Expertise is a key resource in the global economy today, and it manifests in various forms and areas (Anteby & Holm, 2021; Eyal, 2019; Pryma, 2022; Sheehan, 2022). This article focuses on expertise in social issues within the context of film and television production in Hollywood. Existing scholarship shows that contemporary entertainment industries rely heavily on expertise, and it is not only the expertise about the craft and trade, but also knowledge of the areas such as politics, society, and science (Colbran, 2014; Jenkins, 2016; Khitrov, 2020; Kirby, 2011; Lam, 2014; Mirrlees, 2016; Montgomery, 1991; Turow, 1989, 2010). When film or television writers seek to create realistic images of police stations, prisons, or hospitals, they often turn to experts in law enforcement or healthcare and hire them as consultants or technical advisors (Colbran, 2014; Lam, 2014; Turow, 2010). But entertainment makers often need more than just a convincing perceptual reality of such professional environments (Frank, 2003, 2004; Kirby, 2003a). Accurate and thoughtful representation of gender, race, ethnic, and class relations, as well as many other social and political issues, is becoming as important for cultural producers as the accuracy of the portrayals of tangible objects such as microscopes or spaceships (Khitrov, 2020; Montgomery, 1991). Cultural producers recognise the complexity of these issues and often seek the guidance of consultants for more informed portrayals. Overall, both the global influence of Hollywood’s stories and the global prestige of Hollywood as an industry hinge on how authentic its stories look and how well-informed industry professionals appear. Social and political expertise, which this article is about, is a key foundation of the symbolic and economic power of Hollywood. Moreover, the fictional images coming from Hollywood, or any other entertainment industry for that matter, serve as a source of knowledge about ‘real-life’ situations for the global public (Gierzynski, 2018; Khitrov, 2019:19; Mutz & Nir, 2010; Yates & Hill, 2018). If we want to know what our overall knowledge of the world is made of, it is indispensable to investigate how expertise becomes available to Hollywood professionals. The article sheds the light on this.

A recent study examining the role of experts in the production of contemporary American television series, identified four main expertise providers: state organisations; social movements; research organisations; and independent, or private, experts (Khitrov, 2020). That study argued that expertise production in Hollywood is a patchwork of structurally varied and circular efforts of all the parties involved. It showed that each type of expert pursues its own interests, adheres to unique strategies, and engages in particular practices. That study contended that it is critical to recognise the relational nature of expertise provision. For example, while Hollywood professionals may view consulting organisations as a source of reliable information and seek their seal of approval for credits, these organisations may see their collaboration with Hollywood as an opportunity to convey their messages to Hollywood and its mass audiences. In other words, whereas entertainment makers see experts as assistants in their research, development, or production work, organisational experts reach out to entertainment makers to lobby their interests and push for change. Collaboration between Hollywood and consulting organisations can be mutually beneficial, following a certain circular logic. Organisations aim to convey their messages to Hollywood’s mass audiences through films and television series, selecting Hollywood for its prestige and audience size. Hollywood professionals use organisational expertise to accumulate their economic capital and prestige within the industry and in the field of power. Organisations contribute to Hollywood’s power, while Hollywood’s power makes the industry attractive for organisations. Drawing on that study that answered the question of why experts work with Hollywood and vice versa, here, I delve deeper into the question, which that study left open, namely, how exactly consulting organisations work and how they accumulate and exercise their power.

When in this study I refer to consulting organisations, I mean state organisations, social movement organisations, and research organisations. The category ‘state organisations’ includes, among others, the FBI Office of Public Affairs; the Office of Multimedia, Motion Pictures and Television at the Department of Homeland Security Office of Public Affairs; and the Department of the Air Force Entertainment Liaison Office. Social movement organisations include Muslims on Screen and Television; Muslim Public Affairs Council Hollywood Bureau; Coalition of Asian Pacifics in Entertainment; Asian Pacific American Media Coalition; Women in Film; National Domestic Worker’s Alliance; Caring Across Generations; RespectAbility; Color of Change; and National Hispanic Media Coalition. Research organisations can include think tanks and public engagement and policy impact units at universities and research institutes, such as the USC programme Hollywood, Health & Society; the National Academy of Sciences’ programme the Science and Entertainment Exchange; and The Center for Media & Social Impact at American University. I use the term ‘research organisations’ instead of ‘think tanks’ as the latter is often an emic concept, and I prioritise using etic concepts for better research reflexivity. To protect my research participants’ anonymity, I am not disclosing here the specific organisations I interacted with. The organisations I have just mentioned serve as a mere illustration of the domain of organisational expertise.

For many of these organisations, the scope of their work extends beyond simply advising television and film writers and producers in Hollywood. Governmental organisations hire Hollywood professionals to brainstorm possible national security threats (Martin, 2019); social movements push Hollywood to make it a more inclusive workplace (Littleton, 2017); and research organisations partner with entertainment organisations to collect data on issues such as diversity in Hollywood (Sperling, 2021). Given that these activities draw on a range of expertise in social and political matters, it can be argued that the consulting work discussed here is only a part of the broader spectrum of organisational expertise provision work that these organisations carry out within Hollywood.

What are these social and political issues exactly? It would perhaps be more accurate to see them as an open family resemblance multitude rather than a closed list, as any such list would inevitably be incomplete due to the emergence of new social issues over time. The family of social and political issues includes substance abuse, civil rights, gender equality, nuclear weapons, public health, food consumption, climate change, disability, human trafficking, guns, as well as the issue of the authenticity of the portrayals of the military, law enforcement, immigrants, religious communities, people of colour, and scientists.

To understand the consulting work that organisations carry out in Hollywood, I propose three research objects. The first research object is a particular social space around the field of Hollywood, which I call ‘the relational space of organisational expertise production and exchange’, or simply ‘the relational space’, borrowing the term ‘relational spaces’ from Wooten and Hoffman (2017). While Melissa Wooten and Andrew J. Hoffman introduced this concept to shift from an interactionist view of social reality to a relational view inspired by Bourdieu, I employ it to transition from a Bourdieusian perspective centred on conflicts to a view of social reality that includes mutual orientation without overt competition.

My use of this concept draws on Bourdieu’s relational thinking and integrates some more recent attempts to merge field theory, Actor-network theory, and Science and technology studies that have been made to explain how expertise works today (Bourdieu, 2019; Eyal, 2012, 2013, 2019; Eyal & Buchholz, 2010; Eyal & Pok, 2015, 2017; Medvetz, 2012; Pryma, 2022; Williams, 2020). In the case of Hollywood, this concept captures the interconnectedness of consulting organisations and the prevalence of collaboration over competition. ‘Production’ here is meant to emphasise that experts do not simply carry their pre-existing knowledge from point A to point B, but adapt, translate, and co-produce it with other parties (Jasanoff, 2004; Kirby, 2008b; Meyer, 2010). The term ‘exchange’ indicates that expertise is not just given or received but is part of a negotiating and trading process. In other words, production is not a one-way street, but a more complex relational, systemic, reciprocal, and multi-agent phenomenon. For brevity, I will further use the term ‘provision’ instead of ‘production and exchange’. Overall, the concept of the ‘relational space’ enriches discussions within Bourdieusian field theory on spaces between fields and the significance of integration.

The second research object I propose is ‘connecting interfaces’. The term grasps the infrastructures that the actors in the relational space strategically and systematically build to establish connections and facilitate expertise exchange. These interfaces include the activities of organisational technical advisors, consultants, and their liaison offices such as workshops and conferences, writing programmes for Hollywood writers, networking events, awards and award ceremonies, public campaigns, and also mailing lists, and the like. To put it differently, ‘connecting interfaces’ include human and non-human objects, events, and environments. I refer to them as ‘interfaces’ because they render organisations visible, comprehensible, and accessible to Hollywood professionals. I use the adjective ‘connecting’ to emphasise the intention behind these interfaces: forging links to Hollywood. Organisations deliberately engage in the efforts to draw Hollywood’s attention to the services and activities they think Hollywood will find valuable. This concept extends the existing concept of ‘networks of expertise’ by emphasising the deliberate nature of these connections, contrasting with the autopoietic unfolding of the networks implied in the literature on networks of expertise. The concept also adds nuance to the concept of ‘boundary spanners’, which typically refers to human subjects navigating between fields, by including a broader range of mediating structures (Kirby, 2008b, 2011).

