Towards a theoretical understanding of the role of social agents in long term institutional development: a historically situated study of the genesis and growth of the sub-field of English wine

The genesis of this paper is an ongoing empirical study of English wine producers that has thrown up a conceptual challenge for us, namely how to theorise the historical formation of a new sub-field of English wine and its incorporation within the wider European and ultimately global field of wine production. In order to do this, we address the following questions: how do individual social agents, acting largely independently, contribute to the genesis of a field? How do organizations develop within that field and in turn how does that field develop through processes of institutionalisation? Specifically therefore, how can those individual and organizational activities can be understood in the historical context of socio-cultural changes in England in the period 1945-2012?