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This paper utilizes a mixture of qualitative, formal, and statistical socio-semantic network analyses to examine how cultural homophily works when field logic meets practice. On the one hand, because individuals in similar field positions are also imposed with similar cultural orientations, cultural homophily reproduces ‘objective’ field structure in intersubjective social network ties. On the other hand, fields are operative in practice and to accomplish pragmatic goals individuals who occupy different field positions often join in groups, creatively reinterpret the field-imposed cultural orientations, and produce cultural similarities alternative to the position-specific ones. Drawing on these emergent similarities, the cultural homophily mechanism might stimulate social network ties between members who occupy not the same but different field positions, thus contesting fields. I examine this ambivalent role of cultural homophily …