To investigate how participants shape a field's social and symbolic boundaries over time, I
conducted an in-depth longitudinal study of five core and peripheral communities in the …

“Grand challenges” are complex problems with far-reaching societal implications that lack a
clear solution. To make progress, diverse communities often coalesce around an ambitious …

Research in the sociology of science has increasingly begun to acknowledge the role that
external influences play in shaping the boundaries and content of science. However, a …

Organizational fields are a central construct in institutional theory and the notion of shared
meaning is integral to the definition of “field.” In this review, we discuss how institutional …

Field theory offers a view of social life concerned with how a set of actors orienting their
actions to one another do so within a meso-level social order. Fields, once formed, are the …

The discovery of meso-level social orders in organizational theory, political sociology, and
social movement theory, what have subsequently been called sectors, policy domains, and …

We draw on an in-depth longitudinal analysis of conflict over harvesting practices and
decision authority in the British Columbia coastal forest industry to understand the role of …

Integrating an analysis of fields into studies of social change provides a better
understanding of the outcomes achieved by challengers. We demonstrate the value of field …

The concept of an institutional field is one of the cornerstones of institutional theory, and yet
the concept has been stretched both theoretically and empirically, making consolidation of …

Neil Fligstein and Doug McAdam have presented a new theory of how collective action
creates the structure and dynamics of societies. At issue is the behavior of social …