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This Introduction gives a historical and theoretical overview of this volume on Fields of Knowledge: Science, Politics and Publics in the Neoliberal Age, which showcases original research in political sociology of science targeting the changes in scientific and technological policy and practice associated with the rise of neoliberal thought and policies since the 1970s. We argue that an existing family of field theoretic frameworks and empirical field analyses provides a particularly useful set of ideas and approaches for the meso-level understanding of these historical changes in ways that complement as well as challenge other theory traditions in sociology of science, broadly defined. The collected papers exhibit a dual focus on sciences’ interfield relations, connecting science and science policy to political, economic, educational, and other fields and on the institutional logics of scientific fields that pattern expert discourses, practices, and knowledge and shape relations of the scientific field to the rest of the world. By reconceptualizing the central problem for political sociology of science as a problem of field- and inter-field dynamics, and by critically engaging other theory traditions whose assumptions are in some ways undermined by the contemporary history of neoliberalism, we believe these papers collectively chart an important theoretical agenda for future research in the sociology of science.

The purpose of this paper is to sharpen the intellectual identity of the field of educational administration (EA) and to understand its scholarly boundaries by comparing between the writings of this field and those of the field of organisational behaviour (OB), an area of study usually located in faculties of management, and share many commonalities with EA.

A qualitative content analysis of textbooks and journal papers in OB and EA, reading of previous writings that revolved around the epistemological dimensions of these fields.

The author sheds light on the theoretical and empirical distinctions of OB and EA historically and provides insight into the distinctive intellectual identity of the latter field during the 2000s. A special attention is given to paradigms and theories in EA imported to the field from outside and transformed in a way that specify the unique identity of EA in the academic world.

This comparison is warranted in order to clarify more profoundly the unique contributions of EA, both theoretically and practically, to emphasise the differences that separate it from other disciplines, and to legitimate its independent position in higher education.

Why did peasants in old-regime Europe scatter their land in small strips within open fields? According to an influential theory advocated by Deirdre McCloskey, the system’s main aim was risk reduction. By spreading out land, peasants were less exposed to the caprices of nature: heavy rains, droughts, frost, or hailstorms. In a time when other insurance institutions were lacking, this approach could be a rational solution, even if, as McCloskey suggests, it could be achieved only at the expense of overall agricultural productivity.

Over the years, McCloskey’s theory has repeatedly been debated. Still, it has never been empirically established to what extent the open fields actually reduced risk. McCloskey offered only indirect evidence, based on hypothetical calculations from short series demesne level yields. Risks on enclosed and open-field land farms were thus never compared.

This chapter presents farm-level harvest variation series, including observations from both types of land. It is based on tithe records of 1,700 farms in Southern Sweden from 1715–1860. Results show that scattering had a limited effect on agricultural risk. The system did protect against small-scale local crop failures. It was less efficient, however, when it came to the large-scale regional harvest disasters that constituted a much more serious threat to peasants of the time. From this perspective, the inner logic of the open-field system is taken up for renewed consideration.

Attempts to prove, in this second chapter of the author’s monograph, that with a new research programme, it is possible to build a methodological bridge between economics and all other natural sciences and the scientists should address this challenge. Reviews basic principles that govern nature, including Einstein’s findings along with such luminaries as Copernicus, Newton, Galileo and Jeans. Concludes that the future is safe, as a new generation of scientists is now emerging in the East and the West, and that the new methodology should provide enough space for new roads, ideas and interpretations, which may occur in the future. Closes by saying a new spirit should be initiated in economics and transplanted into natural sciences.

