This sub-theme seeks to interrogate the interdependencies and tensions between personhood—the embodied, inhabited experience of individuals navigating institutional life—and actorhood—the abstract, constructed capacity of institutional actors. Zooming in on players can bring refreshing angles to delimit the boundaries of institutions from conventions. By returning to the subjects of institutional life and considering how players of institutions construct themselves through an aesthetic feeling-perception process (Weik, 2019), it presents multiple theoretical opportunities to critically rediscover and conceptualize the sources, media, and outcomes of institutional (re)production. Understanding the interplay between personhood and actorhood is also critical for theorizing inhabited institutionalism, institutional change, identity work, and agency.
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