Star Sociologists: Anatomy of a Disciplinary Elite 3031139372, 9783031139376

Citation preview

Socio-Historical Studies of the Social and Human Sciences

Series Editors Christian Fleck Department of Sociology University of Graz Graz, Austria Johan Heilbron Centre Européen de Sociologie et de Science Politique (CESSP) CNRS - EHESS - Université Paris 1-Panthéon-Sorbonne Paris, France Marco Santoro Department of the Arts Università di Bologna Bologna, Italy Gisèle Sapiro Centre Européen de Sociologie et de Science Politique (CESSP) CNRS - Ecole des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales Paris, France

This series is the first to focus on the historical development and current practices of the social and human sciences. Rather than simply privileging the internal analysis of ideas or external accounts of institutional structures, it publishes high quality studies that use the tools of the social sciences themselves to analyse the production, circulation and uses of knowledge in these disciplines. In doing so, it aims to establish Socio-­ Historical Studies of the Social and Human Sciences as a scholarly field in its own right, and to contribute to a more reflexive practice of these disciplines.

Philipp Korom

Star Sociologists Anatomy of a Disciplinary Elite

Philipp Korom Institute for Advanced Studies (IHS) Vienna, Austria

Socio-Historical Studies of the Social and Human Sciences ISBN 978-3-031-13937-6    ISBN 978-3-031-13938-3 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13938-3 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: © Retrorocket / Alamy Stock Vector This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Acknowledgments

During my graduate studies I was, like most of my fellow students, part of a social milieu extensively exposed to the thought of such key thinkers as Norbert Elias and Pierre Bourdieu. It seemed to me that professors tended to develop either a predilection or a relative disdain for various eminent sociologists. Thus, early on I was given the impression that there exists little consensus on the best examples of excellence that one can hope to emulate. On the other hand, exam committees drawing up reading lists selected only key writings of a handful of scholars who proved, in general, to be essential to the academic curriculum in sociology worldwide. Intuitively, one would, therefore, think that a small elite within sociology does in fact exist, notwithstanding apparent disagreements on who the “star” sociologists are. Having graduated, I embarked on several research projects that examined elites (e.g., top managers, the super-rich, or parliamentarians) through a sociological lens, which always implies asking which characteristics the powerful share. Even though the elite perspective focuses on a few, it rarely confines the analysis to a single sector of society. This book took shape when I started to ask myself whether one could extend elite research to sociology as a discipline. So far sociology has been preoccupied with individual intellectuals, which appears almost paradoxical given that the discipline specializes in the study of groups. Biographies of scholars such as Max Weber or Pierre Bourdieu fill bookshelves, but one hardly finds any publications v

vi Acknowledgments

comparing sociology’s masterminds. The present book, in contrast, has been guided by a single question: What, if anything, do scholars such as Robert K. Merton, Talcott Parsons, and Anthony Giddens have in common? At the beginning, I discussed this question extensively with Christian Fleck at the University of Graz. He had previously worked on a collective biography of German-speaking social scientists, titled A Translantic History of the Social Sciences, that deeply inspired me. As an early supporter of this project, he suggested comparing not only different cohorts within the discipline, but also sociology with economics—comparative frameworks that I used for this book’s study. I acknowledge financial support by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) between 2016 and 2019; it was decisive in helping to realize my research goals. This book is essentially an offshoot of the FWF project, “Academic Super-Elites in Sociology and Economics” (P 29211). I benefited as well from several opportunities for feedback, discussion, and reflection on research that were offered by the University of Wuppertal, for which I want to thank Thomas Heinze. The GustavFigdor Award, which I received from the Austrian Academy of Sciences for my work on academic elites, motivated me to further pursue my research. My personal debts are to my family, who endured with stoicism the writing of this book. Most of the empirical studies included in the book have appeared previously in open access articles in various journals. The many anonymous reviews I received forced me to sharpen my arguments and helped reduce the number of shortcomings. Although journal articles, in some ways, are intellectual fast food that one tends to consume without pleasure, I hope that a book-length portrait of sociology and its elite is rather something to feast on.

Contents

1 I ntroduction  1 References   9 2 E  minent Scientists 11 Emergence of Research Universities   11 Enter the Professional Scientist   16 Prominent Scientists  21 In Search of a Geiger Counter to Detect Eminence   26 Citation-Based Eminence Research   29 References  32 3 Sociology  as an Academic Discipline 39 The Emergence of Sociology as a Discipline on its Own   39 From Quasi-Hegemony to Pluralism   44 Rise and Fall of Hegemonic Schools in U.S. Sociology   44 Pluralism of National Sociologies   52 Contrasting Sociology with Economics   55 SSDs with and without a Core   55 High- versus Low-Consensus SSDs   56 Hierarchical versus Non-Hierarchical SSDs   57

vii

viii Contents

Self-Contained versus Open SSDs   57 Journal versus Book-Based SSDs   58 References  58 4 I dentifying the Elite 65 At the Peak of the Eminence Hierarchy   65 Two Methodological Pathways for Identifying Elites   68 Citations in Sociology—The Worst Proxy for Scholarly Recognition, Except for All the Others   68 Study I: Eminence in the Monographic and Journal Literature  70 Study II: Eminence in the Pluralistic World of Academic Journals  77 Validating the Methodology   88 Do Citations Correlate with Prizes and Memberships in Academies?  88 Are Textbook Citations Special?   88 Do Journals Mirror National and Specialist Sociologies?   97 References  99 5 Collective  Biographies and Career Pathways103 From (Auto-)Biography to Prosopography  103 Elites in Transition  107 Elite Careers in Economics and Sociology—A Comparison  114 References 129 6 The  Rise to and the Fall from Eminence133 Explaining (Fading) Eminence  133 Master–Apprentice Relationships  135 Elite Higher Education  136 Academic Tribes  136 Lipset and the Early Years of Political Sociology  138 Lipset: Remembered in Political Science, Neglected in Sociology 141 Why Has Lipset’s Eminence Faded in Sociology?  147

 Contents 

ix

Pierre Bourdieu and U.S. Sociology: A Diffusion Study  153 Channels of Diffusion  155 Diffusing Publications and Concepts  156 Social Structures Impacting Diffusion Processes  162 Carrier Groups  162 Eminence in Sociology—A Nested Phenomenon Extending Across Many Specialties  166 References 167 7 E  lites as Gatekeepers171 The Case of Journal Reviewers  171 The Case of RKM—An Eminent Scholar Crisscrossing Social Circles 176 RKM as Gate-Opener—Analysis of 1460 Recommendation Letters 181 Elite Power in Sociology?  195 References 197 8 Making  Sense of Prestige Elites201 The Discipline-Elite Nexus  201 Toward a Sociology of Academic Elites  208 References 214 A  ppendices219 I ndex223

List of Figures

Fig. 3.1 Membership of the American Economic Association and American Sociological Association, 1960–2019 (Sources: Siegfried [1998] and association homepages) Fig. 4.1 Top-ranked 50 sociologists in the 1970s and 2010s, according to aggregated reference scores. Early theorists who died before World War I, such as Herbert Spencer or Karl Marx, were excluded from the survey Fig. 4.2 Top-ranked 50 sociologists: Disaggregated and weighted references score. Quintiles were calculated separately for each literature genre Fig. 4.3 A three-dimensional depiction of the prestige elite. The arabic numbers stand for authors as follows—1 for Pierre Bourdieu, 2 for Max Weber, 3 for Talcott Parsons, and so forth (see Table 4.3). Pierre Bourdieu is located at the upper-right corner because of an extraordinarily high number of references and the fact that he belongs to the top 20% in 10 national sociologies and 9 (out of 11) specialist sociologies Fig. 4.4 Top-ranked 64 sociologists in order of year of birth: Awards and memberships in honorary societies. Included are scholars who were alive at the time of conducting the survey as well as those who have died since 1950

46

74 76

84

89

xi

xii 

List of Figures

Fig. 4.5 Correlates of textbook references. All values in the correlation matrices are Pearson correlation coefficients. AEA/APA/ASA: American Associations of Economics, Psychology, and Sociology; p. president; SSQ: Social Science Quotations; Ency. Brit.: Encyclopedia Britannica; other ency.: other disciplinespecific encylopedias 95 Fig. 5.1 Family backgrounds of elite economists and sociologists  118 Fig. 5.2 Career trajectories in terms of ranking of departmental prestige. Colored lines indicate the most frequent career trajectories taken. For the institutional ranking, see Appendix A2 121 Fig. 5.3 Years spent in a career position. The middle of the boxplot indicates the median. The lower and upper hinges correspond to the first and third quartiles—that is, the 25th and 75th percentiles. Outliers, or observations that are located outside the hinges, are represented by points 125 Fig. 5.4 Visiting relationships between research institutions in economics. The size of the nodes represents the number of all incoming and outgoing scholars and the thickness of the arcs depends on the number of scholars moving unidirectionally from one node to another 127 Fig. 5.5 Visiting relationships between research institutions in sociology 128 Fig. 6.1 Weighted page count for Lipset’s monographs, book contributions, and journal articles 1947–2001. Considered are 23 books (including one research report), 139 book contributions, and 103 journal articles—see appendix of Korom 2019. The page count was weighted simply by dividing for each item the published pages by the number of authors. The average number of published pages per year is 175 (dashed line). Circles stand for research stays of at least one year; CASBS stands for the Center for Advanced Study in Behavioral Sciences140 Fig. 6.2 Articles, book reviews, proceedings papers and editorials citing Lipset’s works in political science and sociology journals between 1955 and 2014. All citations were identified in the Web of Science (WoS) that provides an interface for searching the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI). The cited author

  List of Figures 

Fig. 6.3

Fig. 6.4

Fig. 6.5 Fig. 6.6

Fig. 6.7

Fig. 7.1 Fig. 7.2

xiii

search combines 11 different variants of Lipset using the Boolean OR operator—for example, LIPSET SEYMOUR, LIPSET SM, LIPSET S. The search was conducted in May 2018 and was confined to the WoS categories “political science” and “sociology” 142 Lipset’s changing research agenda measured in (weighted) pages. Considered are 18 books and 92 journal articles that are representative of Lipset’s works; for the complete list, see Korom (2019). For each contribution pages were counted and weighted by dividing published pages by the number of authors145 Reception of Lipset in political science and sociology journals, 1956–1987, 1988–2018. The articles, each of which cite at least one of his works, are assigned to topic categories. For example, because Political Man was assigned to the category “democracy,” all identified articles citing it are attributed to that topic. Figure based on data derived from the SSCI 146 Proportion of articles citing Bourdieu (in %) in 20 sociology journals between 1970 and 2010 157 Usage of Bourdieu’s key concepts over time (1970–2010). Considered are 19 journals and 2215 citation contexts. Theory & Society is not included in the analysis because of its citation format, which relies on endnotes that are not conducive to automated content analysis 161 Articles citing Bourdieu published between 1970 and 2010. Each dot stands for one of the 1080 articles, assigned to either elite or non-elite departments according to the affiliation of the first-named author. Lines indicate the 25%, 50%, and 75% quartiles. Elite departments are: Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, Indiana, Johns Hopkins, Northwestern, Princeton, Stanford, UC Berkeley, UC Los Angeles, Chicago, Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Texas, Wisconsin, Washington State, and Yale 163 Representation of the elite among the top 1% of all AJS and ASR reviewers 174 Trajectories of RKM’s recommendations and article citations. The former include 1460 recommendations contained in boxes 103–117 of the his papers, while citations of his articles

xiv 

List of Figures

(N = 644) in the flagship journals American Sociological Review and American Journal of Sociology were identified using the Social Sciences Citation Index (1956–present). The chronological segments in the figure refer to the various stages of RKM’s career at Columbia University 176 Fig. 7.3 Mentor–mentee relationships in the 942 recommendations made by RKM to U.S. universities and colleges. Prestige categories adopted from Weakliem et al. (2012). Top 10 departments: Chicago, Harvard, Columbia, Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Berkeley, Princeton, N Carolina, Yale. Top 20 departments: preceding list plus Penn, Ohio State, UCLA, Washington, Cornell, Northwestern, Iowa, Illinois– Urbana, Stanford, NYU 184 Fig. 7.4 Evaluation criteria used in RKM’s recommendations for students. Considered are 942 recommendations written in favor of (former) students. Categories were dichotomously coded (1 = category applies) and aggregated at the level of master categories—that is, general academic ability. The values indicate, in percentage points, the relative share of each master category. Calculations were conducted separately for male and female students 190

List of Tables

Table 4.1 The text corpus for Study I, consisting of textbooks, handbooks and encyclopedias 71 Table 4.2 Forty-two journals representing either a national or a specialist sociology 80 Table 4.3 Most referenced authors in 42 selected sociology journals 83 Table 4.4 Books by elite scholars that have received the widest diffusion. In the far-right column the number of references is given as a share (in %) of all references of a given author  86 Table 4.5 Comparison of sociology, economics and psychology textbooks in the 1970s and 2010s 91 Table 4.6 Top referenced authors in diverse journals 98 Table 5.1 Comparison of the characteristics of the elite in sociology in the 1970s and 2010s. The statistics relate to scholars alive at the time of writing and those who have died since 1950 110 Table 5.2 Elite profiles in sociology and economics 119 Table 5.3 Career mobility within economics and sociology 123 Table 6.1 Top JSTOR topics in articles mentioning Lipset, divided between political science and sociology 148 Table 6.2 Publications by Bourdieu (including books, book chapters and journal articles) most frequently cited in journal articles (n =1080) by U.S. sociologists 158 Table 6.3 Memberships in ASA sections of first-named authors citing Bourdieu165 xv

xvi 

List of Tables

Table 7.1 Register of recommendations (N = 1460) Table 7.2 Profiles of mentees recommended by RKM Table 7.3 Types of reservation and hedging expressed by RKM in his recommendations Table 7.4 Success rates for candidates recommended by RKM

182 186 188 191

1 Introduction

“Elite” is a contested term. Since becoming commonly used in everyday language, however, its core meaning has not changed much. Individuals are given the label when their prestige has reached the highest magnitude possible. Elites can stand at the apex of whole societies, but in most cases elite individuals ascend to the uppermost rung of the ladder of social prestige by excelling in a single field—one thinks of the world chess champion Magnus Carlsen, the Tesla CEO Elon Musk, or the German chancellor Angela Merkel. Members of elites do not constitute a “class” and sometimes not even a “group”; they may prefer to live in isolation completely devoted to their individual tasks and be reluctant to organize in any systematic way. Why, then, should sociologists study elites? The obvious answer is that sociologists have mostly studied elites for their power. By studying them it is possible to understand how power is organized (Aron 1960). Sociologists, therefore, have a keen interest in political, economic, and military elites. However, not all elites occupy key positions in powerful organizations, with the capacity to implement changes in their societies if they choose. Certainly, the “prestige elite”1 described in this book that includes scholars such as Robert K. Merton and Pierre Bourdieu is not a “power elite” (Mills 1956). Its impact is  By “prestige elite” I mean the “typically thin layer of people … who generally have the highest prestige within what is prestigious collectivity to begin with” (Zuckerman 1972: 159). 1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. Korom, Star Sociologists, Socio-Historical Studies of the Social and Human Sciences, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13938-3_1

1

2 

P. Korom

confined mostly to one academic discipline: sociology. Moreover, the world of sociology is small. Its top departments around the world are reported to have only about 3000 core staff members (Demeter and Toth 2020). Yet, what appears at first sight to be a mundane issue turns out to be the perfect “fruit fly” for exciting investigations into the nature of the “soft” science disciplines (e.g., political science).2 What makes fruit flies ideal for genetic research is their simple genetic structure. Similarly, studies on the small and fairly young discipline of sociology, with its pronounced core characteristics, open up all sorts of possibilities for understanding the inner workings of disciplines that are less “codified” than the natural or “hard” sciences (e.g., physics). By “inner workings” I mean, inter alia, professional recognition. “Just as man does not live by bread alone, so the scientist does not live by salary alone” (Storer 1967: 77). Once in academia, individuals are thrown into a world based on the accumulation of prestige and will surely find themselves wanting to add entries to their curricula vitae that mention awards, grants, invitations to speak at events, and so on. Although the work of most remains little read and some even struggle to find permanent positions, a few succeed in getting not only the attention of peers around the world but also the highest honors of the discipline. Still, we cannot always agree on who belongs to the sociological elite, why some make it into the elite or drop out, and what exactly distinguishes a “star” sociologist from an average one. It is exactly these questions that this book sets out to answer. What characterizes sociology primarily is its fragmented character. Sociology today is a house of many mansions. From the late 1960s onward, the discipline started to increasingly fall apart, losing organizational as well as intellectual coherence. Currently, it appears difficult to even find two sociologists who completely agree on what their science comprises. The discipline is largely a bricolage of qualitative and quantitative, micro and macro, symbolic interactionist and functionalist,  The hard–soft distinction is a matter of relative degrees of disciplinary compactness. Hard sciences (e.g., physics) have a greater consensus about key concepts and methods, whereas soft disciplines (e.g., sociology) are essentially non-paradigmatic (Biglan 1973). 2

1 Introduction 

3

positivist and postmodernist, theoretical and data-driven, scientific and activist. Such polymorphism and multivocality is, however, not unique to sociology. Other disciplines that do not study phenomena in the natural world, but in the diverse laboratories of the social world, are less susceptible to control; for instance, anthropology, history, or political science are also fragmented into subdisciplines, schools, or other scientific collectives. Sociology only stands out through the extreme degree of disciplinary incoherence. Demystifying the elite in sociology thus may help, through the force of example (Flyvbjerg 2006), to better understand “soft” sciences in general. If sociology does not fit well within a certain proposition, a theory is very likely to not hold for the “soft” sciences. Although not being primarily an attempt to generalize, this book may, nevertheless, add to the collective process of knowledge accumulation on academic elites and disciplines that previously tended to be limited to the investigation of “hard” sciences (e.g., Zuckerman 1977). Before proceeding, it is necessary to address an objection that is most likely to come from inside sociology—that is, that there is no consensus on what constitutes the discipline’s elite. Because sociology is a (very) “soft” discipline, so the argument goes, only a few leading scholars, such as Pierre Bourdieu or James S. Coleman, will be recognized as clearly elite by many (never all); consensus on the status of other sociological giants such as Shmuel N. Eisenstadt will not be reached. Even though one must concede that there is no magic bullet for identifying sociology’s elite, uncertainty about outstanding (and recognized) academic excellence is all but unique to sociology. Take, for example, the “Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel,” the economics discipline’s highest honor and the supreme symbol of scientific excellence. Most of the Nobel laureates are caught off-­guard by the news because there are always numerous candidates deserving the recognition. When, for example, Robert J. Shiller, an expert on exuberance and panic in financial markets, won the prize in 2013, it was no surprise to many insiders. Only a few anticipated, however, that he would share the prize with fellow economists Eugene Fama and Lars Peter Hansen, although many guessed all three to be on the shortlist.

4 

P. Korom

Occasionally, it is reported that even after lengthy deliberations within expert circles and shortly before nominations are sent to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, with some 350 Swedish scientists of all disciplines having the final say, the list of candidates still contains up to at least twice as many names as there are years in which the award is given. Thus, each year some scientists, who deserve credit, remain on the list but go away empty-handed. “Uncrowned” laureates, such as Joan Robinson and Anthony Atkinson, resemble in their achievements their award-winning peers in many respects except one—they have not been granted the prize. Thus, although critics have a point in arguing that economists are more likely to agree on whom to honor than sociologists, the discipline’s Nobel Prize is by no means an unerring criterion of outstanding academic excellence. Neither are the identification methods proposed in this book. It is, in general, unrealistic to assume that there exists in the social sciences a perfect Geiger counter of eminence that resembles the real one that always and reliably detects ionizing radiation. This, however, does not imply that one cannot reach elite status in the social sciences at all, and that, therefore, sociology’s elite must remain a mystery that escapes scientific understanding. Even if attempts to identify the elite are at best imperfect, which is partly because of the “fuzziness” of the elite concept applied, new directions and new possibilities for research arise. This book ventures into this as yet uncharted territory. Its core objective is to convince the reader that it is better knowing something about the elite even if its composition remains, to a certain extent, uncertain, than knowing nothing about the elite at all. The book is organized around a number of key questions: • • • • • • • •

What is meant when speaking of “the elite” in the social sciences? What is special about sociology? Who belongs to the elite in sociology? How do the elites of sociology and of economics differ? What is the “half-life” of eminence and why does eminence not endure? How do scholars rise to eminence? Do members of the elite hold power? What is the best “model” to explain eminence in sociology?

1 Introduction 

5

Book Outline Chapter 2 provides a historical survey of the rise of research universities, showing how professional scientists competed against each other for research funds, awards, prestigious posts, opportunities to publish, and prizes. This competition within academic disciplines led to a heavily pyramidal distribution of internal prestige within scientific communities, with a small number of extremely visible scientists occupying the top of the pyramid: the elite. Chapter 3 sheds light on the social space that the sociological elite populates, namely, sociology as an academic discipline. Tracing the discipline’s development, it becomes evident that sociology was only in the early years of its institutionalization dominated by a few schools of thought, all of them American, that promoted a number of paradigms. The ambitious attempt by Talcott Parsons (1902–1979) to build a systematic conceptual base for all social sciences was one of the disciplinewide paradigms that informed sociological work in very different specialties, bringing them together under a common roof. Yet, the disciplinary matrix of accepted concepts, assumptions, and methodological stances started to grow so rapidly from the 1960s onward that one could not tell anymore which element of the matrix defined the discipline most. The disintegration of the discipline shifted sociology and economics into various directions, with sociology becoming an open, low-consensus, mostly non-hierarchical discipline without a common and shared theoretical and methodological core. It is especially this development that makes it interesting to ask whether and how the elite changed in sociology. Chapter 4 introduces two methodological pathways for the identification of sociology’s elite. Scientometrics is used to understand whose work is valued most by peers around the world. This approach conceptualizes citations as “frozen footprints in the landscape of scholarly achievement which bear witness to the passage of ideas” (Cronin 1981: 16). The first analysis takes the observation seriously that, in sociology, monographs and academic journals function as equally important publication outlets and subjects encyclopedias, textbooks, handbooks, and journals to citation analysis. The second gives due attention to the fragmented nature of sociology and measures citations in a multitude of academic journals that

6 

P. Korom

either stand for different specialties (e.g., cultural sociology) or national sociologies (e.g., U.S. sociology). “Star” sociologists are identified as those highly cited scholars that transcend the many internal divides of sociology and impact peers working in numerous corners of the world as well as in different subfields. It turns out that the rosters obtained from both studies do overlap to a great extent, albeit not entirely. Once identified, systematic inquiries into commonly shared characteristics by means of a collective study of elite members’ work lives and intellectual impacts become possible. Chapter 5 asks, among other things, how the elite’s social and geographic origins changed between the 1970s and 2010s and finds that its expansion beyond America, due to its long-established ability to recruit scholars from underprivileged backgrounds, is the most pertinent feature. To further understand what is unique about sociology’s elite, their academic careers are compared systematically with those of all Nobel laureates in economics. The main takeaway is that, whereas outstanding eminence in economics is difficult to reach without holding professorships at the discipline’s top departments, the careers of legendary sociologists have, on the contrary, little in common. In general, the gist of what one can learn from comparing disciplines and their respective elites is straightforward: Where there are no unified and universally accepted problem definitions, methodologies, and theoretical approaches, there is clearly no homogeneous elite. Chapter 6 expands on another finding that emerged from the citation analysis—namely, that eminence in sociology is, like in most other disciplines, rather short-lived, as in the case of Seymour M. Lipset (1922–2006). During his lifetime, Lipset was no doubt among the preeminent social scientists, mostly sitting on the edge between sociology and political science, and best known for his contributions on the social requisites of democracy. Today, some sociology textbooks no longer even mention his name. Interestingly, this quasi-eclipse of eminence cannot be explained by his contributions becoming increasingly replaced by other progressive work in the free marketplace of ideas. The major driving force behind his work’s apparent demise was rather sociology’s fragmentation into specialties that turned Lipset, who was once a central figure of sociology, into a figurehead of only one single specialty—namely, political sociology. The

1 Introduction 

7

case study shows that scholars do not necessarily fall from preeminence because of certain intrinsic qualities of their work. Other factors (e.g., disciplinary developments) make them vulnerable to the waxing and waning of eminence. This chapter also tackles the question of how scholars rise to “stardom” by analyzing the reception of the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (1930–2002), who became the world’s most cited sociologist. What is traced empirically by means of citation analysis is the diffusion of Bourdieu’s ideas across a multitude of generalist and specialist journals between 1970 and 2010. It emerges that reaching eminence in sociology implies having successfully spread his ideas in many, if not all, of sociology’s internal knowledge communities. In the case of Bourdieu, the reception started out within the narrow confines of educational sociology and broadened substantially when he became the icon of (American) cultural sociologists—a powerful “academic tribe” within sociology. Chapter 7 switches the focus to the power of the sociological elite by drawing on yet another case study, an investigation of Robert K. Merton (1910–2003) as an academic gatekeeper. The term that denotes scientists in particular positions within disciplines who can influence the distribution of resources (e.g., research funds and job or publishing opportunities) appears to only inadequately capture the outstanding role of Merton in the academic labor market of American sociology. Instead, the analysis of about 1460 recommendation letters for students and colleagues suggests Merton to have functioned as a gate-opener: Merton dedicated a significant part of his working time to writing letters on behalf of his colleagues and students, thereby effectively helping them to further develop their academic careers. The prestige of the letter writer appears to have had a significant impact on selection committees that had to decide between candidates with (mostly) similar academic achievements. This case study suggests, more generally, that the elite’s impact is not restricted only to the world of ideas. Chapter 8 synthesizes the most important insights gathered from the empirical investigations pursued in the previous chapters and proposes a number of generalizations. Taking up a postulate first advanced by Whitley (1976), it is contended that the case of sociology confirms that there is a nexus between the overall intellectual structure of a discipline

8 

P. Korom

and the composition of its elite. This interrelatedness, that I have referred to previously as “the nexus between the overall intellectual structure of a discipline and the composition of its elite” (Korom 2020), is not particular to sociology, it is argued, but rather universal. Any discipline that mutates and takes on features like sociology is apt to be dominated by scholars without a strong sense of communality. Further, a research program is outlined that is likely to deliver the best explanation for why certain sociology scholars enter, or fall out of, the discipline’s prestige elite. At the core of this program are contextual conditions outside the elite and the focus lies on diffusion patterns across national sociologies and specialties. In this proposed explanatory framework, the originality of contributed ideas alone does not suffice to attain eminence. What is needed are, among other things, carrier groups that circulate an author’s ideas across the numerous internal divides that characterize sociology as a discipline. All chapters, except the last one, are sufficiently self-contained that a reader can parachute into any of them. Chapters 4, 5, 6, and 7 are essentially empirical in nature. As Healy and Moody (2014) noted, somewhere along the line sociology became a discipline that prioritizes dense tables over apparently unsophisticated figures. I prefer the clarity of a (good) figure over the numerical treatment of statistics that may signal scientific rigor, but is often indecipherable; in consequence, the book includes 22 figures, located in chapters 3–7. Taken as a whole, this book oscillates between the general and the particular. At certain stages during the research process I abandoned the collective biography approach, as I felt that only by delving into the “how” and “why” of eminence would it be possible to uncover the web of mechanisms that make it explicable. By comparing the reception by the sociological community of two eminent scholars, my intention was to produce a more generalizable picture. It is my contention that case studies, by explaining how eminence comes about and why it is of continuing importance, can add depth to the collective portrait and thus enhance our understanding of who these eminent men and women were and are.

1 Introduction 

9

References Aron, Raymond. 1960. Classe sociale, classe politique, classe dirigeante. European Journal of Sociology 1 (2): 260–282. Biglan, Anthony. 1973. The Characteristics of Subject Matter in Different Academic Areas. Journal of Applied Psychology 57 (3): 195–203. Cronin, Blaise. 1981. The Need for a Theory of Citing. Journal of Documentation 37 (1): 16–24. Demeter, Marton, and Tamas Toth. 2020. The World-Systemic Network of Global Elite Sociology: The Western Male Monoculture at Faculties of the Top One-Hundred Sociology Departments of the World. Scientometrics 124 (3): 2469–2495. Flyvbjerg, Bent. 2006. Five Misunderstandings About Case-Study Research. Qualitative Inquiry 12 (2): 219–245. Healy, Kieran, and James Moody. 2014. Data Visualization in Sociology. Annual Review of Sociology 40 (1): 105–128. Korom, Philipp. 2020. How Do Academic Elites March Through Departments? A Comparison of the Most Eminent Economists and Sociologists’ Career Trajectories. Minerva 58 (3): 343–365. Mills, C. Wright. 1956. The Power Elite. New York: Oxford University Press. Storer, Norman W. 1967. The Hard Sciences and the Soft: Some Sociological Observations. Bulletin of the Medical Library Association 55 (1): 75–84. Whitley, Richard. 1976. Umbrella and Polytheistic Scientific Disciplines and Their Elites. Social Studies of Science 6 (3/4): 471–497. Zuckerman, Harriet. 1972. Interviewing an Ultra-Elite. Public Opinion Quarterly 36 (2): 159–175. ———. 1977. Scientific Elite: Nobel Laureates in the United States. New York: Free Press.

2 Eminent Scientists

Emergence of Research Universities Throughout most of the nineteenth century, universities were not central hubs of research, but rather parochial institutions subordinated to the will of churches, businessmen, and politicians. Because state or federal funding did not exist, universities were dependent on private donors and local authorities to keep schools operating. Knowing that they were the sole supporters, these financiers often felt that they had the right to remove professors from the faculty, interfere with the school curricula, or prohibit the university from hiring someone whose religious or political beliefs appeared to them unacceptable. In 1879, for example, the Congregational minister and president of Yale, Noah Porter, ordered William G.  Sumner (1840–1910), Professor of Political and Social Science, not to use Herbert Spencer’s The Study of Sociology1 as a textbook because he feared that Spencer’s atheistic materialism would intellectually and morally harm students (Bledstein 1974). 1  In general, the reactions to the publication of The Study of Sociology varied: “Those who found science congenial and who felt it could be extended validly and fruitfully to the study of society, generally greeted the book warmly” (Carneiro 1974: 547). The religiously orthodox, however, including Noah Porter of Yale, feared that it could threaten Christian theology.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. Korom, Star Sociologists, Socio-Historical Studies of the Social and Human Sciences, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13938-3_2

11

12 

P. Korom

Some decades later, during the “Gilded Age,” the clerical domination of university boards of trustees often passed to (newly) rich businessmen— for example, John D.  Rockefeller (1839–1937), who established the University of Chicago, or the tobacco industrialist James B.  Duke (1856–1925), the patron of Duke University. Although this changeover of authority indicated the secularization of higher education, it did not automatically bring about an autonomous community of researchers. The social scientist Thorstein Veblen (1857–1929), who had been a participant observer in various U.S. institutions of higher learning (including Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Yale, Cornell, and University of Chicago) openly rebelled against the (unaccountable) power of the new university presidents. In his penetrating book, The Higher Learning in America: A Memorandum on the Conduct of Universities by Business Men, Veblen argued that rich businessmen tended to hire university presidents of their own kind, who transformed what should be “intimately personal contact and guidance, in a community of intellectual enterprise” into a “business house dealing in merchantable knowledge, placed under the governing hand of a captain of erudition, whose office it is to turn the means in hand to account in the largest feasible output.” Clearly, for Veblen, university presidents were not intellectuals or scientists interested in dispassionate inquiries into the truth but rather subordinates serving business by producing, for example, trained employees. What troubled him the most was the idea that all academic initiatives were, at least in his eyes, subjected to “persistent and detailed surveillance” (Veblen 2015: 120, 210–223). Even if Veblen’s account may have exaggerated the role of vested interests, his ethnographic observations tell us that the boundaries between business and academia were somewhat blurry at the turn of the century. The essence of universities, as they are known today, was not defined yet. Veysey (1965) portrays the second half of the nineteenth century as a period of continual dispute over deeply held views on the ultimate goals of higher education. He identifies four rival concepts: • Develop moral and mental discipline. • Serve an increasingly democratic society by providing a range of programs that would prepare young men and women for a wide variety of employment.

2  Eminent Scientists 

13

• Be a place of free, skeptical, and scientific inquiry—a place of research. • Be a place of liberal culture, sustained through study in the humanities. Around 1900, Veysey argues, it was research values and practices that became institutionalized at several universities while liberal “culture felt the illusory exhilaration of a few victories but lagged far behind in terms of influence” (1965: 257). It was, therefore, only just over a century ago that a new type of higher education institution emerged in the United States, which went on to become the twentieth century’s leading power. Seriously committed to research as an institutional goal, it soon became the intellectual organization that remains recognizable today—the research university. The core ideas for founding this type of institution flowed mostly from Germany, which the key reformers of U.S. higher education—for example, Daniel C.  Gilman (1831–1908) at Johns Hopkins, Charles W.  Eliot (1834–1926) at Harvard, William R.  Harper (1856–1906) at Chicago, and Henry Tappan (1805–1881) at Michigan—had visited either to study or conduct research and whose model of higher education they decided to emulate. The ascent of the research university came close to an “academic revolution” (Jencks and Riesman 1968), as teaching and research moved under the de facto control of faculties, which by virtue of tenure and expertise achieved emancipation from administrative whim and caprice. But what, exactly, were the ideas that inspired this major transformation? An early exposition of how the research process should be organized at universities can be found in the memorandum “On the Internal and External Organization of Institutions of Higher Education in Berlin,” written most probably around 1810 by the politician and diplomat Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835), who was responsible for culture and schools at the Prussian Ministry of the Interior. Humboldt’s philosophical vision of the modern university encompassed the following key principles: • • • • •

The unity of science and scholarship. The freedom to teach and to learn (Lehr- und Lernfreiheit). The community of students and teachers. The unity of disciplines under one university roof. The education of character through academic knowledge.

14 

P. Korom

• A fairly high degree of government control, coupled with the responsibility to finance institutions of higher education. • The right of universities to regulate their internal and academic affairs themselves. The memorandum emphasized that research (and academic learning through research) involves a never-ending quest for truth, which must be pursued continuously: … when it comes to the internal organization of the higher scientific institutions, everything depends on preserving the principle of seeing science as something that has not been and can never be entirely found, and to constantly pursue it as such (von Humboldt 1956, author translation).

This manifesto became famous only when the university in Berlin celebrated its centenary in 1910; Humboldt, in fact, was never particularly present in the German nineteenth-century debate about the university, and his ideas were not widely disseminated during his lifetime (Östling 2018: 11). Even if Humboldt’s fame was to develop only later, the manifesto is an early expression of the idealistic conceptions of science circulating in Germany as a community-based practice that asked for unfettered freedom to be realized. Moreover, Humboldt was the driving force behind the foundation of the University of Berlin (Friedrich-­ Wilhelms-­Universität, FWU) that turned into the “mother of all research universities” (McClelland 2017).2 Its name was finally changed in 1949 to honor Wilhelm Humboldt and his brother, the world-famous explorer and scientist Alexander. While the FWU was unarguably located cheek by jowl with the monarchical court and educational ministry, it emerged as Germany’s premier research center during the nineteenth century. McClelland’s detailed historical account for the period 1860–1918 shows that the  While Wilhelm Humboldt was indeed the driving force behind the setting up of the University of Berlin, which came about in 1810, his overall political influence was limited. He spent barely 16 months in the Prussian Ministry of Culture and never attained the rank of minister. Humboldt’s international reputation seems to derive from only a few papers on higher education that were not published in his lifetime (Henningsen 2006). 2

2  Eminent Scientists 

15

transformation was a gradual one: academic freedom was often undermined, disciplines were not unified within one faculty, and faculty members below the full professor level did most of the teaching; thus, often it was difficult to conduct any research at all. After a rather checkered start, however, the trademark of FWU became the devotion to research and the independence of professors—the “uncrowned kings” (Mommsen 1994: 69)—who could research, more or less, whatever they wanted in their respective subject areas. In the process of reform, the German universities, in particular that of Berlin, served as the international model of university reformers (Wittrock 1993). Universities worldwide turned into educational institutions hosting self-governing communities of professors freed from special interests. Wissenschaft (i.e., knowledge creation through research) became the central plank of the modern university and universalism, communism, disinterestedness, and organized skepticism the four core values of scientific research (Merton 1973).3 The diffusion process was driven mainly by competitive mechanisms. Johns Hopkins, for example, opened in 1876 with a faculty that had mostly studied in Germany. Until the end of 1880s, it produced more PhDs than Harvard and Yale combined (Geiger 1986: 8), and its adoption of the Germanic conceptions of scholarship attracted faculty members from other universities; again, this acted as a stimulus for encouraging independent research at such places as Harvard. In general, even though in the past competition was rather non-existent in academia, from the 1890s onward university administrators started hiring away from elsewhere scholars who were nationally recognized as leaders in their fields. Thus, for example “nothing so clearly marked Columbia as a comer than its success in recruiting such already nationally known scholars as James McKeen Cattell and James Harvey Robinson from Pennsylvania; Henry

 By communism, Merton (1973) implied that research results should be the common property of the whole scientific community; universalism implied that the validity of knowledge claims should only be assessed based on impersonal criteria; disinterestedness carried the expectation that scientists should have no emotional or financial attachments to their work; and, finally, the norm of organized skepticism implied caution in reaching conclusions and demands to continually challenge conventional wisdom. 3

16 

P. Korom

Field Osborn and Franklin Giddings … from Bryn Mawr; [and] John Bates Clark from Amherst” (McCaughey 2012: 202). The main criteria for faculty selection had previously included political skills, administrative talents, links to the university board of trustees, or simply an agreeable temperament. By the late nineteenth century a scholar’s worldwide academic standing became the preeminent factor. Although during the eighteenth century professional educators were atwill employees who retained their jobs on informal yearly contracts, which enabled administrators to tightly control the conduct of their faculty, modern research universities introduced the tenure system as a safeguard to protect employees’ rights (Hertzog 2017). Most indicative of this rise of professionalism is the establishment of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP). The drafters of the AAUP’s “Declaration of Principles of Academic Freedom and Tenure” (1915) insisted that university faculty were “appointees,” like judges, with “professional functions to perform in which the appointing authorities have neither competency nor moral rights to intervene.” They also had a very clear picture of which criteria their peers had to meet: “[F]ew things can be more important than [to] enhance the dignity of the scholar’s profession, with a view to attracting into its ranks men of the highest ability, of sound learning, and of strong and independent character” (Van Alstyne 1993: 393ff.).

