Journal
An institution does not stop moving once the argument is finished.
The Journal follows that movement in particular places—examining institutions, decisions, and developments as they happen, with the same attention Theory and Architecture bring to what lies beneath them.
Some entries follow a single institution over time. Others examine one decision, one leadership transition, one shift in practice, closely. All of them ask the same underlying questions: what is this institution, how is it being formed, and what is it becoming.
Entries
What a Calculation Can Reach
A mother buys her daughter’s groceries each week, and a Dutch court rules the help must be repaid. The decision is almost certainly correct in law, which is what makes it useful for seeing how far an institution’s reach can exceed what it is able to perceive.
Flock Safety and the Municipality: An Institution in Motion
A network of license plate readers meant to keep 6,300 students safe looks like a straightforward safety upgrade, until Denver’s reversal shows how far a city’s own perceptual capacity can outrun the Order meant to govern it.
Calvin Theological Seminary: An Institution in Motion
A new church-planting concentration inside Calvin Seminary’s pastoral training looks like routine institutional news, until you trace it against a century and a half of quiet adaptation in how the CRC forms its ministers.
Notice an institutional story worth a closer look? Send it our way.
Editorial Forms
- Current
- A recurring look at a current institutional story, examined for what ordinary coverage may be missing.
- Essay
- A sustained piece of institutional argument or reflection.
- Case
- A close examination of a single institution or decision.
- Observation
- A brief, exploratory note on something noticed.
- Response
- A reader’s response to a piece, published with permission.