Chapter 1: The Gist of It ; Introduction - The Central Elements of the Theory - ; Other Perspectives - Conclusion ; Chapter 2: Micro-Foundations ; Introduction - Meaning and Membership - The Collective as Existential Refuge - ; Social Skill - Social Skill in Action - The Scope of the Theory - ; Institutional Politics - Social movements - Markets and the Economy - ; The Nonprofit Sector - Conclusion ; Chapter 3: Macro Implications ; Introduction - The <"Embeddedness>" of Strategic Action Fields - ; An Excursus on Formal Organization and Bureaucracy - The State ; as a system of strategic action fields - The Impact of State Fields on ; Non-state strategic action fields - The Dependence of States and State ; Fields on Non-state strategic action fields - Internal Governance Units - ; Higher Education and the Professions - Conclusion ; Chapter 4: Change and Stability in Strategic Action Fields ; Introduction - Current Debates - The Emergence of Strategic Action Fields ; - Sustaining a Settlement - Settlements and Ruptures - Reestablishing - ; Field Stability - The Relationship between Social Skill and the State of ; the Strategic Action Field - Social Skill and the Emergence of Fields - Social ; Skill and the Reproduction of Fields - Social Skill and the Transformation of ; Fields - Conclusion ; Chapter 5: Illustrating the Perspective ; Introduction - The Civil Rights Struggle, 1932-1980 - Setting the Stage - ; The Field of Racial Politics - Destabilizing Changes - The Episode of Contention ; and the Rise of the Civil Rights Movement - A New Settlement - The Declining ; Salience of the Cold War Dynamic - The Revenge of the Dixiecrats and the End ; of the New Deal Electoral Regime - The Rise of Black Power and the Rupture in ; the Movement strategic action fields - The Institutionalization of the Civil Rights ; Movement and Its Impact on Other Strategic Action Fields - Summing up - The ; Transformation of the U.S. Mortgage Market, 1969-2010 - The Dominant Strategic ; Action Fields of the Mortgage Market, 1934-1987 - Changes that Destabilized the ; Mortgage Market, 1969-1987 - Settlement and the new Strategic Action Field - The ; Rise of the Industrial model of the MBS market, 1993-2007 - The Causes of the ; Crisis - The Impact of the Strategic Action Field based on the Industrial model on ; other strategic action fields - Conclusion ; Chapter 6 Methods ; Introduction ; The Roadmap ; How to Tell if a Strategic Action Field Exists ; Emergence, Stability, and Crisis, Part 1 ; The Problem of the State in Relation to Strategic Action Fields ; Emergence, Stability, and Crisis, Part 2 ; Social Skill, Strategic Action, and the Question of Entrepreneurship ; Considering Different Philosophies of Science and Methodological Strategies ; A Positivist Approach to Strategic Action Fields ; Realist Approaches to Strategic Action Fields ; The Problem of Empiricism ; Conclusion ; Chapter 7 A Theory of Strategic Action Fields ; So what is new here? ; The Problem of the Accumulation of Knowledge in the Social Sciences ; The Surprising Discovery of Fields ; Toward a Collaborative Program of Theory and Research on Fields ; Bibliography

"In this bold and sweeping new work, Fligstein and McAdam make the first global contribution to sociological field theory since Bourdieu's Distinction. Finding order and turbulence not only in the semi-autonomous fields that others have investigated, but also in the complex interplay of social movements and the state, Fligstein and McAdam produce a vision that is theoretically insightful, empirically generative and will re-energize the quest for a fundamental grasp of the dynamics of large-scale social interaction." --John Levi Martin, University of Chicago "In this much-anticipated book, Neil Fligstein and Doug McAdam bring their rich and influential strands of scholarly work together to develop a provocative account of how skilled individuals upset established routines and build new political and organizational fields. The core of their argument emphasizes on how people deploy resources, build connections, and forge new practices. In so doing, they place agency in a new and analytically tractable light. This signal accomplishment will be essential reading to all political and organizational scholars." --Walter W. Powell, Stanford University "In A Theory of Fields, Neil Fligstein and Doug McAdam provide a powerful synthetic approach to the analysis of interconnected "strategic action fields" that anchor interaction and meaningful membership. This conceptual language breaches distinctions among political, economic, and other sociologies to advance a compelling general approach to the most basic sociological questions of order and change. Fligstein and McAdam have accomplished the difficult task of grappling with fundamental issues of social theory while advancing a program of social research that should both engage advanced scholars and inspire those earlier in their careers." --Elisabeth S. Clemens, University of Chicago "...an important work that has been at least two decades in the making. Fligstein and McAdam began forming the key insights of the book during their time at the University of Arizona in the 1980s and 1990s, mingling ideas from McAdam's work in social movement theory with Fligstein's political theory of markets. I hope that field theory will continue to evolve as a deductive theory for explaining how actors' relative positions shape their actions, how positions evolve over time, and how changes in position create instability in fields. This book serves as a useful launch point for this type of analysis." --Administrative Science Quarterly

Selling point: Drawing upon insights from several disciplines this book presents a bold new theory for understanding change, stability and the logic of social organization in modern, complex societies.

Neil Fligstein is the Class of 1939 Chancellor's Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. A renowned scholar of economic sociology, organizations, and political sociology, he is the author or coauthor of six books, including The Architecture of Markets and Euroclash: The EU, European Identity, and the Future of Europe. Doug McAdam is the Ray Lyman Wilbur Professor of Sociology at Stanford University. He is the author or co-author of thirteen books in the area of political sociology, with an emphasis on social movements and revolutions. Among his best known works are Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency, 1930-1970, Freedom Summer, and (with Sid Tarrow and Charles Tilly) Dynamics of Contention.

Selling point: Drawing upon insights from several disciplines this book presents a bold new theory for understanding change, stability and the logic of social organization in modern, complex societies.