Enter the Professional Scientist4 With the rise of professionalism, scholarly reputation came to matter. Aspiring academics had to live up to the rules of the competitive “academic game” to gain recognition and meeting the expectation of peers became a necessity to succeed in the academic marketplace. But what were the rules of this game? Teaching, research, and miscellaneous administrative functions were recognized everywhere as essential parts of an academic’s work. Some  On the etymology of the word “scientist,” see Merton (1997).

4

2  Eminent Scientists 

17

sociologists acquired distinction through teaching by either building up a large following of students or attracting large audiences to their lectures. Students of George H. Mead (1863–1931)—a leading intellectual figure at Chicago who published infrequently—were, for example, the prime disseminators of his ideas through frequently referring to Mind, Self, and Society during the period immediately after its publication (Huebner 2014: 191ff.). Georg Simmel (1858–1918), a now world-famous scholar who was a somewhat marginal figure in German academia during his lifetime, gained his reputation as a popular lecturer. As Coser (1958: 637) notes, “it is no exaggeration to say that many of Simmel’s lectures were public events and often described as such in the newspapers.” A report from the University of Minnesota indicated that the factors influencing promotion between 1913 and 1931 were, in descending order of importance: teaching (43.4%); productive scholarship (27.6%); student counseling (11.6%); administrative work (11.0%), and public service (6.4%) (Wilson 1942: 101). In a similar vein, August B. Hollingshead—a sociologist with a distinct interest in social stratification—reported in his study “Climbing the Academic Ladder,” which investigated promotion histories of 207 scholars at Indiana University, a weak, if not negative, relationship between publication behavior and tenure: “the man who published only one item had just as good a chance to be promoted as the man who wrote prolifically” (Hollingshead 1940: 110). Over time, however, research came to replace teaching as the basis for promotion. To gain a reputation with peers, sociologists felt under increasing pressure to publish. During the 1950s, the sociologists Theodore Caplow and Reece J. McGee visited 10 major U.S. universities in 164 vacancy-and-­replacement situations involving a full-time faculty position in liberal arts departments. Over a two-year period, the dean and at least one academic peer were asked, mostly with openended questions, about the person who left, the person who replaced him, and how the candidate for the replacement was found, evaluated, and appointed. When Caplow and McGee went over the transcribed

18 

P. Korom

interviews, they noted that 122 respondents defined “productivity” unmistakably as research or publication of research; only 14 referred either directly or indirectly to the teaching of students; and 11 of these 14 qualified the importance of teaching in some way (Caplow and McGee 1961: 83). By the 1900s, U.S. universities such as Chicago, Columbia, Harvard, and Johns Hopkins had introduced campus-based journals in which faculty members published their research and reviewed the published contributions of colleagues based elsewhere. Most notable is the Chicago sociologist Albion Small (1854–1926) who founded the American Journal of Sociology (AJS) in 1895. Small’s regular early critical AJS reviews of articles published in the French L’Année sociologique, a journal started by Émile Durkheim (1858–1917) in 1898, not only indicate that the profession of sociology was not limited by national boundaries but also that there was already a global status competition between leading sociologists of their time. Howard S.  Becker, a sociologist who left the University of Chicago with a PhD in 1951, described the way his cohort of fellow students kept up with the literature, as follows: Sociology had fewer publications then. The major journals (the American Journal of Sociology, the American Sociological Review, and Social Forces) and a handful of (very minor) local, regional, and specialty journals contained what everyone read. Sociological books didn’t appear in the quantities now common. There weren’t many sociologists, and they didn’t buy or assign enough books (other than textbooks) to make publishing them worthwhile until the GI Bill filled the graduate schools in the late 1940s.… We read every article, whatever field it was in and whatever subject matter it dealt with. It was all sociology and worthy of our attention, and besides, what else was there to read? (Becker 2017: 44–45).

The number of sociology journals skyrocketed in the decades to come. During the period 1953–1967, the discipline witnessed the appearance of no less than 29 new sociology journals of which 18 were published

2  Eminent Scientists 

19

outside the United States (Pease and Rytina 1968). Today, the digital library JSTOR hosts as many as 150 sociology journals.5 For a discipline in the making, such as sociology, the writing of textbooks was another way to make one’s name. In 1921, Robert E.  Park (1864–1944) and Ernest W. Burgess (1886–1966) persuaded their colleagues at University of Chicago Press to publish a 1040-page doorstopper titled Introduction to the Science of Sociology. The textbook included excerpts from a wide array of sociological themes, contained no photographs or wide margins, and became so popular in colleges and universities across the United States that students started to refer to it as the “green bible” (Sica 2012). Clearly, this major effort to institutionalize sociology was a success story. The first edition of Sociology and Modern Social Problems by Charles A. Ellwood (1873–1946) that appeared in 1915 turned out to be similarly influential. It sold 300,000 copies—an astonishing number given the relatively small size of the U.S. college student population during the era (Turner 2007: 134). To put this number in context: The sociological giant Talcott Parsons (1902–1979) informs the reader in the introduction to the second Free Press paperback edition of the landmark study, The Structure of Social Action, that the original McGraw Hill edition (1937) sold only 1500 copies (Parsons 1968: v).6 The academic market for books in the United States was, by and large, late to feature the writings of sociologists. Initially, publication was almost invariably subsidized, and only those few authors who were supported by foundations or universities could publish book-length monographs. A case in point is the monograph Middletown by Robert S.  Lynd (1892–1970) and Helen M. Lynd (1886–1982), published in 1929. The first sociological study of a U.S. community, it became an instant sensation, receiving an unprecedented front-page review in the New York  JSTOR was initially conceived in 1994 by William G.  Bowen, then-president of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, to help university and college libraries handle an ever-increasing amount of published scholarship by converting printed scholarly journals into electronic formats and storing them in a digitial archive (Schonfeld 2003). In 2020, the JSTOR digital library offered access to about 12 million academic journal articles. 6  This small number might be due in part to the book’s printing plates being requisitioned for war use (Sica 2016: 127). 5

20 

P. Korom

Times. The path to publication was not smooth. The directors of the Institute for Social and Religious Research (ISSR)—a personal charity of John D. Rockefeller (1839–1937)—decided, following a series of battles with the authors over the study’s content and methodological approach, against including it in their monograph series. Ultimately, rather than the Institute, Alfred Harcourt published Middletown.7 Vigorously promoted by the publisher, and prominently featured in bookstore windows, it went through six printings in 1929 alone, selling more than 30,000 copies over the next eight years (Gilkeson 2010: 69). With the expansion of sociology (see Chap. 3) and the growth of the international market for scholarly books, the publication of monographs and edited volumes became a common vehicle of scholarly communication. Today, “book people” and “journal article people” are to be found side by side in nearly every sociology department worldwide. If garnering attention at all, each publication genre may generate various types of reputation. Books are more likely to facilitate entry into intellectual and lay communities that transcend immediate networks of colleagues, whereas articles are more likely to establish authority in special research areas but come at the cost of not reaching broad audiences (Clemens et al. 1995). That publications rather than lectures have turned out to be the dominant source of reputation has a simple reason: Unpublished lecture notes rarely receive collegial evaluations. In turn, the importance of peer review to the newly formed profession of sociology cannot be overestimated. Much like lawyers or doctors, sociologists have had reason to prefer selfpolicing over external controls. When peers started to assess the “quality” of colleagues on a regular basis, whether it was in promotion committees, academic conferences, or on the editorial boards of scholarly journals, gradients in the reputational standing of scholars became visible. Like in other academic disciplines—and not much different than in society at large (Speier 1935)—the reputation of a sociologist hinges on two factors: the number of persons familiar with one’s work, and the number of  On several grounds, the publication ran into opposition from the Institute staff. It deviated from the quantitative portrayals for which the Institute was already well known. Further, it did not serve the Rockefeller interests because it stressed class divisions in “Middletown” (Muncie, Indiana) rather than community harmony (Harvey 1983). 7

2  Eminent Scientists 

21

those willing to recognize one’s contribution to the advancement of the discipline. Some have been judged by competent peers as fair to middling, others as reliable if not exceptional, and a few as towering over the rest. For some, it is, for example, crystal clear that if a Nobel Prize was awarded for sociology, there was no question that Robert K. Merton would have been a recipient (Kaufman 2003). Thus, the elite was a clear by-product of a system of peer judgment that by now pervaded the discipline. Interestingly, research on prominent scientists had started long before in other disciplines.

Prominent Scientists Sir Francis Galton (1822–1911), a Victorian polymath and cousin of Charles Darwin (1809–1882), was obsessed with genius. He hypothesized that (outstanding) mental abilities were like physical characteristics—passed on through evolution by natural selection—but how could he prove that? For him, eminent men clearly exhibited genius most clearly; thus, he started gathering evidence by surveying biographical dictionaries. All those who stood out because of a consensus concerning their importance were included one by one in his “database.” Galton then researched these selected men and their genealogies, finding that the chances of relatives attaining fame were above average. Regarding eminent men of science, Galton came to the following conclusion:“to every 10 illustrious men, who have any eminent relations at all, we find 3 or 4 eminent fathers, 4 or 5 eminent brothers, and 5 or 6 eminent sons” (Galton 2001: 378). Findings, such as this one, were interpreted as compelling evidence for the hereditary nature of genius. Of course, Galton also came across some disconfirming evidence that was, however, consolidated with his “theory” by showing that rare surnames are destined to disappear over time (Watson and Galton 1875). Galton’s work proved not only to be consequential for the development of psychology because it popularized statistical applications, but also had at least some impact on the study of eminence when his ideas

22 

P. Korom

began to cross the Atlantic.8 The carrier of Galton’s ideas was James McKeen Cattell (1860–1944) who obtained his psychology degree at Bryn Mawr and met Galton when he became a lecturer at Cambridge University. Cattell was impressed by Galton’s versatility and emphasis on statistics, which he started to teach after being appointed the first professor of psychology in the world at the University of Pennsylvania in 1888. He later moved to Columbia and acquired the weekly journal Science, which became the world’s top academic journal. Cattell followed in Galton’s footsteps by continuing to collect biographical data on scientists that were finally published in the directory American Men of Science (AMS). The first edition of AMS (Cattell 1906) featured about 4000 biographical sketches. Each entry contained, among other things, place and date of birth, education and academic degrees, mailing address, departmental affiliation, and information on career positions and areas of research. What set AMS apart from other biographical rosters was not only its comprehensiveness but also the practice, in selected entries, of inserting an asterisk before the field of research, to indicate that the scholar was to be regarded as one of the country’s leading men of science (“starred” entries). Thus, a “star” was, literally, everybody with an asterisk next to their name. How did Cattell identify these stars? He implemented the following simple procedures: the 10 leading representatives in the 12 principal sciences (e.g., anatomy) who were members of the National Academy of Sciences were asked to rank order the “most eminent” scientists (e.g., anatomists) in their respective background disciplines. By conflating these ratings, Cattell identified the most eminent U.S. scientists who were ultimately flagged with a mark of distinction. It is interesting to observe that initially the star system was, in part, quite well received, as is evident from the following review, published in the Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society:

 It should be noted that Galton not only coined the term “eugenics”, advocating that eminent men and women should be encouraged to intermarry and produce offspring, but even went so far as to call on the (British) Sociological Society to launch eugenics as a national program (Renwick 2011). 8

2  Eminent Scientists 

23

In view of the great difficulties in forming a correct estimate of the merits of the work of contemporaries, the present undertaking appears a bold one, but the importance of accurate knowledge on this point seems to justify such ventures. All men of science … must feel keenly the difficulties encountered in the effort of judging the relative merits of the work of those who may be under consideration; and as such judgements are sometimes imperatively necessary, any reliable aid is a great desideratum (Miller 1906: 34).

In a similar vein, the Berkeley physicist L. B. Loeb argued in a personal letter to Cattell that because only a small number of physicists could be elected to the National Academy, the star system provided an effective means of identifying and rewarding successful scientists (Lankford 1997: 246). Given this reception, it appears that the AMS had unintended consequences. Although Cattell intended to use the AMS for communication purposes and for scientific investigations only, others saw it as a valuable “judgment device” (Karpik 2010) with practical applications: The roster promised to reduce knowledge deficits relating to achievements in the rapidly expanding sciences and to establish a hierarchy of recognition. Over time, taking a negative stance toward AMS became a widely shared attitude. Criticism focused mainly on the limited number of fields in which Cattell assigned stars, the fact that so few stars were assigned in total, and the biases of the judges he had chosen (Sokal 1995). Even though there may have been several factors at play causing biased judgment, the most vexing problem was the complexity of the task at hand. When asking individuals to evaluate peers, Cattell wanted judges to consider multiple criteria. While contributions to research were to be given priority, he also suggested that teaching, administration, editing, and the compilation of textbooks should be taken into consideration. Careful attention was to be paid to the mix of activities that made a man or woman efficient in advancing science (Lankford 1997: 246).

24 

P. Korom

However, based on archival material,9 it is possible to detect that despite these instructions the judges’ conceptions of what it meant to be a leading scientist in America were often inconsistent. Some, for example, based their judgments on publications only, while others made an appraisal considering all dimensions. Critics bemoaned other apparent deficits as well. For example, the validity of the the AMS star system suffered considerably from the self-imposed restriction that individuals who had received a star in a prior edition of AMS should retain their star until death (Cattell and Brimhall 1921: viii). In consequence, there were fewer slots left for “rising stars” (Rossiter 1992: 289–90). It is not clear, however, whether these severe deficits of the roster finally led to the demise of the star system or whether war-related turbulence ended it. In any case, the seventh edition (1944) edited by Jacques Cattell, the son of James, was the last to include asterisks. Even if today Cattell’s star system appears a remote chapter in the history of science, it is, in fact, full of insights. It shows, among other things, that any classification of scientists is likely to create resistance. Why? Most likely because scientific status usually resides largely in tacit and informal judgments. Peer evaluations, like those collated by Cattell, often not only break the silence but also distinguish quite boldly between a few top scholars and the rest. To many this imposed dichotomy appears artificial, giving the widely shared impression that academic reputation has many more gradients and, consequently, raises the hackles of many. Cattell’s work on eminence was to lay forgotten for some 30 years until interest in the history of psychology started to grow. In the late 1960s, Robert I. Watson (1909–1980) and Edwin G. Boring (1886–1968) developed a list of 1027 individuals as a first step in the preparation of a biographical dictionary, projected to contain 500 entries, of persons important in the history of psychology (Annin et al. 1968: 303). The list was wide and varied in its remit, including psychiatrists, anthropologists, and biologists from the seventeenth through to the twentieth century. To restrict the list to the most outstanding contributors to the advancement of science, Cattell’s approach of expert evaluations was used. Watson and Boring asked seven other psychologists—four Americans, one  The James McKeen Cattell papers are housed in the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

9

2  Eminent Scientists 

25

Belgian, one Frenchman, and one Japanese—to rate all names on a scale of 0 to 3, giving three checkmarks if the individual should be among the 500 great psychologists, two checkmarks if the judge was able to identify key contributions of the given scholar, and one checkmark if the judge only was able to recognize the name in the history of psychology. Although raters were not asked to apply any specific criteria in the determination of their ratings, they were advised to do their rating “cold”—that is, without any consultations. The ratings for each name were then tallied; the highest possible score was 27 if all nine raters assigned three checkmarks. Annin et al. (1968) report 53 names that received a score of 27, among them Alfred Adler, Edmund Husserl, Karl Pearson, Herbert Spencer, and Edward Thorndike. Again, as in the case of Cattell, this survey of professional opinion on who counts as an eminent scientist was met with severe criticism. Leonard Zusne, for example, doubted the methodology on the following grounds: Of the three points that could be assigned an individual by a judge, two were to be given on the basis of the judge’s familiarity with him. Thus, while even the most eminent individuals could not be rated higher than 3 by a judge, the lower echelons of eminence received a boost from the historians, familiar with more historical names than most (Zusne 1975: 492–93).

Clearly, definitive and objective criteria for identifying excellence had yet to be established. Most critical observers of these early endeavors had the gut feeling that different expert panels would very likely give different ratings. The result would be rosters of eminence that only partially overlap. Some felt the urge to find alternative measurement strategies. Renewed efforts to define eminence were based on the fundamental assumption that it was not about originality in the first place, but about the amount of attention a scholar attracted at a given time. What was, therefore, needed was a tool, a kind of Geiger counter, which could distinguish between scholars whose work was being widely discussed and those whose ideas and contributions were rarely adopted by fellow scientists. But what would such a Geiger counter look like?

26 

P. Korom

In Search of a Geiger Counter to Detect Eminence Psychology, like other disciplines, turned to citations to gauge the extent to which someone’s research was used by others in the field as the key indicator of recognition.10 The rationale was simple: One of the most significant ways in which scientists are rewarded is by having their work used by other scientists. Thus, the number of citations a scientist receives may be taken as an indicator of the amount of recognition his work has received (Cole and Cole 1973: 34).

One should add, however, that there has always been a common awareness that citations were a feasible but not a perfect Geiger counter. Jonathan and Stephen Cole themselves, for example, pointed these substantive problems out. The significance of a scientist’s work is not always recognized immediately, and innovators may remain obscure in their own lifetime. In addition, citations may refer to contributions that are being criticized or even rejected rather than commended or employed in support of the author’s research. Another vexing problem is that citations have distinct functions. While some are “substantive” (i.e. truly needed for understanding of the referring text), others are “perfunctory” (i.e. an acknowledgment that other work in the same general area has been performed). In the second case, citations indicate the intellectual precursors. In one of the early in-depth studies on the use of citations, Moravcsik and Murugesan (1975) found that about 40% of citations were perfunctory. Furthermore, citations could be of the “methodological type” (Bornmann and Daniel 2008), which cause a systematic bias because papers reporting new methods or research instruments tend to be cited more often than purely theoretical contributions. Finally, the validity of  It is noteworthy that Eugene Garfield, who pioneered the Science and Social Science Citation Indexes that were to become the main research tools in the evaluation of scientists and institutions, argued early on that such citations primarily indicated the utility rather than the importance of academic contributions. In his words: “A highly cited work is one that has been found to be useful by a relatively large number of people” (Garfield 1979: 246). 10

2  Eminent Scientists 

27

any citation count could be seriously influenced by mutual reference arrangements. Sometimes what is observed is “citation stacking”—that is, authors working in the same team or department citing each other to raise their prestige. In face of these objections, the question arises as to whether citations are an accurate reflection of recognition by peers. Radioactivity is impossible to observe visually but can be detected through use of a Geiger counter. Similarly, most social scientists would agree that eminence in science can be best deduced from citations. There is firm evidence to support this stance, namely the high levels of correlation with a usually unquestioned indicator of academic eminence: the Nobel Prize. The will of Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel, written in 1895, dedicated most of his estate to prizes for those who had “conferred the greatest benefit on mankind” by making “the most important discovery or invention” in the fields of physics, chemistry, and physiology or medicine (as well as contributions to literature and peace). It was only from 1968 onward that the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences started to be awarded annually. The main reason this prize is commonly regarded as the ne plus ultra of honors in science is the elaborate selection process applied. The economist Assar Lindbeck (1930–2020), who sat on the prize committee for many years describes its principles as follows (Lindbeck 1985). Every October a candidate proposal form is sent to professors at around 75 departments of economics, as well as to previous economic laureates, all over the world. About 150 to 200 completed forms are received, usually including some 75 to 125 nominees. When committee commission experts study these proposals, they pay the most attention, not to the candidates who received the greatest number of nominations, but to those who were recommended by the most highly competent nominators. In-depth studies are commissioned for each candidate, narrowing the field down to the 20 to 30 candidates whom the committee regards as having made the most outstanding contributions. After several meetings of the prize committee, a prize proposal is sent to the social science class of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which is obliged to accept it. Finally, the prize is decided on by a simple majority in a secret ballot during a plenary session; this is where all Swedish members of the Academy (260 persons) have the right to vote.

28 

P. Korom

Clearly, the selection procedures are far more rigorous, for example, than those of Watson and Boring, not least because the prize is the expression of the opinion of numerous competent judges.11 Now, if citation counts are a powerful proxy for eminence, one should be able to use citation analysis to forecast Nobel Prize winners. In an early study Eugene Garfield established that of the 50 most-cited economists, 17 had won the prize until 1991. Seven had died and therefore were not eligible for the prize. Overall, his results led him to conclude that “a simple, quantitative, and objective algorithm based on citation data can effectively corroborate—and even forecast—a complex, qualitative, and subjective selection process based on human judgement” (Garfield and Welljams-Dorof 1992: 117). In a later study, Bjork et al. (2014) analyzed the citation trajectories of Nobel Prize winners in economics. Their main finding is that, even though the trajectory patterns differ between the prize winners, the Swedish Academy tended to award, on the average at least, the prize close to the winners’ citation peak. The evidence at hand implies that citations, despite the complexities, do account for recognized achievement because that is exactly what the Nobel Prize honors. Many efforts have already been invested into refining citation studies to make them less error-prone. Currently, the gold standard appears to be one that demands a combination of various citation studies conducted for the same sample of people, as well as a joint consideration of other criteria of excellence that need to be demonstrated to correlate with citation counts (Gingras 2016). In general, academic journal-based citations are the most widely used. These are viewed as “blue collar” indices of intellectual impact, relying on the citation “votes” of the entire scientific community rather than on the judgment of selected experts. Later, with the launching of the Social Science Citation Index (SSCI)—a digital database that contains the abstract and key words  The Nobel Prize in Economics was, however, never free of criticism. It was, for example, argued that the chairman, Assar Lindbeck, dominated the prize committee during the first 25 years in such a way that the prize-winning theories provided a scientific stamp of approval for a market-liberal policy agenda in Sweden that he aimed to strengthen. Even if it is true that the committee enjoyed some leeway to favor one candidate over another, the harshest critics state that the committee did not “stray too far from the discipline’s internal prestige rankings” (Offer and Söderberg 2016: 141). 11

2  Eminent Scientists 

29

rather than the full text of journal articles, as well as a complete list of references—journal citation counts became easily available and started to be used, and abused, globally. A recurrent criticism leveled against SSCIbased citation studies is their reliance on academic journals only, and their neglect of other genres of literature. Already during the 1960s, a leading bibliometric expert urged his colleagues to reflect on the following question: Important from whose point of view? Who is more important for the discipline, a sociologist who is recognized as such by the multitudes who have passed through an introductory sociology class or one who is recognized by the select few who are exposed to the American Sociological Review? (Oromaner 1969: 334, emphasis added).

Indeed, textbook citations became in the years that followed another commonly used proxy for eminence (Wright et al. 2000). In their study of the citation rankings of authors in the sociological monographic and journal literature Cronin et al. (1997) reported that there may be two distinct populations of influential authors, one in monographs, the other in journals, with only a small degree of overlap. One can only guess at the reasons for this. A possible explanation could be the median age of literature cited in each genre. Obsolescence is not as rapid for books as it is for journal articles. Another reason could be that “journal people” tend to cite methodological contributions more often. Whatever the reason, given this insight, sole reliance on SSCI citations appears problematic. Even in psychology, a discipline in which journal articles are the predominant form of communication, eminence is measured by citations in introductory textbooks and discipline-specific journals (Diener et al. 2014).

Citation-Based Eminence Research In contrast to various other disciplines such as economics (e.g., Szenberg 1993), political science (e.g., Bingham and Vertz 1983), and psychology (e.g., Haggbloom et al. 2002), sociology has never embarked on a

30 

P. Korom

systematic citation-based investigation of its most eminent members as a collective. The sparse work on eminence contributed by sociologists is instead marked by an obsession with individual outstanding scholars, such as Pierre Bourdieu (Medvetz and Sallaz 2018) or Anthony Giddens (Loyal 2003). One can only speculate on the reasons for sociologists’ refusal to indulge in large-scale and citation-based eminence research. Several possible complementary hypotheses suggest themselves. Most likely, one reason is sociologists’ skeptical stance toward the evaluative quantification of research and the very process of creating rankings. Once selective indicators of eminence, such as awards or citation counts, are given numbers, they can be aggregated into a single eminence score, producing commensurability among what were previously noncomparable authors. Such practices transform “qualities into quantities, difference into magnitude” (Espeland and Stevens 1998: 316). Quantifications that can foster simplistic views—for example, “Pierre Bourdieu’s sociology offers more insights than that of Raymond Boudon”—are, understandably, problematic for most sociologists. This is because, obviously, what is presumed is that the works of both scholars can be subjected to the same metric of excellence. Rankings have numerous pitfalls, and it is no wonder that scientists have grown wary of them. Here is an example demonstrating that even the comparison of football teams can raise rather complex issues that, if not settled, let rankings appear to be a flawed practice of comparison: If we argue that actually Real Madrid is better than Juventus F.C., the advocate of Juventus might ask us to elaborate on how we came to such a conclusion: Do Real play more efficiently? Do they have a more attractive style? Do they have a particularly rich tradition? The proponent of Real Madrid might have just as many good reasons as does the champion of Juventus F.C. And things would get even more complicated in the case of multiteam comparisons in which you would have to explain not only the hierarchy between Real and Juventus but also the relative greatness of all other teams in the world (Ringel and Werron 2020: 142).

Another is that in many places academic sociologists’ performances are evaluated based on presumably solid indicators of excellence (e.g., Google

2  Eminent Scientists 

31

Scholar citations) to such a degree that it has become difficult to imagine such an assessment without any reliance on quantification (Ferretti et al. 2018). Many feel unfairly treated if, for example, they are not promoted to a professorship because of underperformance based on several indicators that seek to impose numerical values on a phenomenon that is difficult to measure—research excellence. They also have a hard time believing that citation of an article implies that it has actually been read, and they question that there is just a handful of standards to assess the quality of academic work. Consequently, a widespread attitude has developed that despises any quantitative assessment of research. A final reason is the widely shared conviction that sociology is one of the most fragmented social science disciplines that is not only highly structured by language and national settings but also by many different and incompatible standards for what constitutes good work (Stinchcombe 1994). It is, therefore, often felt that a consensus on the question of who belongs to the elite is simply impossible to reach. Many would argue that while one could potentially identify reputational leaders in some subfields of sociology, a universally recognized elite simply does not exist. The fact that sociology does not know of any ne plus ultra award but is rather marked by a seemingly ever-growing number of distinct awards, prizes, and honors (Best 2008) is arguably proof of the impossibility of identifying a single elite based on a single citation matrix. Although there is (a grain of ) truth to these arguments, I take the stance in this book that it is possible to identify sociology’s elite based on citations. As I go on to demonstrate in the following chapters, outstanding high-­citation counts do correlate with other indicators of academic prestige and therefore are suited to detect those few who stand on the top of sociology’s internal prestige pyramid. In this book, citations are not being used as a ranking device but serve to detect eminence. Thus, the trap of comparing what is noncomparable is avoided. Finally, the citation analyses conducted take into consideration that sociology is not organized in any coherent way, as the discipline’s core feature is integrated into the actual research design applied. What is more, this book combines quantitative and qualitative methodologies. Primarily, citation counts are used to lay bare the most

32 

P. Korom

important trends in processes of professional recognition. As will become apparent, quantifications of how references to scholars evolve over time, or of how they vary across fields of research, raise many questions that can only be answered through qualitative in-depth analyses. Finally, it is important to point out that this study is not an exercise in evaluation based on simple metrics, nor does it claim that citations are unambiguous indicators of elite status. I argue, however, that citation counts are the worst proxy for scholarly recognition, except for all the others. Once the elite is identified based on citation (see Chap. 4), a collective portrait becomes possible. One can leave the well-trodden paths of writing intellectual biographies of individual thinkers by looking at star sociologists as a group. The common aspects of their intellectual lives will be targeted rather than their individual histories. It is important to look for general factors that explain their eminence. To find answers, I will, at some point, exchange the macroscopic for a microscopic perspective and “zoom in” on the cases of Pierre Bourdieu, Seymour Lipset, and Robert K. Merton; the goal is to identify patterns in the reactions to their work that are likely to be held by the majority of star sociologists. With this having been stated, one can easily proceed with identifying and describing the elite. I feel it necessary, however, to reflect first on what is special about sociology. It is, as the next chapter shows, only through historical reflections on the disciplinary development that it is possible to effectively understand sociology’s character.

References AAUP. 1915. Declaration of Principles on Academic Freedom and Academic Tenure. https://www.aaup.org/NR/rdonlyres/A6520A9D-­0 A9A-­4 7B3-­B 550-­ C006B5B224E7/0/1915Declaration.pdf. Annin, Edith L., Edwin G.  Boring, and Robert I.  Watson. 1968. Important Psychologists, 1600–1967. Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 4 (4): 303–315. Becker, Howard S. 2017. Evidence. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Best, Joel. 2008. Prize Proliferation. Sociological Forum 23 (1): 1–27.

2  Eminent Scientists 

33

Bingham, Richard D., and Laura L.  Vertz. 1983. The Social Structure of an Academic Discipline: Networks and Prestige in Political Science. Social Science Quarterly 64 (2): 275–287. Bjork, Samuel, Avner Offer, and Gabriel Söderberg. 2014. Time Series Citation Data: The Nobel Prize in Economics. Scientometrics 98 (1): 185–196. Bledstein, Burton J. 1974. Noah Porter Versus William Graham Sumner. Church History 43 (3): 340–349. Bornmann, Lutz, and Hans-Dieter Daniel. 2008. What Do Citation Counts Measure? A Review of Studies on Citing Behavior. Journal of Documentation 64 (1): 45–80. Caplow, Theodore, and Reece J.  McGee. 1961. The Academic Marketplace. New York: Science Editions. Carneiro, Robert L. 1974. Herbert Spencer’s ‘The Study of Sociology’ and the Rise of Social Science in America. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 118 (6): 540–554. Cattell, James McKeen. 1906. American Men of Science: A Biographical Directory. New York: Science Press. Cattell, James McKeen, and Dean R. Brimhall. 1921. American Men of Science: A Biographical Directory. Garrison, NY: The Science Press. Clemens, Elisabeth S., Walter W. Powell, Kris McIlwaine, and Dina Okamoto. 1995. Careers in Print: Books, Journals, and Scholarly Reputation. American Journal of Sociology 101 (2): 433–494. Cole, Jonathan R., and Stephen Cole. 1973. Social Stratification in Science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Coser, Lewis A. 1958. Georg Simmel’s Style of Work: A Contribution to the Sociology of the Sociologists. American Journal of Sociology 63 (6): 635–641. Cronin, Blaise, Herbert Snyder, and Helen Atkins. 1997. Comparative Citation Rankings of Authors in Monographic and Journal Literature: A Study of Sociology. Journal of Documentation 53 (3): 263–273. Diener, Ed, Shigehiro Oishi, and JungYeun Park. 2014. An Incomplete List of Eminent Psychologists of the Modern Era. Archives of Scientific Psychology 2 (1): 20–31. Espeland, Wendy Nelson, and Mitchell L. Stevens. 1998. Commensuration as a Social Process. Annual Review of Sociology 24 (1): 313–343. Ferretti, Federico, Ângela Guimarães Pereira, Dániel Vértesy, and Sjoerd Hardeman. 2018. Research Excellence Indicators: Time to Reimagine the ‘Making Of ’? Science and Public Policy 45 (5): 731–741.

34 

P. Korom

Galton, Francis. 2001. Hereditary Genius: An Inquiry Into Its Laws and Consequences. Honolulu: University Press of the Pacific. Garfield, Eugene. 1979. Citation Indexing: Its Theory and Application in Science, Technology, and Humanities. Vol. 8. New York: Wiley. Garfield, Eugene, and Alfred Welljams-Dorof. 1992. Of Nobel Class: A Citation Perspective on High Impact Research. Theoretical Medicine 13 (2): 117–135. Geiger, Roger L. 1986. To Advance Knowledge: The Growth of American Research Universities, 1900–1940. New York: Oxford University Press. Gilkeson, John S. 2010. Anthropologists and the Rediscovery of America, 1886–1965. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press. Gingras, Yves. 2016. Bibliometrics and Research Evaluation: Uses and Abuses. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Haggbloom, Steven J., Renee Warnick, Jason E.  Warnick, Vinessa K.  Jones, Gary L. Yarbrough, Tenea M. Russell, Chris M. Borecky, Reagan McGahhey, John L. Powell III, Jamie Beavers, and Emmanuelle Monte. 2002. The 100 Most Eminent Psychologists of the 20th Century. Review of General Psychology 6 (2): 139–152. Harvey, Charle E. 1983. Robert S. Lynd, John D. Rockefeller and Middletown. Indiana Magazine of History 79 (4): 330–354. Henningsen, Bernd. 2006. A Joyful Good-Bye to Wilhelm von Humboldt: The German University and the Humboldtian Ideals of ‘Einsamkeit and Freiheit’. In The European Research University: An Historical Parenthesis? ed. K. Blückert, G.R. Neave, and T. Nybom, 91–108. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Hertzog, Matthew J. 2017. Protections of Tenure and Academic Freedom in the United States. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Hollingshead, August B. 1940. Climbing the Academic Ladder. American Sociological Review 5 (3): 384–394. Huebner, Daniel R. 2014. Becoming Mead: The Social Process of Academic Knowledge. Chicago; London: The University of Chicago Press. von Humboldt, Wilhelm. 1956. Über die innere und äussere Organisation der höheren wissenschaftlichen Anstalten in Berlin. In Die Idee der deutschen Universität. Die fünf Grundschriften aus der Zeit ihrer Neubegründung durch klassischen Idealismus und romantischen Realismus, ed. E. Anrich, 375–386. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. Jencks, Christopher, and David Riesman. 1968. The Academic Revolution. Garden City, NY: Doubleday. Karpik, Lucien. 2010. Valuing the Unique: The Economics of Singularities. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

2  Eminent Scientists 

35

Kaufman, Michael T. 2003. Robert K. Merton, Versatile Sociologist and Father of the Focus Group, Dies at 92 (Feb. 24). The New York Times. Lankford, John. 1997. American Astronomy: Community, Careers, and Power, 1859–1940. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lindbeck, Assar. 1985. The Prize in Economic Science in Memory of Alfred Nobel. Journal of Economic Literature 23 (1): 37–56. Loyal, Steven. 2003. The Sociology of Anthony Giddens. London: Pluto Press. McCaughey, Robert A. 2012. Stand, Columbia: A History of Columbia University in the City of New York, 1754–2004. New York: Columbia University Press. McClelland, Charles E. 2017. Berlin, the Mother of All Research Universities: 1860–1918. Lanham: Lexington. Medvetz, Thomas, and Jeffrey J. Sallaz. 2018. The Oxford Handbook of Pierre Bourdieu. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Merton, Robert K. 1973. The Normative Structure of Science. In The Sociology of Science: Theoretical and Empirical Investigations, ed. R.K.  Merton and N.W. Storer, 267–278. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. ———. 1997. De-Gendering ‘Man of Science’: The Genesis and Epicene Character of the Word Scientist. In Sociological Visions, ed. K.  Erikson, 225–253. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. Miller, G.A. 1906. Review: J.  McKeen Cattell, American Men of Science. A Biographical Directory. Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society 13 (1): 33–34. Mommsen, Wolfgang J. 1994. Bürgerliche Kultur und künstlerische Avantgarde: Kultur und Politik im deutschen Kaiserreich 1870 bis 1918. Frankfurt a. M: Propyläen Verlag. Moravcsik, Michael J., and Poovanalingam Murugesan. 1975. Some Results on the Function and Quality of Citations. Social Studies of Science 5 (1): 86–92. Offer, Avner, and Gabriel Söderberg. 2016. The Nobel Factor: The Prize in Economics, Social Democracy, and the Market Turn. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Oromaner, Mark J. 1969. The Audience as a Determinant of the Most Important Sociologists. The American Sociologist 4 (4): 332–335. Östling, Johan. 2018. Humboldt and the Modern German University: An Intellectual History. Lund: Lund University Press. Parsons, Talcott. 1968. The Structure of Social Action: A Study in Social Theory with Special Reference to a Group of Recent European Writers. New  York: Free Press.

