scholarly journals Magicians at Work: Modellers as Institutional Entrepreneurs in the Global Governance of Agriculture and Food Security

2019 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 58-77
Author(s):  
Lise Cornilleau
Keyword(s):  
Field Theory ◽  
Global Governance ◽  
Sociology Of Science ◽  
Recent Change ◽  
Strategic Action ◽  
Institutional Entrepreneurs ◽  
Descriptive Account ◽  
A Site ◽  
Agriculture And Food ◽  
Strategic Action Field

Global models of agriculture act as the epistemic basis for quantitative foresight, which guides international policymaking and research on agriculture. With the new political sociology of science as a backdrop, this article studies the actors who develop and use these models through the lens of field theory. Contributing to the dialogue between the neo-institutionalist field theory and its Bourdieusian version, it describes the structure and the dynamics of the strategic action field of modelling organizations, using the Bourdieusian notions of “succession” and “subversion” to refine the characterization of challengers. It also discusses the insights of the Bourdieusian concept of “homology” to analyse the relations between the field of model producers and the field of model users. Whereas Bourdieu provides a primarily descriptive account of homologies, which are close to a “social magic without magicians” for Roueff, the present text describes magicians doing the work of producing homologies. Some modellers use intercomparison to reduce competition and to have their models used in the field of global governance, thus strategically producing homologies, while resolving the main modelling conflict of the field. These actors benefit from the recent change in the modelling field under the influence of climate change, to behave as what Fligstein and McAdam have called “institutional entrepreneurs”. The article concludes that this amended version of field theory makes it possible to describe the co-construction of a range of models developed by competing organizations and the controversial making of global agricultural governance. Doing so, it complements the co-production framework, which often focuses on a given site of expertise production and a site of global governance.

scholarly journals Taste matters: Cultural capital and elites in proximate Strategic Action Fields

2016 ◽  
Vol 70 (2) ◽  
pp. 211-236 ◽  
Author(s):  
Crawford Spence ◽  
Chris Carter ◽  
Javier Husillos ◽  
Pablo Archel
Keyword(s):  
Field Theory ◽  
Public Sector ◽  
Private Sector ◽  
Cultural Capital ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
Recent Literature ◽  
Professional Roles ◽  
Strategic Action ◽  
The Public ◽  
Strategic Action Field

Recent literature suggests that elites are increasingly fragmented and divided. Yet there is very little empirical research that maps the distinctions between different elite groups. This article explores the cultural divisions that pertain to elite factions in two distinct but proximate Strategic Action Fields. A key insight from the article is that the public sector faction studied exhibits a much broader, more aesthetic set of cultural dispositions than their private sector counterparts. This permits a number of inter-related contributions to be made to literature on both elites and field theory. First, the findings suggest that cultural capital acts as a salient source of distinction between elite factions in different Strategic Action Fields. Second, it is demonstrated how cultural capital is socially functional as certain cultural dispositions are strongly homologous with specific professional roles. Third, the article demonstrates the implications for the structure of the State when two culturally distinct elites are brought together in a new Strategic Action Field.

From Mother’s Ruin to Ginaissance: Emergence, settlement and resettlement of the gin category

2019 ◽  
Vol 41 (7) ◽  
pp. 969-992 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giuseppe Pedeliento ◽  
Daniela Andreini ◽  
Daniele Dalli
Keyword(s):  
Field Theory ◽  
Process Model ◽  
Product Category ◽  
Strategic Action ◽  
Product Categories ◽  
Socially Constructed ◽  
The World ◽  
Strategic Action Field ◽  
Small Producers

This article provides a historically grounded explanation of category emergence and change by using the gin category as an example. Formerly a standardized spirit produced by a narrow group of large England-based producers, gin has become a premium craft spirit made by thousands of big and small producers in every corner of the world – a categorical shift that commentators have dubbed the ‘ginaissance’. We approach product categories as socially constructed entities and make informed use of history to explain the successive categorical dynamics. Strategic action field theory is applied to explain how internal and external category actors interact to create and change product meanings and affect categorical configurations. Our results show how the intricate, complex and historically embedded processes that the product category underwent first triggered stigmatization and then put conditions in place that led to concentration and made the current ginaissance possible. Findings drawn from this study of gin contribute to research on product categories by revealing some peculiar dynamics of concentration and partitioning, status recategorization and categorical stigma, which are summarized in an empirically grounded process model of category emergence and change.