The third research object I introduce is ‘proxy capital’, a term referring to capital not intended for long-term retention but for rapid conversion into other capital forms. Hollywood professionals, as members of a profit-driven industry within the US capitalist economic field and a player in the US democratic political field, are wary of direct economic or ideological influence from other social arenas, as they may undermine their standing. However, Hollywood professionals can assimilate expertise from other fields. Hollywood professionals retain this expertise for as long as the production is running, and when a film or a TV series is released, they convert this expertise into economic capital (box office, viewership) and symbolic capital (awards, prestige). This swift turnover of a short-lived capital, in contrast to the long-term accumulation typically studied by Bourdieusian researchers, resembles trading as opposed to investing. The concept of proxy capital thus invites an exploration into the temporality of capital enhancing the standard capital analysis in terms of its volume and composition. Overall, these three concepts are rooted in a relational way of thinking in general and Bourdieu’s field theory in particular.

In this article, I answer the question of how organisational experts work in Hollywood and how they accumulate their power. I show how expertise coming from one field gains power in another precisely through the inter-field relations. I argue that the provision of organisational expertise in Hollywood is undertaken by organisational boundary spanners who operate within the relational space surrounding Hollywood, through the enactment of expertise networks, the construction of connecting interfaces, and the exchange of expertise as proxy capital. I contribute to the sociology of expertise by introducing the idea of purposefully built connecting interfaces and I expand field theory with the concepts of proxy capital. Ultimately, I clarify how expertise on social and political issues gets into popular culture, becoming embedded in the wider social world’s repository of shared meanings (Gray & Lotz, 2011:22), and what happens between social fields.

Literature Review

While the empirical phenomenon of technical advisors and consultants who represent organisations in Hollywood has been studied before, existing research has only considered limited aspects of this phenomenon. In particular, historians, communication studies scholars, and critical security studies scholars have studied governmental expertise. Sociology of social movements and communication studies have focused on the medical and social justice expertise. Science and technology studies and communication studies have analysed science expertise. These diverse literature strands suggest that governmental agencies, social movement organisations, and research organisations share similar methods of engaging with Hollywood. Yet, the existing scholarship has not constructed this commonality as a distinct research object. I consolidate the findings scattered across previous studies and make sense of my own findings by utilising the concept of the relational space.

In the following paragraphs, I offer an overview of current studies on the empirical phenomenon of organisational expertise, dividing this section into three parts: firstly, examining literature related to expertise from the U. S. government; secondly, discussing social movements; and thirdly, reviewing studies on research organisations. Subsequently, I turn to Bourdieu-inspired field analysis and the sociology of expertise, which, as I argue, enable me to transcend the disciplinary boundaries of the initial three areas of literature to construct a deeper understanding of expertise in the social world and simultaneously contribute to these two strands of literature.

The U. S. Government and Hollywood

Two bodies of literature focus on governmental expertise in Hollywood: history of the relations between the government and Hollywood and studies of the so-called ‘military-entertainment complex’. Historical research that has dealt with state expertise encompasses four sub-disciplines: history of film and television; organisational history of governmental agencies; history of public relations and public diplomacy; and political history. The military-entertainment complex research is part of a larger debate about cultural imperialism within communication studies and critical security studies. I will now examine history and then turn to the military-entertainment complex research.

Historians have long paid close attention to relationships between the U. S. government and politicians on one side and the American film and television industries on the other. While providing a comprehensive overview of this field lies beyond the scope of this article, it is important to highlight key studies that investigate the complex interplay between Hollywood and the political arena. Kathryn Cramer Brownell, in her book Showbiz Politics: Hollywood in American Political Life, offers a detailed history of how Hollywood, from the beginning of the twentieth century until the end of the 1960s, was in constant contact with American politicians, exchanging its endorsement of some of these politicians and Hollywood’s public relations techniques for the industry’s relative autonomy from the state (Brownell, 2014). Brownell also argues that Hollywood’s star system deeply shaped the symbolic performance of American politics for the public. Steven Ross’ Hollywood Left and Right: How Movie Stars Shape American Politics and Donald Critchlow’s When Hollywood Was Right: How Movie Stars, Studio Moguls, and Big Business Remade American Politics discuss the political engagement of Hollywood professionals and analyse the right-leaning fraction of the entertainment industry. These studies counter the widespread perception of Hollywood as a uniformly left-liberal monolith (Critchlow, 2013; Ross, 2011). Together, these works contribute to a larger scholarly conversation that critically examines Hollywood’s autonomy vis-à-vis the political field. They effectively argue that Hollywood, due to its upper echelon status within the field of power, has always been closely connected with the political world. These works have also shown that Hollywood’s economic, social, and symbolic capital—encompassing wealth, networks, loyal domestic and international audiences, creative and organisational expertise, prestige, and fame—have been valuable in the political field. Moreover, these assets have been exchanged for social and symbolic capital in the field of power, forming the foundation for mutually beneficial relationships between the state and Hollywood. Central to these relationships is the exchange of expertise.

A number of studies have delved into the exchange of expertise between the government and Hollywood specifically. Historians such as Lawrence Suid, Ryan Wadle, Tony Shaw, Gregory Black, and Clayton Koppes have analysed how the Bureau of Motion Pictures and Department of Defense worked with Hollywood throughout the twentieth century (Koppes & Black, 1977, 1987; Shaw, 2007; Suid, 1996, 2015; Wadle, 2019). Scholars like Simon Willmetts, Tricia Jenkins, and John Sbardellati have focused intelligence organisations, including the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the CIA, the FBI, and their relations to Hollywood (Jenkins, 2009, 2016; Sbardellati, 2012; Willmetts, 2016). Additionally, communication historians Kevin Hamilton and Ned O’Gorman have explored the collaboration between the American government and Hollywood in relation to the development of nuclear weapons (Hamilton & O’Gorman, 2019; O’Gorman & Hamilton, 2016). Collectively, these works emphasise that the relationships between the American government and Hollywood have been mutually beneficial. For instance, Willmetts details how the Office of Strategic Services used Hollywood studios’ research libraries and their footage archives as war intelligence sources during the Second World War and how later, after the war, former OSS head William Donovan used Hollywood as an advertising and campaigning platform in his efforts to establish a permanent peacetime intelligence agency, which became the CIA (Willmetts, 2016:89, 111, 113–14). Willmetts reconstructs how, right after the Second World War, Donovan created the Motion Pictures Committee specifically to provide intelligence technical assistance to Hollywood and aided war veterans in becoming technical advisors (Willmetts, 2016:77, 80). Wadle shows how the Navy Department Motion Picture Board, a unit within the U. S. Navy, provided filmmakers with technical assistance and military expertise in the 1930s. Within the U. S. Navy, the Board collaborated with the Chief of Naval Operations, the Navy Recruiting Bureau, the Motion Picture Exchange, and the Information Section of the Office of Naval Intelligence (Wadle, 2019:86–96). Both authors show that technical advisors were key expertise providers to Hollywood, contributing significantly to the government’s public relations and recruitment efforts. For Hollywood, the value of these advisors lay in their knowledge that enhanced the realism of films, access to military hardware, which helped Hollywood save on production costs, and assistance in marketing films. Hollywood studios, motivated by the pursuit of financial success and prestige, were keen to engage in these practices (Willmetts, 2016:83).

Importantly, Willmetts analyses the post-WWII dynamics amongst former OSS agents, filmmakers, and CIA personnel, referring to these interactions as ‘state-private networks’. His analysis reveals that these networks were more than mere conglomerates of social agents and organisations, such as the PCA, HUAC, or studio legal departments. They also embraced more ephemeral elements such as the defamation law, the documentary and semi-documentary film aesthetics, and the influential the New York Times vs. Sullivan court case (Willmetts, 2016:138–63). Collectively, these social agents and non-material entities formed the space of forces and opportunities during that time.

The second area of study, namely, studies of the military-entertainment complex, focuses mostly on the present-day operations of the Department of Defense (Alford, 2016; Kaempf, 2019; Martin, 2019; Mirrlees, 2016, 2017a, b; Stahl, 2010; Wasson & Grieveson, 2018). They invite their readers to consider the work of the government in relation to Hollywood, including the work of technical advisors, as censorship and propaganda instruments of what they term the American empire. These authors take an overall critical stance towards governmental policies and actions. Mirrlees, for instance, proposes a convincing conceptualisation of the Department of Defense as a cultural policy organisation (Mirrlees, 2017a). Historical studies that I considered above provide slightly more nuanced descriptions of how exactly governmental agencies and Hollywood professionals pursue their interests in practice and how Hollywood professionals’ interests vary and interpolate. They show the contingent nature of decisions made by both government bodies and Hollywood figures and reveal how Hollywood’s economic interests merged or conflicted with its non-economic considerations.

They reveal how much uncertainty was typically involved in the media production process when governmental agencies were involved and to what extent power struggles and unexpected circumstances affected the outcomes of the initiatives of both government and Hollywood. Nevertheless, an important takeaway from the military-entertainment complex studies is that technical advisors who provide Hollywood professionals with military knowledge is a major way the government influences the entertainment industry, an industry that, being fundamentally profit-driven otherwise, operates largely independently of the state. If the empire is in the details, as Catherine Lutz puts it, then governmental technical advisors are a key detail of the state’s power over an otherwise autonomous industry (Lutz, 2006).