36 

P. Korom

Pease, John, and Joan Rytina. 1968. Sociology Journals. The American Sociologist 3 (1): 41–45. Renwick, Chris. 2011. From Political Economy to Sociology: Francis Galton and the Social-Scientific Origins of Eugenics. The British Journal for the History of Science 44 (3): 343–369. Ringel, Leopold, and Tobias Werron. 2020. Where Do Rankings Come From? A Historical-Sociological Perspective on the History of Modern Rankings. In Practices of Comparing. Towards a New Understanding of a Fundamental Human Practice, ed. A. Epple, W. Erhart, and J. Grave, 137–170. Bielefeld: Bielefeld University Press. Rossiter, Margaret W. 1992. Women Scientists in America: Struggles and Strategies to 1940. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Schonfeld, Roger C. 2003. JSTOR: A History. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Sica, Alan. 2012. Book as Totem: The ‘Green Bible’ One More Time. Contemporary Sociology: A Journal of Reviews 41 (5): 557–560. ———. 2016. Book Matters: The Changing Nature of Literacy. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. Sokal, Michael M. 1995. Stargazing: James McKeen Cattell, ‘American Men of Science,’ and the Reward Structure of the American Scientific Community, 1906–1944. In Psychology, Science, and Human Affairs: Essays in Honor of William Bevan, 64–86. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Speier, Hans. 1935. Honor and Social Structure. Social Research 2 (1): 74–97. Stinchcombe, Arthur L. 1994. Disintegrated Disciplines and the Future of Sociology. Sociological Forum 9 (2): 279–291. Szenberg, Michael, ed. 1993. Eminent Economists: Their Life Philosophies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Turner, Stephen. 2007. A Life in the First Half-Century of Sociology: Charles Ellwood and the Division of Sociology. In Sociology in America: A History, ed. C.J. Calhoun, 115–154. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Van Alstyne, William W. 1993. Freedom and Tenure in the Academy. Durham: Duke University Press. Veblen, Thorstein. 2015. The Higher Learning in America: A Memorandum on the Conduct of Universities by Business Men. Annotated edition. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Veysey, Laurence. 1965. The Emergence of the American University. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

2  Eminent Scientists 

37

Watson, H.W., and Francis Galton. 1875. On the Probability of the Extinction of Families. The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 4: 138–144. Wilson, Logan. 1942. The Academic Man. London, New York, Toronto: Oxford University Press. Wittrock, Björn. 1993. The Modern University: The Three Transformations. In The European and American University Since 1800: Historical and Sociological Essays, ed. S. Rothblatt and B. Wittrock, 303–362. Cambridge; New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Wright, Richard A., J. Mitchell Miller, and Patricia Gallagher. 2000. Citations to Critical Criminologists in Introductory Criminology Textbooks. The Justice Professional 13 (2): 125–142. Zusne, Leonard. 1975. Contributions to the History of Psychology: XXI. History of Rating of Eminence in Psychology Revisited. Psychological Reports 36 (2): 492–494.

3 Sociology as an Academic Discipline

 he Emergence of Sociology as a Discipline T on its Own During the first half of the nineteenth century, the social sciences as an academic subject did not yet exist aside from the juridical sciences (Staatswissenschaften) that are often perceived as a forerunner (Shils 1970). It was only during the late nineteenth century that the organizational structure of the social sciences became fixed with academic disciplines as foundational pillars (Stichweh 1992). In 1857 Francis Lieber (1800–1872) at Columbia College, for example, was granted the first official Professorship in Political Science in the United States (Farr 1988) and in 1884 Alfred Marshall (1842–1924) was appointed to the Cambridge Chair of Political Economy. It is telling that Marshall questioned in his inaugural address the unity of the social sciences: “It is in vain to speak of the higher authority of the social science. No doubt if that existed Economics would gladly find shelter under its wing. But it does not exist; it shows no signs of coming into existence” (Hodgson 2005: 132). Thus Marshall, like most of his contemporaries, already perceived the young social sciences of his time as being departmentalized into different disciplines. Toward the end of the nineteenth century several important books with the name “sociology” in their titles were published. Among them were Herbert Spencer’s The Study of Sociology (1872), Ludwig © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. Korom, Star Sociologists, Socio-Historical Studies of the Social and Human Sciences, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13938-3_3

39

40 

P. Korom

Gumplowicz’s Grundriss der Soziologie (1885), Émile Durkheim’s Les règles de la méthode sociologique (1895), and Georg Simmel’s Zur Soziologie der Familie (1895). Apparently, the authors felt a need to emphasize that they studied the social world from an analytical perspective that was unique to the discipline of sociology. But, what exactly is a discipline? A discipline is at least three things simultaneously: Ensembles of various perspectives from which several problems are viewed. Both economists and sociologists, for example, have studied capitalism, albeit through different analytical lenses. Sociologists have been interested in capitalism as a culture or a system of ideas and principles, even as economists have been drawn to the quest of discovering its driving forces. For a second example, consider poverty research: “If we ask academics why poor people are poor … different disciplines will answer … in their own unique ways: each with certain kinds of data, certain methods, [and] certain habits of thinking about the problem” (Abbott 2001: 142). In fact, almost every social phenomenon has been studied in a different way by two social science disciplines. Further, disciplines are institutional structures. Departments at universities have disciplinary names, students pursue degrees in disciplines, and professors have discipline-specific professional qualifications. Finally, disciplines are also cultures. Scholars sharing membership in a disciplinary grouping have most likely been exposed to the same fundamental debates, read the same “classical” books, learned the same methodologies, and formed similar preferences for styles of scholarship1 (Wallerstein 2003). Disciplines are likely to emerge in the context of other, previously established ones. Professional sociology in the United States started to grow in the shadow of economics. The American Economic Association (AEA) was initially the intellectual hub of aspiring sociologists discussing the socioeconomic problems of the day (Young 2009), and it was not merely coincidental that Franklin H.  Giddings (1885–1931) was  A study of peer review panels judging research proposals has revealed that a comprehensive style of scholarship can be distinguished from a constructivist, positivist, and utilitarian one (Lamont 2009). The comprehensive style “values verstehen, attention to details, and contextual specificity” (p. 57); the constructivist style “emphasizes proposals that ‘give voice’ to various groups (p. 57); the positivist style “favors generalizability and hypothesis testing” (p. 57); and, finally, the utilitarian style “values only the production of instrumental knowledge” (p. 58). 1

3  Sociology as an Academic Discipline 

41

appointed professor of sociology in the Columbia economics department in 1894. In an early article, he defined sociology as a subbranch of economics that studied how “wealth-production and distribution” interacts with “human nature and social organization” (Giddings 1888: 29). Many early sociologists, such as Edward A. Ross (1866–1951), received their PhDs in economics and even after the foundation of the American Sociological Society (ASS) in 1905—which was later renamed the American Sociological Association (ASA)—cross-collaborations between both disciplines persisted. What started as sponsorship, however, turned into partnership and finally ended in rivalry. The disciplinary split stemmed mostly from the “marginalist revolution” inside economics. The economy ceased to be perceived as being enmeshed in broader social, political, historical, and institutional settings. The broader conception was replaced by a narrow one that put market exchange, individual choice, and maximizing behavior center stage and dispensed with history. Currently, almost every economist is some kind of marginalist. By turning economics into a science of choice, the discipline began to lean toward the natural sciences (e.g., physics), and it diverged critically from sociology where it is often postulated that social processes shape individual preferences (Fine and Milonakis 2009). In addition, the mathematization of economics (Debreu 1991) has created not only a bond that ties economists together but also has caused economists’ key publications to increasingly feature complex technical “models”2 that are largely inaccessible to other social scientists. One could even speak of a second “formalist revolution” that led to a growing insularity of economics within the social sciences which manifests itself, among other things, in vastly asymmetric citation patterns. These days, articles in the American Political Science Review cite the top 25 economics journals more than five times as often as the articles in the American Economic Review cite the top 25 political science journals. The citation  Economists conceptualize models as simplified setups that are intended to shed light on the economy’s workings by clarifying the relationships among exogenous/endogenous effects, and intermediating processes. Economic science, it is believed, will advance by testing abstract models against reality (Rodrik 2016). 2

42 

P. Korom

asymmetry turns out to be even starker when compared to the American Sociological Review (Fourcade et al. 2015: 93). When sociology started to disentangle itself from neighboring disciplines, universities were about to transition from a focus on teaching to one on research (see Chap. 2). The discipline became intellectually consolidated especially through the establishment of its first separate department at the University of Chicago that was created more by coincidence than by deliberate intention in 1892.3 Its first president William R. Harper (1856–1906), a prominent Baptist educator, was known for being “more interested in individuals of outstanding talent than in welldelineated disciplines or departments” (Diner 1975: 515). Harper endeavored to lure the country’s highest profile professors to Chicago, such as historian Herbert B. Adams (1850–1901) and political economist Richard T. Ely (1854–1943). Job negotiations, however, failed, and Harper arranged appointments with alternative candidates, among them Albion Small (1854–1926). Like other early social scientists, Small held that the young discipline owed its justification to a valid program of social reform (Barnes 1926). In general, a widespread belief among sociologists of the time was that the discipline could not only discover the “laws” of society but also change things for the better. The intellectual structure of sociology was essentially divided. On the one side, there were meliorists aiming for social reform; on the other, there were those who were interested only in scholarly pursuits. Small, whom Harper finally appointed head professor of social science, became the discipline builder of U.S. sociology. He not only founded the American Journal of Sociology, the first U.S. periodical of consequence devoted to the subject, but also recruited key future figures of sociology—for example, William I.  Thomas (1863–1947), Robert E.  Park (1864–1944), and Ernest Burgess (1886–1966)—to the faculty. Thus, it started to be known across the country as the “Chicago School” (Bulmer 1986)—a school of thought that became consequential for many

 Sociology courses had been taught earlier at various universities such as those led by William G. Sumner (1840–1910) at Yale (Small 1916). 3

3  Sociology as an Academic Discipline 

43

reasons.4 Two of them being that, at its peak in 1925, one-­third of all graduates in U.S. sociology were enrolled in Chicago; and that as late as 1971, half of all presidents of the old American Sociological Society and its replacement, the American Sociological Association, were either on the Chicago faculty or were former students of the department (Turner 1988: 330). Finally, Park and Burgess authored sociology’s most influential textbook titled Introduction to the Science of Sociology.5 The textbook sold more than 30,000 copies, equivalent to 332,000 copies in today’s book market (Sica 2012). The bestseller helped students prepare for exams, and its importance in giving a whole generation of young students their first introduction to sociology cannot be overestimated. In its introduction, the discipline-builders Park and Burgess clearly established the character of sociology in contrast with its disciplinary others: Sociology, it was argued, was not a philosophical science but was geared toward systematic (empirical) research to expand the field. Further, it was not to be regarded as a “mere congeries of social-welfare programs and practices” but as “the science of collective behavior.” Sociology can claim to be unique because no other science treated “social control” as its “central fact and central problem” (Park and Burgess 1921: 42). The question “What is sociology?” was to be repeated on innumerable occasions within subsequent textbooks. Even though there exist perhaps as many different views on sociology as there are sociologists (see Kinloch 2013), and widely accepted definitions range from “the study of social order” to the “study of the process and forms of social organization,” the goal of textbook introductions remains the same—namely, to demarcate the sociological turf. All authors similarly claim that what differentiates sociology from other social sciences is not the subject matter studied but the approach adopted. Carr (1945: 137), for example, perceives only sociologists being properly concerned with the analysis of “human togetherness”:  The term “school of thought” implies that research practices, methodological stances, and ways of building theories common to a group of scholars are formed and consolidated within one institutional framework. 5  Under the editorship of Morris Janowitz, the second “student edition” (1969) was shortened to a 450-page paperback edition. 4

44 

P. Korom

What are the problem phenomena of the anthropologist? Basic anatomical likenesses and differences, and culture, the accumulated, transmissible results of past behavior in association. What does the psychologist study? Human behavior under controlled conditions. What is the social psychologist looking for? Human behavior under actual life-conditions. What is the historian interested in? Unique events and their connections through time. The economist? Subsistence behavior, its forms and processes. The political scientist? Control behavior, its forms and processes. All these—anthropologist, social psychologist, historian, economist, and political scientist— take the togetherness of men for granted, or at best they observe it only incidentally.

Thus, to become a discipline on its own, sociology had to be defined as a unique perspective on the social world (Erikson 1997). Sociologists scan the same human scene as other social scientists, but they select different details, and sort them in different ways. It is not what sociologists see but the way they see it that gives the discipline its distinction. Sociology as a discipline, however, is not structured around ideas alone. It is only by establishing social facts (e.g., departments, institutes, chairs, associations, periodical or book series) that a discipline can secure identity among other disciplines (Mucha 1998). Therefore, an analysis of the most important institutional arrangements promises further insight into sociology as a discipline.

From Quasi-Hegemony to Pluralism Rise and Fall of Hegemonic Schools in U.S. Sociology The institutional “home” to both faculty and students is the academic department. Curricula, degree programs, grading practices, research initiatives and faculty careers are shaped there. Departments also provide the main intellectual environment in which disciplines evolve. U.S. sociology departments have always been highly stratified in terms of prestige. Research consistently finds that for PhD students who are not recipients of degrees from the top schools, the chances of obtaining

3  Sociology as an Academic Discipline 

45

teaching positions in leading departments are slim, and that the higher the prestige of a department the greater the proportion of home-grown faculty (Gross 1970). There is a long tradition of U.S. departments monitoring and recording their observations of the quality of graduate faculty members, providing the opportunity for longitudinal analysis. Despite a turnover of faculty and the rise and fall of dominant ideas and research programs, one can observe an astonishing stability in departmental prestige over long periods of time (Burris 2004: 241). Until the 1970s, Chicago, Columbia, and Harvard consistently made up the “elite” in sociology (Weakliem et al. 2012). This axis of prestige existed at a time when U.S. sociology expanded dramatically. After the Second World War, the number of professionally trained sociologists grew exponentially. Sociology departments were granting about 8000 Bachelors’ degrees per year by 1950, which rose to 35,000 during the 1970s; similarly, the number of PhDs awarded increased from around 150 in 1960 to 700 a decade or so later. This went hand in hand with an expansion of many sociology graduate programs at less elite universities (Turner 2006: 23). The growth of sociology, especially during the 1960s, also manifests itself in the comparative assessment of memberships in social science professional associations (see Fig. 3.1). The figure shows sociology to have almost stood on a par with economics during the post-war period (House 2019). Finally, although the 1930s and 1940s were a low point for sociology financially, the post-Sputnik period, until the early 1970s, brought increased financial support, especially from the military (Turner and Turner 1990: 131–41). The faculties at Chicago, Columbia, and Harvard, during sociology’s “golden age” (1940–1970), can be conceptualized as schools of thought that exerted a quasi-hegemony,6 because majorities within the profession accepted their research agenda as the best way to perform “normal science.” As Tiryakian notes, such schools solidify around a small number of charismatic leaders, who formulate key ideas that are taken up and refined  Sociology has always been a multiple paradigm science with several paradigms competing for hegemony but never reaching it. At times, however, a few overarching paradigms clearly outweighed the importance of all other existing ones. This is why I speak here of a quasi-hegemony. 6

46 

P. Korom

Fig. 3.1  Membership of the American Economic Association and American Sociological Association, 1960–2019 (Sources: Siegfried [1998] and association homepages)

by many followers, thereby elevating their spiritus rector to paradigm status (Tiryakian 1977). The leading three departments magnetically attracted students from all over the country who perceived the discipline to be arranged in a topdown way. Arthur J. Vidich (1922–2006)—a then young student in sociology who became a sociology professor—remembers the image his cohort had of the discipline, as follows: In Madison, where I studied in 1946–48, MA students thought of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology as a take off point for bigger and better things elsewhere. Harvard and Columbia were believed to be the places where one could find all the answers and the fundamental truths about the social sciences.… The once-prominent Chicago had lost its luster…. Madison looked like a way station. The real thing was in the east (Vidich 2000: 607).

The hierarchical structure implied that “the top institutions would teach younger scholars, who would fan out across the country in the hopes of producing work sufficiently important in character that they would be asked back to join one of the elite schools” (Wolfe 1992: 776).

3  Sociology as an Academic Discipline 

47

Some anecdotal evidence also suggests that the elite had a strong tendency to reproduce itself during sociology’s “golden age.” Seymour M. Lipset, who spent most of his professional life in U.S. elite institutions (see Chap. 6), remembers, for example, that most top sociology departments had hired Columbia students by the mid-1950s (Lipset 1955). What were the dominant agendas of the few hegemonic schools of U.S. sociology? Until about the 1940s,7 “Chicago sociology” reigned as the first quasi-hegemonic paradigm that became associated with such names as Robert E. Park or Everett C. Hughes (1897–1983). For Chicago School researchers, the city, and its explosively growing immigrant working class, was of utmost importance as a “laboratory for the investigation of collective behavior” (Park 1967: 22). Urban field studies were conducted using a variety of methods including first-hand observation, interviewing, maps, and even the study of newspapers. Social surveys were largely considered “unscientific,” and the focus was geared toward groups, thus the micro-level of society; social classes or organizations were barely studied by the Chicago School (Turner 1988: 333). After 1945, Columbia and Harvard rivaled or surpassed Chicago in terms of faculty production, faculty quality, and graduate training (Cortese 1995: 248). Survey and statistical methods were rising in popularity. Columbia University was, as an early textbook writer underscores, “the home of statistical sociology” (House 1936: 372). After Richmond Mayo-Smith (1854–1901) acquired calculating machines and a library of statistical publications, a statistical laboratory also was started to complement the sociology curriculum at Columbia (Wallace 1992: 503). Franklin H.  Giddings, another founding father of sociology and Columbia professor, was firmly convinced that it is “the statistical method [that] has become and will continue to be the chiefly important method of sociology” (1904: 633–34). Giddings and his students, such as William F. Ogburn (1886–1959) and Howard W. Odum (1884–1954), were to  Coser (1976: 146) dates the end of Chicago dominance to 1935 when the American Sociological Society decided, in a minor coup d’état, to establish its own journal, the American Sociological Review, thereby loosening the long-time cross-links of the discipline to the Chicago Department of Sociology. 7

48 

P. Korom

develop a distinct vision of sociology as a science based on quantifiable facts. With sociologist Robert K. Merton becoming professor at Columbia in 1941, “middle range theories” that can only be applied to selected social phenomena (e.g., organizations) became another trademark of the “Columbia School.” Although formulated in an abstract language, these theories incorporate propositions that permit empirical testing. At Columbia University, Merton collaborated for 35 years with the methodologist Paul F.  Lazarsfeld (1901–1976). Together they established the Bureau of Applied Social Research (BASR), which became one of the leading institutions of social research after the Second World War and a place where long-term relationships between Merton and his many mentees were forged (see Chap. 7). Lazarsfeld’s many methodological innovations (e.g., panel analysis, latent structure analysis) as well as the foundation of the BASR—that was intended to be transformed into a “Professional School for Training in Social Research” (Jeřábek 2001)— decisively advocated the institutionalization of empirical social research in sociology. Another hotspot of sociology was located at Harvard University, where Talcott Parsons (1902–1979) established the interdisciplinary Department of Social Relations in 1946. Parsons’ main contribution was to have developed a series of abstract analytical concepts that arguably capture central features of human action “without having to account for the myriad of empirical phenomena that threatened to drown the researcher in a sea of particularities” (Coser 1976: 148).8 The name “Parsons” stood for “grand theory.” His long-time collaborator, Neil Smelser (1930–2017), recalls his synthetic powers: Parsons “converted the specific into the general, and then set the general into some systematic conceptual relationship with something else that was general” (Smelser 1981: 149). One important conceptual tool introduced was the “action frame of reference,” which revolves around the “unit act” consisting of four  Fox et al. (2005) point out that Parsons consistently sought to develop conceptual schemes to facilitate empirical investigations and that his writings on specific empirical phenomena were also, for Parsons, a means of applying, testing, and refining basic concepts. It is also obvious, however, that his many classification schemes cannot be empirically tested because, as such, they do not make any propositions. 8

3  Sociology as an Academic Discipline 

49

elements: actor, end, situation, and normative orientation. In Parsons’ view, every social action contains exemplars of each element, regardless of time, place, or sociocultural context. The idea of analyzing society through a general theoretical system was widely welcomed and the recasting of familiar subject matter (e.g., the economy, modernization) into distinctively Parsonian conceptual forms became a kind of industry. Between 1946 and 1956 the Department of Social Relations awarded 206 PhD degrees in total and 80 in the field of sociology to a future generation of leading sociologists, including Bernard Barber, Albert K.  Cohen, Harold Garfinkel, Morris Zelditch, Renée C.  Fox, Robert N. Bellah, and Neil J. Smelser (Johnston 1998). The three distinct schools of thought were not only critical for the emergence of three main approaches within modern sociology—inductive observation, statistical generalization, and analytical abstraction (Camic 1995)—but they also provided sociology with some kind of overarching intellectual coherence. Of course, the short descriptions given for each school oversimplify reality because American sociology’s leading departments were not intellectually integrated but ecosystems of plural knowledges (Calhoun and VanAntwerpen 2007). This is the case especially for the Chicago School, which never constituted a perfectly coherent system of thought. Further, it can be argued that to think of Chicago and Columbia as representing the dichotomous (qualitative vs. quantitative) nature of empirical sociology is overdone since, among others, William F. Ogburn (1886–1959), a proponent of quantitative work during those years, joined Chicago early on (Harvey 1986). Finally, besides the Merton–Lazarsfeld collaboration at Columbia, Parsons and Samuel Stouffer (1900–1960) at Harvard were an influential partnership in theory and research. The main point here, however, is that what makes these three schools unique in the history of U.S. sociology is, besides a certain distinctiveness, their far-reaching if not discipline-wide intellectual impact. Chicago, Columbia, and Harvard at various times set standards of research excellence that were difficult to ignore in the profession. Further, all three departments were characterized, although to a different extent, by a social structure that, according to Tiryakian (1977), can be seen as prototypical: A “founder-leader” (e.g., Park, Merton, and Parsons) who presents a clear

50 

P. Korom

expression of the way in which reality is to be approached, surrounded by an inner circle of “interpreters” and “converts.” Interpreters communicate the school’s paradigm and its significance to a larger audience, while converts (who may share a similar age with the founder-leader), further detail key ideas. At the same time, other followers simply may validate the school’s paradigm through empirical study. Contacts made by converts with colleagues in other schools are vital in disseminating the founderleader’s key ideas. The closely-knit social network between all members of a school, including agents of institutionalization, eventually draws in more and more followers. It was this widening network of like-minded sociologists that helped elevate its key members to prominent levels of eminence. It set Chicago, Columbia, and Harvard apart from Berkeley, the latter an upstart center of sociology created from scratch during the 1950s. It was not marked by one or two dominant effective consensual figures but rather by a pluralistic assemblage of eminent figures (Shils 1980). Even though it is, again, controversial as to whether Herbert Blumer (1900–1987), Louis Wirth (1897–1952) and Everett Hughes were interpreters or converts of Park at Chicago or simply scholars who happened to work in the same department (Harvey 1987), it is clear that the roles of Merton and Parsons as “founder-leaders” are straightforward as a closer look reveals. For example, Merton’s proposed research program in the sociology of science, which intended to trace the way in which institutions and norms impinge on science, was partially carried out by his former students Jonathan Cole and Stephen Cole (1941–2018). The prominence of the “Columbia School of organizational sociology” (Haveman 2009) not only stems from Merton’s key contributions (e.g., “Bureaucratic Structure and Personality” (1940)) but also from Alvin Gouldner’s Patterns of Industrial Bureaucracy (1954) or Peter M.  Blau’s The Dynamics of Bureaucracy (1955). Gouldner and Blau had clearly absorbed Merton’s approach to the study of organizations, and both belonged, like Seymour M. Lipset (1922–2006) and James S. Coleman (1926–1995), to a generation of future leading sociologists who trained at Columbia. Similarly, the Harvard-trained sociologist Robert N.  Bellah (1927–2013) studied religions using Parsons’ so-called “AGIL” scheme

3  Sociology as an Academic Discipline 

51

that was based on the premise that all systems should fulfill four basic functions (i.e., adaptation, goal attainment, integration, and latent pattern maintenance) to endure within complex environments, while Neil Smelser extended Parsons’ research program to the study of the economy as a subsystem of society. Like another former Parsons student, Renée C. Fox (1928–2020), Bellah and Smelser became eminent social scientists. Already this glimpse into scholarly networks reveals why hegemonic schools are relevant to the study of changing eminence in sociology: Scholars who become eminent are known to closely network with other scholars with high levels of fame—as predecessors, contemporaries, and successors (Collins 2002); this is especially so if there exists a relatively unitary disciplinary core. The 1970s, a time in which the growth of U.S. sociology started to stagnate (see Fig. 3.1), mark a break with hegemonic schools in sociology in the United States, and, thus, with the belief that the discipline can build on a guiding body of theory and methods. A post-war, rebellious, generation of young social scientists started to dismantle some of sociology’s dominant theories—that is, the Parsonian framework that was judged as conservative and in favor of the status quo (Deflem 2013). Lipset, who received his PhD in sociology from Columbia in 1949, vividly describes how excitement for sociology as a (possible) normal science gave way to disillusionment: We literally believed that we, or rather our elders, were creating, for the first time, a scientific sociology based on a functional and conceptual scheme derived from Marx, Weber, and Durkheim as elaborated by Parsons and Merton, and [a] rigorous analytical statistical methodology, as developed by Lazarsfeld and Stouffer. … The postwar consensus behind a positivist view of sociology, including the widespread acceptance of structure functional theory and quantitative methodology, broke down with a vengeance. No theoretical or methodological orientation commanded wide acceptance anymore (Lipset 1994: 201, 211).

Sociology had entered a new stage that ceased to be dominated by a few towering figures and their respective schools even as the interdepartmental prestige-hierarchy and the divide between “elite” and “mass

52 

P. Korom

sociology” persisted. Top departments continue to appoint (with rare exceptions) one another’s graduates, forming “labor cartels” (Turner 2014); but the hegemonic intellectual structure vanished. Of course, there still exist various schools of thought—for example, the Jeffrey Alexander School of Cultural Sociology at Yale University (Emirbayer 2004)—but they are not designated as hegemonic anymore because their influence is limited to specialties (e.g., culture or theory) within sociology. Instead of hegemony, the acceptance of diversity and theoretical pluralism as a normal condition has established itself firmly within the discipline. Not only intellectually but also organizationally, centripetal forces that integrated have given way to centrifugal forces. The dominant organizational form within U.S. sociology has become the “groupuscule,” a small research team “that operate[s] without much contact with, or direction from, the main theoretical concerns of the field” (Turner 2014: 61). The American Sociological Association (ASA) can be described as a brokerage organization that brings together at its annual meeting a significantly increased number of sections, each of which covers a different specialty. In addition, one can observe that debates almost entirely take place between scholars who share similar research interests while ignoring all others. Finally, specialist journals, which have started to considerably outnumber generalist ones, incentivize the pursuit of arguments within the narrow boundaries of subdisciplines. Given this fragmentation, individual rather than collective research agendas began to dominate within the discipline that had become significantly more polycentric.

Pluralism of National Sociologies The United States was given special attention because until the 1970s the preeminence of sociology in its professional sphere throughout the world may have been “even greater than the corresponding world influence of most other American cultural efforts” (Gouldner 1970: 22).9 This hegemony can be explained not only through the simple fact that a  It is worth mentioning that intellectual leadership in the social sciences previously had shifted from Europe to the United States (Goudsblom and Heilbron 2015). 9

3  Sociology as an Academic Discipline 

53

well-funded sociology became institutionalized earlier in U.S. departments than anywhere else, but also through the internationalization of sociology through three channels: (1) U.S. sociological books were frequently translated into other languages; (2) foreign nationals were given scholarship aid to obtain training in the United States; and (3) major U.S. foundations (e.g., Rockefeller, Ford, and Carnegie) or the U.S. government Fulbright program financed international research programs (Hiller 1979). Although an international stratification of sociology with the United States at the top persists, albeit much less strident, defining subdivisions within sociology became increasingly dictated by different nations (and languages). One can speak of national sociologies in the sense that most studies are conducted within one society, intellectual products are distinguishable in terms of the national culture, and sociologists often confine professional contacts within national boundaries. A single illustration may suffice here to demonstrate the importance of the nation state for the shape of sociology. Armer (1987) classified journal articles in the 1985 volumes of the American Sociological Review and the American Journal of Sociology according to whether the (empirical) study focused on the Unites States only or whether social variations were at least referred to. He found that an astonishing three-­quarters of all contributions were localist. Any comparison of two national sociologies reveals distinct research traditions and cultural differences. Whereas in France, for example, the role of the public intellectual is highly valued and the national prestige of the humanities inhibited the spread of an empiricist scientific ethos within the discipline, leading U.S. sociologists, on the other hand, tend to refrain from political activities and more often use sophisticated statistical methods in research (Lamont 2000). Finally, communication patterns are nationally structured, which turns out to be not only because of linguistic barriers. For example, Haller (2019: 354), based on citation analysis, finds that about one-third of the references in journal articles by British sociologists cite the work of scholars working in the United States, while U.S. sociologists practically neglect their British colleagues. Some nation-centeredness stems from the boundedness of knowledge in the social sciences. While mathematical formulas easily travel through

54 

P. Korom

time and space, nearly all sociological findings apply only to certain contexts. Moreover, it is mostly state agencies rather than international organizations that provide sociologists with data. Further, career opportunities are also nationally structured. Besides language barriers, the so-called Habilitation—a second, more advanced PhD thesis—acts as a barrier for international candidates in Germany. In France, to give one more example, one needs to pass the agrégation de l’enseignement supérieur to advance from assistant to full professor, which is a lengthy process that practically rules out foreigners not familiar with French bureaucracy. In general, sociology is not internationalized in many countries because of the prevalence of endogamous recruitment that is based on local contacts rather than on research and teaching performance (Afonso 2016). That the recent development of sociology has been shaped both institutionally and intellectually by distinct national contexts is best illustrated by countries with various political and legislative entities that have their own official language. In Belgium, an orientation toward French sociology is dominant in the Walloon part, even as Flemish sociologists forge close ties with the (partially English-speaking) sociological community in the Netherlands (Vanderstraeten and Louckx 2018). In Canada, the internationalization of sociology in Quebec is driven mostly by an increasing proportion of PhDs trained in France, while the proportion of faculty trained in the United States is especially high in Englishdominated Canadian sociology (Warren 2014). Further, notions of research excellence differ significantly between national sociologies, as became evident from interviews that Hokka (2019) conducted with leading Finnish and Swedish sociologists. Although the former, for example, regard internationally refereed journal articles in top-tier journals as the single best indicator of research excellence, the latter disdain the “journal ranking business.” Clearly, national contexts matter in sociology. Like everyday life that is lived within separate containers marked by borders of nation-states, the most common frame to sociology is the nation-state. Sociology as a discipline thus resembles the Tower of Babel, because it is subjected to two centrifugal forces. First, with the disappearance of hegemonic schools,

3  Sociology as an Academic Discipline 

55

the discipline has become dominated by a wide variety of paradigms and an ever-increasing number of specializations. Second, with sociology remaining intimately rooted in the nation-state, national sociologies have resisted becoming consolidated within a global sociology.

Contrasting Sociology with Economics To understand sociology as a discipline, one not only can trace its development over time but also compare it to other social science disciplines (SSDs). The comparative framework chosen here focuses on the two least similar “sister” disciplines: economics and sociology. Although it is difficult to establish when exactly both parted ways, it is well established that at Harvard Talcott Parsons agreed on a form of pact with his colleagues in the Economics Department that marked each other’s turf and was loosely summarized as follows: “You, economists, study value; we, the sociologists, will study values. You will have claim on the economy; we will stake our claim on the social relations in which economies are embedded” (Stark 2009: 7). Sociology contracted after the 1970s, coinciding with the expansion of economics, which became its chief competitor for students. When rational choice economists, such as the Nobel laureate Gary Becker (1930–2014), pushed the boundaries of the discipline outward, sociologists reacted to “economic imperialism” by establishing the new subdiscipline of economic sociology. To a limited extent, both disciplines study the same phenomena (e.g., financial markets). They differ, however, in their cognitive and social structure in significant ways. At least five dimensions of difference can be distinguished.

SSDs with and without a Core The intellectual core of a discipline consists of theories, methods, and exemplars that are almost universally accepted by practitioners as both important and true (Cole 1994). Through bibliometric studies it is

56 

P. Korom

possible to identify the discipline’s core because researchers of very diverse specializations are likely to draw on ideas from their discipline’s certified knowledge. Based on co-citation data generated from the Social Science Citation Index (SSCI),10 Diana Crane and Henry Small visualized crosslinkages between specialties in sociology and economics and found the intellectual structure of sociology to be much more diffuse. In contrast to economics, the authors concluded that sociology lacked a “sizeable core that incorporated a number of major subfields” (Crane and Small 1992: 222).

High- versus Low-Consensus SSDs In his seminal work, The Intellectual and Social Organization of the Sciences, Whitley (1984) stressed that disciplines differ with regard to the uncertainty that exists over the “right” ways of doing, for example, economics or sociology. He further distinguishes between “technical uncer­ tainty” (a degree of unpredictability and variability within a field regarding the accepted methods to solve empirical problems) and “strategic uncertainty” (consensus or lack of consensus on which problems are important and, thus, on how to gain respect). Economics is a high-consensus SSD. It is very much agreed that economics can, like physics, bring regularities to light by applying mathematics, and that it is not only a quantitative science but also a “science of efficiency” in the use of scare sources (Allais 1968). Sociology, in contrast, is a low-consensus SSD that is not “able to argue with one voice about what is elementary” (Stinchcombe 1994: 80). There also exists within sociology a fundamental methodological divide between qualitative and quantitative research (Schwemmer and Wieczorek 2020).

 The SSCI contains information from articles published in the most important high-impact scholarly journals in the social sciences. Each registered article is indexed, and the references in each article are extracted, which allows researchers to conduct (co-)citation analysis. 10

3  Sociology as an Academic Discipline 

57

Hierarchical versus Non-Hierarchical SSDs A high degree of consensus on what constitutes good science implies a similarly high degree of centralized control over research outputs. The relationship between both is, as Fourcade et al. (2015: 96) argue, an intricate one: “[T]here might be more consensus because there is more control (for instance if a consistent view of what constitutes quality research is promoted by those who control the top journals); conversely, control might be more effective and enforceable because there is more consensus.” In economics, having one’s articles published in top-tier journals such as American Economic Review is key to obtaining tenure and promotion and establishes one’s professional reputation. The editorial boards of the top five journals are tightly controlled by the five most prestigious departments of the discipline, which serves to concentrate the power to shape the profession within the hands of a select group of editors (Heckman and Moktan 2020). Such a hierarchical control system does not exist in sociology to the same extent. Publishing in prestigious journals such as the American Journal of Sociology or American Sociological Review can certainly nurture one’s career, but is by no means a prerequisite for tenure. Many sociologists either do not submit articles to journals at all or opt to publish in specialist journals. Frequent publication in top journals turns out to be not even a salient characteristic of the presidents of the American Sociological Association (Platt 2016).

Self-Contained versus Open SSDs Survey research reveals that U.S. economists (57%) disagree significantly more than U.S. sociologists (25%) with the proposition that “in general, interdisciplinary knowledge is better than knowledge obtained from a single discipline” (Fourcade et al. 2015: 95). In addition, analyses of citation patterns of sociology’s flagship journals consistently reveal that the discipline is fairly receptive to the literature of other SSDs, while economists pay less attention to other SSDs, with the notable exception of political science (Angrist et al. 2020).

58 

P. Korom

Journal versus Book-Based SSDs While findings in economics are predominantly published in academic journals, articles and books are equally important publication outlets in sociology (Wilder and Walters 2020). Many sociologists favor a book format because it allows authors to go into greater depth and further elaborate their arguments. On the other hand, some evidence suggests that published articles in peer-review journals have become more important for academic careers in sociology (Lutter and Schröder 2016). If one synthesizes all identified interdisciplinary differences, the cohesive structure of economics and the fragmented character of sociology clearly emerges. Sociology is marked by a series of unresolved tensions between specialized sociologies with little common ground, national sociologies, “journal people” and “book people”, “qualities” and “quantities”, that make sociologists tend to go their separate ways. In sociology’s Tower of Babel, ideas spread within only loosely integrated national communities or specialties, which is not only to be attributed to passive hurdles to transmission (e.g., language barriers) but also to a lack of consensus about what constitutes “good” sociology. The boundaries with other disciplines are porous, the core is weak, and the publication market is diverse. To some extent, the French cultural sociologist with a qualitative focus and the U.S. political sociologist who specializes in survey research often interact with each other in much the same way as the folk singer and the heavy metal musician do—they recognize the other as a sociologist (or a musician), but they do not play on the same stage. With this background in mind, we can now turn to the main subject of this book: sociology’s elite.

References Abbott, Andrew. 2001. Chaos of Disciplines. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Afonso, Alexandre. 2016. Varieties of Academic Labor Markets in Europe. PS: Political Science & Politics 49 (4): 816–821. Allais, Maurice. 1968. Economics as a Science. Cahiers Vilfredo Pareto 6 (16/17): 5–24.

