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This chapter examines the emergence and evolution of institutional logics at the institutional field level of analysis. It integrates the practice literature with research on theories, narratives, and vocabularies of practice. It develops a typology of change in field-level institutions logics that distinguishes transformational changes from replacement, blending, and segregation, from developmental changes such as assimilation, elaboration, expansion, and contractions of logics. The chapter illustrates how institutional field-level logics are both embedded in societal-level logics and subject to institutional field-level change processes that generate distinct instantiations of societal-level institutional logics.

Humanitarian NGOs receive wide support from donors, policymakers, and diplomats, despite a lively scholarly debate about their effectiveness and ethical grounding. How did the humanitarian NGO sector attain such an unusually trusted status? The introduction examines this question in light of existing work on the history and sociology of humanitarian work. It focuses on the central role religion has played in long-distance humanitarian projects, and highlights the mid-nineteenth-century as a key turning point in the development of the humanitarian NGO sector. Building on the work of Pierre Bourdieu and on the Strong Program in Cultural Sociology, the introduction argues that the humanitarian NGO sector achieved its prominent international status through a set of cultural and religious processes occurring in the second half of the nineteenth-century.

The early Red Cross movement promoted a controversial idea: establishing a sector of nongovernmental and impartial volunteer societies, which would be considered neutral parties on the battlefield. What convinced the Red Cross founders that this is an appropriate model for relief work? This chapter delves into the early genesis of the Red Cross in the 1860s and presents the theological origins of its proposal to organize a humanitarian sector. It focuses on the nineteenth-century Reformed Protestant Réveil movement and the social conditions in Geneva that led to the establishment and success of the movement there. The chapter shows that the principles the Red Cross espoused – impartiality, neutrality, permanence – were rooted in the religious convictions of its founding members about the nature of war, the agency of humankind in alleviating its effects, and the proper relationship between the state and civil associations. The chapter demonstrates how those principles became embedded in the legal and organizational structures of the humanitarian field.

The Red Cross emerged in 1863 to assist wounded soldiers on the battlefield, and received widespread acclaim. However, mid-nineteenth-century Europe was already brimming with ideas for improving medical care on the battlefield by the time the Red Cross first appeared. What made the notion of nongovernmental volunteer aid societies, as proposed by the Red Cross founders, stand out when other types of proposals were similarly attractive? This chapter traces the social and cultural conditions that made multiple parties in late-nineteenth-century Europe and elsewhere particularly receptive to the idea of organized volunteer relief work. The chapter first reviews the key ‘competitors’ to the Red Cross idea, in particular mendicant orders, military medicine reformers, and pacifist movements. The chapter then shows that the early advocates of the Red Cross—in particular Jean-Henri Dunant—offered proposals that resonated with an intersecting set of inchoate anxieties prevalent among their contemporaries, especially surrounding the neglect of wounded soldiers on the battlefield of Europe. By drawing on these specific concerns, the Red Cross gained the necessary leverage by which to advocate for volunteer humanitarianism in broader terms.