eyal & buchholz, from sociolgy of intellectuals to the sociology of interventions 24 pp

SO36CH06-Eyal ARI 2 June 2010 23:20

From the Sociology ofIntellectuals to the Sociologyof InterventionsGil Eyal and Larissa BuchholzDepartment of Sociology, Columbia University, New York, New York 10027;email: [email protected], [email protected]

Annu. Rev. Sociol. 2010. 36:117–37

First published online as a Review in Advance onApril 13, 2010

The Annual Review of Sociology is online atsoc.annualreviews.org

This article’s doi:10.1146/annurev.soc.012809.102625

Copyright c© 2010 by Annual Reviews.All rights reserved

0360-0572/10/0811-0117$20.00

Key Words

classical intellectual, intellectual fields and markets, expertise

Abstract

This review suggests that the sociology of intellectuals is being con-verted into a sociology of interventions, i.e., instead of focusing ona certain social type, it analyzes the movement by which knowledgeand expertise are mobilized to inform a value-laden intervention in thepublic sphere. We first demonstrate that the classical sociology of in-tellectuals was centered on a problematic of allegiance that no longerseems productive. In addition, we show that by focusing on a particularsocial type it remained limited to only one mode of intervention into thepublic sphere. We then review two literatures that distance themselvesfrom the classical problematic and that could be integrated under thecommon rubric of a sociology of interventions: The first literature an-alyzes intellectual fields and markets. It moves away from the sociologyof intellectuals by multiplying the relevant actors and depersonalizingthe term “intellectual” so that it no longer stands for a social type butfor the capacity to make a public intervention, a capacity to which manydifferent actors lay claim. The second literature analyzes the public de-ployment of expertise. It multiplies not simply the actors laying claimto the mantle of the intellectual, but the formats and modes of inter-vention itself, i.e., the different ways in which knowledge and expertisecan be inserted into the public sphere.

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INTRODUCTION

There are several reasons why writing a reviewof the sociology of intellectuals is not a straight-forward task. The most immediate one is thata great deal of the most recent literature onintellectuals seems to announce their declineand disappearance. This is particularly true forthe specifically American debate about “publicintellectuals.” Beginning in 1987 with the pub-lication of Jacoby’s The Last Intellectuals, theneologism “public intellectuals” has sparkeda resurgence of debate about intellectuals, yetmost of it has been confined to the question ofwhether they are a dying breed or not ( Jacoby1987, Kellner 1997, Donatich 2001, Posner2001, Fuller 2004, Townsley 2006, Drezner2008, Fleck et al. 2009). This discussion res-onates with some of the founding texts of thesociology of intellectuals, which were typicallywritten in a genre characterized by Posner(2001) as a jeremiad, a rant (mixture of lamentand accusation) about decline and betrayal(Benda 1927 [1928], Molnar 1961, Jacoby1987). For a reviewer, the problem is therebynot so much whether such diagnoses are corrector not, but how to characterize a literature ofwhich one main principle of multiplication hasbeen the claim that its object is dissolving. Isthe very project of the sociology of intellectualsbecoming more and more anachronistic and areview, therefore, redundant?

To be sure, if one looks beyond the con-temporary American scene, one may take heartthat the sociology of intellectuals is alive andwell, not only regarding work on classicalhistorical cases, such as Russia and France,but also when it comes to the contemporarynon-Western world (Kurzman & Owens2002). But this seems cold comfort, for it couldbe taken to imply that when these countries“catch up,” they too will shed the central roleof intellectuals and that the sociology of intel-lectuals is thus essentially a backward-lookingtwentieth-century affair. The task we set forthis review, therefore, is not merely descriptivebut also reconstructive: to extract from therecent literature the parameters and research

directions of what may be reasonably termed atwenty-first-century sociology of intellectuals.

This reconstructive approach may beginwith the observation that the diagnostic disputeabout the death or resurrection of the publicintellectual ultimately boils down to a matterof definition, to boundary work (Gieryn 1999):The “Jeremiahs” define the object of the soci-ology of intellectuals restrictively, its prototypebeing the man of letters who intervenes inthe public sphere in the name of universaltruth and morality, the classical embodimentprovided by Zola’s J’accuse. Consequently,they bemoan its decline. The “boosters” defineit expansively to include the whole gamut ofeducated types. Consequently, they dilute theobject beyond recognition. Both, in fact, havebeen going at it for quite a while. Almost fromthe very moment the term “intellectuals” wasinvented (during the Dreyfus affair) and thesociology of intellectuals began to take shape,it spread outward into various sociologies ofthe intelligentsia (Mannheim 1936), organicintellectuals (Gramsci 1932 [1995]), men ofknowledge or ideas (Znaniecki 1940 [1968],Coser 1965 [1970]), producers of culture(Lipset & Dobson 1972), or the “new class”(Makhaiski 1899 [1979], Djilas 1957, Bruce-Briggs 1979, Gouldner 1979, Konrad &Szelenyi 1979). This outward movement wasmet with a countermovement, asserting that“these are not real intellectuals” and providingits own diagnosis of decline and betrayal(Benda 1927 [1928], Molnar 1961, Jacoby1987). Then the cycle would begin again.

The cyclical nature of this dispute is nodoubt due to the highly reflexive nature of thevery project of the sociology of intellectuals. AsBauman (1987, pp. 2, 8) puts it, any definitionof intellectuals is a self-definition and there-fore “it makes little sense . . . to ask the ques-tion ‘who are the intellectuals?’ and expect inreply a set of objective measurements.” This isone reason why the reconstructive task we setfor this review is not a willful choice, but is ne-cessitated by the type of literature with whichwe are grappling. Any definition of the scopeof this review would rely on boundary work

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between “intellectual” and “nonintellectual”and would thereby be reconstructing the veryuniverse in which the review itself is positioned.A review of the sociology of intellectuals is thusmeta-reflexive and has to attend to its own posi-tioning within a history of definitions and coun-terdefinitions (see also Townsley 2006).

This lengthy preamble is meant to justifythe analytical strategy underlying this review.A sociology of intellectuals for the twenty-firstcentury cannot adopt a restrictive and obscu-rantist definition of its scope, but neither can itdilute its object beyond recognition. Diagnos-tically, the work of reconstruction begins by re-jecting, with Fleck et al. (2009, p. 1), the narra-tive of decline in favor of transformation: “Overthe years, new groups of intellectuals have en-tered the public arena while older ones havedisappeared. . . . [T]he twenty-first-century in-tellectual is very different in his or her aspira-tions and functioning role when compared tothe type that more than a hundred years agowas emerging.” Regarding the United States,for instance, Jacobs & Townsley (2010) demon-strate that its “space of opinion”—i.e., the sortof publicly oriented commentary in which intel-lectuals specialize—has in fact grown in size andbecome more heterogeneous in recent years,rather than declined. Such changes imply thata sociology of intellectuals for the twenty-firstcentury must be different from the classical so-ciology of intellectuals. As its object changes,so should its substantive questions and concep-tual tools. Yet the work of reconstruction weenvision eschews expanding and diluting theobject beyond recognition in favor of a care-ful work of conversion, seeking to identify cer-tain constants that were foundational for thetwentieth-century sociology of intellectuals asa research project and showing how their spe-cific content is being modified in the contem-porary context of emerging novel questions andresearch strategies.

