Towards an integration of the field theories: strategic action fields approach

Neil Fligstein and Doug McAdam (2012) crafted together their integrated theory of fields under the label of strategic action field theory� Their goal was not only to develop the theoretical conceptualization of the meso-level but also to rein-tegrate sociology, which they perceived as too fragmented� In their approach they bring together the advancements of economic sociology and new institu-tionalism (Fligstein’s field of expertise), as well as social movements (McAdam’s field of expertise)� According to them, a strategic action field is “a constructed meso-level social order in which actors (who can be individual or collective) are

attuned to and interact with one another on the basis of shared (which is not to say consensual) understandings about the purposes of the fields, relationships to others in the field (including who has power and why), and the rules governing legitimate action in the field” (Fligstein, McAdam 2012: 9)�

According to Fligstein and McAdam, the search for the meso-level of social or-der in many different sub-fields of fragmentized sociology has been visible at least since the 1990s� As the most important paradigms in which this search appeared, they enlisted various branches of new institutionalism, social movements litera-ture, and network analysis� Still, the most influential inspiration for strategic action fields theory was Bourdieu’s conception of social fields – discussed above – with critical elements borrowed also from Fligstein and McAdam� The first distinc-tive element of strategic action field theory is that a whole theory is constructed around the concept of a field – it is a theory of fields� For other approaches fields are very important concepts, but they are rather coined in order to be used to achieve some other theoretical goals such as understanding forces shaping trajec-tories of individuals (in case of Bourdieu) or understanding the environment of an organization (in case of new institutional theory of organizations)� For both of these approaches, the fields are indispensable and central notions, yet they are not theories of fields – fields are helpful to theorize about habitus or institution�

Fligstein and McAdam accuse new institutionalism of understanding social fields as static arenas of reproduction of institutions� It is also a common cri-tique of strategic action fields theory that it presents Bourdieu as a theorist of reproduction unable to explain change, which is not entirely true (Swartz 2014)�

Indeed, Fligstein and McAdam focus on change and stability as outcomes of stra-tegic action, yet they exaggerate in diminishing the salience of focus on change in other theories� In brief, the strategic action field theory is an attempt to syn-thesize new institutionalism (presented as a very good theory of stability, but lacking theory of change and emergence) with social movements theory (as a very good theory of change, but lacking theory of durability)�

The actors, according to the assumptions of Fligstein and McAdam, are stra-tegic� The fields deliver a structure in which the actors are embedded, but the actors are not determined by this structure� The actors play an on-going game of making their position better� This continuous activity is called jockeying and makes other actors “to interpret them, consider their options, and act in re-sponse” (Fligstein, McAdam 2012: 12)� Thus, jockeying eventually creates a huge internal pressure on fields to change, but it may also result in reproduction – Anthony Giddens and the theory of structuration is also pointed by Fligstein and McAdam as an important inspiration�

Unlike in the rational actor theory or the Marx-inspired critical approach of Bourdieu, in the strategic action fields theory, actors are not only driven by their interests but also by the urge to find meaning and identity� It lies at the micro-fundations of Fligstein and McAdam’s theory that social activities also have an existential function for human beings� According to the authors, existential fear and uncertainty are elements of human nature, and it is also natural for humans to seek refuge from these fears by engaging in collectives� According to Max Weber (1978), the source of all social life is the ability of people to understand one another and, according to George H� Mead (1934), crucial social mecha-nisms provide people with a sense of self and the ability to take the role of the

“other�” So for the strategic action fields theory the issues of meaning, identity, and self are not only characteristics of individuals, but they enable collective ac-tion and cooperaac-tion� According to Fligstein and McAdam’s approach, the homo economicus is a wrong model of a social actor as it treats the urge of belonging as something irrational and unexplainable, while it is one of the factors that social theory needs to treat seriously in order to understand phenomena on a collective level� As Fligstein and McAdam (2012: 43) claim, “any adequate theory of human strategic action must take this mix of instrumental and existential motives into account�” The focus on existential function of the social, leads authors to the no-tion of “social skill” as something important for understanding the co-operative aspects of field processes�

Social skill is defined by the Fligstein and McAdam (2012: 46) as “the ability to induce cooperation by appealing to and helping to create shared meanings and collective identities�”¹⁷ It enables actors to see their field from the perspective of other actors and thanks to that empathy it is a great tool for building coalitions of cooperation which are capable of transforming social fields� Yet, social skill is also indispensable for sustaining fields� Fligstein and McAdam highlight that the theory of social skill is in strong relation with the theory of social field� As they argue, it is capable of solving the tension between determinism (actors driven by their position in social structure) and overly agentic approach in which actors are capable of creating and re-creating society by their wish: both the skills and position influence the actors’ ability to cooperate and compete� Social skill is a concept merging insights from the social movements theory (i�e� socially skilled actor is able to use opportunities and to frame situations) and from neoinstitu-tional theory of instituneoinstitu-tional entrepreneurs (Battilana, Leca, Boxenbaum 2009;

DiMaggio 1988)� However, in my opinion, this element of theory remains rather 17 The notion was earlier introduced by Fligstein (2001) in his famous paper�

blurry and underdeveloped� Social skill seems to be another attempt to grasp what Weber (1978) called “charisma�”

