Relational sociology of the scientific field: Communication, identities, and field relations

Abstract

A relational sociological conceptualisation of social fields is developed and applied to the world of academia and science. Generally, social fields are arenas of communication governed by specific institutions and by the sense (illusio) of involvement in the same game. They consist of communicative events like publications in science, claims and demands in politics etc. Scientific fields are organised around representational claims about the phenomena under study. Such communicative events offer particular definitions of the situation that subsequent communication builds on and / or renegotiates. In this process, ideas develop that structure the field, and identities of actors associated with these ideas. In this perspective, actors do not drive the processes of the field, but they serve as projection points that organise discourse in the field. Actors are connected to ideas, and thus indirectly to each other, in position-takings. Field relations then involve constellations of actors and ideas. Unlike social relationships like friendship or patronage, field relations can be one-sided, and they affect follow-up communication in the larger field rather than only between two involved actors. In contrast to previous theories of social fields, these are seen as socio-cultural constellations developing in the course of communication, rather than the competition of actors for resources, or constellations of subjective orientations.