ABSTRACT
This chapter provides the theoretical basis for our study. In it, we introduce the key principles of ‘field theory’ to help to explain how the professional practices of humanitarian journalists are shaped by a complex interaction of political, economic and social forces, alongside individual agency. Significantly, almost all previous studies have used field theory to help explain what happens either inside, or outside, professional fields like journalism and humanitarianism. We argue, instead, that the kinds of professional practices adopted by humanitarian journalists are best explained by thinking about them as taking place within a ‘thick boundary zone’ between the journalistic and humanitarian fields. Eyal suggests that all social fields, ‘secrete these thick boundary zones as an inevitable aspect of their functioning, as fuzzy zones of separation and connection… characterised by qualities such as permeability, fuzziness, hybridity and weak institutionalization’. This general idea – and Eyal and Pok’s more specific concepts of ‘boundary work’, strategic ambiguity and a ‘space of opportunity’ – are introduced to help us make sense of humanitarian journalists’ practices, throughout our analysis.