Conceptualizing U.S. Community Economic Development: Evidence from New York City

2020 ◽  
pp. 0739456X2092907
Author(s):  
Jason S. Spicer ◽  
Evan Casper-Futterman
Keyword(s):  
Field Theory ◽  
New York ◽  
Economic Development ◽  
New York City ◽  
Historical Development ◽  
Community Economic Development ◽  
Strategic Action ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Strategic Action Field ◽  
Practical Sense

Building from the “Progressive Cities” era toolkit, advocates of community economic development (CED) today deploy a wide range of new and well-established strategies. How can planners make theoretical and practical sense of these varying tactics? Using New York as a case and sociological strategic action field theory as a framing device, we find evidence of three distinct CED logics: exactive/concessionary, localist, and transformative/democratic. We differentiate these logics based on their relationship to neoliberalism and globalization, forces which have shaped CED’s historical development. Awareness of these ideal-type logics may assist planners and CED actors in selecting and coordinating contextually appropriate strategies.

Ottoman Foundations of Turkish Typography: A Field Theory Approach

Design Issues ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 59-75
Author(s):  
Özlem Özkal
Keyword(s):  
Field Theory ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Theory Approach ◽  
Historical Evidence ◽  
Strategic Action ◽  
Strategic Action Field ◽  
Field Formation ◽  
Late Ottoman

This paper examines the formation of the field of typography in the Ottoman Empire from within a field-based perspective. By approaching typography as a strategic action field, it analyzes the typographic environment and its various actors from mid-nineteenth to early twentieth centuries according to the criteria of field formation. Through explicatory historical evidence, it demonstrates that the field of typography was in the process of formation in the late Ottoman period.

Consumers’ collective action in market system dynamics

2016 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-70 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dannie Kjeldgaard ◽  
Søren Askegaard ◽  
Jannick Ørnstedt Rasmussen ◽  
Per Østergaard
Keyword(s):  
Field Theory ◽  
Collective Action ◽  
System Dynamics ◽  
Significant Role ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Market Dynamics ◽  
Organized Activities ◽  
Market System ◽  
Strategic Action

This article examines how consumers may work strategically to alter market dynamics through formally organized activities. We address this issue in the context of the Danish beer market and its evolution over the last two decades, with a specific empirical focus on the role of a formally organized consumer association. We draw on key tenets of recent advances in sociological field theory, which views social order as comprising multiple and related strategic action fields. From this perspective, we describe the Danish beer market and its transformation, with an emphasis on how Danish beer enthusiasts played a significant role in altering the logics of competition in the market, but also played a significant institutionalized role within the field itself. We theorize this activity as consumers’ collective action.

What would a Bourdieuan sociology of scientific truth look like?

2009 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-79 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kyung-Man Kim
Keyword(s):  
Field Theory ◽  
Scientific Practice ◽  
Sociology Of Science ◽  
Pierre Bourdieu ◽  
Sociological Study ◽  
Theory Of Science ◽  
Collège De France ◽  
Social Logic ◽  
Scientific Truth ◽  
Idealistic View

In his last lecture delivered at the Collège de France, Pierre Bourdieu criticizes relativist sociology of science for failing to capture the truly social logic of scientific practice and asserts that his argument of 30 years ago can still work as a corrective to the relativist sociology of science. However, Bourdieu's critics concur that his field theory of science is not only theoretically defunct but also empirically deficient. In this article, I do two things. First, after showing why, in Bourdieu's field theory of science, the distinction between the two explanatory categories deployed by the relativists dissolves, I argue that, contrary to the critics' claims, Bourdieu's field theory of science has the distinctively Bourdieuan elements that sharply distinguish it not only from the Mertonian/Habermasian idealistic view of science but also from that of relativist sociology of science. The second part of this article discusses a sociological study of scientific practice and indicates the way in which Bourdieu's theoretical arguments can be empirically substantiated.

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