Another novelty in field theory brought by Fligstein and McAdam (2012: 77) is the concept of internal governance unit, which they define as “organizations or associations within the field whose sole job it is to ensure the routine stability and order to the strategic action field�” Internal governance units are also usually dealing with relations between fields (i�e� associations of certain occupational categories represent them in relations with the state or other fields)� Internal governance units may serve field members in relations with administration, in-formation, regulation, enforcement, or certification� Yet, usually they are con-trolled, or at least very much influenced, by field incumbents and serve them as a tool of domination towards challengers�

Fligstein and McAdam (2012: 58) accuse former conceptualizations of social fields of field-centric bias and theorize about the embeddedness of strategic ac-tion fields, which are often connected in a manner similar to Russian dolls� The fields remain in different kinds of relations, which of course change over time:

they might be unconnected, dependent, or interdependent� The factors shaping these links are as follows: resource dependence, mutual beneficial interactions, sharing of power, information flows, or legitimacy� State is also perceived by stra-tegic action field theory as a field, and not as one unified actor� The authors also highlight that “formal organizations are often the central players in strategic ac-tion fields” (Fligstein, McAdam 2012: 64), but they do not limit membership in fields to organizations and show that it is possible to look at organizations also as fields (then the fields are nested in each other)� This is the case of the state, whose agencies are present in virtually all social fields�

According to the strategic action field theory, an increasing focus should be put on inter-field relations, as recently it has been possible to observe three re-lated macro-social processes: proliferation of fields, growth of higher education, and the development of professions� New fields usually require new professions (or occupational categories of ambition to become professions) and these are produced by higher education entities� The supply and demand for professionals are in feedback relation�¹⁸

To sum up, the strategic action fields theory is a synthesis of insights from the thought of Pierre Bourdieu, new institutional sociology of organiza-tions, and social movement theory� It puts the concept of field in the center of theoretical attention, which allows to grasp meso-level social phenomena�

18 Very similar observations have been made by Bromley and Meyer (2015)�

It develops the understanding of relations between various fields, theorizes the relation between actor and field, and claims to contribute to better understand-ing of change in fields� The strategic action field theory attempts to solve the biases of the two main traditions of the notion of field uses: bias toward con-flict (attributed to Bourdieu) and bias toward conformity (attributed to new institutionalism)�

2.5 Concluding remarks

In this chapter I have presented the most influential approaches in current socio-logical theory to the field concept� In discussing Pierre Bourdieu’s blurry – but inspiring – use of social field notion, the heterogeneous and vivid understanding of organizational field conception in new institutional studies of organizations, and the synthetizing theory of Neil Fligstein and Doug McAdam I was focusing mostly on how the concept of field is useful in tying the micro- and macro-levels of analysis� Indeed, I agree with Kluttz and Fligstein (2016: 202) that the field concept is the most important contribution to the sociological theory made in the recent decades� It is so because fields link actions of single actors (individual humans or collectives) and their interactions – the phenomena on the micro-level – with broader societal processes from the macro-micro-level� Still, the field as a meso-level social order creates its own effects and constrains the conditions for social action� The fields are recreated in continuous processes of structuration by social actors who shape fields’ boundaries in their daily practices and never-ending jockeying for a better position� But the relation of fields with actors is of a mutual character and it is the field which provides a social definition of an actor:

it is impossible to be an artist without a field of art, or a scientist without a field of science, or it is impossible to run a hotel without and organizational field of hospitality services�

Social field may be a key concept in the studies focused on different phenomena – as in the case of Bourdieu’s interest in power and habitus, or neoinstitutionalism’s interest in institutions and organizations – or the center of sociological theory, as in the case of strategic action fields theory� It brings attention to that which is in between – not only in between the micro- and macro-levels of analysis, but also in between actors�

For a long time, many sociologists understood their discipline simply as a study of society� It is the case of Polish sociology preoccupied with explain-ing Polish society to itself as a whole (Bucholc 2016) and dealexplain-ing with macro-processes such as transformation after the communist regime (Pawlak 2013)�

More attention to the field level brings a better understanding of action and

actors� As scholars working with the notion of field proved, understanding so-cial action only with the knowledge on soso-cial categories and macro-processes is always fallacious� Yet, the program of explaining a given society could be saved for national sociologies, thanks to the field theory� A synthesis of case studies of various social fields present in a given country is, in my opinion, a better strategy for drawing a picture of this country’s society than the attempts to provide a grand-sociology of this society from the macro-perspective� Many macro-pro-cesses are visible in various fields, yet they occur in their own specific ways, and this meso-perspective may provide a better understanding of what the transfor-mation from the communist regime or Europeanization actually are�

The growing knowledge on various fields, acquired thanks to empirical studies conducted either on the field level or using the concept of the field to understand phenomena from other levels of analysis, allows to build hypotheses (or research questions) for future studies of other fields� I would restrain myself from talk-ing about laws of fields, but theoriztalk-ing about results of various studies allows researchers to ask questions about what is likely to be at stake in a field which has previously been not studied� In this sense, it is possible to talk about a theory of fields because it provides research questions for studies of phenomena – even those which are empirically very distant from the ones already described in the theoretical language of fields�

Finally, social fields are to some extent invisible� Although many social actors are very aware of their relevant social environment, the theory of fields is quite abstract in comparison to many theoretical tools of sociology� It is quite far from the common sense or folk wisdom about society� It appeared quite late in the history of sociological thought� Without this theoretical tool, sociological under-standing of what takes place in between the micro-level and the macro-level was obscured� Thus, I claim that the social field theory is one of the best avenues for searching for what could fill the sociological vacuum�

3 Social networks: tying micro and macro