Socioplastics 11844 Institutions Hold Contradictions in Place
Some institutional contradictions become durable through procedures that acknowledge them while preserving the arrangement that produces them. ContradictionSurvival describes this process of managing incompatible commitments through exceptions, budgets and recurring explanations. A public body may endorse equal access while maintaining a service rule that predictably excludes a group. The discrepancy can be visible to staff and users, yet each case is treated as a local adjustment. Wendy Brown examines neoliberal political rationality and its institutional effects. Pierre Bourdieu analyses how social relations become embedded in practices and fields. Iris Marion Young develops accounts of structural responsibility, while Ann Laura Stoler reads the administrative habits through which governance operates. Their work helps examine how contradictions are sustained through ordinary organisational routines and how responsibility is distributed across them. A study could compare stated commitments with budgets, eligibility rules, exception procedures and user experiences. It would identify which offices handle recurring discrepancies and what evidence they receive. The inquiry could then ask whether an exception resolves an individual case, changes the governing rule or creates a new routine for managing the same problem. A review process could assign responsibility for proposals that address the underlying arrangement. ContradictionSurvival makes organisational adaptation observable. It helps institutions assess how well their procedures connect public commitments with actual outcomes. Repeated exceptions can become evidence for revising a rule and aligning practice with declared responsibilities. The review can also compare how often exceptions recur, which groups encounter them and how staff explain their causes. A pattern across cases can guide a change to the rule rather than another isolated adjustment.
REFERENCES
Bourdieu, P. (1990) The Logic of Practice. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Brown, W. (2015) Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution. New York: Zone Books.
Stoler, A.L. (2009) Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Young, I.M. (2011) Responsibility for Justice. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
CITE AS
Lloveras, A. (2026) Socioplastics, LAPIEZA-LAB, Madrid.
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