Cultural Translations of Social Movements: A Field-Translation Interpretation of the Adoption Pattern of the Temperance Movement in the Danish Field of Moral Reform

Studies of the diffusion and translation of social movements has traditionally interpreted the adopting context of a movement as culturally homogenous and explained the adoption of a matter of similarity between transmitters and adopters. As a consequence, most existing theoretical and methodological approaches to diffusion and translation are ill-suited to interpret culturally fragmented cases in which adoption patterns do not reflect cultural similarities. Building on social movement field literature, this article introduces a field-translation approach to account for fragmented cases with ‘dissimilar’ adoption patterns – specifically the adoption of the temperance movement in Denmark at the turn of the 20th century. Using mixed-methods – Social Network Analysis on temperance leaders’ organizational affiliations and content analysis of key texts – the article shows how attention to field-specific doxa can provide a satisfying interpretation of why rural progressives embraced an originally evangelical movement, while evangelicals first rejected it and only later became its most ardent supporter – and why the movement could not make inroads with urban progressives.