3  Sociology as an Academic Discipline 

59

Angrist, Josh, Pierre Azoulay, Glenn Ellison, Ryan Hill, and Susan Feng Lu. 2020. Inside Job or Deep Impact? Extramural Citations and the Influence of Economic Scholarship. Journal of Economic Literature 58 (1): 3–52. Armer, J. Michael. 1987. Provincialism and Internationalism in Contemporary American Sociology. International Sociology 2 (3): 315–324. Barnes, Harry Elmer. 1926. The Place of Albion Woodbury Small in Modern Sociology. American Journal of Sociology 32 (1): 15–44. Bulmer, Martin. 1986. The Chicago School of Sociology: Institutionalization, Diversity, and the Rise of Sociological Research. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Burris, Val. 2004. The Academic Caste System: Prestige Hierarchies in PhD Exchange Networks. American Economic Review 69 (2): 239–264. Calhoun, Craig, and Jonathan VanAntwerpen. 2007. Orthodoxy, Heterodoxy, and Hierarchy: ‘Mainstream’ Sociology and Its Challengers. In Sociology in America: A History, ed. C.  Calhoun, 367–410. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Camic, Charles. 1995. Three Departments in Search of a Discipline: Localism and Interdisciplinary Interaction in American Sociology, 1890–1940. Social Research 62 (4): 1003–1033. Carr, Lowell Juilliard. 1945. Situational Sociology. American Journal of Sociology 51 (2): 136–141. Cole, Stephen. 1994. Why Sociology Doesn’t Make Progress like the Natural Sciences. Sociological Forum 9 (2): 133–154. Collins, Randall. 2002. The Sociology of Philosophies: A Global Theory of Intellectual Change. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Cortese, Anthony J. 1995. The Rise, Hegemony, and Decline of the Chicago School of Sociology, 1892–1945. The Social Science Journal 32 (3): 235–254. Coser, L.A. 1976. Sociological Theory from the Chicago Dominance to 1965. Annual Review of Sociology 2 (1): 145–160. Crane, Diana, and Henry Small. 1992. American Sociology since the Seventies: The Emerging Identity Crisis in the Discipline. In Sociology and its Publics: The Forms and Fates of Disciplinary Organization, ed. T.C.  Halliday and M. Janowitz, 197–234. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Debreu, Gerard. 1991. The Mathematization of Economic Theory. The American Economic Review 81 (1): 1–7. Deflem, Mathieu. 2013. The Structural Transformation of Sociology. Society 50 (2): 156–166.

60 

P. Korom

Diner, Steven J. 1975. Department and Discipline: The Department of Sociology at the University of Chicago, 1892–1920. Minerva 13 (4): 514–553. Emirbayer, Mustafa. 2004. The Alexander School of Cultural Sociology. Thesis Eleven 79 (1): 5–15. Erikson, Kai. 1997. Prologue: Sociology as a Perspective. In Sociological Visions, ed. K. Erikson, 3–16. Lanham, Md: Rowman & Littlefield. Farr, James. 1988. The History of Political Science. American Journal of Political Science 32 (4): 1175–1195. Fine, Ben, and Dimitris Milonakis. 2009. From Economics Imperialism to Freakonomics: The Shifting Boundaries Between Economics and Other Social Sciences. London; New York: Routledge. Fourcade, Marion, Etienne Ollion, and Yann Algan. 2015. The Superiority of Economists. Journal of Economic Perspectives 29 (1): 89–114. Fox, Renée C., Victor M. Lidz, and Harold J. Bershady. 2005. Introduction. In After Parsons. A Theory of Social Action for the Twenty-First Century, ed. R.C.  Fox, V.M.  Lidz, and H.J.  Bershady, 1–30. New  York: Russell Sage Foundation. Giddings, Franklin H. 1888. The Sociological Character of Political Economy. Publications of the American Economic Association 3 (1): 29–47. Giddings, Framklin H. 1904. The Concepts and Methods of Sociology. Science 20: 624–634. Goudsblom, Johan, and Johan Heilbron. 2015. Sociology, History Of. In International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 989–995. Amsterdam: Elsevier. Gouldner, Alvin W. 1970. The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology. New  York: Basic Books. Gross, George R. 1970. The Organizational Set: A Study of Sociology Departments. The American Sociologist 5 (1): 25–29. Haller, Max. 2019. A Global Scientific Community? Universalism Versus National Parochialism in Patterns of International Communication in Sociology. International Journal of Sociology 49 (5–6): 342–369. Harvey, Lee. 1986. The Myths of the Chicago School. Quality and Quantity 20 (2–3): 191–217. ———. 1987. The Nature of ‘Schools’ in the Sociology of Knowledge: The Case of the ‘Chicago School’. Sociological Review 35 (2): 245–278. Haveman, Heather A. 2009. The Columbia School and the Study of Bureaucracies. Oxford University Press.

3  Sociology as an Academic Discipline 

61

Heckman, James J., and Sidharth Moktan. 2020. Publishing and Promotion in Economics: The Tyranny of the Top Five. Journal of Economic Literature 58 (2): 419–470. Hiller, Harry H. 1979. Universality of Science and the Question of National Sociologies. The American Sociologist 14 (3): 124–135. Hodgson, Geoffrey M. 2005. ‘The Present Position of Economics’ by Alfred Marshall. Journal of Institutional Economics 1 (1): 121–137. Hokka, Johanna. 2019. What Counts as ‘Good Sociology’? Conflicting Discourses on Legitimate Sociology in Finland and Sweden. Acta Sociologica 62 (4): 357–371. House, Floyd N. 1936. The Development of Sociology. New  York/London: McGraw-Hill. House, James S. 2019. The Culminating Crisis of American Sociology and Its Role in Social Science and Public Policy: An Autobiographical, Multimethod, Reflexive Perspective. Annual Review of Sociology 45 (1): 1–26. Jeřábek, Hynek. 2001. Paul Lazarsfeld — The Founder of Modern Empirical Sociology: A Research Biography. International Journal of Public Opinion Research 13 (3): 229–244. Johnston, Barry. 1998. The Contemporary Crisis and the Social Relations Department at Harvard: A Case Study in Hegemony and Disintegration. The American Sociologist 29 (3): 26–42. Kinloch, Graham C. 2013. The Sociological Study of South Africa: An Introduction. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Lamont, Michèle. 2000. Comparing French and American Sociology. The Tocqueville Review 21 (1): 109–122. ———. 2009. How Professors Think: Inside the Curious World of Academic Judgment. Harvard, MA: Harvard University Press. Lipset, Seymour M. 1955. The Department of Sociology. In History of the Faculty of Political Science, Columbia University, ed. R.G. Hoxie, 284–303. New York: Columbia University Press. Lipset, Seymour Martin. 1994. The State of American Sociology. Sociological Forum 9 (2): 199–220. Lutter, Mark, and Martin Schröder. 2016. Who Becomes a Tenured Professor, and Why? Panel Data Evidence from German Sociology, 1980–2013. Research Policy 45: 999–1013. Mucha, Janusz. 1998. Institutionalization of Sociology. Polish Sociological Review 123: 235–246.

62 

P. Korom

Park, Robert E. 1967. The City: Suggestions for the Investigation of Human Behavior in the Urban Environment. In The City, ed. R.E.  Park and E.W. Burgess, 1–46. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Park, Robert E., and Ernest Burgess. 1921. Introduction to the Science of Sociology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Platt, Jennifer. 2016. Recent ASA Presidents and ‘Top’ Journals: Observed Publication Patterns, Alleged Cartels and Varying Careers. The American Sociologist 47 (4): 459–485. Rodrik, Dani. 2016. Economics Rules: The Rights and Wrongs of the Dismal Science. New York: Norton. Schwemmer, Carsten, and Oliver Wieczorek. 2020. The Methodological Divide of Sociology: Evidence from Two Decades of Journal Publications. Sociology 54 (1): 3–21. Shils, Edward. 1970. Tradition, Ecology, and Institution in the History of Sociology. Daedalus 99 (4): 760–825. ———. 1980. The Calling of Sociology and Other Essays on the Pursuit of Learning. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Sica, Alan. 2012. Book as Totem: The ‘Green Bible’ One More Time. Contemporary Sociology: A Journal of Reviews 41 (5): 557–560. Siegfried, John J. 1998. Who Is a Member of the AEA? Journal of Economic Perspectives 12 (2): 211–222. Small, Albion W. 1916. Fifty Years of Sociology in the United States (1865–1915). American Journal of Sociology 21 (6): 721–864. Smelser, Neil J. 1981. On Collaborating with Talcott Parsons: Some Intellectual and Personal Notes. Sociological Inquiry 51 (3–4): 143–153. Stark, David. 2009. The Sense of Dissonance: Accounts of Worth in Economic Life. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Stichweh, Rudolf. 1992. The Sociology of Scientific Disciplines: On the Genesis and Stability of the Disciplinary Structure of Modern Science. Science in Context 5 (1): 3–15. Stinchcombe, Arthur L. 1994. Disintegrated Disciplines and the Future of Sociology. Sociological Forum 9 (2): 279–291. Tiryakian, Edward A. 1977. The Significance of Schools in the Development of Sociology. In Contemporary Issues in Theory and Research: A Metasociological Perspective, ed. W.E.  Snizek, E.R.  Fuhrman, and M.K.  Miller, 211–233. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Turner, Jonathan H. 1988. The Mixed Legacy of the Chicago School of Sociology. Sociological Perspectives 31 (3): 325–338.

3  Sociology as an Academic Discipline 

63

———. 2006. American Sociology in Chaos: Differentiation without Integration. The American Sociologist 37 (2): 15–29. Turner, Stephen. 2014. American Sociology: From Pre-Disciplinary to PostNormal. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Turner, Stephen P., and Jonathan H. Turner. 1990. The Impossible Science: An Institutional Analysis of American Sociology. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications. Vanderstraeten, Raf, and Kaat Louckx. 2018. Sociology in Belgium: A Sociological History. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Vidich, Arthur J. 2000. The Department of Social Relations and ‘Systems Theory’ at Harvard: 1948–50. International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society 13 (4): 607–648. Wallace, Robert W. 1992. Starting a Department and Getting It under Way: Sociology at Columbia University, 1891–1914. Minerva 30 (4): 497–512. Wallerstein, Immanuel. 2003. Anthropology, Sociology, and Other Dubious Disciplines. Current Anthropology 44 (4): 453–465. Warren, Jean-Philippe. 2014. The End of National Sociological Traditions? The Fates of Sociology in English Canada and French Quebec in a Globalized Field of Science. International Journal of Canadian Studies 50: 87–108. Weakliem, David L., Gordon Gauchat, and Bradley R.E.  Wright. 2012. Sociological Stratification: Change and Continuity in the Distribution of Departmental Prestige, 1965–2007. The American Sociologist 43 (3): 310–327. Whitley, Richard. 1984. The Intellectual and Social Organization of the Sciences. Oxford; New York: Clarendon Press/Oxford University Press. Wilder, Esther Isabelle, and William H. Walters. 2020. Characteristics of the Most Productive U.S. Sociology Faculty and Departments: Institution Type, Gender, and Journal Concentration. The Sociological Quarterly 62 (3): 594–622. Wolfe, Alan. 1992. Weak Sociology/Strong Sociologists: Consequences of a Field in Turmoil. Social Research 59 (4): 759–779. Young, Cristobal. 2009. The Emergence of Sociology from Political Economy in the United States: 1890 to 1940. Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 45 (2): 91–116.

4 Identifying the Elite

At the Peak of the Eminence Hierarchy There is abundant evidence that stratification exists within all scientific disciplines—that is, the allocation of symbolic recognition in the form of citations, honors, or prizes to individual scientists is highly unequal (Cole and Cole 1973). Although “particularistic” elements (e.g., having powerful mentors) may have an impact (see Chap. 7), the work produced by scientists, and the opinions of their work held by the scientific community, are by far the most important determinants of a scientist’s status. Most recent large-scale evidence, based on publication and longitudinal career data of virtually all individuals working in Germany’s sociology departments, buttresses the meritocratic character of stratification in science. The study’s main finding is that the number of publications that have undergone a double-blind peer review based on “universalistic” criteria is the best predictor of tenure (Lutter and Schröder 2016). At the very top of a discipline’s prestige hierarchy, one finds what I have described in the preceding chapters as the “elite,” although the

Parts of this chapter were previously published in Korom (2018, 2020).

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. Korom, Star Sociologists, Socio-Historical Studies of the Social and Human Sciences, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13938-3_4

65

66 

P. Korom

terminology used for referring to this small group of leading scholars varies considerably in the literature. Some use the phrase “most eminent scholars,” others speak of “academic celebrities” to emphasize the cultlike aspects of academic prominence (Walsh and Lehmann 2019); others again find “academic superstars” to be a more befitting term (Heesen 2017). To avoid terminological confusion, this chapter mostly uses the “elite” concept that has a long, although checkered, history in sociology. One research tradition in elite research goes back to Vilfredo Pareto (1848–1923), who was the first to use the term for small groups of people standing out from the overall population because of their superior achievements.1 In the same vein, it is assumed here that the elite in science are bestowed with prestige by knowledgeable peers because of their (perceived) outstanding contributions to the body of disciplinary wisdom. My focus is not on the “power elite” within academia so much as on those scholars whose work finds broad and enthusiastic acceptance within the scientific community and those who constitute the “prestige elite.” There is an important relational aspect to prestige (Goode 1978): what has been achieved also has to be recognized by others as achievement. Prestige rests in distinction in the eyes of others. Any prize winner, for example, depends on the judgment of peers concerning the quality of his or her work. High prestige is, therefore, only achieved if granted by (significant) others, and for as long as they continue to do so. Elite status in the sciences is not set in stone but changes with the ebb and flow of collegial recognition. Although prestige in academia hinges in general on the ongoing evaluation of peers and the wider community, it does so more in some disciplines compared to others. The variations inversely relate to a discipline’s certainty of being considered a “science,” as Rebecca Goldstein points out:

 Pareto suggested a highly formal elite definition: “Let us assume that in every branch of human activity each individual is given an index which stands as a sign of his capacity, very much the way grades are given in the various subjects in examinations in school. The highest type of lawyer, for instance, will be given 10. The man who does not get a client will be given [a] 1—reserving zero for the man who is an out-and-out idiot. … So let us make a class of the people who have the highest indices in their branch of activity, and to that class give the name … of élite” (Pareto 1935: 1423). 1

4  Identifying the Elite 

67

Thus at one end of the spectrum occupied by sociologists and professors of literature, where there is uncertainty as to how to discover the facts, the nature of the facts to be discovered, and whether indeed there are any facts at all, all attention is focused on one’s peers, whose regard is the sole criterion for professional success. Great pains are taken in the development of the impressive persona. … At the other end, where, as the mathematicians themselves are fond of pointing out, “a proof is a proof,” no concern need be given to making oneself acceptable to others; and as a rule none whatsoever is given (Goldstein 1983: 202).

At least three characteristics distinguish the few members of the prestige elite from the vast majority in science: First, their writings attract a disproportionate amount of attention from their peers. Attention can be quantified in various ways (e.g., citations of their publications or awards received—that is, high peer attention). Second, their contributed key ideas do not quickly fall into oblivion but are discussed by at least more than one generation of scholars (i.e., enduring peer attention). Third, success can result in multiple forms of acknowledgment: elite scholars are not only highly cited but are also given honors such as memberships in different academies (i.e. recognition within the wider academic community). Methodologies used for identifying prestige elites in sociology must take into proper account the special character of sociology, as discussed in the previous chapter. Sociology recognizes two main modes of scholarly production: journal articles and books (primarily monographs). Sociologists’ preferences with regard to what they read and where they publish are often based on their beliefs concerning which intellectual enterprise they consider sociology to belong to: journals are considered as having a “scientific” orientation and the monographic literature as having a “humanistic” one. Yet they coexist in sociology and both need to be considered. Further, there is no single interpretation of the discipline’s mission, much less a shared theoretical approach to, or a dominant empirical paradigm for, the study of the social. Therefore, sociology clusters into various specialties that very likely harbor their own elite. What is more, the discipline clearly develops into nation-specific knowledge communities, with few scholars succeeding in bridging the internal divides. These divides at

68 

P. Korom

the core of the discipline very likely have an impact on the structure of the elite within it and, therefore, need to be considered in any citation study trying to identify prestige elites in sociology. In the next section I present two approaches to citation analysis that are not intended to rank scholars hierarchically but rather to detect elite status. Numbers are treated as orders of magnitude. Similar to the approach adopted by economists who select the “top 1%” in the wealth distribution to identify “the rich” (Piketty 2014), my intention is to locate the “prestige elite” by exploring the topmost stratum of citation distributions.

 wo Methodological Pathways T for Identifying Elites  itations in Sociology—The Worst Proxy for Scholarly C Recognition, Except for All the Others2 Differences in the contributions to the advancement of knowledge are difficult to judge because there exist divergent theoretical views on which criteria should be applied to identify outstanding achievements (Deutsch et al. 1986). Peer review has, since the earliest studies of eminence, been the primary method for identifying exceptional scientific achievements (see Chap. 2) and it remains the main method of determining the allocation of the most prestigious awards. Competent peers decide, for example, to whom the Nobel Prize should be given. However, peer judgments are not always readily available. Rather than approaching experts to provide lists of the most widely recognized workers in their field, eminence researchers often rely on these awards to act as indicators of outstanding accomplishment. In the case of sociology, there are a considerable number of international awards (e.g., the European Amalfi Prize, the Holberg Prize, and the Princess of Asturias Award). Although the selection is always made by a jury that includes distinguished social scientists, the nomination  This is a variation of Winston Churchill’s dictum that “democracy is the worst system of government, except for all the others.” 2

4  Identifying the Elite 

69

processes, prize amounts, award categories (e.g., life work, past research), and boundaries of eligibility vary enormously (Schögler 2015). Given the fact that no prize has yet reached the elevated reputation and public awareness of the Nobel Prize (in economics), or the Canadian Fields Medal (in mathematics), and that most sociological awards have been established relatively recently, these manifestations of scholarly recognition do not appear to be the best indicator of elite status in sociology. Another high honor that a scientist can receive is being elected a member of the Academy of Sciences (Cao 2004). Academies can function simply as a means of awarding honorifics (e.g., Royal Society of London, National Academy of Sciences), or honorifics in combination with research activity (e.g., French Academy of Sciences). In general, only academy members can submit formal nominations and candidates are admitted only after having passed a vetting process. Given the high number of social science fellows and foreign or honorary members in academies around the world, however, being elected to one or many may only serve as another imprecise indication of belonging to the academic elite. The only remaining indicator for outstanding quality is citation counts. What do citations exactly stand for?3 Citation counts are essentially a measure of the value of scientific work: “A highly cited work is one that has been found to be useful by a relatively large number of people” (Garfield 1979: 246). Furthermore, citations inform us about how much attention is paid to a scholar’s work. Finally, citations can report about the perceived “quality” of a researcher’s work if it is empirically shown that citations correlate with other types of scientific recognition (Gingras 2016). Even though it is the case that research is cited for other reasons than quality, this argument becomes difficult to maintain when leveled at citation elites (Parker et al. 2010). Extraordinarily high citation counts have frequently been shown to go hand in hand with the high prestige granted by peers. The citation-based approaches developed subsequently are tailored to the idiosyncratic character of sociology described in Chap. 3. The first considers various genres of literature and concentrates on two shorter time windows—the 1970s and 2010s. The second covers a longer time  For a comprehensive overview of the various motivations of citers, see Bornmann and Daniel (2008). 3

70 

P. Korom

span (1970–2010) and uses as research material journals that stand for unique national or specialist sociologies. In a final step, I validate all results by, among other things, cross-checking whether the identified elite members received at least one prestigious award or were elected to at least one academy.

 tudy I: Eminence in the Monographic S and Journal Literature This first study builds on a newly generated text quantity of approximately 49,000 pages which encompasses four different genres of literature: encyclopedias, textbooks, handbooks, and journals. There are basically two rationales underlying the selection of text sources for Study I: First, given the fact that sociologists “attend to and cite leading books at even higher rates than they cite leading articles” (Sullivan 1994: 171), more weight was given to monographs than to journal literature. Second, extraordinarily high citation counts in each genre of literature indicate distinct variants of eminence. Citations in textbooks and encyclopedias that provide authoritative statements on the discipline reveal whether someone has contributed “certified knowledge” that has been approved by at least one generation of scholars. Using Stephen Cole’s nomenclature (Cole 1983), one can further argue that encyclopedias and textbooks stand for the “core” (i.e., fully evaluated ideas) while journals represent the “research frontiers” of a discipline (where not all contributions will turn out to be significant). Handbooks are situated in between the core and various research frontiers. Given this variety, the design of Study I covers the relatively stable core of a discipline as well as the (inner and outer) periphery marked by a more rapid turnover of dominant ideas. The text corpus used consists of 10 textbooks, two handbooks, two encyclopedias, and five “top” journals from either the 1970s or the 2010s (see Table 4.1). The following provides an overview of the data sources I reviewed: • Journals: The present sample includes two “major” journals of U.S. sociology, American Sociological Review (ASR) and American Journal of Sociology (AJS), and one slightly less highly ranked, Social Forces (SF).

4  Identifying the Elite 

71

Table 4.1  The text corpus for Study I, consisting of textbooks, handbooks and encyclopedias 1970s Textbooks Bierstedt, Robert. (1974). The Social Order: An Introduction to Sociology. New York: McGraw-Hill. Broom, Leonard, and Philip Selznick. (1973). Principles of Sociology. A Text with Adapted Readings. New York: Harper & Row. Horton, Paul B., and Chester L. Hunt. (1964). Sociology. New York: McGraw-Hill. Inkeles, Alex. (1964). What Is Sociology? An Introduction to the Discipline and Profession. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Lenski, Gerhard. (1970). Human Societies: A Macrolevel Introduction to Society. New York: McGraw-Hill.

2010s Giddens, Anthony, and Philip W. Sutton. (2009). Sociology. Cambridge: Polity Press. Henslin, James M. (2015). Essentials of Sociology: A Down-To-Earth Approach. Boston: Pearson. Kendall, Diana E. (2011). Sociology in Our Times. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/ Cengage Learning. Macionis, John J. (2012). Sociology. Boston: Pearson. Schaefer, Richard T. (2013). Sociology: A Brief Introduction. Dubuque, Iowa: McGraw-Hill.

Handbooks Faris, Robert E. L. (1964). Handbook of Calhoun, Craig J., Chris Rojek, and Modern Sociology. Chicago: Rand Bryan S. Turner, eds. (2005). The SAGE McNally and Co. Handbook of Sociology. London: Sage Publications. Encyclopedias Sills, David L., ed. (1968). International Wright, James D., ed. (2015). Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. International Encyclopedia of the New York: Macmillan and Free Press. Social & Behavioral Sciences. Amsterdam: Elsevier.

Also considered were the British Journal of Sociology (BJS) and the European Journal of Sociology (EJS), two European generalist journals, which already were firmly established during the 1970s. For each journal, every research article published in all volumes for the years 1970 and 2010 was considered—a total of 995 articles.4 • Textbooks: As it is impossible to select the most widely used textbooks based on sales figures because of a lack of information, this study  Excluded from the analysis were journal contributions that do not adhere to the usual standards of referencing, such as correspondence, editorials, obituaries, and book reviews. 4

72 

P. Korom

s­ettled on an alternative proxy for sales. The digital tool WorldCat specifies the number of libraries in which a certain textbook is available; this became the main selection criterion here. • Handbooks: Contributors to the SAGE Handbook of Sociology (Calhoun et al. 2005) are clearly more international than the mostly U.S. authors who provided chapters in the Handbook of Modern Sociology (Faris 1964). It is, however, far from clear whether this indicates a bias because sociological research during the 1970s was in fact predominantly conducted by scholars from the United States (MacLeod 1970). • Encyclopedias: As encyclopedias devoted purely to sociology, such as the Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology (2007), have become available only comparatively recently, it was decided to include the 1968 and 2015 editions of the International Encyclopedia of the Social (and Behavioral) Sciences, both of which cover all the social sciences. The encyclopedic material alone constitutes a large text corpus. Sills (1968) contains 1716 articles by 1505 contributors, while Wright (2015) features approximately 4000 entries by 4945 contributors.5 Data were collected from bibliographies (not the body of the text) without the use of automated retrieval routines.6 Depending on the style of referencing, this study also considered footnotes or endnotes. Thus, what is counted are not citations but the number of references to a given author in all bibliographies. The data were weighted in consideration of multi-authorship. Single authors were given one point, two joint authors one-half of a point each, three authors one-third of a point each, and so on.7 Adding up reference counts across sources from an unbalanced text corpus would give disproportionate weight to encyclopedias containing considerably more bibliographies than other sources (e.g., journals). Therefore, scores were normalized for all scholars for each source  Biographical entries were excluded because they would have heavily biased the results.  There are several reasons for why it makes little sense to apply automated retrieval routines. First, referenced names (e.g., Hauser, Wright) may refer to different individuals. Second, the reference styles differ hugely across time and text sources, which makes even flexible reference search strategies error-prone. In general, working with bibliographies rather than text citations allows for more rapid identification of authors. 7  This weighting procedure was not applied again in Study II as a comparison between weighted and unweighted data revealed only minor differences overall. 5 6

4  Identifying the Elite 

73

s­eparately. The range of reference counts varies within each literature genre (e.g., handbooks) between 0 and 1, while reference counts aggregated across all four literature genres vary between 0 and 4. To identify the prestige elite, sociologists were ranked in Fig. 4.1 by reference scores aggregated across the four different literature genres. The figure suggests that Talcott Parsons was still by far the most eminent sociologist during the 1970s. Max Weber and Robert K. Merton ranked second and third, respectively, and were closely followed by Émile Durkheim and Seymour M. Lipset. James S. Coleman, Kingsley Davis, and Peter M. Blau were marked by similar outstandingly high scores. The ranking of these top-ranked scholars changes slightly if unweighted citation data are considered. Disregarding coauthors, Lipset ranks second and Merton third. Additionally, Otis D.  Duncan and Paul F.  Lazarsfeld, who were both known for empirical contributions written jointly with collaborators, enter the uppermost ranks. During the 2010s, Pierre Bourdieu, Erving Goffman, Anthony Giddens, Manuel Castells, Michel Foucault, and Charles Tilly joined the small group of highly influential scholars. Apart from Émile Durkheim and Max Weber, only two twentieth-century scholars (i.e., Merton and Parsons) remained among the top 10 between 1970 and 2010 and only about one-fifth remained among the top 50 scholars. It also becomes obvious, however, that the idea of a whole new generation of eminent scholars supplanting an older one is not the case in sociology. Although the average “half-life” of the prestige elite in sociology appears to be shorter than half a century, there are also some scholars (e.g., Weber or Parsons) whose eminence was, and is, enduring. Another major insight that can be gleaned from the ranking is the meteoric rise of Bourdieu and the precipitate decline, amounting to a quasi-eclipse, of Lipset. Both extraordinary cases deserve further investigation and are therefore analyzed in depth in Chap. 6. What is further noteworthy is that if one does not introduce any arbitrary convention as to whom to count as a sociologist but considers all scholars even if they might not call themselves sociologists, then a significant number of anthropologists (e.g., George P. Murdock during the 1970s) or philosophers (e.g., Jürgen Habermas during the 2010s) turn up in the rankings, not to mention psychoanalysts (e.g. Sigmund Freud, ranked tenth in the

74 

P. Korom

Fig. 4.1  Top-ranked 50 sociologists in the 1970s and 2010s, according to aggregated reference scores. Early theorists who died before World War I, such as Herbert Spencer or Karl Marx, were excluded from the survey

4  Identifying the Elite 

75

1970s). This rather unexpected finding clearly underlines the disciplinary openness of sociology. In Fig. 4.2 the aggregate score is decomposed by literature genres. All scores are assigned to text source-specific quintiles. To give two illustrative examples: If the four different literature genres are analyzed, Talcott Parsons ranked first in each separate analysis and thus always occupied a rank situated in the first quintile of the four citation distributions analyzed. During the 1970s Kingsley Davis, on the other hand, shows two (of four) citation scores that are assigned to the second quintile in the encyclopedia and journal-specific distribution. For the 1970s, the figure points to the comparatively low citation scores of anthropologists (e.g., George  Murdock, Clyde  Kluckhohn, Margaret Mead, and Alfred Kroeber) in the journal-specific distribution. This finding suggests that peer-reviewed journal articles tended to promote primarily disciplinary knowledge at a time when non-sociologists exerted considerable influence on the discipline. The opposite can be seen in the case of the International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (Sills 1968), which covered the state of knowledge in many different disciplines, among them anthropology and economics. Further, it is also interesting to note that sociologists (e.g., Paul DiMaggio, Andrew Abbott, even Pierre Bourdieu) have not (yet) achieved textbook eminence. This finding supports the argument that sociology textbooks of the time featured theoretical perspectives on the discipline that have tended to overlook the work of leading contemporary key thinkers (Manza et al. 2010). In line with expectations, it is especially the uppermost ranked scholars who were likely to score high in all four literature genres. If one delves deeper, some further interesting results emerge. Although Parsons was clearly one of the most influential sociologists during the 1970s across the four literature genres, Merton was more present in encyclopedias and journals during the 2010s. How can this be explained? Merton is. like Foucault, a theorist whose influence extended (and continues to extend) far beyond sociology. As has been shown previously, some of Merton’s concepts were commonly applied in different social science ­disciplines such as communications research, urban studies, industrial relations, and linguistics (Garfield 1980). The multidisciplinary International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences (Wright 2015)

76 

P. Korom

Fig. 4.2  Top-ranked 50 sociologists: Disaggregated and weighted references score. Quintiles were calculated separately for each literature genre

4  Identifying the Elite 

77

precisely captures this widespread influence. The decreasing importance of Parsons in the world of journals, on the other hand, stemmed mostly from the empirical orientation of contributing authors. Currently, some journal articles still base their empirical research on some of Merton’s concepts, but almost none of them refers to Parsons, which simply reflects that mainstream sociology prefers data over theory.

 tudy II: Eminence in the Pluralistic World S of Academic Journals All analyses of sociology, regardless of whether they are personal accounts of how (eminent) researchers experienced the internal structure of sociology (e.g., Lipset 1994) or statistical analyses of citation patterns (e.g., Crane and Small 1992), reveal the picture of a highly fragmented discipline. Put metaphorically: Much like viewing mountain ranges from a single peak on a cold foggy morning, we can see other peaks but not the valleys connecting them. As such, while we know our own mountain well (having worked hard to scale it), we have little sense of the general topography that links our mountains to the broader sociological landscape (Moody and Light 2006: 67).

Given this background, it appears warranted to investigate whether there are scholars whose ideas disperse across the many internal divides. Past research has not considered sociology’s balkanized intellectual structure at all, preferring to measure the overall citation impact of scholars (e.g., Cronin et al. 1997; Oromaner 1980). However, are aggregated citation counts really the best available proxy for eminence? The second study’s focus was not on the depth but on the width of the imprint scholars leave on the discipline. Even though the most cited authors are likely to have impacted the largest number of different fields within the discipline, one does not necessarily imply the other. High-­ impact scholars may dominate a few core specialties, where the bulk of sociologists work, but may not be read in most of the peripheral

78 

P. Korom

specialties. In turn, the impact of some most-cited scholars may be limited to a few dominant national sociologies (e.g., U.S. sociology). To illustrate the breadth of a scholar’s intellectual imprint on the field of sociology, a global view is complemented by more disaggregated ones that trace impacts on different levels and allow for questions such as: Is a scholar’s impact high across the French-, German-, and Spanish-speaking sociologies? Does a scholar impact not only theorists but also empirical researchers? The prestige elite identified in the second study design consists, thus, not necessarily of only the most-cited scholars but also scholars who receive the broadest attention and whose ideas diffuse the most broadly within sociology. Given sociology’s fractured structure, it is likely one will find various types of citation elites. Because the discipline and its practitioners do not share characteristics that provide a sense of unity, coherence, and common tradition, sociology clusters into a variety of specialties that each harbors its own elite. For example, Travis Hirschi, the most-cited scholar in criminology throughout the world, turns out to be a sociologist who has not significantly impacted the discipline’s many other specialties. I therefore refer to scholars whose impact spans only a few specialties within sociology as the “specialist elite.” Furthermore, sociology develops effectively within nation-specific knowledge communities. A consequence of the predominance of nation-­ states is that each nation has a distinct elite, which is best demonstrated by the case of Niklas Luhmann. He continues to be considered one of the most distinguished sociologists in Germany. Although his work has been translated into English, few of his ideas circulate, for example, within U.S. sociology. Thus, it is not surprising that a sociologist in the United States starts his review of Luhmann’s monumental book, Theory and Society, with the ironic remark: “Who now reads Luhmann?” (Khan 2014: 49). A nation’s most cited scholars will henceforth be referred to as its “national elite.” Yet stark internal divisions can be overcome, as illustrated by the examples of Bourdieu and Merton. Bourdieusian and Mertonian paradigms commonly are used in very different (national) fields of sociology. These scholars with global influence have been dubbed “core elite.”

4  Identifying the Elite 

79

Study II focuses on 42 journals that either represent a national or a specialist sociology (see Table 4.2). Of the selected journals, 20 stand for a national sociology because they were published by a national association (e.g., Polish Sociological Review), are an association’s official flagship journal (e.g. Sociology) or feature articles in national languages (e.g., Zeitschrift für Soziologie). In many cases, at least two of these three criteria apply. Another 22 selected journals stand for specialist sociologies because their official mission statements invite authors to send in contributions to a special subfield of sociology. To give two examples: According to the official homepages, the journal Research in Social Stratification and Mobility features “the highest, most innovative research on issues of social inequality,” and the editors of Gender and Society emphasize that the journal is dedicated to “gender and gendered processes in interactions, organizations, societies, and global and transnational spaces.” As national sociologies (e.g., German sociology) or specialized fields of sociology (e.g., sociology of gender) are internally heterogeneous, it was decided to select two journals that, if jointly analyzed, allowed for a broader investigation. Cultural sociology, for example, is covered by considering the journals Cultural Sociology and Poetics. The former leans toward qualitative approaches and the latter toward quantitative approaches. As can be seen from Table  4.2, the selected journals cover different time spans. Whenever possible, the analysis goes back to the 1970s. The complete journal content covered not only includes research papers but also other content (e.g., book reviews or corrections). In total, the analysis considers 82,045 documents. To analyze the journals the computerized Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI)8 was used; it is a database that does not contain the full text of journal articles but rather, among other things, the complete list of references contained therein. These reference lists were also used in Study I. It is, however, an oddity of the SSCI that only the first author of a cited publication is identified. For elite identification purposes, Study II searched for the most referenced authors in all 82,045 documents considered. The creation of any final ranking of top scholars necessitates choosing references that separate  The Social Sciences Citation Index can be accessed online through the Web of Science website.

8

80 

P. Korom

Table 4.2 Forty-two journals representing either a national or a specialist sociology Country or specialism

Type

Journal

Australia

National

Australia

National

Canada

National

Canada

National

China

National

China

National

France

National

France

National

Germany

National

Germany

National

Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology Journal of Sociology Canadian Journal of Sociology Canadian Review of Sociology Chinese Sociological Review Chinese Sociology and Anthropology Revue Française de Sociologie Sociologie du Travail Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie Zeitschrift für Soziologie Revista Española de Investigaciones Sociológicas Revista Internacional de Sociología Acta Sociologica

Hispanosphere National

Hispanosphere National

Nordic countries Nordic countries Poland

National

Poland

National

National National

Sociologisk Forskning Polish Sociological Review Studia Socjologiczne

Coverage Coverage No. of first year last year documents 1970

1997

2111

1998

2019

1238

1975

2019

2882

2008

2019

374

2011

2019

147

1970

2011

1021

1970

2019

3443

1970

2019

3160

1972

2019

6170

1972

2019

1472

2008

2019

523

2007

2019

564

1970

2019

2267

1974

2019

1788

2005

2019

496

2008

2012

246 (continued)

81

4  Identifying the Elite  Table 4.2 (continued) Country or specialism

Coverage Coverage No. of first year last year documents

Type

Journal

United Kingdom United Kingdom USA

National

British Journal of Sociology Sociology

1970

2019

4819

1970

2019

6128

1970

2019

11055

USA

National

American Journal of Sociology American Sociological Review

1970

2019

3939

Comparative soc.

Specialist Comparative Studies in Society and History Specialist International Journal of Comparative Sociology Specialist Cultural Sociology Specialist Poetics Specialist Economy and Society Specialist Socio-Economic Review Specialist Gender & Society Specialist Men and Masculinities Specialist Sociological Methodology Specialist Sociological Methods & Research Specialist Journal of Political & Military Sociology Specialist Politics & Society Specialist Qualitative Sociology Specialist Symbolic Interaction

1970

2019

2495

1970

2019

1935

2007 1992 1972

2019 2019 2019

592 422 1350

2009

2019

357

1987 2006

2019 2019

2669 760

1985

2019

386

1973

2019

1174

1973

2006

1314

1970 2008

2019 2019

973 370

1984

2019

1305

Comparative soc.

