''Institutional Change in the Diffusion of Non-instrumental Innovations: Lessons from the Case of American Hand-knitting'

• In Event: 3184 - Section on Sociology of Culture Refereed Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: Table 06. Culture, Diffusion, and Reception

Abstract

Diffusion of innovations has been a useful framework to study popularization, institutionalization, and rejection of social practices. In this body of research, the most common object of study have been technologies that promise improvement in efficiency, status and other related terms. I argue that as a result of this undivided attention to technological innovations, assumption of intentionality and pragmatist action are implicit in the majority of formulations about what facilitates diffusion and that there is a deficiency of theorizing about the spread of mundane objects and practices. In order to fill this gap, I turn both to new-institutionalism and the writings of cultural sociologists on habits to develop the term ‘mundane innovations’ for new body techniques à la Marcel Mauss. Diffusion of mundane innovations is the wide-spread acceptance of a new body technique that either replaces or complements previous habitual styles of doing things. To understand these processes, I introduce the case of the rapid diffusion of a knitting method across American knitting books and magazines during the 1970s and 1980s. This historical analysis demonstrates that the method's diffusion was an unintended consequence of particular institutional conflicts and subsequent cultural changes in the hand-knitting sector. Based on insights from this empirical case, I invite further scholarly attention to diffusion of mundane innovations.

Author

• Esma Ozel, University of Chicago