Social Movements and Hollywood

The second literature segment relevant for this study focuses on the intersection of Hollywood and social movements. This literature covers virtually all eras of Hollywood’s history, as well as many types of social movements. For instance, Emilie Raymond examines the intersection between the Civil Rights Movement and Hollywood; Allison Perlman shows how television was the battlefield for both progressive and conservative movements; Vincent Doyle provides an insightful analysis of media activism of one particular LGBTQ+ organisation called GLAAD (Doyle, 2016; Perlman, 2016; Raymond, 2018). Collectively, these works show that, since its emergence, Hollywood has not only been the target of social movements, but has also been tightly linked with them. These movements range from the workers’ movement in early twentieth century, to anti-communist movements during and post-World War II, to various progressive movements at the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Moreover, it could be inferred from this literature that Hollywood has, in a way, acted as a social movement in its own right, safeguarding its collective interests and propagating particular worldviews.

This literature does not make experts its central object of interest, although some works refer to them extensively. Kathryn Montgomery’s work is particularly enlightening, providing a detailed account of how social movements sought to impact the American entertainment industry from the 1960s to the late 1980s (Montgomery, 1991). She explains how social movements developed their strategies of influencing the television industry and how the industry adapted to that, eventually integrating social movement actors and their agendas. The key insight from Montgomery’s research concerning expertise in Hollywood is the shift from initial hostility between social movements and Hollywood in the late 1960s to a more cooperative, institutionalised, even routinised relationship from the mid-1970s onwards. A crucial element in this shift was the involvement of social justice experts in the production process. Social movements learned to back their claims up with expertise coming from both independent experts and professional and research organisations, such as the American Psychiatric Association, while television executives increasingly relied on the experts as arbiters and mediators to ease tensions with social movements. Montgomery specifically notes that gay activists pioneered research-based advocacy and framed lobbying as ‘education’ in the early 1970s, a practice that gained widespread adoption in the 1980s. This argument aligns with my findings. The emergence of experts as engaged professionals or referees at the beginning of the 1970s, whether brought in by social movements or Hollywood players, shaped the further evolution of the relations between Hollywood and social movements. Expertise allowed social movements to influence Hollywood, and Hollywood to protect its reputation and economic interests by claiming that the industry had dealt with relevant issues in a timely manner, and it did so professionally, relying on experts.

To reiterate, from the mid-1970s onwards, militant confrontations gave way to peaceful knowledge-transfer routines, with these routines becoming institutionalised and standard practice within Hollywood. Vincent Doyle, writing on the current state of affairs within the LGBTQ+ advocacy in Hollywood, characterises the dominant strategy of contemporary social movements engaging with Hollywood as ‘mainstreaming’. He defines this as adherence the rules set by the media management (Doyle, 2016). He highlights the peaceful and mutually beneficial collaboration between various social movements and Hollywood, which likely stems from the processes that Montgomery documented in her book. This partnership mirrors the manner in which governmental organisations work with the entertainment industry.

Research Organisations and Hollywood

The third segment of literature I discuss focuses on the intersection of science and entertainment. This segment includes two distinct areas of study: science communication research and the entertainment-education field. I consider Joseph Turow’s study on medical communication separately.

Science communication studies are a part of the broader field of public understanding of science, which in turn, falls under the umbrella of Science and technology studies. Science communication studies primarily focus on how the natural sciences make their results understandable and accessible to the general public, the role of science representations in popular culture in shaping scientific facts, and the practical question of improving science communication (Adamsone-Fiskovica, 2019; Allgaier, 2019; Cassidy, 2014; Greenbaum, 2008; Grody, 2010; Nelson et al., 2013; Shinn & Whitley, 1985).

Science communication studies focus mainly on analysing the communication efforts of STEM researchers and STEM documentary filmmakers (Campbell, 2016). Several works in this area have explored the role of science consultants and technical advisors in Hollywood (Frank, 2003; Loverd et al., 2018; Merchant, 2013). Notably, the prominent researcher of science expertise, Kirby (2003a, b, 2008a, b, 2010, 2011, 2013, 2014, 2017, 2018, 2019b), introduced the concept of the boundary spanner in the discussion (Kirby, 2008b, 2011), which originates from Science and technology studies. Within STS, ‘boundary spanner’ relates to the demarcation between science and non-science, understood as ‘boundary work’ (Gieryn, 1983). Recent literature on expertise at large expands on the theory of boundary work and boundary organisations (Brandmayr, 2020). The fields of network analysis, management studies, development studies, and policy analysis have utilised the concept of boundary spanner too, along with concepts such as ‘brokers’, ‘bricoleurs’, and ‘boundary riders’, to analyse and advise on policy expertise and knowledge provision in organisations (Haas, 2015; Kellogg, 2014; Long et al., 2013; Turpin et al., 1996).

Kirby’s understanding of the boundary spanners, which I rely on here, is based on Kelly Moore’s sociological work on scientific and non-scientific interests (Moore, 1996). Kirby defines a boundary spanner as a mediator between science and entertainment production, someone who knows both the scientific culture and the culture of entertainment production, who masters both languages equally well, who can translate from one language to another, and who is able ‘to assume an identity unique to each social group and maintain their own unique social identity as a mediator’ (Kirby, 2008b:167). My findings are consistent with Kirby’s analysis, and the idea of the boundary spanner helps explain exactly how expertise gets from one social sphere to another. Specifically, expertise provided by an organisation gets translated into the language of Hollywood through the work of individuals acting as boundary spanners. What I add to this picture is the idea of connecting interfaces, which includes human subjects, non-human entities, material infrastructure, events, and social environments.

The entertainment-education field is another area of literature that deals with science consultants in the entertainment industries amongst other issues. Entertainment-education, ‘E-E’ or ‘EE’, as it is often abbreviated, belongs to a wider field of communication studies. EE is both a practical communication strategy and a research field that evaluates the effectiveness of this strategy (Frank & Falzone, 2021; Singhal & Rogers, 1999; Singhal et al., 2004). EE addresses a wide range of issues, including public health, human reproduction, and social justice (Borum Chattoo, 2020, 2021; Borum Chattoo & Feldman, 2020). Some practitioners of EE prefer alternative names for the discipline, such as ‘social impact entertainment’ and ‘narrative change’, in order to downplay the educational aspect of the strategy for their partners in the entertainment industries, as some EE scholars admit (Borum Chattoo, 2020, 2021; Borum Chattoo & Feldman, 2020; Rosenthal & Folb, 2021:258–59). It is worth noting that while social movements of the 1970s reframed their lobbying efforts as education to somewhat soften the image of power dynamics, today’s social movement members prefer concepts with even less exposure of the power component than what ‘education’ contains. The most common objects of analysis in EE are health organisations, governmental organisations, especially the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), NGOs, foundations, and social movement organisations. It can be inferred that all the actors analysed in this article, namely, governmental organisations, social movement organisations, and research organisations, intentionally incorporate some elements of the EE strategy. Importantly, it can also be expected that the literature on EE, which often includes application advice, might itself influence the practices discussed in this article, creating a feedback loop. These circumstances support my thesis that it is important to analyse organisational expertise in Hollywood as a distinct research object. To critically assess the broader social implications of the EE strategy in terms of power relations, I view it from a meta position, i.e. from a standpoint external to the strategy.

An insightful analysis of medical communication in Hollywood by Joseph Turow diverges from the two areas I just explored. It is a historical and sociological study of scientists and public health organisational experts (Turow, 1989, 2010). Turow, like Montgomery, covers more than just one type of expertise: both authors shed light on the overlaps between social movement and public health experts. Turow offers a thick description of the collaboration and struggle between the sphere of medical organisations and Hollywood between the 1930s to the early 2000s. Turow argues that the profession of the technical advisor and consultant emerged as early as the first half of the twentieth century, and the practice of hiring technical advisors and consultants in film and television production has been common since then until today. Film and television makers have been mainly interested in working with experts because this allowed them to acquire new ideas about social worlds not immediately known to them, which, by implication, helped them attract large audiences. This practice also provided media makers with production infrastructure such as the newest medical equipment and filming sets, which reduced production costs. It also helped Hollywood professionals secure official seals of approval from medical organisations, which Hollywood producers saw as a shield from possible criticism by vigilant competitors, critical audiences, and militant social movements. The primary interests of the medical community were raising the symbolic capital of their profession in society and protecting the reputation of specific medical organisations.

