Rebels with a cause: How creative geniuses transform cultural systems

Before a new idea or practice spreads, cultural entrepreneurs must create, name and theorize it to make it understandable for and meaningful to potential adopters. Most studies, however, have focused on the adoption of practices that have already been identified and theorized. Few studies examine how cultural entrepreneurs collectively theorize new practices and transform culture in doing so. In this study, we investigate the problem-driven, discursive struggle between members of a field in the production of cultural symbols and objects that generate meaning and allow for new way of interpreting the social world. Specifically, we conduct a textual and content analysis of works produced by renowned architects that had a transformative influence in the field of architecture in the 20th century. We reveal how change in the symbols, meanings and structure of culture involved a process of theorization where cultural entrepreneurs: (1) identified and named problems and offered solutions, sparked by a sense of 'inauthenticity' with the current vocabulary and practices; (2) crystallized their solutions into relatively coherent logics of action, embedded in new vocabularies and practices that were contested among social actors, reflecting disagreement about what constituted authenticity, and (3) converged on a shared vocabulary, even while they diverged on the meaning of that vocabulary, and what an authentic performance constituted, indicating distinct logics of action. Contestation and conflict permeated the initiation and theorization of a new ideal and set of material practices, resulting in distinct logics of modern architecture.