The Toggle Switch of Institutions: Religion and Art in the U.S. in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries

An institution is taken for granted when it is enveloped within a cultural and moral framework that is not contested. The usual account of the institution of high culture that emerged in the U.S. in the late nineteenth century relates to the growing importance of elites and the uncertainties of modernization. This raises an important puzzle: how did the visual arts that had been so dominated by the morality of popular 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 understanding institutional change is sketched out. It includes the importance of ideology, social and economic interests, and intellectuals who articulate emerging new views. The metaphor of the “toggle switch,” adapted from Weber's term, switchmen, captures the idea that transformation occurs when there are underlying cultural contradictions and the resolution of these contradictions depend on the investments and prospects of competing interests.