To conclude the overview of the studies of the empirical phenomenon in question, I would argue that the existing studies of organisational expertise provision have focused on just one or two types of expertise, but they have neither considered the organisational expertise provision as a whole, nor have they constructed this phenomenon as a research object. My data suggests that organisational expertise can be seen as a special empirical phenomenon, and it can also be constructed as a distinct research object because different types of expertise-providing organisations collaborate, occupy close structural positions in the social space, and demonstrate similar organisational habitus. Based on this, I propose a general model of organisational expertise provision which contributes to the Bourdieusian field analysis and the sociology of expertise.

The Bourdieu-Inspired Field Analysis: The Question of Integration and the Temporality of Capital

In this section, I show how I contribute to two bodies of field analysis literature. The first literature addresses field theory’s neglect of integration. Bourdieu’s emphasis on the interdependence of the three key concepts—field (of forces and actions), capital (resources that actors compete to accumulate), and habitus (the system of dispositions formed by this competition and shaping it)—implies that conflict and competition are essential conditions of field analysis (Bourdieu, 2019). However, there is room for integration in Bourdieu’s theory. Integration appears in Bourdieu’s theory in both the field of forces and the field of actions. The field has two sides: the field of relations between positions (referred to as the field of forces) and the field of struggle amongst agents (referred to as the field of position-taking actions). Bourdieu used the metaphor of the magnetic field to elucidate the former and the rugby field for the latter (Bourdieu, 2019). The first metaphor exposes the structural aspect of the field, while the second metaphor illustrates the agency side. When considering the field of forces or positions alone, we are examining the field without struggle, i.e. the field as an integrated, structured, and relational social space, formed by relations between positions.

Integration reveals itself on the level of actions, too. According to Savage and Silva, even in highly competitive fields, there is at least one aspect of integration in the form of the so-called illusio, which is the belief in common principles (doxa) in the field of struggle (Savage & Silva, 2013:112; 118–19). Without agreement on what is worth struggling for, the struggle would not have been possible.

The perception of Bourdieu as a theorist of struggle may be attributed to his focus on competition for capitals. He likely does not prioritise integration in his theoretical framework because he does not view it as a defining characteristic of a proper field. However, as some Bourdieu-inspired studies show, integration may be just as significant as competition in the real world (Hennen, 2013:91; Medvetz, 2012:75; Thompson, 2012:3–4). Therefore, when seeking to understand the social world, we should not automatically assume that competition always outweighs integration in all social spaces.

The new institutional theory, strategic action fields theory, and social worlds theory better capture integration than classical Bourdieusian analysis (Becker, 2008; Fligstein & McAdam, 2012; Powell & DiMaggio, 1991). However, all three are more suitable for cases where actors collaborate directly pursuing a common interest and working towards the same outcome. In contrast, consulting organisations that I analyse show only partial interaction and similar, but not the identical, interests, practices, habitus, and outcomes. They do not really demonstrate strategic coordinated collective action. Therefore, these three approaches are not the best fit for the empirical case I study. What I encountered in my fieldwork is closer to what Neil Fligstein and Doug McAdam call ‘broader field environment’ or ‘the broader set of relationships’ (Fligstein & McAdam, 2012:18–19; 24–25; 169), which is an equivalent of ‘spaces between fields’ in Bourdieu-inspired sociology of expertise that I consider below.

Recent work in organisational research recognises the existence and importance of such social spaces, emphasising that recent organisational field research has started moving towards a more Bourdieusian understanding of fields, i.e. ‘[m]oving beyond the notion of fields as being constructed around the physical proximity of actors (Warren, 1967) or issues (Hoffman, 1999)’ (Wooten & Hoffman, 2017:64). Melissa Wooten and Andrew J. Hoffman call such fields ‘relational spaces’, highlighting that the vision of fields as relational spaces ‘stresses the notion that organisations need to do nothing more than take note of one another to be considered part of the same field. This does not mean that actors formalise their relations via hierarchical arrangements or network ties (Djelic & Sahlin-Andersson, 2006). Instead, one actor takes note of another and through this process of referencing one another, actors bring a field into existence’ (Wooten & Hoffman, 2017:64). While the Bourdieusian field analysis has recently shifted its focus to integration rather than struggle, organisational research, which previously emphasised directly coordinated actions, has now turned its attention to non-interactional forms of synchronisation between organisations. The concept of the ‘relational spaces’ highlights the type of social life that until very recently has been on the fringes of both fields. This present study aims to further develop the analysis of these phenomena.

The second aspect of Bourdieu’s field theory that I engage with and contribute to is the theory of capital. Bourdieusian field analysis primarily focuses on capital accumulation and discusses capital in terms of its volume and composition (Bourdieu, 2019). While Bourdieu does touch on capital exchange, it receives less attention. Bourdieu and Bourdieusian sociologists appear to envision accumulation practices as investments, i.e. as long-term strategic activities. In my research, I have observed a unique practice of rapid capital exchange, akin to trading: swift and opportunistic. Expertise appears to be a short-lived form of capital that agents are keen on converting within a brief period rather than retaining it for an extended duration. A conversation with a consultant needs to take place this week, the script must be finished by Friday, and the scene must be shot tomorrow. Of course, some processes in Hollywood may take longer, but once a TV series season is released and the awards season is over, Hollywood creators move on to their next trading session. In this article, I introduce a new dimension to the idea of capital—its temporal dimension. I propose to analyse not only volume and composition of capital, but also the speed of exchange and the duration for which it is held.

The Bourdieu-Inspired Sociology of Expertise: Space Between Fields, Boundary Spanners, and Networks of Expertise

Another underdeveloped aspect of Bourdieu-inspired field analysis is the concept of the space between fields. Thomas Medvetz, Gil Eyal, Grace Pok, and Larissa Buchholz have pointed out that Bourdieu’s theory lacked a theory of such space, and they have attempted to fill this gap (Eyal, 2012; Eyal & Buchholz, 2010; Eyal & Pok, 2015, 2017; Fligstein & McAdam, 2012:26; Medvetz, 2012, 2015). Medvetz specifically views the space between fields as a hybrid social space populated by boundary spanners. These individuals cross field boundaries and masquerade as representatives of one established field or another, while also engaging in competition. Eyal, Buchholz, and Pok integrate Bourdieu’s field theory with Actor-network theory to theorise expertise production between fields. In this light, Eyal defines expertise as ‘a distributed set of actors, conditions and operations, only temporarily and provisionally assembled and embodied by an expert’ (Eyal, 2019:42). This conceptualisation extends beyond the narrow focus on individual human experts and encompasses the relations between people, organisations, objects, and ideas in the spirit of Actor-network theory, while also considering power relations in line with Bourdieusian analysis. In fact, we can observe examples of this synthesis in Laboratory Life, where Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar discuss credibility with a strong reliance on Bourdieu (Latour & Woolgar, 1986). These two theories do not necessarily need to be juxtaposed. Their synthesis in relation to expertise provision may enable us to develop a more nuanced understanding of social reality.

In this work, I build on these Bourdieu-inspired arguments and propose additional concepts of the relational space, connecting interfaces, and proxy capital to discern more elements in the space between fields. Expanding on my previous argument about integration, I define the relational space as a social space that demonstrates field effects such as the isomorphism of practices and organisational habitus, irreducible to direct interactions. By organisational habitus, I mean organisations’ similar dispositional orientation, their tacit awareness of each other, or simply similarity in their actions. Similarly disposed agents may even pursue the same form of capital, but they would do so without struggling with each other.

If I were to label this as a space between fields, the phenomenon that such a name captures would have risked appearing less real compared to the fields. Moreover, the idea of the space between fields is rather apophatic, i.e. it is defined as what it is not rather as what it is. Another option, namely, the conceptualisation of such space as a field in-the-making, would be based on a questionable teleological assumption that it is all social spaces’ destiny to become fields. Eyal and Pok rightly challenge this assumption (Eyal & Pok, 2015). The idea of the relational space, in contrast, does not suppose the teleological mode of thinking and makes spaces between fields appear as real as the fields. It does not mean, of course, that some relational spaces may not be indeed fields-in-the-making, but it frees us from the compulsion to perceive them as such. This idea also allows us to retain the explanatory power of the Bourdieusian logic when an object of study does not fully qualify as a proper field.

