What Editors Talk About When They Talk About Editors: Resisting Institutional Change through Discourse in Italian Literary Field

Abstract

How do resisters and losers of a process of institutional change use discourse to define their identity and position themselves in the new institutional arrangements? After a process of institutional change, received literature suggests that losers tend to re-define themselves in relation to the new institutional arrangement: in this case we see their discourse colonized by a new dominant one. We analyse Italian literary field, that experienced a transformation toward a market oriented institutional logic, that is already finished. Here editors, that are professional that select new manuscripts to be published and edit texts before publishing, far from incorporating market discourse, leverage their symbolic role to protect their niche. We find that their discourse highlights their literary peculiarities: we suggest that they maintain an idiosyncratic discourse, focused on aesthetic and literary topics, in order to define their identity and role and protect their position. Publishers' dimensions accounts for different discourses, with editors of medium sized publishers more prone to refer to aesthetic issues, editors working for big ones that refer to personal expertise, whereas small publishers’ editors are the only ones explicitly referring to market.