Identifying Contemporary Observable Social Norms

The previous two chapters mainly provided a conceptual analysis of institutions, norms, and performativity, arguing that formal explicit institutions are shaped by the generic performativity of collectively accepted norms. Based on this theoretical perspective, this chapter identifies representative observable social norms that are generically performative in contemporary society. There are several keys to make this identification compelling. First, insights from linguistic studies highlight the process of nominalization that widely accepted norms are thought to undergo. In other words, nominalized words can represent collectively accepted social norms. However, since there are many such nominalized words, an observer’s identification is necessarily subjective. Therefore, the identification of target nominalized words should be as plausible as possible. Based on various data, this chapter identifies globalization and financialization as collectively accepted norms that are generically performative in contemporary society. In order to analyze the performative institutionalization in Part II, this chapter provides the definition of these social phenomena in relation to institutional changes and proposes a research method of process tracing. By applying the process tracing method in a specific context in a deductive way, it is possible to show how operative members acted and established institutions with specific ideas, and thus the generic performativity of observable norms can be examined. In short, a close examination of the activities of influential actors, including individuals and national as well as international organizations, is useful. Overall, this chapter serves as a bridge between the conceptual and theoretical discussions in Part I and the case-based analyses of the development of accounting institutions in Japan in Part II.