How the Nobel became a world prize: Scalar mediation in the global literary field

Abstract

This article introduces the concept of scalar mediation to describe a central aspect of the work of global consecrating organizations. Existing work has demonstrated how scales within global cultural fields can operate as distinctive symbolic universes. The present study looks at how global consecrators bridge the different and sometimes contradictory judgements made at different scales to produce selections that “scale up” and appear legitimate before global audiences. It examines the awarding of the Nobel Prize in Literature using a qualitative and quantitative analysis of archival records from 1901 to 1966 – some of the most recent years available under the statutes of the Nobel Foundation. The results show that the scales of mediation for the Nobel Prize underwent several transformations during the period of observation. The earliest prizes favored the tastes of conservative national academies over international literary opinion, while in the 1920s and 1930s the Nobel largely ignored or rejected the preferences of other cultural authorities. Only after 1946 did the prize recognize cosmopolitan literary pioneers and world-renowned thinkers with any regularity. The findings reveal that scalar mediation can be a slow, uncertain, and contested process, even in the most self-evidently global of cultural organizations.