C’est la ‘Fête du slip’! When a Weak Field Mandate Event Tries to Change an Organizational Field

Abstract

The literature on field-configuring events draws a contrast between ‘strong field mandate’ events, which play a dominant role in a field, and the ‘weak field mandate’ events held at the periphery. Irrespective of their type, three levers have been identified that enable field-configuring events to configure the field in which they occur: legitimacy, conformity to the rules and norms in force in the field, and power. Since, by their nature, weak field events do not have access to these levers, an essential question arises concerning how weak field mandate events can attempt to modify an organizational field. The study of ‘La Fête du slip’, an alternative pornography festival, identifies three actions that are undertaken in an effort to access these levers: (1) contributing to the emergence and structuring of the alternative pornography subfield, (2) driving communities (of practice, as well as epistemic), and (3) opening up to alternative events within the field as well as to other related and institutional fields outside the field. This work contributes to the literature by discussing actions that allow weak field events to access configurative levers in an attempt to change an organizational field.