Cultural Translations of Social Movements: A Field-Translation Interpretation of the Adoption Pattern of the Temperance Movement in the Danish Field of Moral Reform

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Studies of the diffusion and translation of social movements has traditionally interpreted the adopting context of a movement as culturally homogenous and explained the adoption of a matter of similarity between transmitters and adopters. As a consequence, most existing theoretical and methodological approaches to diffusion and translation are ill-suited to interpret culturally fragmented cases in which adoption patterns do not reflect cultural similarities. Building on social movement field literature, this article introduces a field-translation approach to account for fragmented cases with ‘dissimilar’ adoption patterns – specifically the adoption of the temperance movement in Denmark at the turn of the 20th century. Using mixed-methods – Social Network Analysis on temperance leaders’ organizational affiliations and content analysis of key texts – the article shows how attention to field-specific doxa can provide a satisfying interpretation of why rural progressives embraced an originally evangelical movement, while evangelicals first rejected it and only later became its most ardent supporter – and why the movement could not make inroads with urban progressives.