A Theory of Fields

by Fligstein, Neil; McAdam, Doug

• ISBN13: 9780199859948
• ISBN10: 0199859949
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-05-14
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Finding ways to understand the nature of social change and social order-from political movements to market meltdowns-is one of the enduring problems of social science. A Theory of Fields draws together far-ranging insights from social movement theory, organizational theory, and economic andpolitical sociology to construct a general theory of social organization and strategic action. In a work of remarkable synthesis, imagination, and analysis, Neil Fligstein and Doug McAdam propose that social change and social order can be understood through what they call strategic action fields. They posit that these fields are the general building blocks of political and economic life,civil society, and the state, and the fundamental form of order in our world today. Similar to Russian dolls, they are nested and connected in a broader environment of almost countless proximate and overlapping fields. Fields are mutually dependent; change in one often triggers change in another. Atthe core of the theory is an account of how social actors fashion and maintain order in a given field. This sociological theory of action, what they call "social skill," helps explain what individuals do in strategic action fields to gain cooperation or engage in competition. To demonstrate the breadth of the theory, Fligstein and McAdam make its abstract principles concrete through extended case studies of the Civil Rights Movement and the rise and fall of the market for mortgages in the U.S. since the 1960s. The book also provides a "how-to" guide to help othersimplement the approach and discusses methodological issues.With a bold new approach, A Theory of Fields offers both a rigorous and practically applicable way of thinking through and making sense of social order and change-and how one emerges from the other-in modern, complex societies.

Author Biography

Neil Fligstein is the Class of 1939 Chancellor's Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. A renowned scholar of economic sociology, organizations, and political sociology, he is the author or coauthor of six books, including The Architecture of Markets and Euroclash: The EU, European Identity, and the Future of Europe.

Doug McAdam is Professor of Sociology at Stanford University. He is the author or co-author of thirteen books in the area of political sociology, with an emphasis on social movements and revolutions. Among his best known works are Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency, 1930-1970, Freedom Summer, and (with Sid Tarrow and Charles Tilly) Dynamics of Contention.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. xi
The Gist of It	p. 3
The Central Elements of the Theory	p. 8
Other Perspectives	p. 23
Conclusion	p. 31
Microfoundations	p. 34
Meaning and Membership: On the Origin of the Existential Function of the Social	p. 35
The Collective as Existential Refuge	p. 40
Social Skill	p. 45
Social Skill in Action	p. 50
Conclusion	p. 53
Macroconsiderations	p. 57
The "Embeddedness" of Strategic Action Fields	p. 59
An Excursus on Formal Organization and Bureaucracy	p. 64
The State as a System of Strategic Action Fields	p. 67
The Impact of State Fields on Nonstate Strategic Action Fields	p. 71
The Dependence of States and State Fields On Nonstate Fields	p. 74
Internal Governance Units	p. 77
Higher Education and the Professions	p. 79
Conclusion	p. 80
Change and Stability in Strategic Action Fields	p. 83
Current Debates	p. 83
The Emergence of Strategic Action Fields	p. 86
Sustaining a Settlement: The Reproduction of Fields	p. 96
Settlements and Ruptures: Stability and Crisis in Strategic Action Fields	p. 99
Reestablishing Field Stability	p. 104
The Relationship Between Social Skill and the State of the Strategic Action Field	p. 108
Conclusion	p. 112
Illustrating the Perspective: Contention over Race in the United States, 1932-1980 and the Rise and Fall of the Mortgage Securitization Industry, 1969-2011	p. 114
The Civil Rights Struggle, 1932-1980	p. 115
Setting the Stage: Contention over Race in the United States, 1781-1877	p. 116
The Field of Racial Politics, 1877-1932	p. 117
Destabilizing Changes: The Depression and the Cold War	p. 121
The Episode of Contention and the Rise of the Civil Rights Movement	p. 127
A New Settlement	p. 129
The Declining Salience of the Cold War Dynamic	p. 130
The Revenge of the Dixiecrats and the End of the New Deal Electoral Regime	p. 130
The Rise of Black Power and the Rupture in the Movement Strategic Action Fields	p. 132
The Institutionalization of the Civil Rights Movement and Its Impact on Other Strategic Action Fields	p. 134
Summing Up: An Important Postscript	p. 136
The Transformation of the U.S. Mortgage Market, 1969-2011	p. 140
The Dominant Strategic Action Fields of the Mortgage Market, 1934-1987	p. 142
Changes that Destabilized the Mortgage Market, 1969-1987	p. 145
Settlement and the New Strategic Action Field	p. 149
The Rise of the Industrial Model of the MBS Market, 1993-2007	p. 151
The Causes of the Crisis	p. 157
The Impact of the Strategic Action Field Based on the Industrial Model on Other Strategic Action Fields	p. 159
Conclusion	p. 161
Methodological Considerations	p. 164
The Roadmap	p. 165
How to Tell if a Strategic Action Field Exists	p. 167
Emergence, Stability, and Crisis, Part 1	p. 170
The Problem of the State in Relation to Strategic Action Fields	p. 173
Emergence, Stability, and Crisis, Part 2	p. 174
Social Skill, Strategic Action, and the Question of Entrepreneurship	p. 178
Considering Different Philosophies of Science and Methodological Strategies	p. 183
A Positivist Approach to Strategic Action Fields	p. 188
Realist Approaches to the Study of Strategic Action Fields	p. 192
The Problem of Empiricism	p. 196
Conclusion	p. 198
Toward a Theory of Strategic Action Fields	p. 200
So What is New Here?	p. 200
The Problem of the Accumulation of Knowledge in the Social Sciences	p. 208
The Surprising Discovery of Fields	p. 209
Toward a Collaborative Program of Theory and Research on Fields	p. 215
Bibliography	p. 223
Index	p. 233
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