Culture Culture Economics Economics Gender Gender Methodology Methodology

Politics

Politics Qualititative Qualititative

National National

(continued)

82 

P. Korom

Table 4.2 (continued) Country or specialism Religion

Religion Stratification

Stratification

Theory Theory Work Work

Type

Journal

Specialist Journal for Scientific Study of Religion Specialist Sociology of Religion Specialist European Sociological Review Specialist Research in Social Stratification and Mobility Specialist Sociological Theory Specialist Theory and Society Specialist Work and Occupations Specialist Work, Employment and Society

Coverage Coverage No. of first year last year documents 1970

2019

2790

1993

2019

1523

1993

2019

1202

2010

2019

329

1994 1974 1982

2019 2019 2019

498 1791 1320

1991

2019

2647

the elite from other widely referenced scholars. Any cut-off point is necessarily an arbitrary choice. It was decided to include 70 scholars and thus to settle on a threshold of 898 references. To facilitate the reading of Table 4.3, the following example is given: In the reference sections of the analysed documents, the cited author name “Bourdieu, P.” or “Bourdieu, Pierre” or “Bourdieu” appears 9853 times. To better understand whether the mere quantity of references indicates the breadth of diffusion of a scholar’s ideas across the discipline, a three-­ dimensional cube was used. The x-dimension of the cube reflects the number of top quintile (top 20%) memberships in national sociologies, the y-dimension indicates the number of top quintile (top 20%) memberships in specialist sociologies, and the z-axis represents the total number of references in the 42 sociology journals considered. All 70 scholars

4  Identifying the Elite 

83

Table 4.3  Most referenced authors in 42 selected sociology journals Rank Author

References Rank Author

References

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

Bourdieu, Pierre Weber, Max Parsons, Talcott Durkheim, Emile Goffman, Erving Foucault, Michel Giddens, Anthony Marx, Karl Luhmann, Niklas Habermas, Jürgen Coleman, James S. Goldthorpe, John H. Tilly, Charles Blau, Peter M. Beck, Ulrich Merton, Robert K. DiMaggio, Paul J. Granovetter, Mark S. Becker, Gary S.

9853 6135 4011 3939 3870 3773 3722 3203 3058 3038 2606 2522

36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47

Meyer, John W. McAdam, Doug Inglehart, Ronald F. Lamont, Michèle Abbott, Andrew Burawoy, Michael Skocpol, Theda Breen, Richard Hochschild, Arlie R. Boudon, Raymond Elias, Norbert Wright, Erik O.

1439 1408 1407 1369 1333 1319 1298 1297 1267 1262 1257 1257

2509 2444 2402 2370 2204 2103

48 49 50 51 52 53

Goodman, Leo A. Burt, Ronald S. Gouldner, Alvin W. Kalleberg, Arne L. Castells, Manuel Blalock, Hubert M.

1253 1201 1178 1148 1112 1105

2055

54

1100

Connell, Raewyn W. Collins, Randall Latour, Bruno Berger, Peter L. Lipset, Seymour M. Simmel, Georg Esping-Andersen, Gøsta Stark, Rodney Becker, Howard S. Duncan, Otis D. Portes, Alejandro Alexander, Jeffrey C. Bauman, Zygmunt Putnam, Robert D. Blossfeld, Hans-Peter Erikson, Robert

2029

55

Wallerstein, Immanuel M. Massey, Douglas S.

1838 1829 1827 1827 1785 1653

56 57 58 59 60 61

Callon, Michel Geertz, Clifford Mills, C. Wright Snow, David A. Elster, Jon England, Paula S.

1060 1049 1040 1038 1029 1029

1638 1614 1558 1544 1537

62 63 64 65 66

Garfinkel, Harold Rose, Nikolas Hall, Stuart Hauser, Robert M. Reskin, Barbara F.

982 979 975 945 941

1494 1451 1449

67 68 69

Mead, George H. Blumer, Herbert Boltanski, Luc

911 908 902

1445

70

Korpi, Walter

898

13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35

1067

84 

P. Korom

Fig. 4.3  A three-dimensional depiction of the prestige elite. The arabic numbers stand for authors as follows—1 for Pierre Bourdieu, 2 for Max Weber, 3 for Talcott Parsons, and so forth (see Table 4.3). Pierre Bourdieu is located at the upper-right corner because of an extraordinarily high number of references and the fact that he belongs to the top 20% in 10 national sociologies and 9 (out of 11) specialist sociologies

were projected onto this cube. The numbers in Fig. 4.3 stand for a scholar’s rank in the overall distribution of references (see Table 4.3). It can be inferred from the figure that the mere quantity of references is a rough proxy for the breadth of reception of an author’s work, especially if the author belongs to one of the most-cited scholars’ category. The relationship is, however, far from perfect, which is best demonstrated by the prominent cases of Talcott Parsons (rank 3) and John Goldthorpe (rank 12). One would expect to find both in the cube’s upper-right corner given their overall impact. They are rather, however, situated in the middle (Parsons) and lower-left corner (Goldthorpe). This suggests that Parsons has lost his leading status in many specialties while Goldthorpe continues to be accorded a high degree of recognition in only a few nations (e.g., Nordic countries, U.K.) and specialties (i.e., Stratification,

4  Identifying the Elite 

85

Work). The lower the rank, the more unpredictable the position of a scholar in the cube. Paul DiMaggio and Raewyn Connell, for example, were ranked seventeenth and twentieth, respectively, in the overall distribution of references. Nevertheless, in the cube they have marginal positions because both are marked by a narrow reception in sociology as compared to other top scholars. Figure 4.3 further reveals that only 14 scholars have achieved a global and discipline-wide impact (“core elite”), four have succeeded in overcoming national boundaries (“national elite”), and the ideas of another 11 have gained recognition in many diverse subfields of the discipline (“specialist elite”) (see Table 4.4). Aside from this handful of scholars, the impact of all other influential thinkers in sociology tends to stay limited in scope; national and interdisciplinary boundaries are rarely transcended. For each elite category, Table 4.4 lists one of the scholar’s publications that is the most referenced in all 42 sociology journals. Jointly considered are all editions and translations of this key contribution. The table reveals that the percentage of references made to the most influential contribution varies greatly between 7.8% and 41%. In the case of Gøsta Esping-­ Andersen, The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism accounts for 41% of all references; in the case of Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Modernity for 7.8% of all references. Despite his multifaceted works, Robert K.  Merton is more often cited for his Social Theory and Social Structure than Karl Marx is cited for Capital. Some authors (e.g., Arlie R. Hochschild and Robert Putnam) are well-known in various national and specialist sociologies mainly because of one single publication success (e.g., The Managed Heart, Bowling Alone). The ideas of others (e.g., Anthony Giddens, Talcott Parsons, and Charles Tilly) have spread through multiple contributions. If one compares the rankings of top scholars gained in the two citation studies conducted, it becomes apparent that 7 out of a total of the 29 scholars listed in Table 4.4 do not occur in the final list constructed in Study I. Nearly all of these scholars (e.g., Robert D. Putnam, Howard S. Becker, and Gøsta Esping-Andersen) belong to the group of “specialist elites” who do not reach wide audiences within sociology, but rather heavily impact few research communities within sociology. Most likely

86 

P. Korom

Table 4.4  Books by elite scholars that have received the widest diffusion. In the far-right column the number of references is given as a share (in %) of all references of a given author Author

Most referenced work

Core elite Marx, Karl Weber, Max

Capital/Das Kapital Economy and Society / Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft Beck, Ulrich Risk Society / Risikogesellschaft Becker, Gary S. Human Capital Coleman, James Foundations of Social Theory S. Durkheim, Division of Labour in Society / De la Emile division du travail social Habermas, Theory of Communicative Action / Theorie Jürgen des kommunikativen Handelns Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life Erving Foucault, Discipline and Punish / Surveiller et punir Michel Latour, Bruno Science in Action / La science en action Bourdieu, Pierre Distinction / La distinction Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity Anthony Inglehart, The Silent Revolution Ronald F. Parsons, Talcott The Social System National elite Merton, Robert K. Granovetter, Mark S. Luhmann, Niklas Bauman, Zygmunt

Specialist elite Esping-­ Andersen, Gøsta Putnam Robert D. Hochschild, Arlie R.

Type

%

Monograph 30.9 Monograph 30.0 Monograph 29.3 Monograph 26.0 Monograph 25.2 Monograph 21.2 Monograph 19.6 Monograph 19.4 Monograph 16.9 Monograph 16.8 Monograph 16.7 Monograph 16.0 Monograph 15.8 Monograph 13.6

Social Theory and Social Structure

Monograph 36.4

Economic Action and Social Structure: The Problem of Embeddedness Social Systems / Soziale Systeme

Article

Liquid Modernity

Monograph 7.8

The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism

Monograph 41.0

Bowling Alone

Monograph 37.2

The Managed Heart

Monograph 33.8

23.2

Monograph 10.2

(continued)

87

4  Identifying the Elite  Table 4.4 (continued) Author

Most referenced work

Type

Blau, Peter M. Skocpol, Theda Snow, David A.

The American Occupational Structure States and Social Revolution Social Networks and Social Movements: A Microstructural Approach to Differential Recruitment Manufacturing Consent

Monograph 32.7 Monograph 28.9 Article 24.9

Art Worlds

Monograph 22.9

From Mobilization to Revolution The Credential Society Social Capital: Its Origins and Applications in Modern Sociology

Monograph 15.8 Monograph 14.1 Article 11.9

Burawoy, Michael Becker, Howard S. Tilly, Charles Collins, Randall Portes, Alejandro

%

Monograph 23.3

this difference in outcomes can be explained through the heavy reliance of Study I on monographic literature making up the “core” of sociology, and thus partially neglecting some specialist literature, for example, Putnam on democracy, Becker on deviance and symbolic interactionism, and Esping-Andersen on the welfare state. Do these differences in the eminence rankings imply that the tools used fail to reliably distinguish the elite from the rest? I argue here that this is not the case because the social world does not possess many regularities, so it obviously does not consist of atomic units with interactions that obey various rules. Thus, it is simply unrealistic to expect any instrument for “elite” detection to work as reliably as a Geiger counter that never fails to detect radiation. If we think of Academy memberships as indicators of outstanding academic achievements, there are always some scholars who are worthy of membership but not yet elected— a phenomenon that has become known as the “41st chair” (Zuckerman 1978). This name derives from the French Academy of Sciences’ practice of restricting the number of members to only 40 scientists at any time. The human world, it appears, is rather messy and, in my view, scholarship should embrace such messiness rather than seek to bring artificial order to it. What one can do, however, is to ensure the soundness of the “detection tool” by studying, among other things, whether it really captures prestige conferred on scholars by their peers.

88 

P. Korom

Validating the Methodology  o Citations Correlate with Prizes and Memberships D in Academies? It is crucial to know whether citation counts correlate with other manifestations of outstanding peer recognition. Figure 4.4 displays whether scholars identified as elite in Study I were recognized for their achievements in other ways. It can be inferred that most of the selected scholars received at least one prestigious award and were elected to at least one academy. If one simply considers the number of awards, then Charles Tilly appears to be the most distinguished contemporary sociologist, whereas Robert K.  Merton gained the most memberships in honorary societies. A few eminent scholars (e.g., Louis Wirth, C.  Wright Mills, Alvin Gouldner, Michel Foucault) received no formal recognition of their achievements in their lifetime. It is difficult to provide a wholly satisfactory answer as to why this is the case. Wirth and Foucault died at a young age, while Mills and Gouldner had real struggles with the sociological establishment. Among contemporary scholars, George Ritzer and Arlie Hochschild, who have retired only recently, have also yet to receive formal recognition. A possible explanation is that none of these scholars mentored students who became important adherents or developers of their mentor’s ideas. Given these insights, it is easy to rebut one recurrent criticism in the literature that citations are weak indicators of the extent to which outstanding achievement is recognized. At least if citations are measured, as was the case in Study I, then one surely generates information that reliably correlates with peer evaluations of outstanding scientific achievements.

Are Textbook Citations Special? So far, I have operated on the assumption that citations in various genres of literature are informative about different aspects of eminence. Citations in textbooks, it has been argued, might inform one about the extent to

4  Identifying the Elite 

89

Fig. 4.4  Top-ranked 64 sociologists in order of year of birth: Awards and memberships in honorary societies. Included are scholars who were alive at the time of conducting the survey as well as those who have died since 1950

90 

P. Korom

which someone contributed core knowledge to the discipline. Like the pudding that one must eat to know what’s inside, textbook citations must be studied in their own right to understand what they represent. It has been a common assertion that “…introductory textbook coverage reflects the degree to which textbook writers believe the work of a scientist is important”; and this is found to be an oversimplification of the nature of introductory texts (Diener et al. 2014: 21). In his article “Confessions of a Textbook Writer,” James McConnell (1978: 167) points to five different audiences (i.e., students, instructors, peers, colleagues, and publishers) that “make very different and often conflicting demands on the writers. It is well known that textbook writers and editors closely observe the textbook market and that textbooks go through extensive peer review. Some even argue that intrusive market pressures and editorial control make ‘books write authors’” (Agger 1989). Another difficulty inherent in the writing of textbooks is that authors are not only supposed to present the well-established fundamentals of the discipline, but also to take account of recent work in a rapidly moving set of research problems about which there is substantial disagreement. Such new developments provide them with room to differ from previous textbooks, despite the predominance of uniform market strategies. Thus, a priori, what a textbook citation represents is not fully clear and needs to be established empirically. To address this issue, I decided to select five of the most widely used textbooks from the 1970s, and a further five from the 2010s, which are representative of one of the three disciplines in the Anglo-Saxon world: economics, psychology, and sociology.9 This comparative research design allows one to probe whether eminence resulting from citation in textbooks has universal features that do not vary between disciplines. The selection of books was not based on sales figures but on information retrieved from WorldCat, which lists libraries worldwide where a given monograph is available. Working from the author indices, the number of textbook pages on which scholars10 were referenced was determined.  For a list of all books included, see Korom (2018).  Excluded were non-scientists and other persons who have not contributed to the respective discipline. 9

10

91

4  Identifying the Elite 

As can be seen from Table 4.5, sociology, economics, and psychology textbooks differ only slightly in extent, but very considerably in terms of how they are organized. Between the 1970s and the 2010s the average extent in psychology remained virtually unchanged at around 730 pages, whereas in sociology it increased from 510 to 750 pages, and in economics from 620 to 800 pages. The typical organization into chapters was by far the most fine-grained in economics, with an average of 34 chapters in 2010. The most-pronounced interdisciplinary differences were observed regarding citations. In scholarly work, citations are sparse in economics; in both the 1970s and 2010s samples, fewer than 500 scholars are listed in the index, suggesting a strong tendency to discuss economic models without any reference to their intellectual origin.11 The “person index” has become substantially longer in psychology textbooks (average of Table 4.5  Comparison of sociology, economics and psychology textbooks in the 1970s and 2010s

Textbooks No. of textbooks Length of textbook, pages (average) No. of chapters (average) Person index No. of scholars listed in the index (average) No. of references to scholars in the index (average) Bottom 50%: share of citations Mid 40%: share of citations Top 10%: share of citations Most cited scholars Cut-off point selection No. of most cited scholars

Sociology

Economics

1970s

2010s

1970s 2010s 1970s 2010s

Psychology

5 507.8

5 747

5 5 5 5 622.8 800.6 728.4 724.8

13.4

19.6

34.6

33.8

20.8

629.6

1388.8 429

475

595.6 3456

1371.4 2076.8 820

812

934.8 4343

19.2 39.9 40.9

29.1 32.0 38.9

21.3 33.0 45.7

26.3 36.7 52.5

26.0 33.3 40.7

32.3 35.1 34.8

9 91

8 102

3 46

3 54

7 94

8 102

15.8

 Paul A. Samuelson’s Economics stands out because of the comparatively substantial number of references. Other economics textbooks studied for the survey refer to fewer than 100 economists. 11

92 

P. Korom

3456 scholars listed) than those in sociology (average of 1389 scholars listed). Psychologists also tend to reference the scholars listed in the appendix more often, which is indicative of the encyclopedic nature of the key textbooks available in the discipline. In sociology and economics, scholars with the highest number of pages on which they were cited (“top 10%” in terms of page count) received 40–45% of all references. Contemporary psychology textbooks stand out insofar as references found in the name index are more equally distributed between the bottom 50%, the middle 40%, and the top 10% of listed scholars. With the identification of scientific eminence the prime concern, I selected scholars with the highest page score, settling on two different inclusion criteria. First, the scholar must be mentioned in at least two out of the five textbooks. Second, a cut-off point was set in such a way that it was possible to compare an almost equal number of scholars across time in each discipline, thereby excluding a minimum number of scholars who were, in general, ranked among the most eminent representatives of their discipline. These decisions meant there were various numbers of top-referenced scholars in each discipline. Even by putting the page count as low as three pages in economics, it was still possible to include only 54 eminent economists for the 2010s. To probe the meanings of textbook citations for the most-referenced authors, associations with other “variables” were tested, which stand for productivity and/or publication impact, certified eminence, and academic prestige. In what follows I explain how these variables were generated. • Google Scholar citations: Google Scholar covers print and academic journals, conference proceedings, books, theses, and other outlets available from major academic publishers, professional societies, or government agencies. Its citation data are likely to provide a valid measure of impact within (and somewhat outside) academia, especially for a book-heavy field like sociology.12 Overall citations were used as well as the number of citations given to the most-cited publication.  To analyze Google Scholar citation data, the Harzing’s Publish or Perish (PoP) software was used; see: https://harzing.com/resources/publish-or-perish. 12

4  Identifying the Elite 

93

• H-index (Google Scholar-based): The h-index indicates the number of “papers” by a scholar that have been cited at least h times. Thus, an h of 40 indicates that a scholar has produced 40 papers cited at least 40 times. The h-index is arguably the best indicator for assessing the frequency and consistency with which authors have produced work that has had an impact on scholarship. • Eponyms: Eponymy is defined by Merton (1957: 642–43) as “[the] practice of affixing the name of the scientist to all or part of what he has found. … In this way, scientists leave their signatures indelibly in history; their names enter[ed] into all the scientific languages of the world.” Eponyms function as implicit citations of contributions by certain scholars who are widely recognized and have stood the test of time, at least in part. In most cases a law, theory, hypothesis, effect, or principle is named after the first scholar to have discovered it (e.g., Pavlovian conditioning, Schumpeterian entrepreneur). For psychology and economics, eponymous dictionaries (Roeckelein 1998; Segura and Rodríguez Braun 2004) were used to count the eponyms referring to one of the selected scholars. In sociology, eponyms are rare and can be disregarded. • Encyclopedia entries: Entries in encyclopedias are another manifestation of “certified eminence.” Editors of key encyclopedias in their respective disciplines typically devote entries only to those sociologists, economists, and psychologists who are perceived to have deeply influenced the development of the discipline and whose influence on intellectual life is, at least to some degree, persistent. The sources used here are the Encyclopedia Britannica, three discipline-specific encyclopedias (Durlauf and Blume 2008; Kazdin 2000; Ritzer 2007), and a book titled Social Science Quotations: Who Said What, When and Where (SSQ)—a supplement of the International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences—which contains a broad selection of quotations from scholars of authority and consequence (Sills and Merton 2000). One can find in SSQ quotations from sociology, economics, and psychology scholars alike, not only who wrote well but whose ideas also had a formative impact on social thought. In short, the book is about “memorable ideas memorably expressed” (Sills and Merton 1992: 168).

94 

P. Korom

• Elected president: Being elected president of the American Sociological Association (ASA), the American Economic Association (AEA), or the American Psychological Association (APA) confers prestige on the scholar and is a clear sign that his or her work has merit. ASA presidents also are characterized by distinguished academic records (Platt 2016). In economics, the number of journal publications is an important determinant of election to president (Diamond and Toth 2007). • Honorary awards: Another important source of prestige in academia, these are, symbolically, an important part of the academic reward system. Considered here are the Nobel Prize for economics, the “W.E.B.  Du Bois Career of Distinguished Scholarship Award” for sociology, and the “APA Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions” for psychology. Obviously, there is no equivalent to the Nobel Prize in the two other disciplines. In the case of both the Du Bois and APA awards, however, it might be said that the awarding committees established an elaborate system to ensure that the award goes only to deserving scholars. To explore the most important correlates of textbook references, several intercorrelations are explored in a basic correlation matrix. The first vertical row in Fig. 4.5 presents correlations between the textbook page count and all other variables. As can be seen from the matrix, the correlation with the number of quotations in SSQ is the highest in all three disciplines. In psychology, the correlation is as high as 0.8, suggesting that the two variables measure very similar concepts. Further, it can seen that for sociology and psychology, the textbook page count relates to Google Scholar citation measures (i.e., h-index, number of total citations). For economics, however, the correlation with the h-index is so low that one must conclude that there is no substantive overlap. If one looks at indicators of certified eminence (e.g., number of eponyms or encyclopedia entries), correlations of between 0.3 and 0.4 in all disciplines can be seen. In contrast, indicators of institutionalized merit-based academic prestige (e.g., the presidency of the ASA, AEA, or APA) are only loosely associated with indicators for textbook eminence. Perhaps the most striking result is that in economics textbook eminence

Fig. 4.5  Correlates of textbook references. All values in the correlation matrices are Pearson correlation coefficients. AEA/APA/ASA: American Associations of Economics, Psychology, and Sociology; p. president; SSQ: Social Science Quotations; Ency. Brit.: Encyclopedia Britannica; other ency.: other discipline-specific encylopedias

96 

P. Korom

and the scientific productivity and impact of a researcher, as measured by the h-index, are almost unrelated. To give some examples: Milton Friedman and Paul A. Samuelson are the only economists who exhibit both a large textbook page count and a high Google Scholar-based hindex in both the 1970 and 2010 textbook samples. Most other economists score high on one or the other dimension, not on both. The Nobel Prize winners Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman, for example, have h-indexes above 140 but are mentioned in fewer than 10 textbook pages. In contrast, central bankers (e.g., Paul Volcker and Alan Greenspan) are mentioned on more than 10 pages, while having a comparatively low h-index. In sociology, there are multiple people (e.g., Merton, Parsons, Foucault, Berger, and Goffman) who score extremely high on both dimensions. Their exceptionally high h-index is partially explained by the broad reception of their work in several academic disciplines. Martin Seligman and Robert Plomin are examples of productive psychologists who are much cited in the “journal world” and whose work also finds recognition in introductory textbooks. Apparently, the meaning of textbook eminence, to some degree, can differ across disciplines. Nevertheless, one common factor prevails. Across all three disciplines, quotations by scholars cited in SSQ were the key correlates of textbook eminence. The editors of SSQ included authors who were consequential and memorable insofar as they “have been quoted over the generations, entering into the collective memory of social scientists and at times diffusing into popular thought” (Sills and Merton 2000: xvi). Eponyms, together with entries in the Encyclopedia Britannica, show similar associational meanings, albeit at lower levels. Thus, as assumed, high citation counts in textbooks stand for having contributed certified knowledge that is considered to have lasted and contributes to the stock of theories and empirical findings that together constitute “the core” of the discipline. The design of the study was based on the assumption that citations in various literature genres can signify different things; it appears to have been broadly correct given the evidence presented here.

4  Identifying the Elite 

97

 o Journals Mirror National D and Specialist Sociologies? In contrast to other bibliometric studies that involve simple rank ordering, Study II examined two dimensions of variation: the range of substantive subfields in which an author’s work is frequently cited, and the range of national contexts in which the work is cited. This study design was developed to consider the two most important divisions in sociology. But does it really make sense to use specialist journals that are supposed to represent national sociologies or different specialties to understand which scholars dominate, for example, French sociology or sociological theory? To answer this question, I checked for the easiest form of validity, where one only applies a superficial assessment of whether the study measures what it is supposed to measure (“face validity”). One can also think of it as being similar to “face value.” Going through Table 4.6, which lists the most-referenced authors, one finds few surprises, which speaks in favor of the method applied. The German sociologist Hans-Peter Blossfeld, a leading scholar in labor market and data-panel data research, is, for example, the top-referenced author in ESR, that represents social stratification research in Study II; and Niklas Luhmann leads the list for the KZfSS, a flagship journal of German sociology. On the other hand, it is also apparent that each journal stands for a mixture of things. To give just one example: ASR tends not only to feature U.S. sociologists but also data-driven articles; this explains why Otis D. Duncan turned out to be the second most-­cited author. To partially remedy this apparent “bias,” Study II always included two journals for measuring one type of sociology. Potentially, one could almost endlessly continue to evaluate the various aspects of the measurement tools used, although the cross-check analyses have so far not revealed any finding that contradicts their validity. What one must keep in mind, however, is that indicators of eminence are extremely time-sensitive, which explains why the rankings differ between Studies I and II. Cross-sectional citation studies will most likely always find some different top-cited scholars than studies that cover longer time-episodes.

98 

P. Korom

Table 4.6  Top referenced authors in diverse journals ASR

KZfSS

RFSOC

ESR

Blau, Peter M.

Luhmann, Niklas

Bourdieu, Pierre

Blossfeld, Stark, Hans-­Peter Rodney

Duncan, Otis D. Parsons, Talcott Weber, Max

Weber, Max Esser, Harmut Parsons, Talcott

Durkheim, Breen, Emile Richard Boudon, Erikson, Raymond Robert Weber, Max Esping-­ Andersen, Gøsta Boltanski, Becker, Gary Luc S. Goffman, Goldthorpe, Erving John H.

Coleman, James S. Tilly, Charles

Bourdieu, Pierre Blossfeld, Hans-­ Peter Lipset, Habermas, Halbwachs, Seymour M. Jürgen Maurice DiMaggio, König, Crozier, Paul J. René Michel Bourdieu, Durkheim, Coleman, Pierre Emile James S.

SOCIRELI

Wuthnow, Robert Smith, Christian Berger, Peter L. Warner, R. Stephen Weber, Max

Portes, Alejandro

Bourdieu, Ammerman, Pierre Nancy T. Ganzeboom, Chaves, Mark Harry B. G. Inglehart, Ellison, Ronald F. Christopher G. Merton, Becker, Kalmijn, Bellah, Robert K. Howard S. Matthijs Robert N. Diekmann, Duru-­Bellat, Mayer, Karl Finke, Roger Andreas Marie Ulrich Mayer, Dubet, Coleman, Roof, Wade Karl Francois James S. C. Ulrich Simmel, Merton, Müller, Greeley, Georg Robert K. Walter Andrew M. Opp, Baudelot, Hakim, Iannaccone, Karl-­ Christian Catherine Laurence R. Dieter Coleman, Parsons, Shavit, Yossi Sherkat, James S. Talcott Darren E.

McAdam, Doug

Becker, Gary S.

Granovetter, Mark S. Meyer, John W.

Müller, Walter Beck, Ulrich

Merton, Robert K. Durkheim, Emile Blalock, Hubert M. Massey, Douglas S. Hauser, Robert M.

Reynaud, Putnam, Jean-­ Robert D. Daniel Touraine, Blau, Peter Alain M. Lazega, Boudon, Emmanuel Raymond

Yang, Fenggang Marti, Gerardo Durkheim, Emile

IJCS Wallerstein, Immanuel M. Inglehart, Ronald F. Meyer, John W. Jorgenson, Andrew K. Weber, Max Inkeles, Alex

Chase-Dunn, Christopher Portes, Alejandro Eisenstadt, Shmuel N. Lipset, Seymour M. Bollen, Kenneth A. Parsons, Talcott Ragin, Charles C. Semyonov, Moshe Esping-­ Andersen, Gøsta Smith David H. Marx, Karl Tilly, Charles

(continued)

4  Identifying the Elite 

99

Table 4.6 (continued) ASR

KZfSS

Hannan, Michael T.

Blau, Peter Simmel, M. Georg

RFSOC

ESR

SOCIRELI

IJCS

Sørensen, Aage B.

Hunter, James D.

Frank, Andrew G.

Note: Authors are listed in descending order of references. ASR stands for American Sociological Review, KZfSS for Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, RFSOC for Revue française de sociologie, ESR for European Sociological Review, SOCIREL for Sociology of Religion and IJCS for International Journal of Comparative Sociology

This has to do with the very nature of eminence that fluctuates over time. As we have seen, there are, for example, scholars whose eminence is relatively short-lived (50

Sociology

Below age All of 50

50 or older

Below age All of 50

50 or older

31 25 21 8 51 35

6 13 16

14 8 17 6 19 12

6 11 7

16 6 6 2 1 0

12 4 6 2 1 0

4 2 0 0 0 0

3 6 2 1 0 2

3 4 0 0 0 1

0 2 2 1 0 1

1 4 7 0 1 8

0 2 2 0 1 3

1 2 5 0 0 5

1 1 4 2 1 8

0 1 2 1 0 2

1 0 2 1 1 6

Notes: For economics, ranks are taken from Amir and Knauff (2008), and for sociology, from the QS World University Rankings by Subject 2016 edited by Quacquarelli Symonds (see also Appendix A2)

124 

P. Korom

important to recognize that the Federal Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1986 exempted postsecondary institutions from the requirement to enforce mandatory retirement at age 70. Following a review in the early 1990s, Congress then allowed the exemption to expire, and mandatory retirement was finally eliminated completely in 1994. Many Nobel laureates who remained employed into their 70s and even 80s switched to less prestigious faculties. The best illustrative case is the Harvard-based economist Wassily Leontief, who joined New  York University at the age of 70. In sociology one finds only somewhat similar mobility patterns. As in economics, downward mobility predominates toward the end of sociologists’ occupational careers. There are, however, also striking differences between both disciplines. In sociology, one finds a near balance between upward and downward career moves before the age of 50. Moreover, the share of scholars entering elite departments (ranks 1–5) is much lower in sociology than in economics, even if one considers only the first half of life. One thinks in this context of Immanuel Wallerstein, who was from 1976 until his retirement in 1999 professor of sociology at Binghamton University, an institution that does not even make it into the top 50 PhD-granting departments of sociology (Burris 2004). What is more, if one considers previous posts at Columbia University and McGill University, then joining Binghamton suggests that Wallerstein decelerated in his career. Nevertheless, Binghamton appeared to have offered him a stimulating intellectual environment as well as plenty of possibilities to realize his academic entrepreneurial acumen, which led, for example, to the establishment of the Fernand Braudel Center. Later in life, around 2000, Wallerstein also joined Yale University as a permanent senior research fellow. Cases like that of Wallerstein clearly deviate from the established career paths for economists. Standardized and explicitly hierarchical elite careers are simply less frequent in sociology (Table 5.3). Differences in career trajectories are not only to be found in the various orders of stages, but also in their timing. I previously hypothesized that if it is true that sociologists face more difficulties than economists when trying to move between different departments, this would manifest itself in longer average durations of different career stages. Figure 5.3 depicts the median number of years spent in the first three professorships. It

5  Collective Biographies and Career Pathways 

125

Fig. 5.3  Years spent in a career position. The middle of the boxplot indicates the median. The lower and upper hinges correspond to the first and third quartiles— that is, the 25th and 75th percentiles. Outliers, or observations that are located outside the hinges, are represented by points

becomes evident that economists spend more years in their first professorship, which can be mostly explained by the fact that they are appointed professor comparatively early in life (see Table 5.1). The substantially longer route to the first professorship in sociology becomes evident in cases such as that of Anthony Giddens, who lectured at the University of Leicester from 1961 onward before applying for another lectureship at Cambridge in 1969. It was only in 1985 at age 47 that he was promoted to full professorship. The pattern is reversed regarding the second and third professorships. Economists move more quickly through these career stages. Switching departments, it appears, is easier for them. So far career movements within institutional hierarchies only have been considered. Academic careers, however, also develop within networks. Universities are essentially hierarchical structures in which elites move through lower positions (i.e., assistant professor, associate professor) to reach a final career plateau, from which there is nowhere to go professionally within the same institution. Elite scholars, however, can also entertain multiple affiliations by visiting other research institutions, which are referred to as the external strand of academic careers. By doing so, they establish networks between the home institution and other

126 

P. Korom

visiting institutions. To obtain a global view of the relatively large visiting networks in both disciplines, I considered all visiting professorships or fellowships of all scholars that lasted at least one full academic term. Figures 5.4 and 5.5 display discipline-specific visiting networks between academic institutions. The networks contain arcs indicating the flow of scholars and vertices that stand for the various departments or research institutions. Displaying all vertices and all arcs makes it simply impossible to see the forest for the trees. Therefore, to find structure, it was decided to shrink all vertices (i.e., home/visiting institutions) belonging to a certain prestige class to one single vertex. Put more concretely, I shrank, for example, all U.S. departments belonging to the T5 to a new vertex labeled “USA {ranks 1–5}.” Moreover, it was decided to count a visit to a host institution only once per scholar.9 In the condensed network depicted in Fig. 5.4, most economists leave second-tier U.S. departments (ranks 6–20) to either visit top-tier departments (ranks 1–5) or conduct studies at European institutions. Moreover, there is a significant inflow to the top U.S. departments from Europe as well as a high circulation between departments belonging to the T5. The overall network structure suggests that the T5 (Chicago, MIT, Harvard, Stanford, Yale) are the main magnets in the visiting network. In sociology, the epicenter of the visiting network is, in contrast, second-­tier U.S. departments and European departments (see Fig. 5.5). A total of 26 scholars circulated between European departments, and scholars temporarily leaving European departments stayed predominantly at non-elite U.S. departments. Like in economics, one of the elite’s favorite working environments appears to be CASBS, where scholars are freed from all faculty commitments and can focus exclusively on research. The analysis of the external strand once more shows that the careers of the most eminent economists are closely tied to the top five departments of the discipline, whereas career mobility in sociology is multidirectional.

 The sociologist Jeffrey Alexander, for example, visited the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study in the Social Sciences twice during his time at UCLA, in 1992 and 1996. In the present analysis, however, this results only in a simple link between University of California, Los Angeles and the Swedish Collegium. 9

5  Collective Biographies and Career Pathways 

127

Fig. 5.4  Visiting relationships between research institutions in economics. The size of the nodes represents the number of all incoming and outgoing scholars and the thickness of the arcs depends on the number of scholars moving unidirectionally from one node to another

Using prosopographical tools, this chapter has now comparatively illustrated the disciplinary, institutional, and external strand of academic careers of the elite in economics and sociology, and it has become evident that there are more differences than similarities. Exploring these careers from multiple angles reveals largely identical insights: Economists pursue careers through a handful of elite channels, primarily by being hired by one of the top departments of the discipline. By contrast, the careers of sociologists share few features in common. Up until the 1970s, reputational leaders such as Talcott Parsons and Robert K. Merton were affiliated with the handful of departments

128 

P. Korom

Fig. 5.5  Visiting relationships between research institutions in sociology

(Harvard, Columbia) that dominated the production of PhDs in U.S. sociology and, in the case of Chicago, participated in the management of major publication outlets. This concentration of elites in a few departments, however, vanished. Elite sociologists such as Jürgen Habermas (Frankfurt University), Immanuel Wallerstein (Binghamton University), Niklas Luhmann (University of Bielefeld), or Manuel Castells (University of Southern California), worked at departments that may well have offered ideal working conditions at the time, but certainly no longer have the largest rosters of highly qualified students or administrative control over critical resources. Moreover, sociologists’ careers are characterized by multidirectional mobility that, to some extent, suggests there are no predefined career pathways to elite status at all. To find such clear-cut interdisciplinary differences is especially remarkable because it is

5  Collective Biographies and Career Pathways 

129

known that intradisciplinary variations also exist—that is, careers vary according to the specialties pursued by scholars (Gläser 2001). In conclusion, the comparison with economics shows that scholarly output in sociology is only loosely coupled with institutions of higher education. Similarly, the nexus between elite departments and scholarly careers is comparatively weak. The randomness of many aspects of career trajectories within the discipline becomes less puzzling if one recalls that within sociology’s Tower of Babel evaluators of candidates for academic positions have a difficult time judging whether someone is truly elite. As Arthur Stinchcombe, an insider and commentator stated nearly three decades ago: It is in the nature of sociology at this time that in my father’s house there are many mansions. This makes it hard to write to the Fellows of Harvard College or the relevant committee at Columbia about whether someone is really elite. It has happened to me that I have been asked to evaluate a candidate and could not answer because I did not know the work of any one on the comparison list. This obviously meant that someone considered the candidate to be distinguished on some criterion that I might be expected to know something about, but also considered them to be distinguished on a criterion that I did not in fact know anything about, on which the others on the list were presumed to be elite (Stinchcombe 1994: 290).

References Amir, Rabah, and Malgorzata Knauff. 2008. Ranking Economics Departments Worldwide on the Basis of PhD Placement. The Review of Economics and Statistics (90) 1, 185–190. Arthur, Michael B. 1994. The Boundaryless Career: A New Perspective for Organizational Inquiry. Journal of Organizational Behavior 15 (4): 295–306. Burawoy, Michael, and Jonathan VanAntwerpen. 2001. Berkeley Sociology: Past, Present and Future. http://burawoy.berkeley.edu/ps/berkeley%20 sociology.pdf. Bürgin, Reto, and Gilbert Ritschard. 2014. A Decorated Parallel Coordinate Plot for Categorical Longitudinal Data. The American Statistician 68 (2): 98–103.