Our inspiration for this strategy comes fromFoucault’s (2000) distinction between the “uni-versal” and “specific” intellectual. Whereas theuniversal intellectual corresponded to the clas-sic image of the engaged man of letters, the

specific intellectual was rather an expert whosework was more narrow and local, yet served as abasis for intervening in the public sphere. Fou-cault thus pointed to the emergence of a newtype of intellectual, not immediately recogniz-able as such by classical definitions. What madethese experts “specific intellectuals”? For Fou-cault, it was not any substantive quality of theactors involved, but a particular kind of move-ment they embodied: “[T]he intellectual is sim-ply the person who uses his knowledge, his com-petence and his relation to truth in the fieldof political struggles” (p. 128). Although thismovement remains a constant object of the soci-ology of intellectuals, its specific components—Who is moving? On the basis of what relation totruth? What type of political agency is consti-tuted by this movement?—were transformed,for example by the greater centrality of scien-tific discourse today or by changes in the publicsphere. Yet note that this does not simply im-ply an expansive definition of intellectuals be-cause not every expert thereby automaticallybecomes an object for the sociology of intel-lectuals, but only one who participates in thismovement. Conversion in this sense means thatone carefully identifies the enduring element—the movement by which knowledge acquiresvalue as public intervention—and translates itinto a new set of conditions and correspondingresearch strategies.

The strategy of conversion has been elabo-rated further by Bourdieu (1992 [1996]), whonoted that it is the high degree of specializationcharacteristic of modern science that made itinappropriate to speak of the specific intellec-tual in the singular and that the type of move-ment characteristic of the classical intellectualwas more effectively undergone by a “collectiveintellectual,” a group of experts working in uni-son. Bourdieu also emphasized that conversionis necessary not only in time, between epochs,but also across space, between different coun-tries and institutional contexts.

What we take from Foucault and Bourdieuis the idea that the classical sociology ofintellectuals needs to be reconstructed, con-verted into a twenty-first-century sociology of

www.annualreviews.org • From Intellectuals to Interventions 119

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interventions. The main difference betweenthe sociology of intellectuals and the sociologyof interventions is that the former takes as itsunit of analysis a particular social type andis preoccupied with showing how the socialcharacteristics of this type explain where itsallegiances lie, whereas the latter takes as itsunit of analysis the movement of interventionitself and is therefore interested in how formsof expertise can acquire value as public inter-ventions. Yet the story we tell in this reviewis also different from Foucault’s or Bourdieu’s.Conversion from the sociology of intellectualsto the sociology of interventions does notyield a binary opposition in which specific orcollective intellectuals replace classical ones,but a more dispersed and fragmented picture:Multiple discourses, multiple sociologies, mul-tiple objects of analysis now occupy the field ofdebate and research that originally belongedto the classical sociology of intellectuals.

These considerations explain the structureof the review. The first section is an inten-tionally short and stylized review of the maincommon characteristics of the classical soci-ology of intellectuals, from its inception un-til roughly 1980. The choice of 1980 is notmeant as an exact periodization, but as a wayto construct a baseline against which to high-light the novel developments of the past 30years. It was selected as a watershed year be-cause it is bordered by two significant dates.First, 1979 marked a high tide in the “new class”literature, i.e., in the expansive trend of the so-ciology of intellectuals. It witnessed the pub-lication of several major books (Bruce-Briggs1979, Gouldner 1979, Konrad & Szelenyi 1979,Walker 1979, Debray 1979 [1981]), some ofwhich argued that intellectuals were poised tobecome a dominant class. Yet, at the otherend of the 1980s one finds almost the exactinverse moment, namely Jacoby’s (1987) in-vention of the redundant neologism of “pub-lic intellectual,” a narrowing to the restrictiveclassical meaning of the term, and a narrativeof decline and lament. No doubt the end ofthe Cold War has contributed to this reversal.One needs only to recall the brief moment of

glory enjoyed by East European dissidents andtheir almost immediate fall from grace as post-communist countries settled into the gray re-ality of neoliberal capitalism (Eyal 2000, 2003;Tucker 2000) to appreciate how this momentmay have translated into a renewed focus onthe classical meaning of intellectuals. We wouldlike to parlay the sense of reversal and fragmen-tation that lies between these two points in timeinto the aforementioned distinction betweenthe classical sociology of intellectuals and atwenty-first-century sociology of interventions.

Thus, the subsequent section and the onethat follows it review works that distance them-selves from the classical sociology of intellectu-als in two different directions. We propose thatthese two could perhaps be integrated underthe common rubric of a sociology of interven-tions. The first literature analyzes intellectualfields and markets. It moves away from the so-ciology of intellectuals by multiplying the rel-evant actors and depersonalizing the term “in-tellectual” so that it no longer stands for a socialtype but for the capacity to make a public in-tervention, a capacity to which many differentactors lay claim. Works in this direction situateall the different claims within a common re-lational sphere such as a field or a market andanalyze the competition between the various ac-tors over the symbolic prestige contained in thevery title of intellectual, as well as the relationsof supply and demand governing intellectualinterventions.

In the third and final section, we reviewworks in the sociology of expertise that seemto represent a different and perhaps comple-mentary move away from the classical sociol-ogy of intellectuals. They multiply not simplythe actors laying claim to the mantle of the in-tellectual, but also the formats and modes ofintervention itself. Here the focus is directed atthe different ways in which knowledge and ex-pertise can be inserted into the public sphereand with what sorts of effects. Instead of ana-lyzing the preconditions for the jump from onedomain to the other, works in this directiondescribe how fuzzy zones of contact and over-lap are created, wherein forms of expertise and


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discourse develop that are common to both pol-itics and science.

THE CLASSICAL SOCIOLOGYOF INTELLECTUALS, 1900–1980

In this section, we trace the main contours ofthe classical sociology of intellectuals, describ-ing in broad outline the questions, definitions,and theoretical orientations that characterize itas a relatively unified configuration. We do notprovide a detailed historical discussion of thedevelopment of the sociology of intellectuals,however, because this has been done elsewhere(Martin & Szelenyi 1988, Kurzman & Owens2002). Instead, our focus is directed at selectedkey contributions to the sociology of intellec-tuals from the turn of the century to the 1980sin order to reconstruct an ideal typical baselineagainst which to highlight and evaluate trans-formations and new trends in the past 30 years.1

One key component of this baseline was anempirical puzzle—“under what conditions dointellectuals become radicalized in their politi-cal behavior?”—shared by classical sociologistsof intellectuals as a common “point of diffrac-tion” (Foucault 1972) from which a game ofmoves and countermoves unfolded. Many clas-sical sociologists of intellectuals have soughtto explain intellectuals’ role as radical criticsof the social order and leaders of revolutionarymovements (Makhaiski 1899 [1979]; Brinton1938 [1965]; Schumpeter 1942, pp. 145–55;Dahrendorf 1953 [1969]; Lasch 1965; Lipset &Dobson 1972; Bruce-Briggs 1979). This querywas countered by other sociologists of intellec-tuals who have sought to explain why modernintellectuals were no longer radical critics,but profoundly absorbed into the machineriesof established powers (Mills 1944 [1963],

1We made no systematic attempt to sample representativereadings because this would be an inappropriate approachto a highly interpretative literature consisting of moves andcountermoves. Instead, we compiled a fairly comprehensivelist of works in the sociology of intellectuals from this pe-riod based on preexisting reviews and then chose the worksthat, in our judgment, were enduring and significant for thedevelopment of the classical problematic.

Chomsky 1969, Debray 1979 [1981]), perhapseven standing at their helm (Konrad & Szelenyi1979). Finally, the sequence of moves was com-pleted by analyses that sought to demonstratethe diversity and contingency of intellectuals’political roles (Michels 1932, Shils 1958 [1972],Coser 1965 [1970], Eisenstadt 1972, Brym1980), with perhaps the final statement in thatperiod delivered by Brint (1985; cf. also 1994).

