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Research on institutions and networks has proceeded on largely separate trajectories over the past few decades. The former is more associated with work in organizational and political sociology, and the latter serves as the wellspring of research in economic sociology. To be sure, a number of loose linkages exist between the subfields. For example, many institutional studies presume that professional or inter-organizational networks serve as conduits for the diffusion of appropriate practices and ideas. Indeed, much institutional research conflates ‘simple’diffusion with ‘deep’institutionalization. Meanwhile, research on networks often considers how categorical or status variations in network structures shape social comparison and stratification processes. But these points of intellectual cross-fertilization have remained undertheorized. 1 We think there is much to be gained from a more analytically driven dialogue between these literatures. We argue that networks and institutions mutually shape one another. Over time, this co-evolutionary process creates, sustains, and transforms social worlds. The cognitive categories, conventions, rules, expectations, and logics that give institutions their force also condition the formation of relationships and thus the network structures that function as the skeletons of fields. But networks are more than just the scaffolds and circulatory systems of organizational fields. They are also the source of ‘horizontal’distinctions among categories of individuals, organizations, and actions, as well as ‘vertical’status differentials. While institutions shape structures and condition their effects, networks generate the categories and …