The concept of boundary spanners helps me identify agents operating in the relational space. The idea of networks of expertise allows me to conceptualise expertise as explicit and tacit body- and thing-orientated skills, provided by stunt people and prop masters working on sets, as well as the material infrastructure provided by governmental agencies. Despite this already rich theoretical framework, in my data, I discover one more phenomenon that goes beyond existing conceptualisations. This is the phenomenon of consultants’ liaison offices, workshops, writing programmes, networking events, awards and award ceremonies, public campaigns, and mailing lists. Some of these mechanisms imitate common Hollywood activities, like discussion panels, while others are exclusive to consulting organisations, such as databases of experts. Regardless, organisations’ objective of creating these mechanisms is to influence the entertainment industry by being comprehensible to it and offering something in return. To grasp this phenomenon, I introduce the concept of connecting interfaces. I build this concept on the studies of boundary objects and interfaces in Science and technology studies (Bowker & Star, 1999; Fujimura, 1988; Kanwal et al., 2019; Star, 2010; Star & Griesemer, 1989; Trompette & Vinck, 2009). Sociologist of science Joan Fujimura defines interfaces as ‘the means by which interaction or communication is effected at the places "where peoples meet" or different social worlds intersect’ (Fujimura, 1988:278). Susan Leigh Star and James R. Griesemer define boundary objects as ‘those scientific objects which both inhabit several intersecting social worlds […] and satisfy the informational requirements of each of them’ (Star & Griesemer, 1989:393). While ‘interfaces’ appear to be emerging on their own or at least partly independently of human actions rather than being intentionally built, and ‘boundary objects’ capture cooperative rather than power-laden knowledge transfer processes, when I mention ‘connecting interfaces’, I refer to the social mechanisms that boundary spanners strategically and systematically build and maintain to facilitate their efforts to connect with and influence Hollywood.

The concepts of relational space and connecting interfaces are not intended to replace the spaces between fields, networks of expertise, or boundary spanners, but to supplement them. They will allows us to better understand the processes in the real world when players of one field strategically seek to influence those in another field, and collaboratively build infrastructure to achieve that.

Data and Methods

To address the question posed in this article regarding the work of organisational experts in Hollywood today, a qualitative study was conducted. The research design of this project included semi-structured interviews and ethnographic observations. The ethnographic immersion allowed for an understanding of actions and implicit meanings that emerged in that context while the interviews helped uncover explicit meanings that people attribute to their actions. Together, these two methods of data gathering provided a comprehensive and multi-dimensional understanding of expertise provision.

The fieldwork took place in Los Angeles, the hub for mainstream scripted American television development and production, as well as consulting organisations. I lived in Los Angeles from October 2017 through June 2018 and again in June 2019, totalling 10 months. My data includes pseudonymised transcripts and notes from semi-structured interviews with Hollywood professionals and experts, ethnographic notes from observation sessions and informal conversations, and about 200 pages of production files. A total of 101 interviews were conducted. Of these, 48 were with the following Hollywood insiders: 20 interviews with writers and producers, 7 with actors, and 21 with individuals who hold various positions such as directors, casting directors, music supervisors, script supervisors, and media finance advisors. The remaining 53 interviews were with experts from different backgrounds. This group included 33 interviews with individual experts and 20 with organisational experts. Of the 33, 7 were with cultural, historical, and linguistic consultants; 5 with political and media consultants; 11 with experts in military and law enforcement; 2 with intelligence and IT specialists; and 4 with medical consultants. Of the 20 interviews with organisational specialists, 4 were with representatives of state organisations, 10 with members of social movements, and 6 with personnel from research organisations. In addition to the interviews, my dataset included field notes from 50 casual discussions, 15 observation sessions, and attendance at 13 public gatherings. Communication with industry professionals and experts also took place through 15 email correspondences. Furthermore, the research included an analysis of about 200 pages of production files. These files, which featured dialogues between writers and consultants, were sourced from the Writers Guild Foundation Archive.

To select research participants, I relied on the purposeful and snowball sampling strategies. My initial purpose was to interview individuals involved in writing and producing television series, conducting research for such productions, or advising TV creators as experts in political issues. It was during my initial interviews that I discovered the consulting organisations, the wide spectrum of social issues they consulted on, and their involvement in advising both TV and film makers. Upon realising that they offered a unique expertise, I started reaching out to them.

I arrived in Los Angeles with only a few connections in the city, but some of them worked ‘in the industry’, as locals say, and they kindly introduced me to their friends and colleagues. I also created an IMDb Pro account, which allowed me to access the contact details of various Hollywood professionals. I reached out to them via cold emails and calls. I often asked those I spoke to put me in touch with their colleagues. I recruited some research participants at Hollywood parties, award ceremonies, and even during shared Uber and Lyft rides, always transparent about my role as a researcher and the purpose of my study. When approaching consulting organisations, I sought out individuals referred by other participants, those whose advertisements I encountered during my fieldwork, and those listed on the Writers Guild of America West and East websites.Footnote 1

Interviews typically lasted for an hour or an hour and a half. Sixty-four interviews were conducted face-to-face, while thirty-seven were done over the phone or via Skype. Phone conversations are a common practice amongst Hollywood professionals and researchers of Hollywood (Gitlin, 1983; Montgomery, 1991). This method of communication allowed me to connect with high-profile executives in Hollywood and individuals based outside of LA during the fieldwork, such as in San Francisco, Boston, and New York. Some of these interviews occurred in professional settings such as sets and writing rooms, which provided me with additional ethnographic data. Following most interviews and observation sessions, I reflected in writing in my fieldnotes on the circumstances, interactions, and emotional processes in the data gathering occasions. I also regularly engaged in face-to-face discussions with fellow social scientists in Los Angeles and communicated with others around the world remotely, which helped me maintain sociological reflexivity while being fully immersed in the field.

Importantly, many interviews and observation sessions that were not specifically focused on organisations ended up including mentions of them. The data coming directly from representatives of organisations provided insight into their activities from the internal viewpoint, while the indirect references allowed me to understand how others view them. These indirect references enabled me to perceive organisations as a shared social space, distinct from both the realm of Hollywood and its subset of independent experts and lead me to the idea of the relational space.

To keep up with the context, I followed around 30 podcasts featuring Hollywood news and discussions covering both the business and creative aspects of media production. I have also been subscribed to various mailing lists, mostly by social movement organisations and research organisations, which have provided valuable insights into their daily public engagement strategies. Additionally, I regularly read online trade media such as Broadcasting & Cable, Cablefax, Deadline, Hollywood Reporter, Variety, Vulture, IndieWire, The Wrap, the Television section of The New York Times, and the Cynopsis Media newsletter, which were particularly helpful in keeping up with the industry. In 2020, during the analysis period, I attended several discussion panels of the ATX Television Festival, the Writers Guild Foundation, and Hollywood, Health & Society, which took place online due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Finally, I have been in contact with a group of research participants belonging to the organisational space, regularly exchanging opinions on the state of Hollywood. These sources have assisted me in locating study participants when I was in LA, to find additional sources of information, and to triangulate my findings.

Overall, the study is based on interviews, observations, archival data, media publications, and embodied and reflexive immersion into the life-worlds of Hollywood professionals and experts. The study received approval from the ethics review board of the Department of Sociology, University of Cambridge. I informed my research participants about the goals and background of my study prior to conducting interviews and observations. The research participants signed consent forms or expressed their consent to be interviewed through emails or, in a few instances, orally. I anonymised the data replacing research participants’ names with numbers. When I quote or describe them, I took measures to ensure that they could not be recognised through direct or indirect identifiers.

I performed thematic analysis on my textual data (Guest et al., 2012) using the MAX QDA software. I labelled the data with codes deductively derived from Bourdieusian field theory, such as ‘field’, ‘capital’, ‘habitus’, and also with codes inductively summarising emerging patterns, such as ‘cross references’ or ‘immediate audiences’. I followed the procedures described by Saldaña (Saldaña, 2012). I triangulated my data across different sources of information and various bodies of research literature reviewed in the previous section.

Findings

The Relational Space

If we investigate how Hollywood content creators conduct research for their creative work, we will likely find that they either do it themselves by searching online, purchasing books on the subject matter, or consulting with individuals who have specific knowledge. They often prefer the latter option because it saves time. If they choose this route, they may consult with private experts or representatives of organisations specialising in the relevant subject matter. For example, a script writer working on a storyline involving firearms may opt to consult with a retired police officer for a fee or with a Public Information Officer of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) Los Angeles Field Division for free. Under what circumstances would the writer seek out a private expert? She would do so if the show’s budget allows for it, if the expert was recommended by a colleague, or if the writer and the expert have previously collaborated and the expert left a positive impression. Why would the writer contact the ATF? This would occur if she was aware of this option, for instance, from a representative of the Bureau whom she met at a screenwriters’ convention last summer, and who provided her with his business card, assured her that the consultation would be free, and also left a positive impression.