Other key empirical puzzles that character-ized the classical sociology of intellectuals andthat no longer seem to hold such fascinationfor contemporary sociologists were (a) the par-tisan role of nationalist or party intellectuals,signifying for some a betrayal of their mis-sion as defenders of universal values (Benda1927 [1928]), yet for others the very meansthrough which intellectuals’ commitment to“the life of the mind” worked its way to a uni-versal synthesis (Mannheim 1932 [1993], 1936,1956); and (b) the question of the class posi-tion of intellectuals “between labor and capital,”which for some signified that they were a “newclass” mobilized to pursue its own collectiveinterests (Bakunin 1870 [1950], Nomad 1937,Djilas 1957, Bruce-Briggs 1979, Gouldner1979, Konrad & Szelenyi 1979) yet for othersthat they merely played a supporting role onbehalf of more “fundamental” classes (Gramsci1929–1935 [1971], Walker 1979).

All three puzzles can be boiled down to a sin-gle one. The classical problematic of the sociol-ogy of intellectuals was dominated by the ques-tion of allegiance. Who are the intellectuals andto whom or to what do they owe allegiance? Forexample, the debate about the class position ofintellectuals ultimately was about whether theyowed allegiance to their own class (as suggestedby new class theorists) or to another class (assuggested by the concept of organic intellectu-als). Similarly, accusations of partisanship andbetrayal a la Benda; diagnoses of decline dueto the rise of corporations and bureaucracies(Coser 1965 [1970], Mills 1944 [1963]); inves-tigations into the radical potential of intellectu-als all were part of a debate about whether in-tellectuals owed allegiance to truth (Mills 1944[1963]), universal values (Benda 1927 [1928]),


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the sacred (Shils 1958 [1972]), the life of themind (Mannheim 1932 [1993], 1936, 1956),ideas (Coser 1965 [1970]), or material inter-ests (Chomsky 1969). The political and ethicalproblematic of allegiance was prior to the em-pirical puzzles of class positions or role expec-tations. It was the foundation upon which theywere formulated. The sociology of intellectualswas meant to deliver an answer to this prob-lem, but, given that any definition of intellectu-als is a self-definition (Bauman 1987), this an-swer could be anything but straightforward. Towhom do we owe allegiance, the classical theo-rists were asking, and nothing was more symp-tomatic than Gouldner’s (1979) wager that theintellectuals were “our best card in history.”Gouldner, an otherwise careful thinker, neverclarified who were the “we” of this assertion andhow could “we” be meaningfully distinguishedfrom “they,” namely the intellectuals who weresupposedly our best hope.

Why was the question of allegiance so cen-tral? One has to return to the original formu-lation of the term “intellectuals” during theDreyfus affair to recall that it emerged as a mo-bilizing device in the course of political strug-gle. It was a rallying call designed to bring intobeing the very category it was naming and astrategy of making claims on behalf of reasonrelevant in political struggles (Bauman 1987).So from its very inception it was inscribed witha duality or ambiguity of allegiance, simultane-ously a claim to rise above sectarian interestsand to mobilize in a field of struggles on behalfof one segment to which it attempted to giveshape and purpose.

The most characteristic symptom of thisduality or ambiguity of allegiance was thetendency of the literature to swing between ro-mantic and satirical forms of emploting the his-tory of intellectuals (White 1973). Like all tribalsocieties, intellectuals were in need of a myth oforigin or meta-history to explain to themselveswho they were and where their allegiances lay.The classical sociology of intellectuals, there-fore, was preoccupied with pinpointing theprecise historical conditions under which intel-lectuals in the classical sense appear and thrive.

Yet from its very inception it was torn betweenromantic meta-narratives of self-discoveryand triumph through struggle, and satiricalmeta-narratives of complicity, betrayal, anddecline: Whereas one set of analyses soughtto specify the historical trends that enabledthe emergence of intellectuals as a distinctsocial group or stratum in modern societies(Mannheim 1936; Znaniecki 1940 [1968];Schumpeter 1942, pp. 145–55; Shils 1958[1972]; Coser 1965 [1970]; Gouldner 1979;Konrad & Szelenyi 1979), a second strandwas focused on diagnosing and explainingtheir decline (Benda 1927 [1928], Gramsci1929–1935 [1971], Mills 1944 [1963], Coser1965 [1970], Chomsky 1969).

Classical definitions of the intellectuals alsoreflected this duality of allegiance. Despitevariations, they broadly shared four corefeatures that constituted what can be termedthe prototype of the classical intellectual:2

First, typically definitions were of intellectuals-qua-social substance—a social type, a group,or a class—by opposition to nonintellectuals—laypeople, technical experts, and politicians.Second, intellectuals were identified as thosewhose work involved the use and manipulationof abstract knowledge or symbols, in contrastto those whose tasks depended more onimmediate sensory experience and directedtoward immediate practical goals (Benda 1927[1928]; Michels 1932; Mannheim 1936; Shils1958 [1972]; Coser 1965 [1970]; Lipset &Dobson 1972; Bell 1973 [1976], 1979;Gouldner 1979; Konrad & Szelenyi 1979).Third and related, intellectuals were character-ized by their commitment to universal values asopposed to particular interests or power (e.g.,Benda 1927 [1928], Shils 1958 [1972], Mills1944 [1963], Coser 1965 [1970]). Finally and

2A prototype is a “best example” of a certain category thatis grouped together by family resemblance rather than astrict definition of necessary and sufficient conditions. Thus,“robin” is a prototypical bird, and the engaged man of letterswas a prototypical intellectual of the earlier twentieth cen-tury. Other members of the category are arranged in orderof proximity or distance from the prototype (Rosch 1978,pp. 27–48; Hacking 1995, pp. 23–24).


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most specifically, intellectuals intervened inpolitical life on the basis of these two definingfeatures, that is, abstract knowledge and thecommitment to universal values. In essence, theclassical prototype of the intellectual referredto a specific formatting of political agency: thecapacity to use abstract knowledge for a critical-universalistic mode of public engagement andintervention. At the same time, however, def-initions of intellectuals also tended to includea secondary clause that relaxed the oppositionand permitted the extension of the categoryaway from the prototype either on a temporalaxis, as in Gramsci’s (1929–1935 [1971])distinction between traditional and organicintellectuals; or along a continuum of occupa-tional differentiation, as in Lipset’s & Dobson’s(1972, p. 137) distinction between jobs that“involve the creation, distribution and appli-cation of culture”; or by means of a totalizingconcept such as the “new class” (Bruce-Briggs1979, Gouldner 1979); or dialectically, whenthe capacity for transcendence emerged outof the immanent play of particular interests(Mannheim 1936, Bourdieu 1975, Konrad &Szelenyi 1979). In this way, they injected a du-ality into the very definition of the intellectual.

The conceptual tools deployed by the classi-cal sociology of intellectuals were borrowed inthe hope that they could give an answer to thisquestion of allegiance. They were “allegiancecaptures” in the sense that they were meantto represent a stable cause or basis for theenduring allegiance of intellectuals. The twousual suspects were interests and norms (or roleexpectations). Borrowed from Marxism, classanalysis reformulated the question of allegianceas about interests (Gramsci 1929–1935 [1971],Bell 1979, Bruce-Briggs 1979, Gouldner 1979,Konrad & Szelenyi 1979), whereas the analysisof traditions, social roles, and values, influencedby functionalism and symbolic interactionism,reformulated it as about normative expectationsand commitments (Znaniecki 1940 [1968],Shils 1958 [1972], Coser 1965 [1970]). Thismeant that despite their differences, all the maincurrents within the classical sociology of intel-lectuals were trying to deduce the worldviews

or political attitudes of intellectuals directlyfrom larger societal trends or position in socialstructure. The more interesting and complexthinkers—Michels, Mannheim, Gouldner,Konrad, and Szelenyi—however, recognizedthe need for mediating concepts and werethereby led to introduce a certain loosenessinto their respective “allegiance captures.” Thereflexive endeavor of the sociology of intellec-tuals gradually forced the classical literaturetoward a more probabilistic, relational, andeventual mode of explanation characteristic,we argue, of a twenty-first-century sociologyof intellectuals. This transformation was mostevident in Bourdieu’s (1985a,b) replacing ofthe concept of class with field and in Foucault’s(1972) replacing of truth/ideas with discourse.

