Processes of Legitimation: Recent Developments and New Directions

The Cooley-Mead Award is a great honor, and I am greatly honored to receive it. But I am also a little embarrassed because so much of the work it honors has been collaborative. The award in my case is for a collective, not an individual, accomplishment. I have spent half my life studying status and rewards, most of it in collaboration with Joseph Berger, Bernard P Cohen, Elizabeth Cohen, and the many others-most of whom are probably here today-who have been involved in the growth of the expectation states program. I have spent another quarter of my life studying power and authority, most of it in collaboration with Sanford M. Dornbusch, William Evan, W. Richard Scott, George Thomas, Henry Walker, and the many others-also probably here-who have been involved in the growth of the legitimacy program. The expectation states program was the subject of Berger's Cooley-Mead address in 1991 (Berger 1992). (Also see Wagner and Berger 2000). What I want to talk about today is recent developments and new directions in the study of legitimacy.