Of course, these two options are not mutually exclusive. A writer might engage both a private consultant and an ATF consultant and also purchase some books, search online, talk to her neighbour, and hire a clearance agency to ensure there are no copyright infringements related to, for example the names of explosives mentioned in the show. A consultation with a private expert or an organisation might appear almost identical for the writer or producer. She would converse with an expert on the phone a few times, send a portion of the script, receive the notes, and consider whether to make any changes in her script based on the notes at all. What would differ, however, is that the show will have either a paid private consultant or a free organisational expert. However, in the case of state organisations, especially those that can provide Hollywood not only with advice but also with their infrastructure, and thus help producers save money, producers will have to sign an agreement which would typically give state organisations the right to review the scripts and the raw cut, as well as the authority to request changes. These distinctions are significant to almost any Hollywood professional because film and TV making is a business, and a paid consultation, however small the fee might be, must be reflected in the budget. But this does not mean that every film or TV maker would always prefer free advice. Many factors can determine her choice, convenience often being amongst the major ones. By convenience, I mean a Hollywood professional’s assessment of the convenience and reliability of the options available to her. This assessment would be based on her past work, preferred research practices, and her past encounters with the experts. From the experts’ standpoint, the writer’s choice would be likely seen as primarily the result of the experts’ past collaborations and his efforts to advertise himself in Hollywood. While private experts rely solely on themselves to build their resumes and reputation, consulting organisations like the ATF Public Information Office depend on the resources provided by their superiors and the positions held by their organisations in the social space.

This lengthy ideal-typical explanation sets the stage for my thesis that in Hollywood, there exists a specific social space of organisations offering expertise to industry professionals. This space has common features and is different from the space of private consultants. In the following section, I will analyse what sets this space apart and how it is structured.

The organisations in question represent three large social arenas: the state, social movements, and research. While I see Hollywood as a proper social field in Bourdieusian sense, drawing on recent studies and my own analysis (Cattani et al., 2014; Khitrov, 2020), I have not empirically established that these three large arenas are fields in Bourdieusian sense. Although my data indirectly suggests they are, I prefer to refer to them as arenas. By the state arena, I am referring to governmental agencies; by social movements arena, I mean non-profit organisations often self-identified as advocacy groups or culture change organisations; and by the research arena, I mean the sphere of knowledge production, which often includes universities, research centres, and think tanks. Each of these spaces have distinctive features and strategies, yet they are not entirely isolated from one another (see Fig. 1, the field of power and expertise provision).

Fig. 1
figure 1

The field of power and expertise provision

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Organisations of each type refer to other organisations of the same type. This discursive discernment allowed me to conceptualise them as three separate arenas. For instance, a representative of the Entertainment Liaison Office (ELO) of one of the Department of Defense (DoD) branches informed me that the ELOs of the Army, the Navy, the Air Force (all of them being under the DoD), and the Coast Guard (under the Department of Homeland Security) share the same building on Wilshire Blvd and communicate with each other: ‘We’re all in Westwood. We all have separate offices, we’re in the same area ‘cause we all, we all cross talk with each other’. (SO04) Social movements often refer to each other as members of the same social space—the space of ‘narrative change’ (SMO01), ‘culture change work’, ‘the non-profit space’, and ‘the media impact landscape’ (SMO02)—and emphasise that they know each other well. Some of them noted that one of the oldest organisations in this space, GLAAD, representing LGBTQ+ communities in the media, served as their model and even ‘taught them’ how to collaborate with Hollywood (SMO01, SMO02). Research organisations also refer to each other. A representative of one such organisation mentioned another one as setting an important example for them and told me that a key figure at that organisation also serves as a board member of their organisation (RO03). These cross-references helped me distinguish the three arenas.

Yet, organisations from each arena also refer to organisations from the other two arenas. This allowed me to see them as members of a shared relational space. For instance, a representative of a state organisation characterised a representative of a research organisation as follows: ‘I think we kind of fell into meeting him because he kinda does the same thing that we do, but for the science entertainment industry’ (SO04). Social movements often name Hollywood, Health & Society (HH&S) as their model in relation to their strategies: ‘The model—you should make a note of that—we base on, it’s called Hollywood, Health & Society’ (SMO04). One social movement organisation depicted HH&S as ‘a neutral informational sharing agency that does not have an agenda’ (SMO04). They found inspiration in HH&S because it demonstrated that sharing expert information with Hollywood in a positive, non-confrontational manner can be impactful. Amongst the social movements I talked to, those that emerged in the 1980s and 1990s seemed to prefer militant tactics and did not mention Hollywood, Health & Society as their model, whereas organisations established in the 2000s and 2010s leaned towards cooperative strategies and mentioned HH&S (HH&S was established in 2000). Therefore, we can identify the time around the year 2000 as a turning point when at least some social movements transitioned from militant to cooperative strategies. This aligns with Kathryn C. Montgomery’s findings (Montgomery, 1991).

Relations between social movements and research organisations deserve particular attention because when social movements rely on data from research organisations to justify their work to themselves, broader audiences, Hollywood professionals, and funders. In the field, I frequently encountered a common narrative: Many long-standing social movements that now collaborate with Hollywood did not engage with the industry in the past (my interlocutors did not specify the time frame). Instead, they carried out various types of advocacy work, including media advocacy, through media products of their own making such as internet campaigns, short films, or theatre productions. At that time, these organisations had full control over their products. They created content using their production teams, distributed it through their own platforms, and assessed its impact using their own media research capabilities. Measuring impact was straightforward: they could easily gather data on viewership numbers, demographics, and qualitative feedback since they managed both production and distribution. This information is crucial as social movements use it to showcase their impact to private foundations and public councils that provide funding, thereby justifying requests for financial support. The main drawback of this approach was that the audience was relatively limited and primarily comprised individuals who already aligned with the movements’ values and beliefs.

To expand their reach, some movements began engaging with Hollywood in hopes of spreading their messages to broader audiences through film and television productions. However, this collaboration resulted in the movements relinquishing control over the production process, content, and distribution, as well as the inability to accurately measure the impact due to the need for more resources to study the effects, which the movements lacked (SMO02). Additionally, the decision to collaborate with Hollywood was originally motivated by a belief in the impact of mainstream entertainment on shaping viewers’ perspectives on social issues, and this belief had not been supported by evidence yet. This is where research organisations play a crucial role. They have the necessary resources to conduct studies that, first, demonstrate the influence of entertainment programmes on the audience, and secondly, elucidate the nature of this influence. Social movements are interested in partnering with research organisations for specific projects, for instance, when a movement creates a message, and a research organisation measures the impact of that message. Research organisations disseminate academic-looking reports written in an accessible manner at no cost (SMO02). These reports play a crucial role for movements, as the movements believe that these reports make their work with Hollywood look meaningful and impactful in the eyes of their constituencies, audiences, other social movements, Hollywood professionals, and, importantly, the funders of the movements. Therefore, research organisations are vital for the efforts of social movements collaborating with Hollywood.

As I already argued above, I prefer to label these organisations as members of a relational space rather than a field because they do not demonstrate strong competitive behaviour. There might be multiple reasons why they avoid competition. Firstly, they all share a common interest in gaining access to Hollywood. Given that Hollywood professionals tend to avoid conflict and base their strategies on the cost-benefit analysis, members of these organisations understand that fostering good relationships with both the industry and with other organisations now will result in more collaborations in the future, whereas a victory achieved through conflict now will likely shatter collaboration in the future. Moreover, organisational practitioners do not see their work as a zero-sum game where one’s success equates to another’s failure. Instead, they believe that the success of one organisation amplifies opportunities for other organisations, while engaging in competition with each other in front of Hollywood professionals could jeopardise the entire organisational space’s chances of accessing the industry. The second reason organisations do not compete is that in most cases each organisation represents a very specific issue. As I mentioned in the literature review, various studies have highlighted how the interactions between Hollywood and experts have become institutionalised and routinised (Montgomery, 1991; Turow, 1989, 2010). My findings align with these studies, and I would add that the relationships between organisations themselves are institutionalised and routinised too.

My conversations with consulting organisations and their Hollywood counterparts have revealed that each group varies in their interests, expertise deployment strategies, and, hence, their vision of success in their interactions (see Table 1, fundamental interests and strategies). State organisations focus on nudging Hollywood professionals to create accurate and appealing portrayals of the state to enhance their credibility and bolster recruitment. Social movements seek to alter narratives and ensure fair representation of their constituencies in both content and production roles, often advocating for the change in media portrayals and hiring practices. Research organisations strive to disseminate accurate scientific information, reinforce the prestige of science, and to influence public health-related behaviour. Their strategies include influencing narrative content to align it with the latest research findings and actively dispelling stereotypes about scientists. Hollywood professionals working with organisations use organisational expertise to accumulate their capital in two fields: the field of Hollywood and the field of power. In the field of Hollywood, they use their expertise to bolster creative research, position their work as relevant and realistic, mitigate reputational risks, and fulfil social responsibility obligations. Concurrently, within the field of power, they utilise organisational expertise as a foundation for their celebrity activism, thereby enhancing the social and political impact of their work and personal efforts. Despite having different interests and strategies, these three types of organisations aim to use their expertise in a respectful way to influence Hollywood and the field of power. More concretely, they aim to shape industrial, national, and international debates and perception of the issues they stand for. It is likely that their shared fundamental interests and their mutual attention to one another lead to their isomorphic orientation towards Hollywood, compelling me to view them as one relational space. To further elucidate this isomorphism, I introduce the concepts of connecting interfaces and proxy capital.