We construe the task of our review,therefore, as partly diagnostic and partlyreconstructive. To fathom the dimensions andpotentialities of a twenty-first-century sociol-ogy of intellectuals, one would need to performa structural conversion of the classical sociologyof intellectuals. The problematic of allegiancereferred to a particular formatting of politicalagency, the claim to intervene in the publicsphere in the name of abstract knowledge anduniversal values. The enduring element here,what needs to be converted, is better expressednot in substantive terms, but in dynamic ones.It is the movement, the maneuver by which ahistorically specific truth-producing practicebecomes an effective tool of intervention in thepublic sphere. This question, we suggest, is atthe heart of a twenty-first-century sociology ofintellectuals.

THE SOCIOLOGY OFINTELLECTUAL FIELDSAND MARKETS

The growing body of work on intellectual fieldsand markets involves a significant modificationand reorientation away from the classicalproblematic. It expands the relevant domainof research beyond the predominant focus onthe allegiances and political behavior of intel-lectuals and, due to its relational methodology,


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reconstructs the very object of investigation asintellectual fields or markets.

In fact, despite internal differences, thesociology of intellectual fields and markets typ-ically rejects the attempt to define intellectualsin an a priori fashion as a social group with a setof objective attributes. Substantivist definitionsare rejected not only because the attributesassociated with intellectuals may vary sys-tematically across different groups of culturalproducers (Rahkonen & Roos 1993, Camic &Gross 2001), historical periods (Ringer 1990,p. 282), or countries (Bourdieu 1990, p. 145,Bourdieu 1992 [1996], pp. 343–44), but moreimportantly because they are also themselvesstakes in struggles among specialized producersof knowledge over the claim to truly embodythe mantle of the intellectual (Bourdieu 1990,p. 143). Thus, rather than predefining intel-lectuals through a set of substantive qualities,studies that draw upon the field frameworkapproach their object by reconstructing thespace within which intellectual attributionsand related values are created and contested.It could be a “space of opinion” constructedaround the practice of providing commentary( Jacobs & Townsley 2010) or more generally aspace of modes of public engagements (Sapiro2009a). Either way, these studies depersonalizethe object of analysis, redirecting the focusfrom particular social types or groups to thestudy of intellectual spaces, their socioculturalproperties, and the multiple positions andclaims that they encompass.

Relative Autonomy

Research building on the intellectualfields/markets approach has evolved aroundthree main strands: The first analyzes themaking, structure, and transformation ofparticular intellectual fields, with the mostattention paid thus far to the French academicfield (e.g., Bourdieu 1984 [1988], Ringer 1992,Kauppi 1996). This line of research is perhapsmost in continuity with the classical sociologyof intellectuals. The problematic of allegianceis overcome yet preserved in the pride of

place that this line of research accords to thequestion of autonomy. Bourdieu explains thathe developed the concept of field preciselyto break with the illusion of intellectuals asdisinterested and free-floating—i.e., owing al-legiance only to ideas. Yet he also sought to gobeyond the symmetrical claim that intellectualshave betrayed their calling and owe allegianceto material interests, either their own orthose of others (Bourdieu 1980 [1993], p. 43;Bourdieu 1989, p. 20). Field analysis rejectssuch either-or attributions of allegiance,drawing attention to how fields as relativelyautonomous arenas of struggle give rise to field-specific, yet internally (differing) affiliations,alliances, and oppositions. It thereby demon-strates that even those intellectual activities thatwould seem the most autonomous and detachedare preconditioned by the structure of the fieldin which they are embedded. Universality—a key aspiration associated with classicalautonomous intellectual position-takings—depends on precise—and rare—structuralconditions involving initial accumulation ofresources, high barriers to entry, and a dynamicof competition for recognition among peers(Bourdieu 1989, p. 17; cf. also Bourdieu 1975;Bourdieu 1992 [1996], pp. 340–48).

By the same token, however, field analysisin this version preserves the problematic of al-legiance at the level of an overall assessmentof the degree of autonomy of the field. Ringer(1992), for example, compares the French andGerman debates on academic reform at the finde siecle (1890–1920) to explain the emergence,in France, of an autonomous “academic cul-ture” that favored intellectual specialization anda modernist research ethos, while in Germanyby contrast the same struggles ended with thecontinuation of the more holistic and less au-tonomous notion of Bildung. The field conceptthus serves Ringer to trace and contrast the di-vergent formations of intellectual allegiancesand attitudes in a relational perspective (Ringer1992, pp. 13–14).

Bourdieu’s (1984 [1988]) Homo Academicus,although limited to France and more structuralin data and approach than Ringer, also uses the


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field concept to characterize the overall degreeof autonomy of the intellectual endeavor. Heshows that the French university field is char-acterized by an internal structure that corre-sponds largely to the structure of privilege anddomination in the larger social space. Althoughindices of heteronomy, of political or temporalpower, increase in weight as one moves from thefaculties of science and arts to law and medicine,indices of autonomy, that is, of specific scientificauthority and intellectual recognition, decrease(Bourdieu 1984 [1988], p. 48).

Kauppi’s (1996) analysis of the transforma-tion of the French intellectual field in the periodfrom 1960 to 1980 similarly seeks to diagnose aglobal transformation in the structure and au-tonomy of the intellectual field. The main ar-gument is that the original bipolar structure ofthe field—structured by the opposition betweenthe figure of the men of letters at the literarypole and the scholar at the university pole—has been transformed into a tripolar structureby the growing relevance of media publicityas a resource for intellectual recognition, andthe overall effect is a decrease in autonomy. Bycomparison, Jacobs & Townsley (2010) providea more nuanced assessment of the transforma-tion in modes, authors, and sites that providemedia commentary. They show that althoughindices of heteronomy increase over time in TVtalk shows, they do not do so in the op-ed sec-tions of major U.S. newspapers, thus provid-ing a more complex assessment of the effect ofmedia publicity on the intellectual field, whichthey conceptualize as polarization rather thanan overall decrease of autonomy.

Genesis and Circulation of Modelsof Intellectuals

The second strand within the intellectualfield/market approach pulls further away fromthe classical problematic of allegiance as iteschews global characterizations. These studiestypically use the concept of the intellectual fieldto explain the emergence, success, or failure ofcertain models or figures of intellectuals andrelated modes of public intervention. Three

works in this line set out to provide geneticaccounts of aspects of the universalistic-criticalprototype of the intellectual, the central focusof the classical tradition. Charle’s (1990)study reconstructs the conditions under whichintellectuals emerged as a social category inFrance. He argues that this neologism consti-tuted a response to a crisis of the literary andartistic professions at the end of the nineteenthcentury (Charle 1990, p. 64), a crisis causedby mismatch between the growing numbers ofcandidate members and the dearth of profes-sional artistic outlets (Charle 1990, pp. 38–63).This situation led to heightened competition,the multiplication of declassed aspirants, andultimately a crisis of established representationsof the intellectual metier itself (e.g., “l’hommede lettres,” “l’artiste,” “le savant”). Against thisbackground, the concept “intellectuals,” Charle(1990, p. 55) suggests, permitted the formula-tion of a new professional ideal of intellectualwork and collective identity for social protest.

