Producing expert capital: how opposing same-sex marriage experts dominate fields in the United States and France

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis paper examines experts testifying before U.S. and French courts and legislatures on same-sex marriage debates between 1990 and 2013. Experts provide special weight to political arguments, which I call expert capital. For this reason, social movements and decision-makers solicit them. Yet, because of specific national conditions, this article shows that not all experts have the capacity to use their respective academic and professional resources to impact policymaking. Drawing on 71 in-depth interviews and ethnographic observation in both the U.S. and France, I analyze how progressive and conservative experts have struggled for dominance in their fields. Results show that American progressive experts have achieved a degree of power in their fields as their conservative counterparts turn to resources outside the academic mainstream. In France, progressives have only recently challenged conservatives’ dominant position. This power distribution is due to: 1) size and centralization of knowledge regimes; 2) disciplinary and university reactions to research on gender and sexuality; 3) academic and professional organization strength; 4) social acceptance of gay families; and, 5) division among allied experts. These findings show that nationally specific knowledge production fields constrain and enable the ability of experts to provide expert capital to their activist and decision-maker allies.