Overview
Institutional coevolution is Agre's framework for understanding how technology and social institutions change together over time. Developed primarily in 'Yesterday's Tomorrow' (1998) and 'Real-Time Politics' (2002), the concept rejects the common assumption that technology drives institutional change (technological determinism) in favor of a picture where institutions and technologies mutually shape one another.
Agre argued that institutions — the settled patterns of roles, rules, relationships, and customs that structure collective life — are so deeply woven into law, language, installed technology, and social practice that their wholesale replacement is impossible. Instead, participants in existing institutions selectively appropriate new technologies to do more of what they are already doing. The selective amplification of particular functions then disrupts existing institutional equilibria, giving rise to new arrangements.
Key Elements
Relation to Other Concepts
Institutional coevolution is the macro-level complement to capture at the micro-level. Where capture describes how activities are restructured to leave digital traces, institutional coevolution describes how entire institutional fields are reorganized through technology adoption. Both reject technological determinism; both emphasize the active role of institutional actors.