The second work, by Sapiro (2003), aims toexplain the emergence of a specific mode ofpoliticization among writers—which she calls“prophesying.” Like Charle, Sapiro combinesBourdieu’s field analysis with theoretical ele-ments from the sociology of professions. Yether argument centers not so much on height-ened rivalry within artistic professions, but onthe increasing competition that writers facedwith other, newly emerging professional groupsof experts. In this situation, she holds, proph-esying became a preferred mode of political in-tervention because it allowed writers to com-pensate for their lack of specific expertise andredefine “their social function in face of thegrowing influence of new professional expertsand their values of scientific accuracy and tech-nical competence” (Sapiro 2003, p. 640).

The third work, by Boschetti (1985 [1988]),deploys field analysis to explain the rise toprominence of perhaps the prototypical classi-cal intellectual, Sartre. She shows how Sartre’srise was predicated on the recognition grantedby established authorities of consecration, andhow his claim to embody the “total intellec-tual” unified and reconciled two previously


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antagonistic poles of the French intellectualfield—professors and artistic creators.

More recent studies have extended this lineof research beyond the French case and the fig-ure of the classical intellectual. Medvetz (2009,2010), for instance, documents the institution-alization of an interstitial field of think tanks inthe United States, situated between the fields ofpolitics, academia, the economy, and the media.This hybrid space, he argues, has made possiblea new figure of public intellectual whose author-ity is not so much based on a particular type ofintellectual or scientific expertise, “nor on thecommand of economic capital, political poweror media access, but rather on the capacity tomediate an encounter among these forms of au-thority” (Medvetz 2010). Ultimately, he holds,this new hybrid intellectual field marginalizesearlier more autonomous modes of intellectualintervention (Medvetz 2010).

Another recent trend in this strand of fieldresearch has been to expand the analytical ap-proach from national to transnational perspec-tives (cf. Sapiro 2009c). Charle’s (2009) com-parison of models of intellectual engagementin different European countries at the end ofthe nineteenth century, for instance, goes be-yond contrasting the internal structure of intel-lectual fields to take into account also phenom-ena of transnational intellectual exchange andtransfer. As he argues, variations in traditionsof intellectual commitment—e.g., the FrenchDreyfusard intellectual, the British publicmoralist, or the Russian intelligentsia—notonly reflect developments within nationalfields, but also are shaped by the circulation ofmodels of intellectual engagement across na-tional borders, albeit reinterpreted and modi-fied. Boschetti (2009) analyzes the European in-tellectual space from 1945 to 1960 to argue thatthe unequal influence of certain figures or mod-els of intellectuals across countries was affectedby hierarchies not just within, but also betweenintellectual fields. One cannot make sense ofSartre’s far-reaching success beyond France,for instance, without considering the domi-nant position of Paris in the European intel-lectual space and even across the Atlantic. Her

argument thereby resonates with pioneer-ing work on transnational cultural spaces inthe context of literary translation (Casanova1999 [2004], Heilbron & Sapiro 2007), whichhas highlighted the importance of analyzingtransnational asymmetries between nationalfields and the way in which they structure thedynamics of cultural exchanges between na-tional fields. This is an exciting new direc-tion for field analysis that promises to movebeyond the still prevailing methodological na-tionalism in comparative research on intellec-tuals. It could be developed further throughcombining it with the novel method of “en-tangled history” (histoire croisee) (cf. Werner &Zimmermann 2003, pp. 7–36; Sapiro 2009b).

Modes of Intervention

The third and last strand within the intellec-tual field/market literature distances itself thefurthest from the classical problematic by doc-umenting and explaining extensive variation inmodes of public intellectual engagement bothwithin and between national cases. In a sense,it moves away from a focus on the allegianceof intellectuals or the autonomy of the intellec-tual field and toward an analysis of modes ofintervention themselves.

Sapiro (2003, 2009a) develops a usefulanalysis and typology of public intellectualinterventions. Drawing on Bourdieu’s fieldconcept, she seeks to relate variations in themode of public intellectual engagement todifferent positions that intellectuals occupy. Inan earlier contribution (Sapiro 2003, pp. 641–47), she suggested, for instance, that forms ofpolitical engagement (e.g., genres of protest,such as manifestos, petitions, patronage, orthe lampoon) vary according to the positionsthat writers occupy in the French literary field,encompassing, ideal typically, the avant-garde,aesthetes, notabilities, and journalists. A morerecent work (Sapiro 2009a) extends this ap-proach to the wider French intellectual field as aspace in which various cultural producers com-pete for the imposition of the legitimate visionof the social world in the public arena. As she


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suggests, the different modes of public inter-vention thereby practiced by different culturalproducers—e.g., in regard to their chosen genre(ranging from prophesy or expertise), discur-sive forms (e.g., the pamphlet or the diagnosis),or modalities (individual or collective)—differsystematically according to their position inthe intellectual field, which is structured alongthree axes (Sapiro 2009a, pp. 10–15): first,the overall amount of symbolic capital, whichcorrelates with the likelihood that the mode ofintervention will be individualistic rather thancollective; second, the degree of independencefrom external political demand, which affectsthe likelihood that an intervention will take anautonomous discursive form; third, the degreeof specialization insofar as the more specializedactors are more likely to intervene in the con-text of professional, organized bodies ratherthan as individuals and to justify interventionby reference to specialized expert knowledgerather than to universal values. Based onthese three structuring factors, Sapiro (2009a,pp. 14–31) constructs a model of the French in-tellectual field that distinguishes ideal typicallybetween seven modes of intellectual interven-tion: the critical, universalistic intellectual; thecustodian of the moral order; intellectual con-tentious groups and avant-gardes; intellectualsfrom institutions or political organizations; theexpert; the specific intellectual; and the col-lective intellectual. This model multiplies thelikely intellectual actors and their typical modesof intervention and thereby moves the furthestfrom the classical sociology of intellectuals.

A related though different typology ofmodes of political engagement by intellectu-als has been developed by Eyal (2000, 2003).Drawing on Bourdieu’s field approach to ex-plain the dynamics of elite formation in latecommunist Czechoslovakia, he identifies fourdiscursive strategies—dissidence, internal exile,reform communism, and co-optation—each in-volving a different conception of the role of in-tellectuals and a different mode of interveningin public affairs. These modes or strategies arethen probabilistically related to different socialpositions in the late communist field of power

and serve to explain likely political affinities andalliances among intellectual fractions within it(Eyal 2000, p. 54; Eyal 2003, pp. 11–13, 26–34,59–92).

An unlikely further example of this strand isPosner’s (2001) study of the market for publicintellectual work in the United States. AlthoughPosner is no Bourdieusian, his market analysisof public intellectual work bears affinities to thefield approach. Public intellectual work, saysPosner, constitutes a relatively coherent arenaof activity that is governed by the laws of de-mand and supply (Posner 2001, p. 2). Yet it alsodiffers significantly from other cultural marketsbecause of the nature of the specific commoditypurveyed by public intellectuals. This focuson the commodity rather than on the actorsmeans that Posner no longer aims to elucidatethe allegiances of intellectuals, but to analyzethe dynamics of how intellectual knowledgeor opinion is made to circulate in the publicsphere. He argues that “market failure” isresponsible for the fact that the public sphereis flooded with public intellectual goods ofdubious and poor quality: The barriers to entryare too low (it does not take much to write anop-ed piece, for example), and there is hardlyany quality control mechanism that wouldencourage market exit because comments orpredictions by public intellectuals are rarelyscrutinized for their accuracy or effectiveness(e.g., there are no real consequences to writinga silly opinion or false prediction) (Posner2001, p. 72). Additionally, his analysis issimilar to Sapiro’s in that he identifies multiplegenres of public intellectual engagement:self-popularizing, own-field policy proposing,real-time commentary, prophetic commentary,jeremiad, general social criticism, specific socialcriticism, social reform, politically inflectedliterary criticism, political satire, and experttestimony (Posner 2001, pp. 2, 36–40).

