Scientific Paradigms and Field Genesis: A Cultural Approach

• In Event: 209 - Theory Section Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 04. Historical Sociology 1

Abstract

Field analysis has been surprisingly vague in explaining why fields emerge in specific historical circumstances, and has often consigned the establishment of new fields to skilled actors alone. This paper proposes that fields emerge as a response to pre-existing cultural tensions a community experiences, and to pre-existing attempts to alleviate the resultant uncertainty. In order to account for this process, this paper adapts Thomas Kuhn’s model of the progress of scientific revolutions to the study of field genesis. The model details four phases: (1) the prenormal, a period in which social action and thought surrounding a specific social issue is sporadic and lacks consensus; (2) the paradigmatic, a period in which particular solutions to the problem become exemplary and provide new interpretive tools to address similar problems; (3) the normal, a period in which social activity proceeds with little reflection, except when dealing with anomalies to the existing explanatory framework; and (4) the extraordinary, which is a period when the accumulation of anomalies gives rise to intense theorizing and experimentation with new arrangements. This in turn may lead to the rise of new fields or to the reconstruction of existing fields. To exemplify, the paper turns to the emergence of the field of transnational humanitarianism, and shows that the rise of its traditional main actor, the Red Cross, was in fact a response to a long standing set of tensions and currents in European social life.

Author

• Shai M. Dromi, Yale University