130 

P. Korom

Burris, Val. 2004. The Academic Caste System: Prestige Hierarchies in PhD Exchange Networks. American Economic Review 69 (2): 239–264. Castells, Manuel, and Martin Ince. 2003. Conversations with Manuel Castells. Cambridge: Polity. Charle, Christophe. 2015. Prosopography (Collective Biography). In International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences, ed. J.D. Wright, 256–260. Amsterdam: Elsevier. Chetty, Raj, John N. Friedman, Emmanuel Saez, Nicholas Turner, and Danny Yagan. 2020. Income Segregation and Intergenerational Mobility Across Colleges in the United States. The Quarterly Journal of Economics 135 (3): 1567–1633. https://academic.oup.com/qje/article/135/3/1567/5741707. Coleman, James C. 1990. Columbia in the 1950s. In Authors of their own lives: Intellectual autobiographies, ed. B.M. Berger and R. Bendix, 75–103. Berkeley: University of California Press. Dietz, James S., Ivan Chompalov, Barry Bozeman, Eliesh O’Neil Lane, and Jongwon Park. 2000. Using the Curriculum Vita to Study the Career Paths of Scientists and Engineers: An Exploratory Assessment. Scientometrics 49 (3): 419–442. Enebakk, Vidar. 2007. The Three Merton Theses. Journal of Classical Sociology 7 (2): 221–238. Fishe, Raymond P.H. 1998. What Are the Research Standards for Full Professor of Finance? The Journal of Finance 53 (3): 1053–1079. Gläser, Jochen. 2001. Macrostructures, Careers and Knowledge Production: A Neoinstitutionalist Approach. International Journal of Technology Management 22 (7/8): 698–715. Grant, Linda, Marybeth C.  Stalp, and Kathryn B.  Ward. 2002. Women’s Sociological Research and Writing in the AJS in the Pre-World War II Era. The American Sociologist 33 (3): 69–91. Han, Shin-Kap. 2003. Tribal Regimes in Academia: A Comparative Analysis of Market Structure across Disciplines. Social Networks 25: 251–280. Heckman, James J., and Sidharth Moktan. 2020. Publishing and Promotion in Economics: The Tyranny of the Top Five. Journal of Economic Literature 58 (2): 419–470. Heer, David M. 2005. Kingsley Davis: A Biography and Selections from His Writings. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. Hermanowicz, Joseph C. 2005. Classifying Universities and Their Departments: A Social World Perspective. The Journal of Higher Education 76 (1): 26–55. Homans, George Caspar. 2013. Coming to My Senses: The Autobiography of a Sociologist. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers.

5  Collective Biographies and Career Pathways 

131

Korom, Philipp. 2020. How Do Academic Elites March Through Departments? A Comparison of the Most Eminent Economists and Sociologists’ Career Trajectories. Minerva 58 (3): 343–365. Lebuda, Izabela, and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. 2019. Why Researches of Professional and Eminent Creators’ Self Beliefs Need Social Context. In The Palgrave Handbook of Social Creativity Research, ed. I.  Lebuda and V.P. Glăveanu, 585–593. Cham: Springer International Publishing. van Leeuwen, Marco H.D., Ineke Maas, and Andrew Miles. 2002. HISCO: Historical International Standard Classification of Occupations. Leuven: Leuven University Press. Light, D.W., L.R. Marsden, and T.C. Corl. 1973. The Impact of the Academic Revolution on Faculty Careers. Washington: American Association for Higher Education. Lipset, Seymour Martin. 1970. Socialism and Sociology. In Sociological Self-­ Images, ed. I.L. Horowitz, 143–175. Oxford: Pergamon Press. Mayntz, Renate. 1960. The Visiting Fellow: An Analysis of an Academic Role. American Sociological Review 25 (5): 735–741. Merton, Robert K. 1938. Science, Technology and Society in Seventeenth-­ Century England. Osiris 4: 360–632. Miller, Nod, and David Morgan. 1993. Called to Account: The CV as an Autobiographical Practice. Sociology 27 (1): 133–143. Nakhaie, M.  Reza, and Robert J.  Brym. 1999. The Political Attitudes of Canadian Professors. The Canadian Journal of Sociology 24 (3): 329–353. Offer, Avner, and Gabriel Söderberg. 2016. The Nobel Factor: The Prize in Economics, Social Democracy, and the Market Turn. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Padberg, Britta. 2020. The Global Diversity of Institutes for Advanced Study. Sociologica 14: 119–161. Quacquarelli Symonds. 2016. QS World University Rankings. https://www. topuniversities.com/university-rankings-articles/world-university-rankings/ qs-world-university-rankings-subject-2016-out-now Ritzer, George. 1975. Sociology: A Multiple Paradigm Science. The American Sociologist 10 (3): 156–167. Sassen, Saskia. 2005. Always a Foreigner, Always at Home. In The Disobedient Generation: Social Theorists in the Sixties, ed. A. Sica and S. Turner, 221–252. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Scott, W. Richard, and Craig Calhoun. 2004. Peter Michael Blau, 1918–2002: A Biographical Memoir. Washington, DC: National Academic Press.

132 

P. Korom

Stinchcombe, Arthur L. 1994. Disintegrated Disciplines and the Future of Sociology. Sociological Forum 9 (2): 279–291. Stone, Lawrence. 1971. Prosopography. Daedalus 100 (1): 46–79. Treviño, A.  Javier, ed. 2006. George C.  Homans: History, Theory, and Method. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers. Turner, Stephen P., and Daryl E.  Chubin. 1979. Chance and Eminence in Science: Ecclesiastes II. Social Science Information 18 (3): 437–449. Wagner, Izabela. 2020. Bauman: A Biography. Cambridge: Polity Press. Weber, Max. 1997. Science as a Vocation. In From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, ed. H. Gerth and C.W. Mills. London: Routledge. Wilensky, Harold L. 1961. Orderly Careers and Social Participation: The Impact of Work History on Social Integration in the Middle Mass. American Sociological Review 26 (4): 521–539. Wiley, Norbert. 1985. The Current Interregnum in American Sociology. Social Research 52 (1): 179–207.

6 The Rise to and the Fall from Eminence

Explaining (Fading) Eminence The composition of the prestige elite in sociology, as the preceding chapters have demonstrated, changes over time. In some ways, this finding is not surprising because one can observe in very different societal spheres circulation of elites as well as blossoming recognition for past achievements. Pareto summed it up succinctly: “History is a cemetery of aristocracies” (Pareto 1935: §2053). What is more, the odds appear to be stacked against lasting eminence, as sociology as a discipline is deeply marked by paradigms that are heralded for a couple of years but then lose their grip on the imaginations of working social scientists; this can be best demonstrated by the paradigmatic cases of interaction process analysis (IPA) and ethnomethodology. Both paradigms were at least for a short while regarded as influential specializations within sociology. IPA was introduced to sociology by Robert F. Bales (1916–2004), a professor at Harvard, and focused on interpersonal interaction in small groups. By abstracting from the actual content of group interactions and

Parts of this chapter have been previously published in Korom (2019).

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. Korom, Star Sociologists, Socio-Historical Studies of the Social and Human Sciences, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13938-3_6

133

134 

P. Korom

classifying individual acts according to predetermined schemes, Bales hoped to identify recurrent patterns and sequences in group behavior that were theorized as the building blocks of larger social processes (Bales 1950). Bales’ insights, which were generated mostly from behind one-­ way mirror observations, commanded the attention of many sociologists throughout the 1950s and 1960s and were widely recognized as “cutting edge.” Later, however, with Bales’ retirement from Harvard in 1986, the Balesian research program fell out of fashion with sociologists. Ethnomethodology is inextricably linked with Harold Garfinkel (1917–2011) and is concerned with the shared knowledge and reasoning procedures that members of a society use in everyday life to create social reality; in most of sociology this is simply accepted as a given. To research self-organizing processes of social orders, Garfinkel conducted, inter alia, “breaching experiments” (i.e., interruptions or irritations of interaction) that helped to demonstrate the existence of underlying presumptions that constitute social life (Garfinkel 1963). His ideas diffused widely and were at least partially absorbed into the “core” of sociology. Although today’s textbooks contain descriptions of ethnomethodology and some of its core claims have been even absorbed into the fabric of sociological theory, few continue to call themselves “ethnomethodologists.” Of course, the life cycles of theoretical paradigms also determined the fate of their spiriti recti, the eminence of which turned out to be short-­ lived. Neither Bales nor Garfinkel make it into the eminence rosters presented in Chap. 3. One could argue that the rise to and fall from eminence of scholars mirror the very nature of scientific progress—a process in which insignificant theories become weeded out and all that is important stays in the current body of knowledge. Such a crude evolutionary understanding of progress in the social sciences, however, does not stand up to scrutiny. In sociology, perceptions of the essential direction of growth in social understanding are notoriously volatile (Rule 1997). The endemic uncertainty and the significant disagreements among scholars on what counts as a “step ahead” does not allow bringing order into chaos and to separate the truly substantive contributions from all the others. How, for example, is one to judge whether Bales or Garfinkel contributed more to progress in sociology?

6  The Rise to and the Fall from Eminence 

135

The intrinsic quality of ideas appears thus not to be the only decisive factor for eminence because firm facts of scientific achievement in sociology simply do not exist (Turner and Chubin 1979). The scarce studies conducted so far into the conditions and processes underlying the continuous recognition of a given scholar reveal instead that various “social factors” significantly account for (fading) eminence. So far, three main social factors have been identified.1

Master–Apprentice Relationships In his seminal work The Sociology of Philosophies, Randall Collins analyzes long-term developments in intellectual communities of philosophers in various places and at different times including ancient Greece, medieval Christendom, and modern Europe through the early twentieth century (Collins 2002). One basic insight of his relational analysis is that …the more eminent the philosophers are by historical reputation, the more links they have to other notable philosophers; they are both more likely to be students of other notable thinkers and to take part in circles of significant allies as well as confrontations with important rivals. Eminence breeds eminence, and the denser the network in both vertical and horizontal dimensions (up to certain limits), the better (Collins 2000: 163, emphasis added)

Consequently, first-rate intellectual performance is not enough to rise to eminence; vertical teacher–pupil relationships and horizontal links to diverse intellectual communities also are important. Other studies reaffirm the outstanding role of mentors for the rise to eminence. Tol (2022), for example, reconstructs the (global) professor– student network in economics using mostly (but not only) the Academic

 Other factors that explain why social science scholars rise in reputation include the strategic choices of intellectual predecessors (Camic 1992), the favorable political climate and national traditions (McLaughlin 1998), flows of translations that help garner a global dominance (Santoro et al. 2018), commemorative practices (Gill 2013), and packaging strategies for promoting intellectual products in the marketplace (Clegg 1992). 1

136 

P. Korom

Family Tree,2 a collaborative online tool for building an academic genealogy for various disciplines. In the network, which spans five generations, all Nobel Prize winners turn out to belong to one single family tree. What is more, new winners are often closely related to previous winners.

Elite Higher Education Eminent scholars often work at prestigious departments that offer not only better research opportunities but also access to important mediating sources (e.g., prestigious publishers) for spreading their ideas (Frickel and Gross 2005). Top departments are also large and well-financed enough to establish specialized research centers that accrue third-party funding and carry out high-quality research (Weeber 2006). Further, with proven track records at prestigious institutions, high-status individuals are less exposed to professional risks and thus encouraged to pursue research agendas with long-term objectives that are more likely to accrue a global reputation. Evidence indeed suggests that scholars in high-status institutions are especially likely to embrace high-risk, high-reward differentiation strategies of publishing (Koppman and Leahey 2019). Finally, institutions of elite higher education (e.g., Cambridge University and the University of Chicago) not only recruit ambitious students but also nurture ambition. Students are likely to gain a heightened self-confidence from association with and approval by eminent figures in the field (Trow 1976: 360), which might lead to the kind of intellectual aspiration that propels scholars to discipline-wide eminence. As was shown in the previous chapter, however, elite institutions of higher education are far more crucial for the formation of elites in economics than in sociology.

Academic Tribes It would appear that scholars’ rise to or fall from fame hinges crucially on whether their ideas fit the needs and expectations of various “academic  See https://academictree.org.

2

6  The Rise to and the Fall from Eminence 

137

tribes” whose members share common standards of what constitutes good science. In her case study, Lamont (1987) showed that Derrida’s work, which popularized deconstruction as a form of literary analysis, helped the Yale Critics cohere into an influential school of thought within U.S.  English departments; this, in turn, led to a broad diffusion of Derrida’s ideas through prestigious literary journals. Developing a similar explanatory framework, McLaughlin (1998) attributes the reputational decline of Erich Fromm to some extent to the enormous hostility he faced within the broader Marxist tradition. More generally, one can formulate that ideas have a “social life” (Santoro and Sapiro 2017): Their success depends on their main multiplying carrier groups that interpret, revisit, criticize, or apply the original ideas in their research. The most brilliant idea will fall into oblivion if not continuously adopted and carried on by various social actors. Then again, are these three types of explanations really the best? If so, then they should help one make sense of the two most outstanding cases encountered so far—the “falling star” Seymour M. Lipset (1922–2006) and the “rising star” Pierre Bourdieu (1930–2002). Lipset was among the most important sociologists of his generation. His citation impact has often been the source of much commentary. It has been, among other things, posited that “no living political scientist or sociologist is more frequently cited” (Diamond and Marks 1992: 3); and one of his mentors, sociologist Robert K. Merton, reported that “of the nearly 3 million scientific authors cited in the SCI3 … only 3 in 10,000 have had their work drawn upon as often,” which would suggest Lipset to be “one of the truly consequential social scientists of our time” (Merton 1992: x–xi). Nevertheless, by the 2010s, the precipitate slide in Lipset’s reputation had become clearly discernible (see Chap. 3). Pierre Bourdieu (1930–2002), on the other hand, emerged as the key figure in contemporary sociology and occupies a quasi-hegemonic status that can only be compared to Parsons’ preeminent position during the 1960s. To understand Bourdieu’s meteoric rise, I explore the reception of his work in the country a sociologist needs to conquer to be recognized as world class— the United States.  The Science Citation Index cited references found in journals from more than 150 scientific disciplines. 3

138 

P. Korom

In what follows, the reception of Lipset’s and Bourdieu’s oeuvre in the sociological literature is reconstructed in some detail, which goes some way towards qualifying the power of the explanatory “variables” previously discussed. In addition, novel approaches to explaining fading eminence in sociology are considered.

L ipset and the Early Years of Political Sociology A note on the biography and the academic contexts in which Lipset developed his many accomplishments appears necessary to understand this versatile scholar. Lipset was born in New York City in 1922 into a working-class family of East European Jewish immigrants. At Townsend Harris High School, a preparatory school for City College, he became involved in the youth group of the Socialist Party, the Young People’s Socialist League (YPSL). At City College, the student Lipset regularly engaged in lunchroom meetings dedicated to exploring Marx’s writings. In the fall of 1943, Lipset started his studies at Columbia University. Columbia was already a major center for graduate education in sociology when Robert K. Merton arrived in 1941, and with Paul F. Lazarsfeld’s appointment, it became the most influential base for PhD training. In his brief memoir Steady Work, Lipset described Merton as the “most important intellectual influence” (Lipset 1996: 7). Columbia sociology combined the theorizing of Merton with the methodological expertise of Lazarsfeld. Its “research laboratory” was the Bureau of Applied Social Research (BASR). The many BASR large-­scale social research projects provided students with research experience and made data available to them. Further, the BASR became a fertile ground for a subdiscipline that was then still in its infancy—political sociology (Glock and Sills 1958). Lipset received a fellowship from the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) to study the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) of Saskatchewan for his doctoral dissertation (1945–1946). He worked as a lecturer at the University of Toronto (1946–1948), defended his

6  The Rise to and the Fall from Eminence 

139

dissertation in spring 1948, and accepted an associate professorship position at UC Berkeley (1948–1950), which enabled him to access—in collaboration with Reinhard Bendix—massive job history data gathered by the Institute of Industrial Relations based in Oakland, California. Merton invited Lipset back to Columbia with an associate professor position (1950–1956), which resulted in a period of intense cognitive interaction between the one-time student turned professor, Lipset, and many talented students (including Martin Trow and James S. Coleman). From the 1950s onward, he traveled frequently to Europe and other parts of the world, becoming an intellectual known beyond the confines of the United States (Velasco 2004: 588). In 1956, Lipset spent a year together with his research assistant, Juan Linz, at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) in Palo Alto, working on a research project about the social bases of political diversity. This cooperation led to a coauthored manuscript that was never published but furnished the groundwork for his monograph Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics (1960). Lipset continued his career as a full professor at UC Berkeley (1956–1965), where he renewed his cooperation with Bendix. In 1965 he moved to Harvard University (1965–1975), mostly to free himself from the time-consuming involvement in Berkeley academic politics.4 At Harvard, he established an amicable relationship with Talcott Parsons. In 1975, he left Harvard and became a professor at Stanford University, where he began to work at the Hoover Institution. Having reached mandatory retirement age, Lipset continued to work as a Professor of Public Policy at George Mason University (1992–2001). Admittedly, this is a short description of a remarkable academic career. Lipset is remembered by one of his students as “the most work-focused and hardest working person I encountered in a variety of elite institutions” (Marx 2006: 78). He collaborated with scholars, such as James Coleman and David Riesman, who defy simple disciplinary classification; he mentored younger colleagues who either became renowned sociologists (e.g., Ann Swidler) or political scientists (e.g., Juan Linz); and he  Lipset first came to Harvard in 1965 as visiting professor. Some assume that he stayed at Harvard because of a distaste for the student protests at Berkeley on which he conducted research. However, the fact that he was already negotiating with Harvard prior to the revolt speaks for a broader motivation for his decision to leave Berkeley (Schwartz 1992). 4

140 

P. Korom

served as a professor of political science and sociology (for example, at Stanford University). Thus, Lipset can be considered one of the true figureheads of the hybrid “political sociology.” A central characteristic of Lipset the academic is his outstanding life-­ long productivity. Figure 6.1 delineates his career in print by using the (weighted) number of published pages per year. Even though the trajectory is curvilinear, reaching its peak in the early 1970s, it becomes clear that Lipset published at least 1000 pages every 10 years between 1947 and 2001. His first book, Agrarian Socialism (1950), emerged from his dissertation and aimed to explain the rise to political power of the social

Fig. 6.1  Weighted page count for Lipset’s monographs, book contributions, and journal articles 1947–2001. Considered are 23 books (including one research report), 139 book contributions, and 103 journal articles—see appendix of Korom 2019. The page count was weighted simply by dividing for each item the published pages by the number of authors. The average number of published pages per year is 175 (dashed line). Circles stand for research stays of at least one year; CASBS stands for the Center for Advanced Study in Behavioral Sciences

6  The Rise to and the Fall from Eminence 

141

democratic Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan. The young leftist from New York hoped to better understand why his own country had never produced a serious socialist movement. Six years later, Lipset published, together with Martin Trow and James Coleman, the landmark study Union Democracy in which the International Typographical Union (ITU) was found to be a significant exception to Robert Michels’ “iron law.” In his last book, It Didn’t Happen Here (2000), in which he addresses the question “Why is there no socialism in the United States?” Lipset returns to the topic of “American exceptionalism” to which he had previously dedicated much of his research. Between Agrarian Socialism and It Didn’t Happen Here, Lipset wrote another 20 books on different subjects, ranging from student politics and social mobility to change and continuity in the U.S. Jewish community. Some of the books, such as Political Man or Revolution and Counterrevolution (1968), are collections of previously published journal articles or book chapters. Although monographs make up approximately 5000 pages (if divided by the number of coauthors), book contributions amount to approximately 3000 pages. With approximately 1400 pages of articles published in 53 different academic journals, this publication genre contributes the least to the overall page count.

L ipset: Remembered in Political Science, Neglected in Sociology Lipset’s work mostly revolved around political topics. His main publications facilitated the establishment of the subfield “political sociology” (Janoski 2005), and he was the leading figure behind the foundation of the international Research Committee on Political Sociology.5 That most of his work stood at the crossroads between sociology and political science reflects the fact that he was the first person to serve as president of  Lipset cofounded and chaired the joint Research Committee on Political Sociology of the International Political Science Association (IPSA) and the International Sociological Association (ISA) between 1960 and 1970. 5

142 

P. Korom

the American Political Science Association and the American Sociological Association. Lipset (1986) himself argued that the reason his book, Political Man, is commonly ranked in rosters of the most-cited works in the social sciences rests not only on its availability in many languages but also on its interdisciplinary orientation.6 If one takes citations as an indicator of research impact, two distinct legacies become apparent, as shown in Fig.  6.2. In sociology, Lipset’s reception reached something of a zenith during the 1970s and then declined continuously over half a century; in political science, more and more scholars started to borrow ideas from Lipset after a decline in attention between 1975 and 1985. Even though Lipset received nearly equal attention in both disciplines between 1970 and 1975, he is cited almost twice as often in political science than in sociology since 2000.

Fig. 6.2  Articles, book reviews, proceedings papers and editorials citing Lipset’s works in political science and sociology journals between 1955 and 2014. All citations were identified in the Web of Science (WoS) that provides an interface for searching the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI). The cited author search combines 11 different variants of Lipset using the Boolean OR operator—for example, LIPSET SEYMOUR, LIPSET SM, LIPSET S. The search was conducted in May 2018 and was confined to the WoS categories “political science” and “sociology”  Political Man is reported to have sold more than 400,000 copies in 20 different languages (Marks 2007). 6

6  The Rise to and the Fall from Eminence 

143

These divergent reception trajectories potentially provide insights into key factors that lead to enduring, rather than transitory, scholarly eminence. To understand each trajectory, we proceed in three steps. First, it is possible to empirically establish the major topics that run like red threads through Lipset’s work and link every publication to one or several of these topics. Second, one can quantify the attention paid in each discipline to selected publications and the collective work on a given topic (e.g., American exceptionalism). Third, a longitudinal contextual citation analysis is applied to determine which key ideas are borrowed from Lipset by political scientists and sociologists at various points in time. As Lipset “wrote [literally] about everything” (Lakin 2011: 337), the wealth of his research contributions can hardly be overlooked. Scholars have, however, identified the following major themes in his thought. For Diamond and Marks there lies a single core theme to Lipset’s work: “the conditions, problems, dynamics, values and institutions of democracy, both in the United States and comparatively throughout the world” (1992: 3). For Laslett (1983), there are two interconnected red threads: ideas related to American exceptionalism, discussing how far, and in what respects, the United States differs from other advanced industrial societies; the concern is to specify the conditions for a stable democracy. Velasco (2004) adds to this list of topics the extreme right; Marx (2006) adds Jewish identity and social mobility; Lakin (2011) adds authoritarianism and working-class politics; and Fischer and Swidler (2016) add Canada, the labour movement and social class. Lipset (1996) himself felt that the politics of academics and intellectuals informed a major part of his research agenda throughout much of the 1970s. Thus, when asked to find the essentials in Lipset’s work, various scholars offer different classification grids. To clarify more precisely which topics dominate Lipset’s writings, an automatic text analysis was applied to his works. I selected this method in order to establish which words appeared in which publications, together with the frequency with which they did so. Texts were treated effectively as unstructured “bags of words”, while word order and relationships were ignored. What was determined beforehand was the overall number of topics (N = 15), based on word frequency.

144 

P. Korom

Each of these topics was represented by a “dictionary”—that is, a list of key words that were found to stand for certain topics (see the Supplementary Material in Korom, 2019). Dictionaries were “calibrated” by extracting the most frequent “meaningful” words from the most representative texts.7 The simple assumption underlying this quantitative methodology for identifying distinct research domains is that an author uses diverse vocabulary when writing on only loosely related topics. To give an example, the dictionary for the topic “student politics” listed the following as the most frequent words: activism, communist, movement, opposition, protest, radical, student, Vietnam, and youth. To assign publications to topics, first 310 extremely common stop-­ words were deleted—words that are of little value for the analysis—from all texts and then the percentage ratio of dictionary-based keywords to total number of n-grams8 contained in each publication was calculated. If the ratio was above 10%, the “match” was accepted. It was determined, for example, that the dictionary term “student politics” covers about 10.7% of all words contained in the book Rebellion in the University (Lipset 1972). Figure 6.3 indicates the proportion of text assigned to a topic for a given episode in Lipset’s career (e.g., 1966–1975, Harvard University). The key point to take from the figure is that democracy was the only research topic that Lipset continued to pursue throughout his professional life. It was also his primary research interest until moving to Harvard, when it became increasingly replaced by growing research on American exceptionalism. Social stratification research was only on Lipset’s research agenda during the 1950s and 1960s. During the Harvard period, his research revolved especially around the issues of student politics and the politics of academics. These interests, however, vanished after a decade of intense research. While Lipset worked on the topic of agrarian socialism at the very beginning of his career, he turned his attention to class politics at the end of it. To reconstruct the reception of Lipset in political science and sociology, I also took cues from scientometrics. Having assigned Lipset’s books  Non-keyword terms that are substantively uninteresting (e.g., “and,” “to,” or “is”) were ignored.  In linguistics, an n-gram is a contiguous sequence of n items. Examples of 2-grams are “13,” “to,” or “as.” 7 8

6  The Rise to and the Fall from Eminence 

145

Fig. 6.3  Lipset’s changing research agenda measured in (weighted) pages. Considered are 18 books and 92 journal articles that are representative of Lipset’s works; for the complete list, see Korom (2019). For each contribution pages were counted and weighted by dividing published pages by the number of authors

and journal articles to one or more specific topics, I sought to establish whether it was, for example, Lipset’s collected works on democracy or on American exceptionalism that gained most peer recognition. For this purpose, Fig. 6.4 displays the proportion of articles citing his works in sociology and political science journals for each topic during two 30-year periods (1956–1987; 1988–2018). The overall picture that emerges is one of a degree of disciplinary overlap. Even if the versatile scholar Lipset published in many different fields, the bulk of citations in both disciplines refer to his contributions on democracy and American exceptionalism. Over time, the reception patterns diverge strikingly. In political science, Lipset garners a substantially growing number of citations for his work related to democracy and American exceptionalism, whereas in sociology citations stagnate with

146 

P. Korom

Fig. 6.4  Reception of Lipset in political science and sociology journals, 1956–1987, 1988–2018. The articles, each of which cite at least one of his works, are assigned to topic categories. For example, because Political Man was assigned to the category “democracy,” all identified articles citing it are attributed to that topic. Figure based on data derived from the SSCI

one notable exception: Publications on social stratification, such as Class, Status, and Power (Bendix and Lipset 1966), start to garner a rather average number of citations. To validate the approach adopted, a second method was used that aims to identify dominant topics covered in the reception of Lipset by analyzing the full content of JSTOR9 archived journal articles mentioning “Lipset” at least once. JSTOR provides up to ten “Topic Cards,” derived for each article from a thesaurus, which are intended to provide background and content for the many subjects covered on JSTOR. Although  JSTOR is the most comprehensive electronic archive of scholarly journal articles, providing access to more than 12 million academic journal articles in 75 disciplines (https://about.jstor.org/missionhistory/, accessed 27 December, 2022). 9

6  The Rise to and the Fall from Eminence 

147

information on the JSTOR thesaurus is not available, the procedure behind the assignment of topics is well documented: The application of a topic is triggered if a term contained in the JSTOR thesaurus is present at least three times in an article; the relevance is determined by how frequently the term appears. To give an illustration: The journal article “Some Social Requisites of Democracy” is assigned the following topics: democracy, political parties, dictatorship, economic development, countries, social democracy, urbanization, communism, and Catholicism.10 Table 6.1 displays only the most frequent topics for two disciplines and various time spans. It becomes apparent that the bulk of all articles contain the following topics: democracy, political parties, liberalism, conservatism, and political attitudes. There are also discipline-specific topics. During the period 1951 to 1987, most articles in sociology mentioning Lipset discuss issues that relate either to social mobility or to social classes. After 1987 topics such as “social mobility” or “working class” cease to be ranked among the top 0.5% of keywords. In political science, voting behavior, political campaigns, and changing political partisanship appear to play a much greater role in Lipset’s reception. Altogether, the contextual citation analysis corroborates findings from the dictionary-citation approach.

 hy Has Lipset’s Eminence Faded W in Sociology? In many ways, the near eclipse of Lipset’s eminence in sociology is puzzling, even more so as the reception of his legacy appears to have increased in political science. Lipset spent his whole academic life at distinguished universities (UC Berkeley, Columbia, Harvard, Stanford), exemplifying the elite professor who is content to let his published research record speak for itself and who is constantly surrounded and inspired by other creative minds. Lipset himself was convinced that scholars working in researchoriented elite departments were more likely to advance a discipline and  It should be mentioned that topics can change over time as new concepts are regularly added to the JSTOR thesaurus. 10

Political parties Liberalism

Political systems Public opinion Communism Capitalism

Countries

Elites Capitalism

Modeling

Working class Social interaction Parents

Voting

Economic Liberalism development Political Political candidates Universities partisanship Political candidates Elites Capitalism

Communism

Political partisanship Political candidates Economic development Public opinion Socialism

Political attitudes

Political systems

Economic development Political partisanship Authoritarianism

Political parties

All years

Universities

Social movements Modeling

Universities

Social research

Social research Social mobility Protestantism Social interaction

Working class

Social structures

Prestige Men

Communities

Voting

Political parties Democracy Liberalism Conservatism Capitalism Liberalism Political attitudes Conservatism Social theories Political Capitalism Attitudes Voting Communities

Democracy

1988–2017

Conservatism Political attitudes Social structures Social mobility Social theories

Political parties Prestige Communities Social theories

Conservatism

Political attitudes Conservatism

Political parties Voting Liberalism

Democracy

Conservatism

Top 0.5 % Political attitudes Voting Liberalism Authoritarianism

Voting Democracy

Democracy

1951–1987

Top 0.1 % Political parties

Sociology All years

1947–1987

1988–2017

Political science

Table 6.1  Top JSTOR topics in articles mentioning Lipset, divided between political science and sociology

148  P. Korom

Political campaigns Presidential elections Socialism Communities Social research Modeling

Social classes Middle class

Working class

Protestantism Social classes Educational attainment Middle class Men Political protest Social movements

Modeling Parents

6  The Rise to and the Fall from Eminence 

149

150 

P. Korom

have long-lasting intellectual impact on their peers—a belief that shines through in some passages of the Divided Academy (Ladd and Lipset 1975). It appears, however, that an elite environment does not protect a scholar’s reputation from falling into neglect. Further, Lipset had certainly many close colleagues and students who debated his work and circulated it within their social circles. One former mentee, Gary T.  Marx, observed that Lipset “must have gone through reams of stationary continuing to write on their behalf over his lifetime” (Marx 2006: 79). In a reversal, former students coedited a Festschrift (Marks and Diamond 1992) or played a crucial role when it came to nominate Lipset for the ASA’s Career of Distinguished Scholarship Award, which he received in 2000. Many colleagues, such as Irving L. Horowitz, held Lipset in great esteem and even while criticizing him were quite convinced of his greatness and the lasting merits of his key contributions (Horowitz 2003). Yet it would appear that being well integrated and respected within a wide community of researchers did not help to keep his work alive in sociology. Another usual suspect that needs to be examined is the timelessness of contributed ideas. Thinking of Lipset’s many contributions to, for example, the study of American exceptionalism or the condition of democracy, few reasons come to mind as to why sociologists should now pay less attention to his ideas compared to 40 years ago. If one ponders the depth and extent to which the United States can properly be said to differ from other nations, Lipset’s ideas on what constitutes the American creed or on the contradictions that form the “double-edged sword” of American exceptionalism can still inform contemporary scholarship. Given Lipset’s influence on past debates over the process of transition to democracy, his work could, equally, be consulted today to understand whether established democracy is in danger (Levitsky and Ziblatt 2018). Indeed, political science continues to acknowledge his contribution. Finally, the reception of Lipset’s major books has never been narrowly confined to the English-speaking world. Political Man, for example, has been translated into more than 14 languages (Lipset 1986) and archived letters to publishers prove Lipset’s keen interest in the distribution of his books. Thus, in theory, Lipset’s work could have continued to resonate with readers around the world. Obviously, one must seek other explanations to solve the puzzle.

6  The Rise to and the Fall from Eminence 

151

One point of departure is to think of the degree to which Lipset’s work became canonized in sociology, a process that typically boosts a scholar’s stature, mostly as a general thinker, by simplifying his or her work into unified messages that are assumed to be hidden somewhere deep in the text; these take priority over the critical and contextualized reading of their work (Outhwaite 2009). Once canonized, an author’s work often finds itself easily summarized with a few words or phrases, such as structuration (Giddens), risk (Beck), liquidity (Bauman), habitus (Bourdieu), and the canonized texts start to represent the work in much the same way that the founding fathers, led by the triumvirate of Marx, Durkheim, and Weber, have represented the discipline. Typically, students learn of canonized authors through secondary literature, short texts in readers or introductory textbooks, which are known to initiate various commemorative practices in a discipline like sociology (Gill 2013). Has Lipset ever reached a canonical status in sociology? All analyses conducted suggest that this is clearly not the case regarding one key knowledge domain of sociology—namely, social stratification research. The book Social Mobility in Industrial Society (Lipset and Bendix 1959)11 still receives citations for what became to be called in the literature the “Lipset and Zetterberg hypothesis” or “LZ-hypothesis”—a label that stands in reality for three key arguments: High rates of social mobility are not a precondition for, but a consequence of industrialization; once a certain stage of industrialization has been attained, mobility rates will increase to a new historic level (i.e., threshold effect); levels of mobility and equality of opportunity do not necessarily co-vary. The LZ-hypothesis might still inspire some sociological research, but scholars do not try to resuscitate a “Lipsetian perspective” in analyzing the social world when citing this work. All other contributions rarely stimulate today’s scholars researching social class and mobility, and it is difficult, if not impossible, to identify what the name Lipset has come to stand for in social stratification research. Further, Lipset’s key contributions to democracy (e.g., Political Man) have not been included in the sociological canon to the same extent as, for example, Daniel Bell’s The Coming of Post-Industrial Society (1973) or  Lipset and Zetterberg contributed a revised chapter on theories of social mobility to the 1959 edited volume that they had first published as a research report in 1956. 11

152 

P. Korom

Peter Blau and Otis D.  Duncan’s The American Occupational Structure (1967). Although there may be various factors at play as to why Political Man never received much sociological commemoration, much suggests that sociologists found the book too focused on political issues to become a sociological classic, which is not without a certain irony, given that Lipset wrote in the foreword that “the study of man in society cannot fruitfully be compartmentalized according to substantive concerns” (Lipset 1981: ix). In general, democracy research has gained a solid foothold in political science whereas it plays a marginal role in sociology, and this in turn has decisively impacted Lipset’s legacy in both disciplines. The main insight gained from the analyses in this chapter is that a big part of Lipset’s work was not only directed toward democracy throughout his life but also that he received most recognition for his stirring myriad of writings on democracy. Lipset the democracy researcher not only occupies a central place in the political science literature but is also honored for his achievements in the form of, for example, the annual Seymour Martin Lipset Lecture on Democracy in the World, which is dedicated to the central questions he sought to address during his lifetime: What does it take to make democracy work? How can citizens and leaders work to protect democracy from the constant threats that it faces? In contrast to this vivid commemoration in political science, the fragmentation of sociology appears to inhibit a broad reception of the democracy researcher Lipset. He mutated from a central figure of sociology to the figurehead of one of the many specialist sociologies—namely, political sociology. Some of Lipset’s groundbreaking ideas—for example, the relevance of socioeconomic cleavages for structuring party systems— continue to resonate with many social scientists, but they have migrated from sociology’s core to its periphery. In a fragmented discipline, however, prestige in a niche area cannot alone provide a scholar with elite status. A potential explanation for Lipset’s decline is to be found in the changed directions that the discipline of sociology took. Or, put more generally, the case of Lipset demonstrates first and foremost the extent to which the reputation and influence of an eminent scholar can depend on purely contextual factors.

6  The Rise to and the Fall from Eminence 

153

 ierre Bourdieu and U.S. Sociology: P A Diffusion Study Bourdieu, born in 1930, was of the same generation as Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida and Gilles Deleuze. Similiar to these prominent scholars, his entire career essentially unfolded within France’s higher education system. Shortly after being appointed assistant to the leading French intellectual, Raymond Aron, Bourdieu took up teaching at the University of Lille (1961–1964). He later became Director of Studies at École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS) in Paris in 1964, where he edited, among other things, the journal Actes de La Recherche en Sciences Sociales. In 1981, Bourdieu was elected to the prestigious Chair of Sociology at the Collège de France and received the highest honor in 1993 from the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), the Médaille d’Or (Grenfell 2012: 11–25). The points of contact with U.S. sociology were few. Bourdieu crossed the Atlantic for the first time in 1973 to spend almost one year at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University. In the spring of 1988, a semester-long graduate seminar workshop at the University of Chicago followed, and when receiving the Goffman Prize in 1996, Bourdieu gave a series of lectures at UC Berkeley. Although his personal contacts with U.S. sociology were limited, he befriended eminent social scientists such as Erving Goffman and Clifford Geertz (Bourdieu 1996). It is well known that Bourdieu took considerable interest in shaping the reception of his work, asking former students, including Michèle Lamont and Loïc Wacquant, to help diffuse his work in the United States (Lamont 2010). A collaboration with Wacquant resulted in the publication of “An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology”, which made Bourdieu’s conceptual canon easily accessible to an English-speaking audience (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992).

