Producing expert capital: how opposing same-sex marriage experts dominate fields in the United States and France
Langue
en
Article de revue
Ce document a été publié dans
Social Movement Studies. 2018-06-08, vol. 19, n° 1, p. 38-62
Taylor & Francis (Routledge)
Résumé en anglais
This paper examines experts who have testified before U.S. and French courts and legislatures on same-sex marriage and parenting debates between 1990 and 2013. Experts can provide special evidentiary weight to political ...Lire la suite >
This paper examines experts who have testified before U.S. and French courts and legislatures on same-sex marriage and parenting debates between 1990 and 2013. Experts can provide special evidentiary weight to political arguments, which I call expert capital. For this reason, social movements and decision-makers on both sides of the debate solicit them. Yet, because of specific national conditions, this article shows that not all experts have the same capacity to use their respective academic and professional resources to impact policymaking in each country. Drawing on 71 in-depth interviews and ethnographic observation in both the U.S. and France, it analyses how progressive and conservative experts have struggled for dominance in their fields. Results show that American progressive experts have achieved a degree of power in their fields as their conservative counterparts turn to resources outside the academic mainstream. In France, progressives have only recently begun to challenge conservatives' dominant position. I argue that these power balances, which are subject to change, are due to: 1) size and centralization of knowledge regimes; 2) disciplinary and university reactions to research on gender and sexuality; 3) academic and professional organization strength; 4) social acceptance of gay families; and, 5) the degree of division among allied experts. These findings have implications for research on social movements. They show that the capacity of experts to provide expert capital to their activist and decision-maker allies is constrained and enabled by factors specific to knowledge production fields that vary cross-nationally.< Réduire
Mots clés en anglais
social movements
expert capital
experts
United States
France
same-sex marriage
Origine
Importé de halUnités de recherche