To summarize, the literature on intellectualfields and markets offers several modificationsof the classical sociology of intellectuals: (a) ashift in the construction of the object from par-ticular types of intellectuals toward the spacesin which intellectual practices are embedded


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and interrelated; (b) the introduction of fieldsas intermediate structured spaces betweenmacrostructural factors and modes of intellec-tual public intervention; and (c) an analyticalapproach that accounts for multiple modes ofpublic intervention and that shifts attentionfrom the allegiances of actors to the modeof their intervention. Nevertheless, existingresearch on intellectual fields and markets stillsuffers from too narrow a focus on the Frenchcase and a dearth of comparative frames thatwould assist in generalizing the results ofresearch on specific national fields. The recentinterest in transnational phenomena couldcontribute to overcoming these limitations andto articulating comparative and transnationalmethodologies in fruitful, novel ways.

SOCIOLOGIES OF EXPERTISE

In this final section, we review works frommainly three research traditions—social studiesof science and technology (SSST), governmen-tality, and the international relations literatureon “epistemic communities”—in order to re-construct the broad outlines of a sociology thattakes as its unit of analysis the movement ofpublic intervention itself. We begin with thecaveat that such a project is not the explicit goalof any of the works surveyed, but it involves acertain reconstructive reading on our part. Yetwe think there is good basis for it. Indeed, whathas been called the “third wave” of SSST hasnow moved from an earlier concern with the so-cial construction of scientific knowledge to theproblem of expertise, i.e., how and what kind ofknowledge could serve as a legitimate basis forintervention in public affairs (Collins & Evans2002). The focus on intervention itself ratherthan on a particular social type is evident in thechoice of terms to designate the new directiontaken by SSST: “studies of expertise and expe-rience” (Collins & Evans 2002), “making thingspublic” (Latour & Weibel 2005), or “public sci-ence” (Wynne 2005). Governmentality stud-ies, for their part, analyze how the exercise ofpower in contemporary societies is infused withknowledge about the nature of what is gov-

erned and what it means to govern. In this sense,they are the mirror image of studies of exper-tise. They begin not with knowledge seeking toenter the public sphere, but with public author-ities seeking to equip themselves with a truth-producing practice. In recent years, links be-tween SSST and the governmentality literaturehave been forged on the basis of their commoninterest in the role that knowledge plays in pub-lic affairs (Rose et al. 2006). Finally, the litera-ture on epistemic communities essentially dealswith how ideas and their carriers penetrate andinfluence international relations (Haas 1992,pp. 3–4, 26–27; Keck & Sikkink 1998, p. 213).

Here, we highlight three common tenden-cies of these literatures that we think togethercompose an analytical grid for empirical re-search focused on interventions themselves.

Distributed Agency

Compared with the field literature surveyed inthe previous section, the response to the ques-tion of who intervenes is not necessarily to mul-tiply the actors and array them all within aspace of competition, but to highlight multi-plicity within the intervening actor itself, whichis conceptualized as an agency constituted, con-structed, and assembled in and through the verymovement of intervention.

Epistemic community is “a network of pro-fessionals with recognized expertise and com-petence in a particular domain and an authorita-tive claim to policy-relevant knowledge withinthat domain or issue area” (Haas 1992, p. 3;Adler & Haas 1992; Keck & Sikkink 1998; King2005). It is distinct, however, from disciplinesand professions because it is relatively smalland because its members share principled be-liefs and values (Haas 1992, pp. 3, 18; Keck &Sikkink 1998, p. 30). Substantively, this litera-ture can be seen as a successor to the classicalsociology of intellectuals because, like classi-cal intellectuals, epistemic communities are de-fined by the combination of truth claims with apublic moral stance and because the concept ismeant to show how the movement from ideas topublic intervention may be accomplished, even


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in such a hostile environment as interstate re-lations and Realpolitik.3

At the same time, however, epistemic com-munities are conceived not simply as groups ofintellectuals or experts, but as networks. Theemphasis is not on the sociological characterof their members, but on their formatting asvehicles of effective intervention. This format-ting involves a cross-disciplinary combinationof forms of expertise as well as transnationalnetwork ties, both crucial for influencing publicdiscourse and diffusing policy innovations glob-ally (Adler & Haas 1992, pp. 378–79, 390; Keck& Sikkink 1998, pp. 6–9). Epistemic commu-nities “are channels through which new ideascirculate from societies to governments as wellas from country to country” (Keck & Sikkink1998, p. 27; see also King 2005). The focus ofthe concept, therefore, is not on characterizinga social type and asking where its allegiances lie,but on the conditions for effective intervention,for bringing expertise to bear on public affairs.Among these conditions, Adler & Haas (1992)identify the reach of the network, its capacityto build transgovernmental and transnationalcoalitions, and its positioning as an ideas bro-ker within these coalitions.

One of the most prominent tendencies inSSST in the last decade has been the atten-tion paid to the phenomenon of “lay expertise”(Epstein 1995, 1996; Wynne 1996; Rabeharisoa& Callon 2004; Collins & Evans 2002, 2007;Silverman & Brosco 2007; Eyal et al. 2010),namely the capacity of ordinary people, often

3The connection between intellectuals and Realpolitik is inti-mate and constitutive. Intellectuals have formed themselvesas a group, during the Dreyfus affair, in opposition to thesecrecy justified by Raison d’etat, and by emphasizing cos-mopolitan ideals against narrow state interests. “Speakingtruth to power” has been a distinctive intellectual genre(Tucker 2000), yet neoconservative intellectuals have cre-ated their identity partly by championing Realpolitik againstwhat they perceived as naive moralism of liberal intellectuals,and nationalist intellectuals thrive on the critique of “root-less” cosmopolitan intellectuals. It is significant, therefore,that the concept of epistemic communities was launched asa meta-commentary on this dispute and that Latour’s (2005)foray into the public intellectual role was titled “From Re-alpolitik to Dingpolitik” and includes a sophisticated critiqueof Realpolitik.

organized in networks, to develop specific ex-pertise in matters of concern to them and topress recognition of their point of view. This at-tention to lay expertise served to highlight theheterogeneity of the actors intervening in thepublic sphere and led SSST to explicitly posethe question of expertise, i.e., how far couldbe extended the right to participate in publicdecision making about technical matters with-out degenerating into a free-for-all (Collins &Evans 2002, 2007). Once SSST began to askwhat is expertise, however, rather than who arethe experts, the possibility opened up for an-alyzing expertise as a distributed property, aproperty not of individuals or even of groups(Collins 1990, Dreyfus & Dreyfus 2005), butof a whole network that needs to be put inmotion for a statement to hold up, circulate,and produce effects. The origins of this ap-proach can be found in Foucault’s (1963 [1994],1972) dissection of the “clinical gaze” as a com-plex enunciative modality composed not only ofindividuals and their training, but also of spa-tial and institutional arrangements, instrumen-tation, concepts, and even the authority dele-gated to doctors by the state.

