The contemporary pragmatist movement in the human sciences: Three case studies in the sociology of ideas

In recent years, researchers working in the sociology of ideas have come to converge around a common theoretical model of intellectual life. According to this model, intellectuals formulate their ideas while working within relatively autonomous and hierarchically-structured fields of social relationships. Individual thinkers, as well as institutions, are seen as vying with one another within these “intellectual fields” for favorable positioning and social status—i.e., for prestige, attention, and credibility. To explain why a thinker chooses one intellectual path instead of another, most sociologists of ideas analyze the thinker's field-positional situation and explain the choice as a function of his or her quest for status.; The goal of this dissertation is to give sociologists of ideas a new theoretical tool they can use to explain intellectual choice. Intellectual choices are frequently shaped by the quest for status, but not all such choices are entirely instrumental. Drawing on the thought of Erik Erikson, among others, I theorize that many intellectual choices result from a desire to do work which resonates with a thinker's sense of the kind of intellectual he or she is i.e., with what I call his or her “intellectual self-concept.” Field positions carry with them their own intellectual self-concepts, but the range of possible self-concepts is wider than the range of field positions. Going beyond neo-Mannheimian standpoint theories, I also argue that many intellectual self-concepts cannot be reduced to major social group identities. And any intellectual self-concept, I suggest, can be decisive in shaping a thinker's choices.; To demonstrate the explanatory value of this claim, I use the theory of intellectual self-concept to help account for various features of the contemporary pragmatist movement in the human sciences. One case study uses the theory to explain why some philosophers choose to work in the pragmatist tradition. A second mobilizes the theory to explain the idiosyncratic nature of Richard Rorty's engagement with pragmatism. And the third incorporates the theory into a sociological account of the interdisciplinary pragmatist renaissance. All three case studies provide provisional empirical support for the claim that intellectual self-concept does influence intellectual choice.