154 

P. Korom

These connections notwithstanding, it remains difficult to explain how a scholar who represented a blank slate for most U.S. social scientists during the 1970s went on to become one of the most cited scholars in U.S. sociology. Such an outstanding reputational trajectory posits a puzzle that demands explanation. One is tempted to ask: “Why Bourdieu, his tortuous style of writing notwithstanding? Why Bourdieu, his strong Frenchness notwithstanding? Why Bourdieu, if certain prominent social scientists (e.g., John Goldthorpe) have been and still are so dismissive toward him and his work?” (Santoro 2011: 5). The question “Why Bourdieu?” has already been tackled by several researchers from various perspectives. Most notably, Gisèle Sapiro studied the international career of Bourdieu’s key publication La Distinction (1979), which appeared in many translations and propelled him from the position of a recognized specialist to that of a social theorist (Sapiro 2014). Marco Santoro and colleagues investigated the worldwide circulation of Bourdieu’s ideas through book translations and scientific journals (Santoro et al. 2018). Jeffrey J. Sallaz and Jane Zavisca provided evidence on when and how Bourdieu’s ideas have been “put to use” in research published in selected U.S. sociology journals (Sallaz and Zavisca 2007). Furthermore, sociologists involved in the process of “diffusing Bourdieu” have reflected on the various relationships that their U.S. colleagues cultivated with Bourdieu’s work (Lamont 2010, 2012; Lizardo 2012). The objective here is to further our understanding of the impact of Bourdieu on U.S. sociology by adopting a new perspective that looks at how citations diffuse. Diffusion studies focusing on citation behavior trace where and when scholars adopt a key thinker’s ideas. More exactly, and according to Katz (1999: 147), good diffusion studies address the “spread of (1) an item, idea, or practice, (2) over time, and (3) to adopting units (individuals, groups, corporate units), embedded in (4) channels of communication, (5) social structures (networks, community, class), and (6) social values, or culture”. The working hypothesis is that in such a fragmented discipline as sociology thinkers only achieve eminence if their ideas spread widely and become recognized in quite diverse knowledge communities or academic tribes. I set out to test this hypothesis by examining a single case only.

6  The Rise to and the Fall from Eminence 

155

The study design is rather comprehensive because it jointly focuses on aspects (1) to (5) that Elihu Katz perceived as essential. Before addressing these issues separately, it appears, however, necessary to ask the most elementary question: When were Bourdieu’s contributions translated from French so that they could easily reach a U.S. audience? (see also Santoro et al. 2018). Here only a rough overview of key translations is provided: After an inconsequential U.S. translation of Sociologie de l’Algérie (The Algerians) in 1962, three important works were published within a short period of time: Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture (1977, coauthored by Jean-Claude Passeron), Outline of a Theory of Practice (1977), and The Inheritors: French Students and Their Relation to Culture (1979). The 1984 translation of La Distinction (Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste) by the prestigious Harvard University Press turned out to be a breakthrough into broader general recognition. This book also contributed to the unification of the reception of Bourdieu’s work because it brought together, among other things, many themes Bourdieu had developed since the 1960s (Brubaker 1985). After Distinction, the average time lag for translating Bourdieu’s books into English decreased significantly as his popularity increased (Sapiro 2014). Le sens pratique (1980), in which Bourdieu consolidates his theoretical apparatus, is an exception; it was published ten years later in 1990 as The Logic of Practice by Stanford University Press. Given these key translations, I opted to start my diffusion study in the early 1970s. Further, I decided to focus on academic journals as these would have functioned as important channels for spreading Bourdieu’s ideas. Special issues, book reviews, and lengthy review essays on Bourdieu’s works (e.g., Brubaker 1985; DiMaggio 1979), for example, may have substantially accelerated his diffusion into U.S. sociology.

Channels of Diffusion To illuminate the role played by journals as diffusion routes, the study included articles published in 20 sociology journals between 1970 and 2010, written by scholars affiliated to a U.S. university (the convention

156 

P. Korom

for counting a scholar as U.S.) and which cite Bourdieu at least once. This produced a total of 1080 articles. It becomes evident that Bourdieu’s work received little attention until the mid-1980s. He is cited by 10.7% of all the articles published by Sociology of Education in 1984, 14.3% of the articles in Theory and Society in 1985, and 22.2% of the articles in Sociological Theory in 1986 (see Fig. 6.5). In several other journals (e.g., Gender and Society), such frequent references to Bourdieu do not appear throughout the four decades. From the 1990s onwards articles published in Poetics start to show a similar reliance on Bourdieu’s ideas. In 1997, for example, more than half of all journal articles published in Poetics, a journal that acquired “the (informal) mantle as the unofficial journal of cultural sociology in the United States” around the same time (Lizardo 2012: 240), cite Bourdieu. The core journals of the discipline (American Journal of Sociology, American Sociological Review) reach a citation rate of above 20% only in the years after 2000. These findings suggest that specialty journals served first and foremost as the channels of diffusion, especially during the early stages of the Bourdieu reception. What is remarkable, however, is the rather broad diffusion from the late 1990s onward across nearly all considered journals—albeit on different levels (see Fig. 6.5).

Diffusing Publications and Concepts Although it is difficult to reconstruct with any precision how and why an author’s ideas succeed in the market of intellectual products, scientometric analysis makes it possible to trace the varying resonance of publications and various concepts contained therein over time. A closer inspection of the dataset reveals clearly that translations of Bourdieu’s works are far more frequently cited than the French originals. Table 6.2 treats translations and originals as one. It transpires that (translated) monographs are the most cited, with a few exceptions (e.g., book chapters “The Forms of Capital” and “Cultural Reproduction and Social Reproduction”). The monograph Distinction receives about 18% of all citations and by far most of the attention.

6  The Rise to and the Fall from Eminence 

157

Fig. 6.5  Proportion of articles citing Bourdieu (in %) in 20 sociology journals between 1970 and 2010

158 

P. Korom

A dynamic perspective further reveals not only skyrocketing citations of Distinction since its publication in 1984, but also a stagnating impact of Bourdieu’s most influential publication of the late 1970s and 1980s: Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture. It is maybe not too farfetched to infer that Bourdieu entering a stage of discipline-wide Table 6.2  Publications by Bourdieu (including books, book chapters and journal articles) most frequently cited in journal articles (n =1080) by U.S. sociologists Publication type

Referenced contribution (publishing house/ journal)

Book

Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (Harvard University Press) La Distinction: Critique sociale du jugement (Éditions de Minuit) Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge University Press) Esquisse d’une théorie de la pratique (Droz) Reproduction in Education, Society, and Culture (Sage) La reproduction: Éléments pour une théorie du système d’enseignement (Éditions de Minuit) The Logic of Practice (Stanford University Press) Le sens pratique (Éditions de Minuit) “The Forms of Capital” in: Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education (Greenwood) Ökonomisches Kapital, kulturelles Kapital, soziales Kapital (Soziale Welt) “Cultural Reproduction and Social Reproduction” in: Power and Ideology in Education (Oxford University Press) “Reproduction culturelle et reproduction sociale” (Information sur les Sciences Sociales) An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology (University of Chicago Press) Language and Symbolic Power (Harvard University Press) Ce que parler veut dire: L’économie des échanges linguistiques (Fayard) Homo Academicus (Stanford University Press) Homo Academicus (Éditions de Minuit) The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature (Columbia University Press) The Rules of Art: Genesis and Structure of the Literary Field (Stanford University Press) Les règles de l’art: Genèse et structure du champ littéraire (Seuil)

Book

Book

Book Book chapter

Book chapter Journal article Book Book

Book Book Book

Published

Cited

%

1984

576

17.6

1977

300

9.2

1972 1977

219

6.7

176

5.4

155

4.7

138

4.2

1992

136

4.2

1991

81

2.5

1988 1984 1993

78

2.4

70

2.1

2006

65

2.0

1979

1970 1990 1980 1986

1983 1977

1971

1982

1992

(continued)

159

6  The Rise to and the Fall from Eminence  Table 6.2 (continued) Publication type

Referenced contribution (publishing house/ journal)

Book

In Other Words: Essays Towards a Reflexive Sociology (Stanford University Press) Choses dites (Éditions de Minuit) The State Nobility: Elite Schools in the Field of Power (Stanford University Press) La noblesse d’état (Éditions de Minuit) “The Specificity of the Scientific Field and the Social Conditions of the Progress of Reason” (Social Science Information) “La spécificité du champ scientifique et les conditions sociales du progrès de la raison” (Sociologie et sociétés) “The Field of Cultural Production, or: The Economic World Reversed” (Poetics) “The Field of Cultural Production, or: The Economic World Reversed” in: The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature (Columbia University Press) The Inheritors: French Students and Their Relation to Culture (University of Chicago Press) Les héritiers: Les étudiants et la culture (Éditions de Minuit) Masculine Domination (Stanford University Press) La domination masculine (Seuil)

Book

Journal article

Journal article Book chapter

Book

Book

Published

Cited

%

1990

51

1.6

1987 1996

51

1.6

1989 1975

45

1.4

44

1.3

38

1.2

35

1.1

1975

1983 1993

1979

1964 2001 1998

reception is to be first and foremost attributed to the publication success of the English translation of La Distinction, a breakthrough book comparable to Parsons’ The Structure of Social Action (1937) and Merton’s Social Theory and Social Structure (1949). In their research on the reception of Bourdieu in the United States, Sallaz and Zavisca (2007) established through content analysis of the journals American Journal of Sociology, American Sociological Review, Social Forces, and Social Problems for the period between 1980 and 2004 that “capital” (especially “cultural capital”) clearly dominated as a concept. Here, this line of research is extended by applying automatized analysis to a substantially larger text corpus. To explore citation contexts,

160 

P. Korom

only the sentences that contain a citation of Bourdieu’s work are analyzed, as opposed to the full semantic content of the articles. To give an illustration: In the journal article “Cultural Objects as Objects” (McDonnell 2010), one finds in different parts of the article three sentences that refer to Bourdieu’s work: “In many ways, this research returns to Bourdieu’s (1984) interest in how culture excludes but refocuses the attention around issues of materiality.” “The centralizing of media production has the effect of limiting the kinds of diversity present across the field of cultural production (Bourdieu 1993).” “Or dispositions as seen through Bourdieu (1977), tools as seen through Swidler (1986), or schema as seen by Sewell (1992) or DiMaggio (1997)”. I converted sentences like these into a so-called “tidy text format,” essentially consisting of a table with one “token” per row—a “token” being a meaningful unit of text (e.g., a word). When excluding extremely common “stop” words that are of little value for the analysis and neglecting punctuation, a tidy text format of the preceding first extracted sentence looks like this (if rows are separated by semicolon): research; returns; Bourdieu; 1984; culture; excludes; refocuses; attention; issues; materiality

To understand trends in the usage of the main Bourdieusian concepts, such contexts of citations were analyzed further. Figure 6.6 confirms one of the main findings of Sallaz and Zavisca (2007)—that is, capital is and has been the most popular concept—whereby most interest centers on cultural capital rather than social capital. Another finding, however, is not consistent with their study. It is clear that Bourdieu’s field concept has slowly but steadily worked its way into U.S. sociology, especially between 2000 and 2010; and it was used much more when citing Bourdieu than the concept of habitus or even class that dominated in the late 1980s. The contention that the field concept, as a site of theoretical innovation, has not played much of a role in recent years, whereas the concept of habitus has given rise to many more studies (Hilgers and Mangez 2015: 1), might not, therefore, be accurate.

Fig. 6.6  Usage of Bourdieu’s key concepts over time (1970–2010). Considered are 19 journals and 2215 citation contexts. Theory & Society is not included in the analysis because of its citation format, which relies on endnotes that are not conducive to automated content analysis

162 

P. Korom

Synthesizing results on the reception of publications and concepts, it becomes clear that Bourdieusian sociology entered U.S. sociology chiefly through the translation of a single book—La Distinction—and revolved around one key concept: “cultural capital.” Both appear to be heuristic tools flexible enough to be stretched and applied by scholars to many distinct research areas.

Social Structures Impacting Diffusion Processes Some authors argue that high-status individuals played a crucial role in the diffusion of Bourdieu in U.S. sociology. Santoro (2011: 8), for example, attributes an important role to “publications [using Bourdieusian concepts] produced by reputed scholars in leading departments – Paul DiMaggio at Harvard and then Yale and Princeton, Craig Calhoun in North Carolina and then NYU, Löic Wacquant at Chicago and then Berkeley, Rogers Brubaker at UCLA.” To ascertain whether the reception of Bourdieu occurred at various times in different U.S. departments, it was necessary to differentiate between authors from elite and non-elite departments. Relying on the sole historical study of change and continuity in prestige of sociology departments, based on hiring patterns of PhD students, 20 departments were classified as “ elite” that ranked among the top 25 in at least two of the following years: 1965, 1983, and 2007 (Weakliem et  al. 2012). Figure 6.7 shows that, especially regarding journals that contain the bulk of all citing articles (American Journal of Sociology, American Sociological Review, Poetics, Theory and Society), the citation-time patterns are not significantly different across both groups. Thus, there is no evidence for “trickle-down effects” in the diffusion. Citation behavior apparently did not flow down the prestige hierarchy in sociology.

Carrier Groups The carrier groups of Bourdieu’s ideas in the journal world appear prima facie to be a variegated collection of individuals. Because many of the

6  The Rise to and the Fall from Eminence 

163

Fig. 6.7  Articles citing Bourdieu published between 1970 and 2010. Each dot stands for one of the 1080 articles, assigned to either elite or non-elite departments according to the affiliation of the first-named author. Lines indicate the 25%, 50%, and 75% quartiles. Elite departments are: Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, Indiana, Johns Hopkins, Northwestern, Princeton, Stanford, UC Berkeley, UC Los Angeles, Chicago, Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Texas, Wisconsin, Washington State, and Yale

authors are members of the American Sociological Association (ASA)—a scholarly society that used to be dominated by a disciplinary elite but turned into a professional association of organized subgroups in the 1950s (Simpson and Simpson 1994)—one can try to gain a more detailed portrait. ASA section memberships can inform one about the specializations of the first-named authors because sections are essentially small

164 

P. Korom

sociological associations that each host their panels at ASA annual meetings and uphold their own communication networks. Systematic investigations into ASA section membership (see Table 6.3) of all first-named authors reveal that members of the Theory and Sociology of Education section were predominant in the first two decades (1970–1990). Between 2000 and 2010, cultural sociologists made up 12.5%; sociologists specializing in the areas of organizations, occupations, and work comprised 9.7%; and educational sociologists only 6.4% of all ASA members that could be identified. The prime carrier group, thus, changed within the four decades considered. It is no longer the educational sociologists but rather the cultural sociologists who spearhead the group of U.S. scholars using, in one way or another, Bourdieu’s theoretical toolkit.12 This finding is an important piece in the puzzle about Bourdieu in U.S. sociology because culture has been on the rise since the late 1980s, continuing to the present day. As Tsang and Lamont (2018) point out, the Culture section of the ASA, founded in 1988, became one of the largest sections of the ASA by the mid-1990s. At this time, the leading journal, American Sociological Review, started to be coedited by a cultural sociologist, Omar Lizardo, as were other high-profile publications such as Contemporary Sociology (Michael Sauder) or Sociological Forum (Karen Cerulo). The academic tribe’s growing impact has also led to a cultural mutation of other sociology specialties like stratification research (“cultural turn”). One can safely assume that Bourdieu would not have reached the uppermost echelon of eminence had he not become the icon of cultural sociologists, but stayed popular only among educational sociologists.

 That U.S. cultural sociologists were highly receptive to Bourdieu’s ideas became evident due to the fact that his theoretical repertoire figured high in most books submitted to the ASA culture section’s book competition (Lamont 2010). 12

Methodology Soc. Psy.

4 (6.3) 4 (6.3)

26 (5.1)

Eco. Soc.

N = 417 First-named author ASA member: yes 278 (66.7%) no 139 (33.3%) ASA sections Freq. (%) Section 64 (12.5) Soc. of Culture 50 (9.7) Org., Occ., and Work 34 (6.6) Comp./Hist. Soc. 33(6.4) Soc. of Education 30 (5.8) Theory

Directory 2003 Publ. Years: 2000–2010

Source: Three editions of the Biographical Directory of Members, edited by the American Sociological Association Note: Names of ASA sections can change over time

5 (4.5)

8 (12.7) 6 (9.5) 5 (7.9)

9 (8.2) 8 (7.3) 6 (5.5)

Marxist Soc. Population Org. and Occ.

N = 188 First-named author ASA member: yes 96 (51.1%) no 92 (48.9%) ASA sections Freq. (%) Section 10 (15.9) Soc. of Education 9 (14.3) Theoretical Soc.

N = 188 First-named author ASA member: yes 67 (35.6%) no 121 (64.4%) ASA sections Freq. (%) Section 11 (10.0) Theory 9 (8.2) Soc. of Education

Strat./Mobility Social Psych. Methodology: Quant. Race/Ethn./ Minority Rel.

Directory 1980 Publ. years: 1970–1990

Directory 1975 Publ. years: 1970–1990

Table 6.3  Memberships in ASA sections of first-named authors citing Bourdieu

6  The Rise to and the Fall from Eminence 

165

166 

P. Korom

 minence in Sociology—A Nested E Phenomenon Extending Across Many Specialties What one can learn from the case study on Bourdieu is that eminence in sociology is a nested phenomenon (Walsh and Lehmann 2019). In the sociological literature there does not exist one single Bourdieu, but many. There is the Bourdieu that provides a model of culture that can be measured (one can have more or less cultural capital) and thereby adapted to regression analysis; the Bourdieu that helps one recognize what separates social collectivities; the Bourdieu one can use to approach scientific knowledge production; and so on. Bourdieu’s work, therefore, diffuses today through several channels throughout the discipline. Once a thinker like Bourdieu starts to dominate not a few but many specialties within sociology, he is likely to join the discipline’s elite. Similarly, Lipset had “multiple lives” in sociology; it was not only the democracy theorist Lipset but also the social stratification researcher Lipset that entered sociology’s textbooks during the 1970s. Once the reception narrowed, Lipset nearly disappeared from the roster of eminent sociologists. Broad reception patterns imply that an author is not only discussed within “elite sociology” but also within “mass sociology,” as the case study of Bourdieu has clearly shown. U.S. educational sociologists working in lower-tier departments were, as I have shown, among the first to apply Bourdieu’s concepts (to the U.S. higher education system). Besides the fact that eminence in such a fragmented discipline as sociology builds on recognition in several specialized fields, influential carrier groups appear key to the emergence and vanishing of eminence. While the reception of Bourdieu began among educational sociologists, it was the growing “tribe” of cultural sociologists that brought him from the margins to the mainstream. Given its high standing within U.S. sociology, this carrier group has been extremely successful in diffusing his ideas. In contrast, political sociologists appear to have too little discipline-wide influence to keep their founding fathers’ work remembered. Put another way, whether scholars occupy a lasting place in the wider pantheon depends not only on the intrinsic power of their ideas, but also on

6  The Rise to and the Fall from Eminence 

167

whether their key concepts are sufficiently flexible to be applied to a wide array of research areas within sociology, as well as on whether intellectual movements central to the discipline incorporate and maintain them.

References Bales, Robert F. 1950. Interaction Process Analysis: A Method for the Study of Small Groups. Cambridge, MA: Addison-­Wesley Press. Bendix, Reinhard, and Seymour M. Lipset, eds. 1966. Class, Status and Power. Social Stratification in Comparative Perspective. New York: The Free Press. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1996. The Goffman Prize Lecture: Masculine Domination Revisited. Berkeley Journal of Sociology 41: 189–203. Bourdieu, Pierre, and Loïc J.D.  Wacquant. 1992. An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Brubaker, Rogers. 1985. Rethinking Classical Theory: The Sociological Vision of Pierre Bourdieu. Theory and Society 14 (6): 745–775. Camic, Charles. 1992. Reputation and Predecessor Selection: Parsons and the Institutionalists. American Sociological Review 57 (4): 421–445. Clegg, Stewart. 1992. Review Article: How to Become an Internationally Famous British Social Theorist. The Sociological Review 40 (3): 576–598. Collins, Randall. 2000. The Sociology of Philosophies: A Précis. Philosophy of the Social Sciences 30 (2): 157–201. ———. 2002. The Sociology of Philosophies: A Global Theory of Intellectual Change. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Diamond, Larry, and Gary Marks. 1992. Seymour Martin Lipset and the Study of Democracy. In Reexamining Democracy: Essays in Honor of Seymour Martin Lipset, ed. G.  Marks and L.  Diamond, 1–14. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications. DiMaggio, Paul. 1979. Review Essay: On Pierre Bourdieu. American Journal of Sociology 84 (6): 1460–1474. Fischer, Claude S., and Ann Swidler. 2016. Seymour M.  Lipset (1922–2006). Washington, DC: National Academy of Sciences. Frickel, Scott, and Neil Gross. 2005. A General Theory of Scientific/Intellectual Movements. American Sociological Review 70 (2): 204–232. Garfinkel, Harold. 1963. A Conception of, and Experiments with, ‘Trust’ as a Condition for Stable Concerted Actions. In Motivation and Social Interaction, ed. O.J. Harvey. New York: Ronald Press.

168 

P. Korom

Gill, Timothy M. 2013. ‘Why Mills, Not Gouldner?’ Selective History and Differential Commemoration in Sociology. The American Sociologist 44 (1): 96–115. Glock, Charles Y., and David L. Sills. 1958. Political Sociology at the Bureau of Applied Social Research. Political Research, Organization and Design 1 (3): 22–26. Grenfell, Michael, ed. 2012. Pierre Bourdieu: Key Concepts. Durham: Acumen. Hilgers, Mathieu, and Éric Mangez. 2015. Introduction to Pierre Bourdieu’s Theory of Social Fields. In Bourdieu’s Theory of Social Fields: Concepts and Applications, ed. M. Hilgers and É. Mangez, 1–35. New York, NY: Routledge. Horowitz, Irving L. 2003. Seymour Martin Lipset: The Social Uses of Anomaly. The American Sociologist 34 (1/2): 10–16. Janoski, Thomas, ed. 2005. The Handbook of Political Sociology: States, Civil Societies, and Globalization. New York: Cambridge. Katz, Elihu. 1999. Theorizing Diffusion: Tarde and Sorokin Revisited. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 566 (1): 144–155. Koppman, Sharon, and Erin Leahey. 2019. Who Moves to the Methodological Edge? Factors That Encourage Scientists to Use Unconventional Methods. Research Policy 48 (9): 103807. Korom, Philipp. 2019. The Political Sociologist Seymour M. Lipset: Remembered in Political Science, Neglected in Sociology. European Journal of Cultural and Political Sociology 6 (4): 448–473. Ladd, Everett K., and Seymour Martin Lipset. 1975. The Divided Academy: Professors and Politics. New York: McGraw-Hill. Lakin, Jason M. 2011. Seymour Martin Lipset. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 155 (3): 336–350. Lamont, Michèle. 1987. How to Become a Dominant French Philosopher: The Case of Jacques Derrida. American Journal of Sociology 93 (3): 584–622. ———. 2010. Looking Back at Bourdieu. In Cultural Analysis and Bourdieu’s Legacy: Settling Accounts and Developing Alternatives, ed. E.B.  Silva and A. Warde, 128–141. London; New York: Routledge. ———. 2012. How Has Bourdieu Been Good to Think With? The Case of the United States. Sociological Forum 27 (1): 228–237. Laslett, J.H.M. 1983. Pluralism, Liberalism, and History: Seymour Martin Lipset and His Worldview. Society 20 (5): 64–68. Levitsky, Steven, and Daniel Ziblatt. 2018. How Democracies Die. New York: Crown.

6  The Rise to and the Fall from Eminence 

169

Lipset, Seymour M. 1972. Rebellion in the University. Boston: Little, Brown. Lipset, Seymour Martin. 1981. Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. ———. 1986. This Week’s Citation Classic: Lipset S.M.  Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics. Current Contents 26: 14. ———. 1996. Steady Work: An Academic Memoir. Annual Review of Sociology 22 (1): 1–27. Lipset, Seymour Martin, and Reinhard Bendix. 1959. Social Mobility and Industrial Society. Berkeley: University of California Press. Lizardo, Omar. 2012. The Three Phases of Bourdieu’s U.S. Reception: Comment on Lamont. Sociological Forum 27 (1): 238–244. Marks, Gary. 2007. “Seymour Martin Lipset: Scholar of Democracy Driven to Understand American Society.” The Guardian. Marks, Gary, and Larry J. Diamond, eds. 1992. Reexamining Democracy: Essays in Honor of Seymour Martin Lipset. Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage Publications. Marx, Gary T. 2006. Travels with Marty: Seymour Martin Lipset as a Mentor. The American Sociologist 37 (4): 76–83. McDonnell, Terence E. 2010. Cultural Objects as Objects: Materiality, Urban Space, and the Interpretation of AIDS Campaigns in Accra, Ghana. American Journal of Sociology 115 (6): 1800–1852. McLaughlin, Neil. 1998. How to Become a Forgotten Intellectual: Intellectual Movements and the Rise and Fall of Erich Fromm. Sociological Forum 13 (2): 215–246. Merton, Robert K. 1992. Notes on the Young Lipset. In Reexamining Democracy: Essays in Honor of Seymour Martin Lipset, ed. G. Marks and L.J. Diamond, ix–xi. Newbury Park, Calif: Sage Publications. Outhwaite, William. 2009. Canon Formation in Late 20th-Century British Sociology. Sociology 43 (6): 1029–1045. Pareto, Vilfredo. 1935. The Mind and Society. New York, NY: Dover. Rule, James B. 1997. Theory and Progress in Social Science. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press. Sallaz, Jeffrey J., and Jane Zavisca. 2007. Bourdieu in American Sociology, 1980–2004. Annual Review of Sociology 33 (1): 21–41. Santoro, Marco. 2011. From Bourdieu to Cultural Sociology. Cultural Sociology 5 (1): 3–23. Santoro, Marco, and Gisèle Sapiro. 2017. On the Social Life of Ideas and the Persistence of the Author in the Social and Human Sciences. Sociologica 1: 1–13.

170 

P. Korom

Santoro, Marco, Andrea Galleli, and Barbara Grüning. 2018. Bourdieu’s International Circulation: An Exercise in Intellectual Mapping. In The Oxford Handbook of Pierre Bourdieu, ed. T. Medvetz and J.J. Sallaz, 21–68. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sapiro, Gisèle. 2014. The International Career of Distinction. In The Routledge Companion to Bourdieu’s Distinction, ed. P. Coulangeon and J. Duval, 29–42. New York, NY: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. Schwartz, Mildred A. 1992. Seymour Martin Lipset: The World Is His Oyster. Footnotes 20 (7): 1–12. Simpson, Ida Harper, and Richard L. Simpson. 1994. The Transformation of the American Sociological Association. Sociological Forum 9 (2): 259–278. Tol, Richard S.J. 2022. Rise of the Kniesians: The Professor-Student Network of Nobel Laureates in Economics. The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought 29: 680–703. Trow, Martin. 1976. ‘Elite Higher Education’: An Endangered Species? Minerva 14 (3): 355–376. Tsang, Amy, and Michèle Lamont. 2018. How Can Cultural Sociology Help Us Understand Contemporary Chinese Society? The Journal of Chinese Sociology 5 (1). Turner, Stephen P., and Daryl E.  Chubin. 1979. Chance and Eminence in Science: Ecclesiastes II. Social Science Information 18 (3): 437–449. Velasco, Jesús. 2004. Seymour Martin Lipset: Life and Work. The Canadian Journal of Sociology 29 (4): 583–601. Walsh, Peter William, and David Lehmann. 2019. Academic Celebrity. International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society 3 (4): 21–46. Weakliem, David L., Gordon Gauchat, and Bradley R.E.  Wright. 2012. Sociological Stratification: Change and Continuity in the Distribution of Departmental Prestige, 1965–2007. The American Sociologist 43 (3): 310–327. Weeber, Stan C. 2006. Elite versus Mass Sociology: An Elaboration on Sociology’s Academic Caste System. The American Sociologist 37 (4): 50–67.

7 Elites as Gatekeepers

The Case of Journal Reviewers While members of the elite shape their discipline indirectly through their writings, they can also exert direct influence. Some hold professorships at the most prestigious universities or sit on important editorial boards, which enables them to control important training facilities, the allocation of awards, or the means of “certifying” research through, for example, their involvement in peer-review processes of academic journals. In theorizing this specific role of scientists, the concept of gatekeeper appears to offer the most promising avenue of inquiry.1 The term was first introduced to the social sciences by social psychologist Kurt Lewin (1890–1947), who developed a theoretical framework (“field theory”) to explain social change in organizations:

Parts of this chapter have been previously published in Korom (2020).  As Zuckerman and Merton (1972: 316) elaborate, the status of a scientist involves not a single role, but rather four principal roles: researcher, teacher, administrator, and gatekeeper. In their role as gatekeepers, scientists “evaluate the promise and limitations of aspirants to new positions, thus affecting both the mobility of individual scientists and, in the aggregate, the distribution of personnel throughout the system.” 1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. Korom, Star Sociologists, Socio-Historical Studies of the Social and Human Sciences, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13938-3_7

171

172 

P. Korom

A university, for instance, might be quite strict in its admission policy and might set up strong forces against the passing of weak candidates. Once a student is admitted, however, the university frequently tries to do everything in its power to help everyone along. … Gate sections are governed either by impartial rules or by “gatekeepers.” In the latter case an individual or group is “in power” for making the decision between “in” or “out” (Lewin 1947: 145).

Scholars since Lewin have modified and adapted gatekeeping theory and its terminology to various social contexts; the core assumptions, however, have remained the same. At the theory’s core are decision-­ making processes (in organizations). Positive and negative forces around a “gate” facilitate or constrain the flow of information to decision makers (i.e., individuals vested with official authority in organizations that make in/out decisions). “Gatekeepers” allow or prevent information from passing through the “gate” and shape information into “stories.” Whereas journalists act as gatekeepers by selecting news on politicians that, once published, can influence their chances of being reelected to office, academics use peer review to influence editorial decisions within the marketplace of ideas (Coser 1975). Do elites have outstanding gatekeeping power in sociology? To tackle this question, our attention now turns to reviewers for the prestigious journals American Journal of Sociology (AJS) and American Sociological Review (ASR). Publication in AJS or ASR is known to be crucial for career advancement, at least within U.S. sociology. Former editor Andrew Abbott reports that during his editorship (2000–2016) about 500 new manuscripts were submitted each year to AJS. Given this number and the diversity of submissions the editor and the five to six members of the sitting editorial board did not read all manuscripts but delegated the evaluation mostly to external reviewers. Abbott dispels the myth that an editor is in a position to doom a paper on his own: … [I]t’s not the Abbott Journal of Sociology, it’s the American Journal of Sociology. What matters are 1. the views of the experts in the paper’s subdiscipline, 2. the issues of bias that can arise in those views … and 3. the

7  Elites as Gatekeepers 

173

responses of the Board as it attempts to channel the general sociological reader (Abbott 2018: 32).

Since the 1970s both journals have published each year an “Acknowledgments to Referees” section, in which they list and thank the people who have assisted the editors by commenting on at least one manuscript. By merging all lists between 1970 and 20102 and harmonizing all names (by resolving minor differences in spelling)3, it was possible to provide a complete register of all reviewers, encompassing 6057 individuals for AJS and 7080 for ASR. The register reveals those scholars whose involvement has been close and ongoing, sometimes for many years. One reviewer, for example, assisted the editorial board of AJS for 29 consecutive years, and that of ASR for 33. To identify the reviewers who had had the most impact, scholars were placed in order of the number of years (for each decade between 1970 and 2010) in which they had contributed a review. I then selected the “top 1%,” individuals who had been mentioned in at least eight acknowledgments per decade. The “top 1%” was further subdivided into those with fewer or more than 1000 citations in SSCI-indexed journal articles, a criterion selected to provide a roster of the most frequently referenced authors in sociology journals and a potential indicator of elite status. Figure 7.1 shows that while more and more scholars are asked continually for their expert judgments, the number of elite members contacted either diminishes (as in the case of AJS) or stays constant over time (as in the case of ASR). Thus, the relative gatekeeping power of (U.S.) elite scholars (e.g., Randall Collins) becomes less decisive as the total number of rather “average” scholars regularly contacted increases drastically. One might speculate on what exactly drives this “democratization” of the “top 1%” in peer reviewing. The evidence suggests that the differentiation of sociology into increasingly narrow specialties has required a new editorial  No data on AJS reviewers was available for the year 1973.  Often a harmonization of names was required as there were inconsistencies in the spelling of foreand surnames and in the inclusion of initials of middle names. 2 3

174 

P. Korom

Fig. 7.1  Representation of the elite among the top 1% of all AJS and ASR reviewers

strategy. Technical papers dealing with specialized fields of knowledge need to be reviewed by knowledgeable peers working in the same field. As they constitute an increasing proportion of submissions, elite expertise that is more broadly oriented becomes less valuable. These results, however, must be interpreted with caution. Editors may weight reviews differently, and it is conceivable that Randall Collins’ judgment, for example, would figure in the decision more than that of non-eminent sociologists. If eminent scholars can indeed critically influence an editor’s decisions on which manuscript to promote or reject, then it becomes difficult to uphold the claim of democratized peer review. Given the weak data at one’s disposal, a definitive answer to the question as to whether or not elites hold greater gatekeeping power remains elusive. In general, it is not particularly surprising that gatekeeping processes in science have remained under-researched. Owing to privacy issues, the deliberations of peer review panels (Lamont 2009) and of selection

7  Elites as Gatekeepers 

175

committees in academic hiring often remain confidential, and it is not unusual for restrictions to be placed on accessing archived materials that allow the reconstruction of gatekeeping decisions (Hamann and Beljean 2019). The evidence suggests that Robert K. Merton (1910–2003, hereafter RKM), one of the most influential sociologists of his time, had a keen awareness that only access to the private knowledge of scholars could provide a window into this aspect of the world of the (social) sciences, which remains largely unknown (Santoro 2017: 3). Consequently, he decided to arrange for his meticulously archived correspondence with hundreds of key scholars and former students to be made publicly accessible after his death (Dubois 2014). The material is unique because it provides an unobstructed look inside the secret gardens of academia. This gift to posterity allows us to gain deeper insights into the kind of power that elite scientists can exercise. Merton’s papers, archived at Columbia University, contain approximately 1460 letters of recommendation written between 1938 and 2002.4 As shown in Fig. 7.2, RKM was an avid writer of such letters, which were sent to selection committees at a number of academic institutions throughout his professional career. The figure also reveals that for much of that time he worked in a single department and that his books and articles received the most attention during the 1960s. What follows makes use of all archived recommendations not only to shed light on RKM the scientist, but also to gain at least a glimpse into the gatekeeping power of U.S. sociology’s elite during and shortly after the peak of its “golden age” (see Chap. 3).

 This study is based solely on archive material contained in boxes 103–117 of the “Robert K. Merton Papers, 1928–2003,” archived in the Rare Book & Manuscript Library of Columbia University. As letters of recommendation can be found in other boxes as well, it is likely that the total exceeds 1460. 4

176 

P. Korom

Fig. 7.2  Trajectories of RKM’s recommendations and article citations. The former include 1460 recommendations contained in boxes 103–117 of the his papers, while citations of his articles (N = 644) in the flagship journals American Sociological Review and American Journal of Sociology were identified using the Social Sciences Citation Index (1956–present). The chronological segments in the figure refer to the various stages of RKM’s career at Columbia University

 he Case of RKM—An Eminent Scholar T Crisscrossing Social Circles When the White House announced in 1994 that RKM would be the first sociologist to receive, from U.S.  President Bill Clinton, the National Medal of Science, which is the nation’s highest scientific honor, he is reported to have perceived the award as proper recognition of his work: “I am deeply moved by this matchless honor, the more so for the peer recognition it gives the sociology of science” (Merton 1994). In many ways, a rather “improbable life trajectory” (Fleck 2015) had led him to finally reach the pinnacle of scientific achievement.

7  Elites as Gatekeepers 

177

RKM was born Meyer R.  Schkolnick, “almost at the bottom of the social structure,” in the slums of South Philadelphia to working class Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe (Hunt 1961). Awarded a scholarship to attend Philadelphia’s Temple University, he was recruited as a research assistant by the sociologist George E. Simpson (1904–1988). In 1931, at the age of 21, RKM won yet another fellowship that took him to Harvard to complete his graduate work in sociology. The eminent sociologist Pitirim E. Sorokin (1889–1968), rather than the university, was the lodestone that drew him to Harvard (Merton 1997: 286). By his second year there, Sorokin and Merton had already published together. His highly regarded publication “Puritanism, Pietism, and Science” (Merton 1936) became the young author’s seventh predoctoral published scholarly article, which prompts one to think of him as a prodigy (Sica 2017). A freshly minted PhD, RKM was appointed as an instructor at Harvard in 1936—a temporary appointment in bleak economic times. He later recalled writing nearly 100 letters to colleagues inquiring about jobs, and Tulane University in New Orleans was the only one that offered him a faculty position (Holton 2004: 509). In 1942 he accepted an appointment as assistant professor of sociology at Columbia University—the “Florence” of the sociological renaissance after the Second World War (Coser and Nisbet 1975: 6)—where he spent the remainder of his academic career (see Fig. 7.2). RKM was to become arguably the most outstanding polymath working in such diverse fields as the history of social thought, the sociology of science and deviance, and empirical methods. His intellectual impact extended well beyond the social sciences, and the many professional recognitions he received for research achievements, ranging from approximately 30 honorary degrees to the National Medal of Science, suggest that he could have won the Nobel Prize if it had existed for sociology. To fully understand RKM’s role in (U.S.) sociology some further contextual information is needed that, while mentioned in most biographical accounts, is rarely explained in detail. Like most other of sociology’s masterminds, he did not work in isolation but was at the very center of various social circles that he crisscrossed. The following four circles appear to have been especially important.