Table 1 Fundamental interests and strategies
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Connecting Interfaces

Organisational actors move between the field of Hollywood and their ‘home’ arenas, pursuing their intrinsic, ‘home’ interests within Hollywood, while also adjusting to the requirements of Hollywood. As such, these actors can be conceptualised as boundary spanners (or knowledge brokers, as some researchers call them) (Haas, 2015; Kirby, 2008b, 2011; Meyer, 2010). Not only do they travel back and forth but also purposefully build infrastructure designed to facilitate and institutionalise their strategic and repetitive collaborations with Hollywood. I refer to this infrastructure as connecting interfaces. The idea can be grasped by the analogy with the small, welcoming reception lobbies in big brands’ stores, designed to make customers feel comfortable. In this analogy, shop assistants (boundary spanners) speak the language of their customers (Hollywood professionals).

An illustration can help clarify this. State organisations attend Hollywood professional events such as film festivals and discussion panels, where they mingle with attendees while conveying their messages to the Hollywood community:

Well, first of all, most people in Los Angeles, where the biggest creative group is [...] they really don’t know much about us at all. And so, we have a... my associate [the name of the person], two years ago, brought a [the name of the organisation] agent in full uniform [to one such event]. And they were just amazed that, you know, here’s this gun holding law enforcement officer who’s at their conference. So, they come up, and they ask all kinds of questions. We, on the other hand, go in with the idea that there are certain things that we want to pitch. And they could be the priorities of the commissioner. Or they could be just interesting or something new that hasn’t been covered before. So, we sort of know what we’re going to say and then they get to ask whatever they want. (SO01)

A law enforcement officer in full uniform attracted the attendees’ attention through this tacit reference to the symbolic power of the state, and by implication, to what this particular liaison office can offer to the creative community. This visit enacted a connecting interface whose elements included the officer, the liaison office that brought the officer to the event, any formal or informal agreements involved, the officer’s uniform, their knowledge, and their skills of speaking to Hollywood professionals, presenting the work of this ELO, and bridging the gap between the ELO and the community.

Connecting interfaces come in various forms, including panels, parties, awards ceremonies, film festivals, writing, acting, and mentorship workshops and programmes established by organisations. These activities closely resemble those found in Hollywood. As a representative of a research organisation described them as follows: ‘it’s a dinner, and it’s a Hollywood event, and red carpet, and celebrities, and all of that’ (RO01). Organisational experts build their social and symbolic capital in Hollywood. Organisations emulate typical Hollywood formats for several reasons. Firstly, they wish to familiarise their constituencies and experts with Hollywood social and work formats to facilitate their further collaboration with Hollywood. By involving their experts and constituencies in these activities, organisations incentivise them to acquire the Hollywood habitus which consists in the respect for symbolic boundaries, hierarchies, and capital in Hollywood; the intricacies of pitching ideas and behaving at auditions and writers’ rooms; and a particular type of self-positionality hinging on the self-celebrating narrative of ‘the power of storytelling’, elevated enthusiasm, emotive and bodily self-mobilisation, and acute concentration on the present moment and the people around. Secondly, organisations aim to create a comfortable environment for Hollywood professionals whom they invite to these events, in order to establish a familiar setting and pave the way for future collaborations. As a result, these events serve as a platform for organisation representatives, their constituencies, and experts to connect with Hollywood celebrities and for Hollywood professionals to find experts they look for. According to a representative of an organisation, once their organisation adopted this approach, it started ‘to organically happen’ that industry professionals began reaching out regularly through referrals and word of mouth: ‘We get calls based on referrals and word of mouth’ (SMO01). Organisations value celebrities who attend these events. During my fieldwork, I attended such events and observed portraits of celebrities who had endorsed organisations displayed on organisations’ websites and office walls. Overall, by hosting such events organisations aim to establish and develop their relationships with the industry and make themselves and their ideas known.

An important aspect of interface building is that organisational boundary spanners cultivate their own particular habitus, slightly different from the habitus of a Hollywood professional. They present themselves as a ‘resource’, ‘a partner in creating content’, or ‘a mediator’ between the actual experts and Hollywood, who merely let Hollywood professionals choose what they want, as opposed to lobbying or critiquing (SMO02). Occasionally, they go even further and downplay the power component inherent in their work by framing their contribution as ‘help’, ‘inspiration’, and ‘relationship building’, as opposed to ‘accuracy policing’, and ‘finger-wagging’ (SMO01):

We always come from what we call a high-trust position. So, we, when we work on a show, generally we’re looking for a partnership. We don’t expect them necessarily to honor all of our notes and changes, but we make strong suggestions and hope that they will. [...] We go in with the assumption that you want to do good, that you actually want to do right [...] the storyline, we don’t go in with the assumption that you are the enemy, and we need to force you to change. Because if we do that, is a very different—to your point about tension and conflict—so really a different relationship. (SMO01)

They emphasise their respect for creative freedom and stress that they maintain a clear boundary between their expertise provision and Hollywood’s creative work. Instead of outright rejecting unrealistic ideas from Hollywood creatives, they propose alternative solutions. They are ready to compromise if a creative’s idea clashes with ‘the truth’. This approach, which might appear as somewhat weak, enables them to build enduring ‘relationships’. Cultivating relationships with Hollywood professionals allows organisations to accumulate trust, a crucial form of symbolic capital in the industry, which can lead to deeper and longer-lasting impacts compared to what a one-off consultation could help them achieve: ‘What I have developed is a series of long-term relationships with the creative community in various forms. […] In Hollywood, the most important currency is trust. If you don’t have that, you don’t get anywhere’ (RO05).

These activities and self-positioning strategies allow boundary spanners to reduce the visibility of their efforts to influence the industry while enhancing the credibility of their experts. For example, a representative of a research organisation summaries this process as follows: ‘So often what we’re doing is we’re just simply connecting them with scholars to give a kind of authoritative perspective on a given issue’ (RO04). A representative of another organisation states: ‘We can change the direction of things by just putting people in front of them who are experts in something that maybe the writer did not know about’ (RO05).

Despite their efforts to be perceived by Hollywood professionals as familiar, in their communication with Hollywood professionals, organisations emphasise that they represent their ‘home’ arenas. This belonging to and their knowledge of their ‘home’ arenas is precisely what their value proposition relies on because Hollywood wants to know what it does not know. Simultaneously, they demonstrate their willingness to adhere to Hollywood’s rules. In other words, organisations intentionally and strategically demonstrate their heteronomy, but their boundary work also consists of presenting boundaries as porous. Simultaneously, organisations and Hollywood do not morph into a fuzzy decentralised rhizome with unclear roles either. A distinction between the suppliers of expertise and the buyers with distinct interests remains in place.

While organisational boundary spanners create connecting interfaces to link themselves to Hollywood, they also assemble networks of expertise to accumulate knowledge that they offer to Hollywood professionals. Networks of expertise consist of individuals, material objects, and ideas. Specifically, they include partner organisations and independent experts, databases of experts that organisations compile and utilise, ‘banks’ of potential stories collected specifically for Hollywood professionals, and material infrastructure that organisations provide (such as military bases) or assist film- and TV-makers in constructing (like medical sets). For instance, representatives from several research organisations told me about their databases of experts, which they open when they receive a query from Hollywood professionals. They find relevant experts, put Hollywood professionals and experts in touch, stay involved in in their communication, moderate it, and follow up afterwards to monitor their impact and to see how they can improve their work in the future. Boundary spanners also invite Hollywood professionals on research visits to interesting locations, such as research laboratories, shooting ranges, and informative events in the style of TED talks. They also prepare their experts in advance for possible questions they can get from Hollywood professionals:

So, what would an earthquake look like on the moon? Like if you were on a moon, if you’re standing on the moon. Could it throw you off?” Like just like random questions like that that are the kinds of questions we expect will come from a Hollywood storyteller. Are the questions we answer. (RO03)

Crucially, organisations want to ensure their experts refrain from saying ‘that would never happen’, but instead find ways to make the writers’ imaginings scientifically possible, even if improbable:

And then what we’re looking for is instead of that kind of “Well, that would never happen. Or that’s a really dumb idea.” We’re looking for that “Yes,” and kind of improv conversations. [...] So, we need scientists who are willing to say, “Okay, an earthquake on the moon would never happen, but maybe if an asteroid hit the other side” or, you know, some other plausible thing that’s within the realm. That’s what we’re really hoping for. (RO03)

To sum up, to connect to Hollywood, organisations build connecting interfaces, mimic the Hollywood habitus themselves, teach their experts to embody it, and assemble networks of expertise.

