Structured Environments of Status Activities: Awards and Honors Systems

The importance of environments of nonwork activities when the objective of these activities is in status judgments has been emphasized in previous chapters. Following Bourdieu (e.g., 1985, 1993, 1996 [1989]; Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992), traditions of Lewin and his colleagues (e.g., Lewin 1951; Stivers and Wheelan 1986) and more recent organizational theorists, environments have been conceptualized in terms of institutionalized fields. Structure in the environments of status activities is suggested as having a common property of dual fields across societies with the respective fields imposing different conditions on activities. Institutions in the field discussed as the restricted field are typically more supportive of activities which use specialized knowledge than are institutions in the field designated as the commercial field.