Rebels with a Cause: Formation, Contestation, and Expansion of the De Novo Category "Modern Architecture, " 1870-1975

principles are identified for it to diffuse (Strang and Meyer 1993). Other scholars have focused on examining how established categories are learned through exemplars that are labeled and grouped, revealing graded (or lenient) rather than dichotomous (or strict) categorical boundaries (Rosch and Mervis 1975, Pontikes 2010). Thus, although we have gained insight into how new categories recombine, modify, or reinterpret existing features, the process through which categories are created and theorized de novo is underexamined and not well understood in the literature. In this paper, we examine the construction and evolution of the de novo category “modern architecture.” The multistage process entailed the creation of a new artifact code that combined previously unavailable materials and symbols and that drew upon institutional logics to guide theorization and specification of artifacts’ features, forms, and functions. These were, in turn, learned and grouped together into a new category by internal and