These initial insights were further devel-oped by Actor-Network Theory, especially inthe literature on performativity, which arguesthat economic models perform, i.e., shape oreven bring into being, markets (Latour 1987,1999; Callon 1998, 2005; MacKenzie et al.2007). This literature, too, is a successor tothe classical sociology of intellectuals becausein the past three decades economists haveprobably been the most influential and visiblepolicy experts and intellectuals-in-politics(Montecinos 1988, Markoff & Montecinos1993, Eyal 2000, Montecinos & Markoff 2001,Babb & Fourcade 2002, Dezalay & Garth 2002,Fourcade 2006) and more importantly becauseit deals with a key question for the sociologyof intellectuals: How is knowledge insertedinto the public sphere and with what effects(Fourcade-Gourinchas 2003)? If it is hard torecognize the affinity between performativityand the sociology of intellectuals, this is becauseperformativity is an effect not of economists


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per se, but of a whole network of materialdevices, accounting tools, institutional ar-rangements, and economic formulas. In short,the agency of intervention is analyzed as anassemblage wherein the expert, the economist,is only one component (Callon 1998, 2007).Or put differently, performativity begins fromthe assumption that we all are—even if weare experts, let alone old-style amateurishintellectuals—disabled or more preciselyincompetent. “Imagine a society consistingprimarily of disabled persons,” writes Callon(2005, p. 313), by which he means lackingspecific technical competence; “how can it betransformed into a democracy, when marketsare constantly spawning new controversies,the technical content of which is becomingincreasingly esoteric?” Effective interventionin public controversies is only possible by as-sembling the necessary material and cognitiveand social equipment, as so many prostheses,into a coherent form of agency. Hence Callon’stongue-in-cheek slogan—“disabled persons ofall countries unite”—is meant to refocus theattention of sociologists away from the personsintervening and onto the organizational,material, and cognitive equipment that enableseffective intervention. His examples includeconsumer unions, patient groups, and issuegroups formed by those affected by envi-ronmental pollution. All began from relativeweakness and acquired the capacity to inter-vene in the public sphere by collecting data,setting up experiments, redirecting the flow ofinformation, and striking coalitions across thescience-state-society and lay-expert divides.

A similar move toward decentering theintervening agent is evident in studies ofgovernmentality (Foucault 1977–1978 [2007],Burchell et al. 1991, Rose 1992, Barry et al.1996, Valverde 1998, Rose et al. 2006). Govern-mentality is an approach to the study of politicalpower as involving multiple and competing artsof governing human conduct. Arts of govern-ment are ensembles of discourses, practices, andinstitutions, i.e., of both knowledge and power.Like performativity, therefore, governmental-ity deals with the problem of how knowledge is

inserted into the public sphere, although per-haps from the other side. Performativity askshow theoretical statements can produce real ef-fects, whereas governmentality asks how the actof ruling is infused with a political rationality.For our purposes here, the crucial point is thatthese political rationalities or arts of govern-ment involve not only a specific conception ofthe human material upon which governmentacts—whether it is a flock, a territory, legal sub-jects, or a population—but also of the subject ofthis activity, who and what kind of an actor isthe governor, and of what does the activity ofgoverning consist. The subject of government,therefore, does not preexist the activity of gov-erning, but is constituted in and through thisactivity. Similarly, when intellectuals are dis-cussed within the governmentality paradigm,as in Osborne’s (2004) analysis of “mediators,”care is taken to emphasize that the discussionis not of intellectual types, but of “epistemicforms” or “ethical technologies” upon whichindividuals draw to legitimate or make senseof particular kinds of intellectual conduct. Likearts of government, such forms involve a spe-cific conception of the “substance,” the raw ma-terial of intellectual work, as well as a specificform of “stylization” of this work, the ethosthe intellectual will embody. In the case thatOsborne (2004, p. 434) discusses, a universityresearch center that seeks to influence policy by“brokering alignments of interest and concernamong differing constituencies,” the substanceis facilitating “vehicular ideas,” and stylizationinvolves an aesthetic attitude toward ideas, a willto create something new in the realm of ideas.The focus, however, is on the analysis of epis-temic forms that constitute their own agenticmodalities.

Truth Effects

These three literatures signal a transitionfrom the sociology of intellectuals to thesociology of interventions not only becausethey decenter the intervening agent, but alsobecause they draw attention to the multiplicityof truth-producing practices and modes of


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intervention. Arguably, the classical conceptof the intellectual, while ostensibly describingsocial types, was in fact describing one genreof interventions characteristic of “publicintellectuals,” namely the manifesto, the signedpetition, the polemical op-ed piece (and nowthe blog), the gesture of “revelation,” proph-esying, “speaking truth to power,” as well as“transformative ideas” (Bell 1960, Gouldner1975–1976, Bauman 1987, Haas 1992).Bauman (1987) characterized this genreas “legislation,” speaking in the name ofuniversal truth and morality. The literatureon epistemic communities seems to rejectprecisely this mode of intervention when itdeclares that “epistemic communities are nei-ther philosophers, nor kings, nor philosopher-kings” (Adler & Haas 1992, p. 371). Instead,scholars in this research tradition emphasizethe capacity of epistemic communities tolink opposing sides and—in conformity withBauman’s (1987) construal of postmodernintellectuals as “interpreters”—translate theirinterests in a way that facilitates commu-nication and compromises among differentinvolved parties (Adler & Haas 1992, p. 382).This is true also for the transnational networksof activists that most closely approximatea twenty-first-century version of criticalintellectuals (Keck & Sikkink 1998).

Recent developments in SSST generalizethis move away from the mode of interven-tion identified with classical intellectuals andsupport it with a historical argument about achanging public sphere. The edited volume andexhibition titled Making Things Public (Latour& Weibel 2005) demonstrate how to make useof the rich conceptual resources provided bySSST in order to document multiple modesof intervention in public affairs, “the frail con-duits through which truths and proofs are al-lowed to enter the sphere of politics” (Latour2005, p. 19). They begin from the observation,central to the Lippmann-Dewey debate of theinterwar years (Lippmann 1922, 1927; Dewey1927; Marres 2005), that modern-day politicsare thoroughly suffused with complex techni-cal issues about which the public is ignorant.

This does not mean, however, that democracyfounded on public opinion is an empty shellmasking the rule of experts. The experts as wellare fairly ignorant about newly emerging “mat-ters of concern” that typically involve complexand unforeseen technical details. It means, how-ever, that democratic politics no longer takesplace in a singular and rarefied public spherewhere ideas are debated, but in multiple set-tings, wherever matters of concern bring forthand assemble new types of publics who edu-cate themselves and equip themselves with theprosthetic devices necessary to address techni-cal matters (Callon 2005). A good example iswhat Rabeharisoa & Callon (2004) call “copro-duction.” They study the mode of action andintervention innovated by the French Muscu-lar Dystrophy Association and show that, be-cause both experts and patients were relativelyignorant about this complex and understudiedcondition, public decision making in this casewas neither authoritative medical prescriptionnor technical response to politically articulatedinterests, but had to be infused with a hybriddiscourse, partly technical and partly strate-gic, that facilitated cooperation and mutuallearning.

Some conduits, however, are not as frail asothers, nor as collaborative. The performativ-ity literature, for its part, argues that economics“performs, shapes and formats the econ-omy, rather than observing how it functions”(Callon 1998). This means also that economistsintervene in the public sphere not—or notprimarily—by opining about the economy, butwhen they invent new methods and devicesthat frame transactions in a way that permitsnew types of calculation and brings new mar-kets into being. Put differently, performativitymeans that the Paul Krugmans of the worldare not the privileged subject of a sociology ofinterventions, but rather technical innovatorssuch as Fisher Black and Myron Scholes are(MacKenzie & Milo 2003, MacKenzie et al.2007).

Similarly, scholars of governmentality havedemonstrated how various types of expertise—psychological expertise (Rose 1992), actuarial


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risk knowledge (Castel 1991, Feeley & Simon1992, O’Malley 1996), even the low-techexpertise of Alcoholics Anonymous (Valverde1998)—are grafted onto programs for gov-erning workplaces, markets, crime, or alcoholconsumption, and how they redefine therebythe objects of governmental intervention andpublic debate (Miller & Rose 1990). Osborne’s(2004) typology of epistemic forms articulates adistinction between four modes of interventionor, in his language, strategies of intellectualwork: (a) Legislation is a mode of interventiondesigned to bring about social and politicalorder by imposing universal abstractions towhich conduct must conform; (b) interpre-tation seeks to bring about understandingand mutual recognition amid the clash ofcultures and values, by reading all culturalforms as texts and translating between differentspeech communities; (c) expertise limits itselfto providing factual and true information atthe disposal of government; and (d ) mediationintervenes in the public sphere by means ofvehicular ideas to bring about innovation anda constantly mobile, creative culture.

