THE TOGGLE SWITCH OF INSTITUTIONS - RELIGION AND ART IN THE US IN THE19TH-CENTURY AND EARLY 20TH-CENTURY

An institution is taken for granted when it is enveloped within a cult ural and moral framework that is not contested. The usual account of t he institution of high culture that emerged in the U.S. in the late ni neteenth century relates to the growing importance of elites and the u ncertainties of modernization. This raises an important puzzle: how di d the visual arts that had been so dominated ty the morality of popula r religion acquire secular worth ? Weber's writings provide a point of departure for analyzing institutional transformations involving art, religion, and the emergence of the avant-garde. A framework for unders tanding institutional change is sketched out. It includes the importan ce of ideology, social and economic interests, and intellectuals who a rticulate emerging new views. The metaphor of the ''toggle switch,'' a dapted from Weber's term, switchmen, captures the idea that transforma tion occurs when there are underlying cultural contradictions and the resolution of these contradictions depend on the investments and prosp ects of competing interests.