more fundamental sociocultural developments. The authors argue that one can only understand nonprofit organizations vis-à-vis government and for-profit organizations by first understanding this broader context.

An analysis of the nature of modern “actors” or actorhood.Offers direct arguments about how the modern (European, now global) cultural system constructs the modern actor as an authorized agent for various interests. Seeing modern actorhood in this way helps greatly in explaining a number of otherwise anomalous or little analyzed features of modern individuals, organizations, and states.

Reflections on how sociological neoinstitutionalism has been used to understand the rise, nature, and impact of the modern world order as itself a society. Discussion of globalization, and large-scale social change, from this perspective. Includes a discussion of Anglo-European modernity as a quasi-religious system.

Much contemporary social science still imagines a “society without culture,” and still works with limited conceptions of institutions that understate their effects.

Actors and social structures in retrospect. The remarkably unrealistic qualities still attributed to individuals, organizations, and states in much contemporary social science.