There is a double crisis in modern science and in particular in physics and mechanics. Among others Einstein and Stephane Lupasco, in the 1930s, warned about this crisis. The Quantum Theory cannot be reconciled with the Relativity Theory. Specifically there is a gap (cleavage) between micro – and macro‐physics and mechanics. Parallel or beneath there is also a second crisis derived from a discontinuity (again a cleavage) between classical and modern science, that is between two previous revolutions. A new research programme of a simultaneous equilibrium versus disequilibrium approach, initially applied in economics has now been extended to include natural sciences. It is the question of a new, more comprehensive methodology which is actually a sui generis synthesis between classical and modern heritage. The rigorous application of the new research programme leads to the organisation of an Orientation Table, that is, a methodological map of all possible combinations (systems). The Table shows, without any exaggeration, a few revolutionary results. For instance, with the help of the Table, modern science or the second revolution (Einstein, Bohr, Heisenberg) does not appear contradictory but rather complementary to classical science or the first revolution (Newton, Lavoisier). The Kuhnian thesis to the contrary is disproved and the second crisis is solved. With the help of the Universal Hypothesis of Duality (the basis of the Orientation Table), matter and energy, at the micro – and macro‐level, appear in a double form (the Principle of Duality): stable (equilibrium) particles and unstable (disequilibrium) waves. The strong interactions from modern physics are associated with the law of gravitation (attraction) or stable equilibrium which governs stable matter and energy. The weak interactions are associated with the law of disgravitation (dispersion or repulsion) including entropy or unstable equilibrium which governs unstable matter and energy. In this way the first crisis is also solved.

Field theory is one of the most visible approaches in the new political sociology of science, and Fligstein & McAdam’s (F&M) Theory of Fields is the most visible recent attempt to further it. This paper evaluates F&M’s theory of field transformation by comparing it with Berman’s (2012a) field-based explanation of the changes in the field of US academic science. While F&M’s general framework is quite useful, their explanation, which focuses on struggles between incumbents and challengers over whose conception of the field should dominate, does not map neatly onto the changes in academic science, which saw no such field-level struggles. This suggests that tools are also needed for explaining new settlements that do not result from intentional efforts to establish them. In particular, the case of US academic science shows that local innovations with practices based on alternative conceptions of the field can lead to field-level change. Attention to the interaction between local practice innovations and larger environments provides insights into how change ripples across fields, as well as the ongoing contention and dynamism within even relatively stable fields.

Gives introductory remarks about chapter 1 of this group of 31 papers, from ISEF 1999 Proceedings, in the methodologies for field analysis, in the electromagnetic community. Observes that computer package implementation theory contributes to clarification. Discusses the areas covered by some of the papers ‐ such as artificial intelligence using fuzzy logic. Includes applications such as permanent magnets and looks at eddy current problems. States the finite element method is currently the most popular method used for field computation. Closes by pointing out the amalgam of topics.

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 most popularly, fields (or in organizational sociology, organizational fields), opens up a theoretical terrain that has not yet been fully explored (see Martin, 2003 for one view of fields). In this chapter, we propose that in fact all of these phenomena (and several others), fields, domains, policy domains, sectors, networks, and in game theory, the “game” bear a deep theoretical relationship to one another. They are all a way of characterizing how meso-level social orders, social spaces are constructed. We want to make a bold claim: the idea of fields is the central sociological construct for understanding all arenas of collective strategic action. The idea of fields is not just useful for understanding markets and political policy domains, but also social movements, and many other forms of organized social life. In essence, scholars working on their particular empirical corner of the world have inadvertently discovered something fundamental about social structure: that collective actors somehow manage to work to get “action” toward their socially and cultural constructed ends and in doing so, enlist the support of others in order to produce meso-level social orders.

This paper examines the calculative practices used by the Slave Compensation Commission to value a slave for the purposes of compensating slave owners on the abolishment of slavery across the British colonies in 1833. It contributes to accounting research in the field of valuation, particularly to understanding the practices of valuing human life.

The methodology is primarily archival and draws on the records of the Slave Compensation Commission held at the British National Archives (Kew).

The paper makes two contributions to the literature. Firstly, it contributes to the valuation studies literature by suggesting the significance of understanding the practice of valuation as a product of the dynamics of strategic action fields (Fligstein and McAdam, 2012). Secondly, it contributes to the theory of strategic action fields by revealing the role of calculative technologies in supporting the organizational apparatus of valuation within the Slave Compensation Commission, and therefore suggests the powerful role of accounting in stabilizing a strategic action field.

The paper provides novel insights into the monetary commensuration of life and the role of calculative technologies in that valuation process.

Social space, the central construct in field theory, offers dialogic organization development a generative image similar to open systems for diagnostic OD. Social space imagery enables people to think, feel, and act in ways that exercise greater choice over the realities they construct and that construct them. This process is illustrated through a “transitional space” that enabled people with severe disabilities to overcome stigma and isolation. Social spatial imagery moves dialogic OD away from systems imagery and language, addresses ambivalence about self and mind, clarifies the meaning of reality, and reconnects it to its Lewinian roots.