Theorizing fields

Field analysis, inspired largely from the work of Pierre Bourdieu, is becoming widely used in sociology today. In A Theory of Fields Neil Fligstein and Doug McAdam elaborate selectively on Bourdieu’s thinking to offer a conceptual framework for better understanding the creation, institutionalization, and transformation of “mesolevel social spaces” where actors compete, often through cooperation and coordination, for material and status rewards. In lieu of calling those spaces markets, organizations, networks, systems, or institutions, as is commonly done in the specialized subfields of social movements, political sociology, organizations, and institutional work in political science, FM propose the language of “strategic action field.” They argue that their strategic action field perspective can link agency to structured social spaces and serve as an integrative conceptual umbrella for these fragmented subfields of scholarly specialization. This review presents and evaluates this intellectual field strategy to provide a common and integrative conceptual framework, while calling attention to its key strengths and weaknesses.