Abstract
Field theory offers a view of social life concerned with how a set of actors orienting their actions to one another do so within a meso-level social order. Fields, once formed, are the arenas where the sociological game of jockeying for position constantly plays out. Our purpose is to review contemporary field theory as articulated in three major theoretical statements in sociology. We first discuss field theory’s intellectual roots, paying particular attention to the influences of Max Weber and Kurt Lewin, but also phenomenology and symbolic interaction. We next provide an overview of three of the most developed elaborations of field theory from the last half-century – Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of fields (1992), the neo-institutional approach to organizational fields (DiMaggio and Powell 1983), and the theory of strategic action fields recently proposed by Fligstein and McAdam 2012. We follow these overviews with more a detailed examination of how each of these theories addresses two of the most fundamental problems in sociological theory: (1) how to conceive of agency and actors in fields, and (2) how social fields emerge, reproduce, and change. We spend the bulk of our essay discussing key differences between the three approaches on these issues. We end by suggesting the next steps forward in elaborating field theory.
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Notes
- 1.
We only review theories that explicitly invoke the field concept. There are a great many perspectives in sociology that appear compatible with field theory, for example, network analysis (White 1992) and the institutional logics perspective (Thornton et al. 2012). But these perspectives eschew field as a central concept and are not discussed in this chapter.
- 2.
- 3.
- 4.
For an extended discussion of Bourdieu’s habitus, see Lizardo (2004).
- 5.
This point should not be overstated. For Bourdieu, although habitus tends to align with the logic and expectations of the field, it is not necessarily a perfect alignment. The extent to which it does align is a matter of degree. Bourdieu’s concept of “hysteresis,” for example, accounts for situations in which one’s habitus becomes mismatched or lags behind the logic of a field (Bourdieu 2000:160–161). This is exemplified in the character of Don Quixote, whose antiquated knightly disposition no longer fits in his contemporary world. However, other than a vague nod to crisis as a possible necessary condition (see our discussion of crisis below), Bourdieu does not systematically theorize the causes or consequences of such hysteresis. Why and when do some experience the disjuncture when others align? Why might some experience the disjuncture when, at other moments of field succession, they can align? Under what conditions does hysteresis lead to active efforts to hold on to the misaligned habitus? When might it lead to efforts to change the logic of a field rather than adapt the habitus to fit the different logic? For a similar critique, see Burawoy and Von Holdt (2012:38–39).
- 6.
It remains an empirical question as to the distribution of social skill in given fields or across the population. Fligstein and McAdam (2012: 17) only offer an unsupported speculation that social skill could be distributed normally across the population.
- 7.
Here, they join Bourdieu in his critique of Marxist materialist conceptions of interaction. Like Bourdieu, they argue that interests themselves only have meaning because they are socially constructed and thus have symbolic meaning to field participants.
- 8.
We acknowledge that Bourdieu did not solely study fields in which individuals were the primary participants. For example, he identifies firms as the key players in the economic field and speaks of the importance of their interactions with the state (Bourdieu 2005). He also links elite universities, corporations, and the state to the field of power (Bourdieu 1996a).
- 9.
- 10.
Neo-institutional scholars have provided a wealth of theoretical and empirical insights into convergent change (i.e., isomorphism) once a field exists.
- 11.
Morrill borrows the term “interstitial emergence” from Mann (1986).
- 12.
As we noted in our overview of the theory of SAFs, field dependencies can be based on legal or bureaucratic authority and on resource dependencies (Pfeffer and Salancik 1978).
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Kluttz, D.N., Fligstein, N. (2016). Varieties of Sociological Field Theory. In: Abrutyn, S. (eds) Handbook of Contemporary Sociological Theory. Handbooks of Sociology and Social Research. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-32250-6_10
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