The Frenzy of Fields: An Interview with Neil Fligstein on Field-Theory and Social Skill

Abstract

In their ongoing attempts to define the basic architecture of the social world, sociologists have repeatedly turned to the idea of an ‘intermediate’ concept of social structure. Led by the intuition that something is needed to bridge the gap between the ‘macro-level’ of society as a whole and the ‘micro-level’ of individual practice, several authors have attempted to formulate the notion of a ‘meso-level’ social order. While embedded in the general fabric of social space and hence exposed to the structural forces it exerts, these local social orders are nevertheless thought of as having their own internal dynamics and relatively autonomous principles of organisation. Classical examples of this idea can already be found in Max Weber’s (1946 [1915]) notion of ‘spheres of value’ (Wertsphare) or Karl Mannheim’s idea of ‘sector fields’ (1940) . More recently, a similar intuition has informed such seemingly disparate intellectual projects as Luhmann’s theory of ‘self-referential social systems’ (1995), DiMaggio’s and Powell’s conception of ‘organisational fields’ (1983), Abbott’s (1988, 2005) work on ‘ecologies’ and, perhaps most famously of all, Pierre Bourdieu’s (1993, 1996, 1998) work on ‘fields’. The latter has been particularly instrumental in developing what has come to be known as a ‘field-theoretical’ perspective within sociology (for a highly insightful overview of the origins and developments of this perspective within sociology, see Martin 2003). One of the latest additions in this line of field-theoretical inquiry is A Theory of Fields (2012), the most recent book by Neil Fligstein and Doug McAdam. The central aim of A Theory of Fields is highly ambitious: to present the outline