Institutionalizing civic engagement: Shifting logics and the cultural repackaging of service-learning in US higher education

Institutionalists in organizational sociology have developed a good deal of evidence about the role of field logics in shaping the practices of organi zations. In this paper, we extend this imagery to multiple fields, highligh ting how shifting logics in a superordinate field enable the infrastructura l development of a subordinate field. in particular, we track how initially marginal, anti-institutional service-learning practices became a legitimat e component of mainstream curricula in the field of US higher education. Wh ile service-learning proponents have always made claims about the importanc e of generating knowledge and insight by helping others in the community, s ervice-learning entrepreneurs had to build a field infrastructure to suppor t their claims and culturally repackage the aims of service-learning in a w ay that articulated with broader logics in the field of higher education. W e argue that the shift from an unarticulated closed-system logic to a situa tion of contending closed-system and open-system logics in the field of hig her education facilitated the cultural repackaging of service-learning prac tices, enabling civic engagement to become a more accepted part of universi ty curricula. Despite this apparently 'successful' institutionalization, ho wever, competing logics in the field of higher education have instantiated contradictions in the service-learning field, raising important issues abou t the future of service-learning as well as the US educational system.