Proxy Capital

In Bourdieu’s language, anything that social agents consider as resource and aim to accumulate can be termed as capital. Bourdieu distinguishes between two major forms of capital, economic and non-economic, further splitting non-economic capital into social, cultural, and symbolic forms. The question of whether these forms of capital encompass all possibilities, or if additional forms can be distilled, is open to debate. I agree with Erik Neveu’s argument that before trying to propose a new form of capital, it is worth to first assess if a newly identified resource can be seen as a blend of the four main forms of capital (Neveu, 2018). Hence, what type of capital does expertise in Hollywood represent?

To answer this question, it is worth to consider the fundamental interests of the social agents involved. Based on my data analysis, it appears that organisations’ fundamental interests, particularly in their interactions with Hollywood, revolve around making their ideas known to Hollywood mass audiences in order to shape major American and global narratives. This aligns with Bourdieu’s concept of symbolic struggles within the field of power. Thus, for consulting organisations, expertise serves as a tool rather than a goal. Organisations do not seek expertise accumulation for the sake of it. Instead, expertise is an instrument in their major struggles within the field of power. Therefore, I would call expertise proxy capital. This does not mean that organisational expertise is false; it merely means that organisational expertise supports and legitimises the narratives that the consulting organisations promote.

Bourdieu did not focus on the longevity of capital, but in the case of expertise in Hollywood, we can observe that the instrumental status of expertise entails its short-term use. Expertise is produced and exchanged by agents into the forms of capital they are most fundamentally interested in the long run. Expertise helps them get where they really want to be. Expertise as proxy capital is not a new type of capital; it can be described as a blend of cultural and symbolic capitals, collected only to be converted into something else. What makes it special is its temporal, short-lived, modality.

Discussion

In this article, I answered the question of how organisational experts work in Hollywood, or, more broadly, how expertise from one social space attains power in another. I argued that, on the fringes of the field of Hollywood, there exists a peculiar relational space populated by organisational boundary spanners who build connecting interfaces, assemble networks of expertise, and produce and trade expertise as a short-lived, or proxy, form of capital. These agents represent broader, well-established social arenas such as the state, social movements, and research. This relational space is unique as it is mostly non-competitive but demonstrates some field effects like similar practices and habitus. Its social agents convert their knowledge of governmental, social, and scientific matters into symbolic power within Hollywood, which they then invest in the field of power. Thus, their symbolic power is amassed through their inter-field trading operations. While Bourdieu claims that the field of power is composed of agents of different fields with high volumes of capital, or, in other words, that the field of power is the field of fields, this study clarifies what happens between the fields interacting within the field of power.

While scholars of history, communication studies, critical security studies, sociology of social movements, and Science and technology studies have explored the empirical phenomenon of organisational expertise in Hollywood, each discipline has focused on just one or two types of organisations like governmental agencies, social movements, or research organisations. The phenomenon of organisational expertise as a whole has remained understudied. This study introduced a concept of the relational space of expertise provision, or simply, the relational space, to theoretically capture this empirical phenomenon and contribute to sociology by constructing two more new theoretical objects, namely, connecting interfaces and proxy capital. To reiterate, the relational space of expertise production is a social space that demonstrates a high level of integration via cross-references and similar fundamental interests, habituses, strategies, practices, connecting interfaces, isomorphic ways of assembling networks of expertise and the ways of treating expertise as proxy capital, and, finally, without strong competition.

This study enhances Bourdieusian sociology in two key ways. Firstly, while Bourdieu defines fields through the idea of competition, I provide examples of integration via similar dispositional orientation. This advancement in Bourdieusian sociology aligns with the perspectives of scholars like Mike Savage, Elizabeth Silva, Thomas Medvetz, Peter Hennen, and John B Thompson, who advocate for considering integration within fields (Hennen, 2013; Medvetz, 2012:75; Savage & Silva, 2013:112; 118–119; Thompson, 2012:3–4). Secondly, while Bourdieu treats fields as separate entities and addresses the inter-field relations by talking about hierarchies of fields and heteronomy, he pays less attention to the processes occurring between fields. This study illuminates the nature of interactions between fields and the connections between fields and other social spaces. It reveals that the space between fields is not a fine thin line, but rather a thick zone with its own dynamics and uneven power distribution. Scholars like Medvetz, Eyal, and Pok highlighted such spaces between fields, and my research builds on their insights, emphasising the importance of further exploring these phenomena (Eyal & Pok, 2015, 2017; Medvetz, 2012).

Limitations

I identify two limitations of this study. The first relates to the idea of competition. I argued above that organisations do not typically consider each other as competitors. I have only one piece of evidence to the contrary. A representative of a social movement, answering my question of whether other social movements seek their advice, said, ‘All the time, but we don’t give it up. We don’t want—we don’t want to create our own competitors. Yesterday we had a meeting with [an organisation working with the same issue]. And you know, you don’t want to create your competitor. So, you just give them enough to give them… We are not trying to be mean about it. It’s just that we don’t want to create… We don’t want to give the Coca-Cola formula’ (SMO03). This suggests that competition might take place between the organisations addressing the same issue, perhaps even if they belong to different social arenas, for instance state and social movements, but further research is needed to validate this. I lack evidence of competition between organisations addressing different issues.

The second limitation concerns the types of consulting organisations. Several studies have suggested that, in addition to the types of organisations considered here, religious and alternative medicine organisations, as well as tobacco and oil industries, directed their public relations efforts towards popular culture makers, at least in the past (Allgaier, 2019:34–35; Kirby, 2019a; Lederer & Parascandola, 1998; Lum et al., 2008; Mekemson & Glantz, 2002; Montgomery, 1991). I did not come across any of such organisations during my fieldwork.

Future Research

The approach I took in this study can be extended to the study of social movements, think tanks, policy researchers, lobbyists, social impact initiatives, censorship, and propaganda because it offers a framework for the analysis of the power relations and capital exchange between organisations belonging to different social worlds.

It might also be interesting to ponder why the system of expertise provision in the USA today includes numerous actors who form a relational space, build connecting interfaces, and exchange expertise as proxy capital. I would suggest that, perhaps, this phenomenon is influenced by two factors specific to the USA. The first factor is a wide-spread belief that private contractors outperform public or more centralised institutions. The second factor, as some researchers have already suggested, is the two-party system. Such highly selective and elitist system limits the full representation of many social groups in the parliamentary system, leading outsiders of the party system to try to convey their agendas through consulting or lobbying mechanisms and collaboration with the entertainment industry (Borum Chattoo & Feldman, 2020:23, 25; Strolovitch, 2014). It can be hypothesised that if social movements and other social groups had wider representational opportunities within the U. S. political field, they might not be as interested in influencing Hollywood as they are now. The third factor, which is particularly relevant to the efforts of social movements, is the assumption that ‘culture change’ can drive policy change. From this perspective, social movements in Hollywood can be seen as agents aiming at policy change via culture change. They deploy experts and expertise as proxy capital in their culture change work because they believe that this will lead to policy change.

Another direction for future research involves comparing consultants’ loyalties in two scenarios: first, when they are members of organisations and, second, when organisations merely bring them into Hollywood, but the experts remain members of their professional fields outside the relational space. Some of my interviews and also two first-person accounts of consulting work published in academic journals suggest that exploring consultants’ loyalties could be a promising research avenue (Baht, 2010; Grody, 2010).

When we encounter social spaces where agents show similar dispositional orientation and little competition, it is tempting to either exaggerate signs of competition to force these spaces fit field theory or dismiss field theory entirely in favour of the study of direct interactions or networks in the Actor-network theory spirit. My research provides an example of a third way. I show that we can analyse such spaces while also retaining the major premises of field theory and relational thinking more broadly. It is conceivable that with the growth of interconnectedness, mediatisation, and division of labour in the cultural industries and in the global economy at large, the theoretical framework presented here, emphasising integration and inter-field phenomena, may prove valuable in interpreting emerging relationships between various fields and more amorphous social spheres.

Conclusion

This study aims to expand our understanding of the power of expertise in the contemporary world. While many social critics declare the decline of expertise, it appears that expertise is proliferating in at least one industry. Regardless of whether expertise is diminishing or increasing, it is important to understand how it works. From a relational standpoint, experts are not omnipotent autonomous figures who either can or cannot save the world. While some may possess enough authority to seem like sovereign referees, they are still part of networks and the relational space, acting as both agents and subjects of power dynamics. If we acknowledge that the social order is at least partly produced and reproduced through categories of vision and division, then, by answering the questions posed in this study, we edge closer to a better understanding of how Hollywood, a highly influential meaning-generating industry, contributes to the production and reproduction of the social order.