Interstitial Domains

Finally, the transition from the sociology ofintellectuals to the sociology of interventionsentails not only decentering the agency of in-tervention and multiplying the modes of inter-vention, but also reenvisioning the space alongwhich the movement of intervention proceeds.Intervention is analyzed not as a daring plungefrom one (tranquil, academic) world into an-other (agonistic, political), but as taking placein an interstitial domain of expertise, where theboundaries between these worlds are blurry. Inthe classical sociology of intellectuals, as wellas in field analysis, there is a chasm betweenthe sphere of ideas [“a world apart” (Bourdieu1990)] and the messy world of political action,over which the public intellectual must leap athis or her peril. Hence, there is the classical de-piction of “intellectuals-in-politics” as “babesin the woods,” naive and lost among powersthey do not quite understand and that soon

devour them, or as thoughtlessly pronounc-ing on matters for which they lack exper-tise ( Joll 1960, Hamburger 1965, Jennings &Kemp-Welch 1997, Lila 2001, Posner 2001).

The great merit of governmentality studiesis to completely reject this spatial image. Arts ofgovernment are at one and the same time stylesof thought and political practices. In analyzingarts of government, one does not have politicson one side and knowledge and intellectual lifeon the other, but on the contrary, one is describ-ing an interstitial domain where the boundariesbetween the two are blurry, a domain composedof movements (Mitchell 1991, Rose et al. 2006).Osborne’s (2004) “mediator” seems to embodythis theoretical tendency: “[T]he mediator issimply the one who gets things moving.” Tomediate is not to stand in between as a passiveintermediary, but to get things going from oneplace to another by means of “vehicular ideas.”

Similarly, Callon (2007) has revised his ini-tial characterization of performativity as the ef-fect not of theoretical armchair economics, butof “economics in the wild,” i.e., of the totalset of actors—whether central bank economists,market professionals, statisticians, engineers, orcredit unions—involved in collective analysisand configuration of markets. Once again, thedaring plunge of cool theoretical economistsinto the hot whirlpool of markets becomes theexception that proves the rule, namely that forthe most part intervention is only possible onthe ground provided by a preexisting interstitialdomain. In fact, it is the same domain in bothcases, namely the domain of government, forwhat is to perform a market but to frame calcu-lations so as to render transactions governable?

To complete this whirlwind tour throughthese complex theoretical traditions, let us notethat epistemic communities are conceptualizednot only as transdisciplinary and transnationalnetworks, but crucially as transgovernmentalnetworks, i.e., “invisible colleges” that stretchacross different arms of government, over intovarious informal circles outside bureaucraticchannels, and outward to include also non-governmental actors, policy circles, think tanks,and academic institutes (Haas 1992, pp. 31–33).


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The capacity of epistemic communities to in-fluence public debate and decision making is afunction precisely of their hybrid and intersti-tial position (see also Eyal 2002).

CONCLUSION

We have argued that the classical problematicof the sociology of intellectuals no longer con-stitutes a fruitful basis for a research program,and we have surveyed two other literatures that,while addressing some of the central concernsof the sociology of intellectuals, are better char-acterized as converging on a new project of a

sociology of interventions. Whether such con-vergence is ultimately feasible is an open ques-tion. Two of the common tendencies identifiedin the previous section—distributed agencyand multiplicity of modes of intervention—donot seem to constitute an obstacle to suchconvergence. It is the third tendency to locateintervention in interstitial domains that posesthe greatest challenge because it seems to godirectly against the image of a bounded andrelatively autonomous field. Reconciling fieldanalysis with the notion of interstitial domainsof expertise would be a major step toward atwenty-first-century sociology of interventions.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

The authors are not aware of any affiliations, memberships, funding, or financial holdings thatmight be perceived as affecting the objectivity of this review.

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Annual Reviewof Sociology

Volume 36, 2010Contents

FrontispieceJohn W. Meyer � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � xiv

Prefatory Chapter

World Society, Institutional Theories, and the ActorJohn W. Meyer � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 1

Theory and Methods

Causal Inference in Sociological ResearchMarkus Gangl � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �21

Causal Mechanisms in the Social SciencesPeter Hedstrom and Petri Ylikoski � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �49

Social Processes

A World of Standards but not a Standard World: Toward a Sociologyof Standards and StandardizationStefan Timmermans and Steven Epstein � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �69

Dynamics of Dyads in Social Networks: Assortative, Relational,and Proximity MechanismsMark T. Rivera, Sara B. Soderstrom, and Brian Uzzi � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �91

From the Sociology of Intellectuals to the Sociology of InterventionsGil Eyal and Larissa Buchholz � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 117

Social Relationships and Health Behavior Across the Life CourseDebra Umberson, Robert Crosnoe, and Corinne Reczek � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 139

Partiality of Memberships in Categories and AudiencesMichael T. Hannan � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 159

v

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SO36-FM ARI 2 June 2010 4:38

Institutions and Culture

What Is Sociological about Music?William G. Roy and Timothy J. Dowd � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 183

Cultural Holes: Beyond Relationality in Social Networks and CultureMark A. Pachucki and Ronald L. Breiger � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 205

Formal Organizations

Organizational Approaches to Inequality: Inertia, Relative Power,and EnvironmentsKevin Stainback, Donald Tomaskovic-Devey, and Sheryl Skaggs � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 225

Political and Economic Sociology

The Contentiousness of Markets: Politics, Social Movements,and Institutional Change in MarketsBrayden G King and Nicholas A. Pearce � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 249

Conservative and Right-Wing MovementsKathleen M. Blee and Kimberly A. Creasap � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 269

The Political Consequences of Social MovementsEdwin Amenta, Neal Caren, Elizabeth Chiarello, and Yang Su � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 287

Comparative Analyses of Public Attitudes Toward Immigrantsand Immigration Using Multinational Survey Data: A Reviewof Theories and ResearchAlin M. Ceobanu and Xavier Escandell � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 309

Differentiation and Stratification

Income Inequality: New Trends and Research DirectionsLeslie McCall and Christine Percheski � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 329

Socioeconomic Disparities in Health BehaviorsFred C. Pampel, Patrick M. Krueger, and Justin T. Denney � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 349

Gender and Health InequalityJen’nan Ghazal Read and Bridget K. Gorman � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 371

Incarceration and StratificationSara Wakefield and Christopher Uggen � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 387

Achievement Inequality and the Institutional Structure of EducationalSystems: A Comparative PerspectiveHerman G. Van de Werfhorst and Jonathan J.B. Mijs � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 407

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Historical Studies of Social Mobility and StratificationMarco H.D. van Leeuwen and Ineke Maas � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 429

Individual and Society

Race and TrustSandra Susan Smith � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 453

Three Faces of IdentityTimothy J. Owens, Dawn T. Robinson, and Lynn Smith-Lovin � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 477

Policy

The New Homelessness RevisitedBarrett A. Lee, Kimberly A. Tyler, and James D. Wright � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 501

The Decline of Cash Welfare and Implications for Social Policyand PovertySandra K. Danziger � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 523

Indexes

Cumulative Index of Contributing Authors, Volumes 27–36 � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 547

Cumulative Index of Chapter Titles, Volumes 27–36 � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 551

Errata

An online log of corrections to Annual Review of Sociology articles may be found athttp://soc.annualreviews.org/errata.shtml

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eyal & buchholz, from sociolgy of intellectuals to the sociology of interventions 24 pp

Documents

sociology of intellectuals

classical sociology

sociology of interventions

annual review of sociology

sociologyof intellectuals

sociology ofintellectuals

public intervention

alyzes intellectual