The Information Processing Representation of Institutionalised Social Action

Abstract

The general idea proposed in this paper is that the fundamental properties of institutionalised social action may be understood in terms of the modelling of real systems of social action as information processing systems—systems whose activity is controlled by symbolic processes. A key property of the models is their generative character: from a given model, with appropriate inputs, it is possible to derive explicitly the sequence of activity of the system. In this way the model is not a merely static description of a system, nor a history of its activity, but shows the activity flowing from the proposed structure of the system. Within this framework the paper explores the issue of the theoretical justification and generalisation of possible models, and proposes an approach based on the interrelationships among the patterns of activity characteristic of various institutions. We discuss the idea of a generative theory in section 1, followed in section 2 by an explication of the formalism we employ based on the outstanding work of Newell and Simon in information processing theory. In section 3, we apply this formalism to the problem of representing the institutional aspects of a social action system, using a familiar institution—the restaurant—as a case study. In section 4 we discuss further aspects of the theory and method involved in this type of representation.