The Contract as Social Artifact

Abstract

This article outlines a distinctive, albeit not entirely unprecedented, research agenda for the sociolegal study of contracts. In the past, law and society scholars have tended to examine contracts either through the intellectual history of contract doctrine “on the books” or through the empirical study of how real‐world exchange relations are governed “in action.” Although both of these traditions have contributed greatly to our understanding of contract law, neither has devoted much attention to the most distinctive concrete product of contractual transactions—contract documents themselves. Without denying the value of studying either contract doctrine or relational governance, this article argues that contract documents are independently interesting social artifacts and that they should be studied as such. As social artifacts, contracts possess both technical and symbolic properties, and the sociolegal study of contract‐as‐artifact can profitably apply prevailing social scientific theories of technology and symbolism to understand both: (1) the microdynamics of why and how transacting parties craft individual contract devices, and (2) the macrodynamics of why and how larger social systems generate and sustain distinctive contract regimes. Seen in this light, the microdynamics of contract implicate “technical” theories of transaction cost engineering and private lawmaking, and “symbolic” theories of ceremony and gesture. In a parallel fashion, the macrodynamics of contract implicate “technical” theories of innovation diffusion, path dependence, and technology cycles, and “symbolic” theories of ideology, legitimacy, and communication. Together, these micro and macro explorations suggest that contract artifacts may best be understood as scripts and signals—collections of symbols designed to yield technically efficacious practical action when interpreted by culture‐bearing social actors within the context of preexisting vocabularies and conventions.

Revisiting the interplay between contractual and relational governance: A qualitative and meta‐analytic investigation

“…It seems that, overall, the positive moderating effects of the configurations of formal and informal institutional A c c e p t e d M a n u s c r i p t 42 environments outweigh the negative moderating effects in China. In addition, the normative force of institutional environments may legitimize contracting as a standard practice (Suchman, 2003), and thus contracting may signal neither a lack of nor an increase of trust in countries such as the Hong Kong, the Netherlands, and the United States, which would help to explain why the contracts-trust relationships are independent in these countries.…”

The Legalization of Emotion: Managing Risk by Managing Feelings in Contracts for Surrogate Labor

“…However, from a law and society perspective, the contract—which is relational, symbolic, and not merely instrumental—will likely not disappear. I embrace the model of contracts as exchange relations that have extra‐legal dynamics, where actors deploy contracts as a technical means of structuring their relations, as symbolic representations, and as cultural displays that inhere particular normative principles and social experiences (Suchman : 100). Surrogacy is a doubly relational contract: not just as between the promisor and promisee for services and consideration but also because the “product” is human (Radin ).…”

Authentication as Institutional Maintenance Work

“…Recently, scholars have turned to artefacts as another potent resource for institutional maintenance work. An artefact is defined as ‘a discrete material object, consciously produced or transformed by human activity, under the influence of the physical and/or cultural environment’ (Suchman, , p. 98). Artefacts communicate institutional content through material means (Carlile et al, ; Dover and Lawrence, ; Jones et al, ), a capacity that imbues them with an ability to influence institutional dynamics and contribute to institutional maintenance (Jones and Massa, ; Jones et al, ; Lawrence et al, ).…”