Call it What You Want, Just Not an Institution

Nigam, Amis and Logue use the case of Taylor Swift to argue that “individual people can become institutions” (p. 2). Although we share their admiration of Taylor Swift and agree that much can be learned through serious research on Swift, she is not an institution, nor should individuals be conceptualized as institutions. Institutions are, by definition, larger social entities, and the benefits of viewing individuals as institutions are outweighed by negative conceptual costs. Our counter argument draws from inhabited institutionalism and is threefold. First, instead of depicting individuals as institutions, we make the case that such people are key participants in broader institutional mythologies which, although tethered to individuals, are greater than them. Second, and relatedly, this is because institutional mythologies develop, exist, and persist through the collective interactions of people—their inhabitants. Third, and somewhat separate to inhabited institutionalism, depicting individuals as institutions disattends to and diminishes other valuable, sociological means of theorizing influential persons, and we outline the alternative benefits of viewing them as leaders, totems, and cultural creators.