178 

P. Korom

• Department of Sociology at Columbia University: RKM taught for more than 40 years at Columbia University (see Fig. 7.2), one of the major centers for graduate education in U.S. sociology. Students remember RKM as “a mesmerizing teacher, a magician in front of would-be prestidigitators” (Cole 2004: 38). His courses, such as the legendary Soc. 215 (“The Analysis of Social Structure”) or Soc. 213–214 (“Social Theory Applied to Social Research”) that even attracted non-­ sociologists (including stockbrokers from Wall Street) were a source of inspiration to many. In an interview RKM stated: “As I think back on the papers I’ve published over the years, the ones that engaged me the most deeply derived from the lectures I developed for courses” (Persell 1984: 363). By developing and honing, often spontaneously, his ideas in the classroom, RKM let students participate in his discoveries, epitomizing the role of the scholar scientist, and “by his example gave substance and purpose to the sociological calling” (Gieryn 2004: 859). These interactions helped to forge close, and sometimes life-long, bonds between the teacher and his many students.5 RKM’s students at Columbia who became leading sociologists include Peter Blau, Alvin Gouldner, Lewis and Rose Coser, James S. Coleman, Suzanne Keller, Seymour M. Lipset, Philip Selznick, and Viviana Zelizer. • The Bureau of Applied Social Research: When the Viennese-born Paul Lazarsfeld came to Columbia in 1940, the Office of Radio Research moved with him and was quickly renamed the Bureau of Applied Social Research (BASR)—the future “research laboratory” of the Department of Sociology. The Bureau garnered resources from corporate and foundation sponsors who called on sociologists for “applied” research. At the BASR, RKM and Lazarsfeld cooperated closely on various research projects, with the former serving as the Bureau’s Associate Director between 1941 and 1971 (Lazarsfeld 1975). Due in no small measure to the passage of the GI Bill in 1944, successive cohorts of mature and talented students helped bring intellectual excitement to the Bureau in the late 1940s and 1950s (Merton 1997: 292). The BASR projects typi The closeness of these teacher–student relationships is revealed in dedications. RKM’s book contribution “Opportunity Structure: The Emergence, Diffusion, and Differentiation of a Sociological Concept, 1930s–1950s” is, for example, dedicated to “James S. Coleman, my onetime student, longtime colleague, enduring friend and teacher.” 5

7  Elites as Gatekeepers 

179

cally involved graduate students and non-tenured, (mostly) neophyte social scientists working in an enthusiastic environment. RKM helped these junior colleagues learn the trade and closely supervised what they wrote (Fox 2011: 103). Former research assistants and research associates at the BASR include Richard Alba, David Elesh, Eva EtzioniHalevy, Barney Glaser, Mary J. Huntington, Patricia Kendall, Charles Kadushin, and Hanan Selvin. • Editing as an Almost Life-Long Passion: Columbia University alumnus David Caplovitz estimates that “Merton has spent from a third to a half of his professional life reading and commenting on the work of others” (1977: 146). RKM himself stated that as soon as sociology became his vocation, editing became his avocation, which becomes evident from the self-reported fact that he contributed editorially to around 250 books and 2000 articles over the course of 60 years (Merton 1997: 293). It is easy to imagine that he might have been a professional editor had he not been an academic: RKM was known for going over manuscripts line by line, writing detailed and voluminous memos, explaining flaws and suggesting means of correcting them. For almost three decades he worked as a consulting editor for Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, which published works by noted sociologists such as Lewis Coser and Arthur Stinchcombe. He found editing rewarding because it both enabled him to stay in touch with his former students and build new relationships with those whom he described as “colleagues-at-a-distance.” • Russell Sage and Other Scholarly Associations: If RKM traveled abroad for professional reasons, it was only for very short periods. He exerted mostly local influence by serving, inter alia, as president of the American Sociological Association (1957); a trustee of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (1953–1975); a Resident Scholar of the Russell Sage Foundation (1979–1999); or by sitting on the boards of the Social Science Research Council (1968–1970), the American Academy of Sciences (1969–1971), the National Academy of Sciences (1971–1978), and Barnard College (1978–1986). RKM’s affiliations with these and other research institutions enabled him not only to act as a gatekeeper, offering expert advice to local decision makers, but also connected him to academics from various backgrounds. While working

180 

P. Korom

at the Russell Sage Foundation (RSF), he came to know, for example, the anthropologist Philippe Bourgeois and the medical sociologist Howard Freeman. During stays at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS), he became better acquainted with the philosopher Yehuda Elkana, the political theorist Yaron Ezrahi, the Polish sociologist Adam Podgorecki, and the science historian Arnold Thackray. These intellectual circles also served as support or friendship networks, providing their members with contacts and opportunities job seekers might not otherwise have heard about. RKM notably assisted his former students and colleagues in various ways, ranging from offering academic advice and (unpaid) editorial work to writing letters of recommendation. Another characteristic worth pointing out is RKM’s extraordinary attention to language. Achieving clarity, precision, and unambiguous meaning of sociological concepts characterized his intellectual style and seems to have been “an almost obsessive preoccupation” (Sztompka 1986: 98). It is not an exaggeration to claim that no other wordsmith in the social sciences coined more sociological key concepts (“Mertonisms”) qua linguistic innovation, from “the Matthew effect” to “serendipity pattern.” Linguistic elegance also characterizes Merton’s letters of recommendation, which is illustrated by a juxtaposition of an excerpt from a standard recommendation printed in Lewis (1998: 88) with one by Merton that comments on the same job candidate’s qualities: He is normally extroverted and prefers to form close friendships with a few rather than casual friendships with many. As a graduate student he gave little attention to personal grooming, whereas on social occasions his appearance was prepossessing. He has a good sense of humor which is often masked by his usually serious manner. I find him an engaging person. He is modest without being timid; congenial without being given to backslapping. He is an earnest person who does not permit his seriousness of purpose to become solemnity. I should

7  Elites as Gatekeepers 

181

think that he would fit in very well indeed in a liberal arts college (box 107, folder: “G-General, 1936–1996, 6–7”).6

This example of RKM’s characteristically spare and straightforward prose, artful and spiced with wit, deviates from the dry language found in most letters of recommendation and leaves a long-lasting impression. His powers of observation (based on his acquaintanceship with many scholars) and linguistic elegance made him eminently suitable for writing effective letters of recommendation.

 KM as Gate-Opener—Analysis of 1460 R Recommendation Letters All letters by RKM address an academic institution with a job opening, a call for fellowships, or an ongoing nomination process for awards/memberships, and are specifically written in favor of or against one or several potential job candidates.7 Because RKM almost always devoted equal space to each candidate, I decided that letters that recommend more than one scholar should be entered multiple times into the register of all recommendations. Table 7.1 provides an overview of the register that contains in total 1460 recommendations in favor of 560 scholars. Approximately 65% are recommendations for academic positions (assistant, associate, full professor) or administrative positions (e.g., dean or departmental chairmanship) at U.S. universities. A quarter of the letters are in support of applications for fellowships (e.g., Guggenheim, SSRC, CASBS) or for visiting scholarships/professorships at universities. The remaining 10% are recommendations for job positions at universities outside of the United States, for honorary degrees and awards (e.g.,  When quoting directly from a source, I will always indicate the box as well as the folder that holds the cited letter so the reader can find the referenced archival material. 7  Disregarded were all other letters such as recommendation requests written by other persons (e.g., RKM’s former students) that are contained in boxes 103–117. Also excluded were letters that did not fully correspond to the format of recommendations, such as student assessments and some recommendations for student grants or loans, that are uniform in format but contain very little text. 6

182 

P. Korom

Table 7.1  Register of recommendations (N = 1460) Recommendations for … Academic and administrative positions at U.S. universities Fellowships and visiting professorships/ scholarships Academic and administrative positions at non-U.S. universities Honorary degrees/prestigious awards Membership in honorific societies Total

Freq.

Percent

942

64.5

365

25.0

103

7.1

35 15 1460

2.4 1.0 100.0

American Sociological Association Career of Distinguished Scholarship), or for memberships in honorific societies (e.g., American Academy of Arts and Sciences, American Philosophical Society). The 942 recommendations for academic posts at U.S. universities and colleges that are mostly one or two pages long can be best categorized using a classification scheme with three criteria: 1. Departmental prestige groupings: As already indicated, RKM wrote the recommendations for applications submitted to a variety of academic institutions. As the bulk of the job openings were in sociology, it seems appropriate to classify the various letter recipients according to prestige rank groupings developed for U.S. sociology. Such rankings that are constructed from hiring patterns provide a good deal of continuity across institutions. The rankings used here were constructed by Weakliem et al. (2012) for the year 1965. 2. Relationship types: There were clearly different degrees of closeness between the mentor RKM and his mentees. In many letters RKM wrote about how long and in what capacity he knew an applicant. The following are examples for such text passages: I came to know Nikos Passas some fifteen years ago through his work on anomie and deviant behavior and have since kept in quite close touch with his further research and writing (box 113, folder “Passas, Nikos, 1989–1995”).

7  Elites as Gatekeepers 

183

Full disclosure requires me to report that Harriet [Zuckerman] and I first came upon Jon Cole back in the 1960s when, as an undergraduate at Columbia College, he applied for admission to our graduate seminar in the sociology of science (box 105, folder “Cole, Jonathan, 1968–1995”). I regard myself as a close friend (though one still capable, I trust, of fairly detached judgement of his work and capacities). For the last nine years or so, he [Herbert Hyman] has been a colleague in the same department at Columbia (box 109, folder “HO-End, 1937–1992”).

3. Letter types: Recommendation letters have at least four different types of “back-stories”: (a) RKM heard of an opening and proposed a qualified candidate on his own initiative; (b) a colleague at Columbia passed on a recommendation request; (c) an employing institution contacted RKM directly asking for his opinion on a job candidate (who indicated RKM as a reference); (d) the applicant contacted RKM asking him to write a recommendation letter and send it to the potential employing institution. To refer to these three different relationship types illustrated in the extracts above, RKM frequently used the following labels: “colleague-ata-distance” (for Passas), “former student” (for Cole), and “immediate colleague” (for Hyman). I adopted the same terminology and classified scholars whom RKM never or only occasionally met in person as “colleagues-at-a-distance.” “Former students” might only have attended a single RKM course or have been his teaching assistants; this category thus has the most heterogeneity in relationship closeness. “Immediate colleagues” either shared with RKM (temporarily) the same working spaces or worked closely with him over several years. The label “immediate colleague” therefore stands—in contrast to “colleague-at-a-distance”—for significant relationship closeness. Further, it was decided to classify ­students-turned-immediate colleagues (e.g., Peter M. Blau and Seymour M. Lipset) as students. Even though the archived material suggests that the last two variants were the two most frequent ones, it is impossible to differentiate unambiguously between the various scenarios based on the text material

184 

P. Korom

collected.8 The only distinction that can be inductively established is between letters that give textual cues that RKM responded to incoming letters from the employing institution (“response letters”) and letters that do not contain such cues (“letters”). Typical clues were coded and might contain the following phrases: “This is a much belated response to your request…,” “I am glad to tell you what I can about …,” “your letter reached me….” Figure 7.3 cross-tabulates all three classification criteria. What immediately catches the eye is that the bulk of all recommendations were in favor of former students and concerned job openings at non-elite U.S. universities and colleges. More letters were sent to middling

Fig. 7.3  Mentor–mentee relationships in the 942 recommendations made by RKM to U.S. universities and colleges. Prestige categories adopted from Weakliem et al. (2012). Top 10 departments: Chicago, Harvard, Columbia, Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Berkeley, Princeton, N Carolina, Yale. Top 20 departments: preceding list plus Penn, Ohio State, UCLA, Washington, Cornell, Northwestern, Iowa, Illinois–Urbana, Stanford, NYU  The following text passage, for example, could be interpreted as depicting letter type (a) or (d): “I have just learned that you are chairing the Faculty Recruitment Committee there just as I, in turn, am chairing the Placement Committee here. In that capacity, you might have noticed that I sent an unsolicited letter a while ago strongly supporting the application of one of our recent graduates, Steven R. Cohen” (box 105, folder “Cohen, Steven, 1981–1983.”) 8

7  Elites as Gatekeepers 

185

New York-based departments rather than to the top 10 departments of the discipline (including Columbia University). It further transpired that RKM wrote slightly more recommendations for colleagues-at-a-distance than for immediate colleagues. Interestingly, letters outnumber response letters, which suggests that former students and colleagues typically contacted RKM directly, rather than simply providing his name as a reference on application letters. Going through the list of 560 applicants for whom RKM gave detailed evaluations, one can find at first glance considerable diversity. The list includes, as one might expect, RKM’s former teaching and research assistants (e.g., Rosa Haritos, Suzanne Keller), close collaborators (e.g., Patricia Kendall, Harriet Zuckerman), and friends (e.g., Lewis A. Coser, Alvin W. Gouldner) who pursued academic careers in sociology. However, there are also scholars who achieved renown in other disciplines, including the historian of science Arnold Thackray, the political scientist Yaron Ezrahi, and the anthropologist Herbert Passin. Although the majority of applicants were from the United States, RKM assisted scholars who studied or taught there but who subsequently worked outside the country, including sociologists Wolf Lepenies and Anthony Giddens, and philosopher of science Yehuda Elkana. Furthermore, while some remained relatively obscure, one does find two Nobel Prize winners: the psychologist-turned-economist Daniel Kahneman and the writer Saul Bellow). Finally, there are individuals who completed a PhD but decided that academic life was not for them. A systematic analysis, however, reveals many commonalities between recommendees (see Table 7.2).9 Even if the population is far from uniform regarding academic specializations, sociologists are clearly dominant. About 40% went through the Columbia PhD program; the core group among all mentees thus consists of Columbia sociologists. Half of the other mentees received their PhD from other top-tier departments  The main biographical sources consulted were the biographical dictionary American Men and Women of Science (McKeen Cattell 1973), as well as its supplements and official curricula vitae. Other sources include Marquis Who Is Who in America; obituaries published in the members’ newsletter “Footnotes” of the American Sociological Association (ASA) and in the New York Times; the ASA Biographical Directory; short CVs published on the digital platform LinkedIn; author biographies accompanying monographs or (JSTOR-archived) journal articles; and, most importantly, the Columbia Libraries Catalog (CLIO) that contains doctoral dissertations. 9

186 

P. Korom

Table 7.2  Profiles of mentees recommended by RKM Biographical information Data availability Some reliable biographical information available No reliable biographical information available Data source U.S. Men and Women of Science and Supplement Official CV Other sources Missing Gender Female Country of birth United States European countries Israel Canada Russia Other countries Missing Discipline Sociology Psychiatry/psychology History Political science Philosophy Other disciplines Missing PhD from … Columbia Harvard Chicago UC Berkeley Yale Wisconsin–Madison Stanford Other PhD-granting universities Missing PhD year Min. Mean Max.

Freq. (in %)   504 (90.0%)   56 (10.0%)   146 (26.1%)   110 (19.6%)   248 (44.3%)   56 (10.0%)   131 (23.4%)   348 (61.1%)   79 (14.1%)   10 (1.8%)    7 (1.2%)    6 (1.1%)   15 (2.7%)   95 (17.0%)   376 (67.1%)   23 (4.1%)   21 (3.8%)   16 (2.9%)   10 (1.8%)   27 (4.8%)   87 (15.5%)   226 (40.4%)   48 (8.6%)   28 (5.0%)   13 (2.3%)   12 (2.1%)    7 (1.3%)    7 (1.3%)   143 (25.5%)   76 (13.6%) 1922 1963 2009 (continued)

7  Elites as Gatekeepers 

187

Table 7.2 (continued) Biographical information Mentor–mentee relationship Weak or strong involvement with the BASRa Coauthor/coeditor Research/teaching assistant to RKMb First full professorship from …c Other departments Top 10 U.S. departments in sociology Other departments in New York No full professorship Top 20 U.S. departments in sociology Missing

Freq. (in %)   115 (20.5%)   22 (3.9%)   15 (2.7%)   198 (35.4%)   84 (15.0%)   56 (10.0%)   43 (7.7%)   38 (6.8%)   141 (25.2%)   560 (100%)

Involvement with the BASR is indicated by mentions of a person’s name in the “Bureau of Applied Social Research Records, 1944–1976” (Columbia University, Rare Book & Manuscript Library Collections) b A person is “coded” as a research or teaching assistant of RKM only if mentioned as such in recommendation letters c Same classification as in Fig. 7.3 a

(e.g., Harvard), and the other half from rather average departments. Perhaps the most striking result is that about 20% were associated in various ways with the BASR. To give some examples: After completing her PhD at Harvard, the eminent medical sociologist Renée Fox joined a medical education project at the Bureau; quantitative sociologist Richard Alba was employed by the Bureau as a computer programmer; and Cynthia F.  Epstein investigated success stories of black professional women at the BASR. Going through the 2065 pages of text material, one notices there are only a few fixed expressions that RKM used repeatedly. In one phrase extensively used to conclude letters, he referred to himself as a “tough codger” who expresses praise most reluctantly. Even more frequently he described himself as a “curmudgeon” with high standards: By way of context, a word about what is for me an enthusiastic endorsement. During a long lifetime of teaching, I’ve evidently acquired notoriety as a curmudgeon (in the strict sense of being difficult if not impossible to satisfy). But, as you see, I do make an effort to recognize scholarly merit (box 113, folder “Poros, Maritsa, 1999–2000”).

188 

P. Korom

Given this self-description, it seems appropriate to investigate how critically RKM assessed job applicants in his letters. To do so, I considered different types of reservations expressed. Table 7.3 differentiates, on one hand, between straight rejections of candidates perceived to be unqualified, research that is (heavily) criticized; letters in which candidates are judged to be middling rather than outstanding; and letters that mention limitations of a candidate. On the other hand, there were letters in which RKM makes clear that he cannot give a well-­grounded opinion given some of his own limitations. Finally, letters were coded in which RKM abstained completely from giving an evaluation because of his insufficient knowledge of the candidate. The table indicates that in most cases RKM transmitted a completely positive impression of the applicant to the evaluators. Whether phrases (e.g., “I can tell you next to nothing of her capabilities as a teacher”) had the potential to raise doubts for the evaluators (because they convey the writer’s uncertainty about the applicant) is impossible to know. In Table 7.3 Types of reservation and hedging expressed by RKM in his recommendations Types of reservation

Number of letters

No first-hand knowledge of teaching 147 Not knowing him/her closely 58 Not kept up with his work; seen little of her/him 56 in recent years Not competent to judge him/her as a specialist 38 He/she is not … [top-notch]; he/she is rather … 29 [reliable] than … [brilliant] His/her limitation/weakness is … 27 No first-hand knowledge of administrative 25 abilities Cannot be of help; must abstain from giving any 22 opinion Cannot recommend; he/she does not qualify; do 12 not support the nomination of … The research statement is … [sketchy, 11 unintelligible mishmash] 425

In percent of all letters (%) 10.1 4.0 3.8 2.6 2.0 1.8 1.7 1.5 0.8 0.8 29.1

7  Elites as Gatekeepers 

189

general, one can summarize that the (archived) letters of recommendation are overwhelmingly couched in laudatory terms. Although we cannot know which requests RKM received from various departments that were interested in filling a vacancy, it is likely that he was asked to evaluate a candidate’s “qualifications for teaching, research, and participation as a colleague,” which was the usual formula Lionel S. Lewis encountered in his analysis of 180 letters of recommendation written by sociologists during the late 1960s (Lewis 1998: 51). Partially building on Lewis’s seminal study, and to systematically analyze recommendations for the Woodrow Wilson Fellowship, Tsay et al. (2003) developed a differentiated classification scheme that allows one to assess types of classification criteria used to exercise gatekeeping discretion. This scheme was adopted with only minor modifications. For example, the category “physical description” was completely dropped, as RKM never described someone as “attractive,” “virile,” “well dressed,” and so on. It is important to note that words/phrases and not sentences were used as coding units. As an example, the sentence “He is a man of the highest integrity, with a real zest for inquiry and an obvious capacity for relati[ng] himself to others” received three separate codes: “academic/ intellectual integrity” (moral character), “intellectual curiosity/drive/ enthusiasm/zest” (intellectual desire), and “at ease socially” (social competence). A systematic analysis of all RKM’s recommendations written in favor of students reveals that he commented frequently on the academic or analytical abilities of his (former) students and less often on their technical skills and personality traits. Interestingly, his references to personality and social competence vary according to the student’s gender. When RKM was asked to assess the capacities of men, he tended to give more space to personal maturity or affability (e.g., “pleasant,” “friendly,” “quiet,” modest”) and the ability to handle social interactions (e.g., “cooperative,” “congenial,” “likeable,” “a nice guy to have around”). The most plausible explanation for this finding is that RKM felt that departments were more anxious about recruiting men who could disrupt social relationships and upset the status quo, while in the case of females such concerns seemed to be less prevalent.

190 

P. Korom

More generally, RKM felt it was necessary—like most writers of recommendations in sociology around the same time (Lewis 1998: xii)—to comment on academic and extra-academic qualities (see Fig.  7.4). Although the selection committee made the final decision, recommendations may have had a significant influence on the opinion-forming processes. The only possible way of ascertaining whether RKM’s recommendations made a difference is to match all available information on academic careers with data that can be gained from the analysis of recommendation letters. To make transparent exactly how a rough indicator of “recommendation success” was developed, I provide one illustrative example that is especially difficult to process because the letter of

Fig. 7.4  Evaluation criteria used in RKM’s recommendations for students. Considered are 942 recommendations written in favor of (former) students. Categories were dichotomously coded (1 = category applies) and aggregated at the level of master categories—that is, general academic ability. The values indicate, in percentage points, the relative share of each master category. Calculations were conducted separately for male and female students

7  Elites as Gatekeepers 

191

recommendation does not, unusually, contain any information on the vacant position. In a letter dated December 9, 1947, RKM recommended his former student Seymour M.  Lipset to E.  W. Strong of UC Berkeley without mentioning the post for which Lipset applied (box 110, folder “L-General, 1939–1999, 4–5”). It was decided to code “success” (=1) for the category “associate professorship” because of the proximity in time between the recommendation and Lipset taking up an associate professorship at Berkeley. More generally, I decided to apply this logic whenever (1) the vacant position was not indicated in the letters, and (2) recommendations preceded the job taken by one or two years. Coding became more complicated when RKM recommended the same person to several institutions using only slightly modified letters. To use an analogy, this can be compared to someone shooting several arrows at the same time hoping that at least one will hit the target. “Success” would then be defined as just one of the many recommendations leading to an appointment. Thus, it was decided to consider jointly all recommendations for a scholar given in the same year and to code “failure” (=0) only if all letters turned out to be unsuccessful. Table 7.4 presents the success rates for different types of job categories. Obviously, success differs significantly between two kinds of appointments: promotions within an organization (closed personnel system) and job postings that are open to outsiders (open personnel system). In cases of (internal) promotions to associate or full professorships, the success rate lies between 90 and 100%, which suggests that nearly all scholars Table 7.4  Success rates for candidates recommended by RKM Application for

No. of scholars (n)

Success rate (%)

Assistant professorship Associate professorship Full professorship Promotion to associate professor Promotion to full professor CASBS fellowship Guggenheim fellowship IAS fellowship

52 42 73 35 45 40 29 10

42.3 57.1 42.5 97.2 86.7 15 34.5 30.0

192 

P. Korom

asking RKM for a recommendation had achieved an outstanding record that qualified them for promotion. In contrast, RKM’s support for external candidates is marked by substantially lower chances of appointment. The rates are lower for assistant and full professorships than for associate professorships, which can be explained, at least in part, by the difficulties of entering the marketplace directly after receiving a PhD and the scarcity of full professorships. The general take-away is that about 40% of all scholars supported by RKM succeeded in acquiring the academic job. Interestingly, the success rate is the lowest for fellowships. The reasons for this are far from obvious. All three considered fellowships are, however, prestigious and known for a rather rigorous selection process. Furthermore, there was a larger applicant pool to choose from for (one-year) fellowships than for faculty positions. It is important to note that “success” is based on recurrent efforts by RKM to assist his mentees in establishing themselves professionally, which becomes apparent through the sheer number of recommendations per scholar. To give a few examples: RKM recommended Gary A. Abraham 20 times, Stephen Cole 16 times, and Henry Etzkowitz 10 times. There is also another possible explanation for why RKM placing a “seal of approval” on job applications may have been very likely beneficial to the advancement of careers—namely, the compelling prose style of affirmation artfully employed by RKM.  The bulk of the letters are full of enthusiasm for promising scholarship. Only in very few letters does RKM express reservations. Rhetoric was in general a very important resource to RKM (Simonson 2010: 215), and in his letters of recommendation he brought the “art of persuasion” as close to perfection as an art form can be. To convince members of selection committees of the suitability of candidates’ qualifications, he often employed three rhetorical strategies— ethos, logos, and pathos—described in On Rhetoric (Aristotle 2007): First, he enhanced his already well-established credibility and trustworthiness (ethos). Second, he increased the persuasive power of his letters by allowing the reader to easily follow his logic (logos). Third, he aimed at keeping readers in a certain frame of mind by putting himself in the shoes of the committee members or by aiming to infect others with his excitement (pathos).

7  Elites as Gatekeepers 

193

In his letters RKM bolsters his credibility by detailing his depth of knowledge of the job candidate. In some cases, the reader becomes easily convinced that RKM is the best available person to provide information: First, full disclosure: My opinion of Tom is based on a good deal of direct experience. I have known him since he began his graduate work at Columbia back in the early 70s and we have since worked together in various scholarly capacities (box 108, folder “Gieryn, Thomas, 1974–1996”).

In other cases, RKM shows personal humility when pointing to his own limitations regarding the selected candidate’s qualifications, which makes his overall judgment of the candidate even more credible (because the reader tends to suspect that RKM is deeply knowledgeable about all other qualifications): This particular investigation deals with matters directly germane to the Juvenile and Family Court so that, in all truth, I am not in a posi­tion to say anything about her competence in this respect. However, I do know her as a person of utmost integrity and impressive intellect (box 109, folder “J-General, 1940–1942, 1958–1992, 1–2”).

Further, RKM provides “proof ” for his judgments and clearly structures his assessment. What is striking is how RKM frames this “proof ”: It is indicative that his classical book, CONSTRUCTING SOCIAL THEORIES, is being reprinted twenty years after its first appearance (box 115, folder “Smith R.C.-Stinchcombe”). His substantial monograph Interviewing in Social Research is by general assent the most thoroughgoing analysis of interviewing procedures available in the field (box 109, folder “HO-End, 1937–1992). All this as well as his recent monograph on the sociology of inflation and recession—MAKING ENDS MEET—has resulted in his being nationally identified as the sociological authority on the subject of the low-income consumer (box 105, folder “CA-CM, 1946–1990, 2–3”).

194 

P. Korom

One of his early works, The Sociology of Conflict, is by all odds the best monograph on the subject in any language accessible to me. It has had an immense influence in the years since it was first published (box 105, folder “COS-End, 1948–1992”).

These comments not only have a clear positive tone, but also present the recommended scholar as belonging to the best. The very concept of academic excellence presumes a well-defined hierarchy, and RKM positions his protégés indirectly at the very top. Finally, RKM refers to the institution’s search for qualified new members and effectively conveys a sense of understanding the department’s needs: I should think that Ms. Moseley might be of particular interest to you in connection with your strong program in comparative sociology at Brown. I hope that it all works out (box 111, folder “M-General, 1945–1996”). It so happens that we have two young sociologists who would, I think, meet your needs admirably. The Department here at Columbia strongly supports both men as candidates for the post. … If there is any further information which I may be able to provide, please let me know (box 114, folder “SA-SE, 1946–1992“).

RKM not only identifies with the members of selection committees and makes a case for how the candidate aligns with their interests, but also may have influenced the letters’ readers with his enthusiasm about the candidate: It is not often that one can continuously applaud a scholar’s contributions to humanistic learning over a span of several decades. But that is inevitably the case with the scholarly work of David Joravsky (box 109, folder “Joravsky, David, 1972–1990”). It is with enthusiasm that I answer your letter of inquiry about Arthur L. Stinchcombe. For some time, he has seemed to me to be the outstanding sociologist of his years in the country (box 115, folder “Smith R.C.-Stinchcombe”).

7  Elites as Gatekeepers 

195

The balanced mix of ethos, logos, and pathos combined with elegant prose that is often marked by vitality make up the typical Mertonian recommendation style. Put somewhat exaggeratedly: a writer as compelling as RKM who could make anybody seem worth hiring is very likely to have been an effective writer of recommendations who could open doors for other scholars.

Elite Power in Sociology? The concept of power is sociologically amorphous, but often it is understood as “power-over.” Max Weber famously defined power-over as being the probability that one actor within a social relationship is in the position to carry out his own will despite resistance, regardless of the basis on which this probability rests (Weber 1968: 152). This notion implies that there are powerful, if not all-powerful elites and powerless subalterns. Are the members of sociology’s elite really vested with power over their peers? There is little doubt that many eminent sociologists accrue significant institutional power. They do not, however, have free rein to decide, for example, which candidates should be promoted, or which journal article should be rejected. In his autobiography Wanderlust in Academia the Berkeley sociologist and former director of the CASBS, Neil Smelser, allows the reader to look “behind the scenes” of the establishment in the social sciences (Smelser 2004). Smelser was among the most influential U.S. sociologists of his generation, evident from his nickname, “Mr. Social Science”, and his roles as editor-in-chief of the authoritative International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences (2001), editor of the American Sociological Review (1962–1965) and chairman of the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Selection Committee (1996–2012). In Wanderlust Smelser reflects on these and other gatekeeping activities. With regard to the ASR editorship he informs the reader that while he had, in general, to cooperate closely with external reviewers as well as with editorial board members, he did have some room left for editorial

196 

P. Korom

maneuvering (“taking a few bets on publishing articles known to be controversial”). Thinking back on his chairmanship of the Selection Committee he remembers “vigorous disagreements and heated conflicts between committee members,” which he settled by adopting a “non-­ pushy authoritarian” style—for example, by “proclaiming consensus when there really wasn’t consensus.” All this suggests that while Smelser certainly exercised the role of an important gatekeeper, his power was limited by the fact that most decisions had to be coordinated with peers with formal or informal veto rights. Moreover, Smelser himself was convinced that such a thing as a sociological or social-science establishment in power terms did not exist as “things are too fragmented and decentralized to permit that characterization” (Smelser 2004: 90, 217–19). Together with the observation that the role of elite scholars in the review processes of leading journals of the discipline is, at least in quantitative terms, diminishing over time, one must tentatively conclude that to speak of elite power in sociology is at best somewhat misleading. This is because even the most influential gatekeepers cannot conceal their decisions from peers with whom they must regularly interact and whose judgments they need to take into consideration. That having been said, elite members can have a lasting impact on the discipline, not only through their scholarship or through their role as institution builders— think of Albion Small and the founding of the American Journal of Sociology—but also through their advisory roles. The analysis of RKM’s professional engagements suggests thinking of him not only, or primarily as a “gatekeeper,” but rather as a “gate-opener” who keeps watch at the door but looks for ways to let people in, rather than locking them out. Thereby he is using his own reputation to open routes to success for others in his circle. Then again, was RKM, owing to his scientific authority, really a more effective gate-opener than the many other non-eminent professors in U.S. sociology pushing their mentees? The answer is obvious: No one knows exactly. A definite conclusion can only be drawn if letters of less renowned professors of the time are systematically researched as well. What can be said with at least some certainty is that without RKM’s dedication to fostering the careers of colleagues and former students, the faculty composition of U.S. sociology

7  Elites as Gatekeepers 

197

would have looked very different. Are more contemporary elite members less influential when it comes to helping colleagues and students find jobs? Yet again, one cannot know. The existing material that can be consulted to verify or falsify personal views is unfortunately limited to the correspondence of scholars of the past (e.g., RKM, Talcott Parsons or Seymour M. Lipset). This material, however, gives indisputable evidence of the importance of master–apprentice relationships in the job search— a form of “soft” power that is clearly distinct from the sort of domination sociologists often have on their minds when writing about power.

References Abbott, Andrew. 2018. On Being the Editor of AJS. Serendipities 1: 29–41. Anon. 1994. Merton Awarded Nation’s Highest Science Honor. Columbia University Record 20 (2). Aristotle. 2007. On Rhetoric: A Theory of Civic Discourse. Transl. G. A. Kennedy. New York: Oxford University Press. Bowker, ed. 1972. American Men and Women of Science. The Social and Behavioral Sciences (Vol. 1 & 2). New York: Bowker. Caplovitz, David. 1977. Merton the Editor. Contemporary Sociology 6 (2): 144–149. Cole, Jonathan R. 2004. Robert K.  Merton, 1910–2003. Scientometrics 60 (1): 37–40. Coser, Lewis A. 1975. Publishers as Gatekeepers. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 421: 14–22. Coser, Lewis A., and Robert Nisbet. 1975. Merton and the Contemporary Mind: An Affectionate Dialogue. In The Idea of Social Structure: Papers in Honor of Robert K. Merton, ed. L.A. Coser, 3–10. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Dubois, Michel. 2014. ‘Private knowledge’ et ‘programme disciplinaire’ en science sociales: étude de cas à partir de la correspondance de Robert K. Merton. L’Année Sociologique 64 (1): 79–119. Fleck, Christian. 2015. Merton, Robert K. (1910–2003). In International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 246–251. Amsterdam: Elsevier. Fox, Renée C. 2011. In the Field: A Sociologist’s Journey. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.

198 

P. Korom

Gieryn, Thomas. 2004. Merton, Teacher. Social Studies of Science 34 (6): 859–861. Hamann, Julian, and Stefan Beljean. 2019. Career Gatekeeping in Cultural Fields. American Journal of Cultural Sociology 9: 43–69. Holton, Gerald. 2004. Robert K.  Merton, 4 July 1910–23 February 2003. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 148 (4): 505–517. Hunt, Morton. 1961. Profiles: How Does It Come to Be So? The New Yorker, 20th January, 39–63. Korom, Philipp. 2020. The talented writer Robert K. Merton as powerful gateopener: An analysis of 1,460 recommendation letters. Zeitschrift für Soziologie 49 (4): 250–265. Lamont, Michèle. 2009. How Professors Think: Inside the Curious World of Academic Judgment. Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press. Lazarsfeld, Paul F. 1975. Working with Merton. In The Idea of Social Structure: Papers in Honor of Robert K.  Merton, ed. L.A.  Coser, 35–66. New  York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Lewin, Kurt. 1947. Frontiers in Group Dynamics: II. Channels of Group Life; Social Planning and Action Research. Human Relations 1 (2): 143–153. Lewis, Lionel S. 1998. Scaling the Ivory Tower: Merit & Its Limits in Academic Careers. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. Merton, Robert K. 1936. Puritanism, Pietism, and Science. The Sociological Review 28 (1): 1–30. ———. 1997. A Life of Learning. In Sociological Visions, ed. K.  Erikson, 275–296. Lanham, Md: Rowman & Littlefield. Persell, Caroline H. 1984. An Interview with Robert K.  Merton. Teaching Sociology 11 (4): 355–386. Santoro, Marco. 2017. The Gini-Merton Connection. An Episode in the History of Sociology and Its International Circulation. Sociologica 3: 1–33. Sica, Alan. 2017. Robert King Merton as a Prodigy. The Sociological Review. Simonson, Peter. 2010. Merton’s Sociology of Rhetoric. In Robert K. Merton: Sociology of Science and Sociology as Science, ed. C.J.  Calhoun, 214–252. New York: Columbia University Press. Smelser, Neil J. 2004. Wanderlust in Academia. https://escholarship.org/uc/ item/9j2082pm. Sztompka, Piotr. 1986. Robert K.  Merton: An Intellectual Profile. London: Macmillan Education. Tsay, Angela, Michèle Lamont, Andrew Abbott, and Joshua Guetzkow. 2003. From Character to Intellect: Changing Conceptions of Merit in the Social Sciences and Humanities, 1951–1971. Poetics 31 (1): 23–49.

7  Elites as Gatekeepers 

199

Weakliem, David L., Gordon Gauchat, and Bradley R.E.  Wright. 2012. Sociological Stratification: Change and Continuity in the Distribution of Departmental Prestige, 1965–2007. The American Sociologist 43 (3): 310–327. Weber, Max. 1968. The Theory of Social and Economic Organization. Transl. A. M. Henderson and T. Parsons. New York: Free Press. Zuckerman, Harriet, and Robert K.  Merton. 1972. Age, Aging and Age Structure in Science. In Aging and Society: A Sociology of Age Stratification, ed. M.W. Riley, M. Johnson, and A. Foner, 292–356. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

Appendices

Appendix A1: Ranking of sociologists considered to be comparable in stature to economists awarded the Nobel Prize No.

Scholar

No.

Scholar

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

Bourdieu, Pierre Goffman, Erving Parsons, Talcott Giddens, Anthony Merton, Robert K. Foucault, Michel Blau, Peter M. Strauss, Anselm Coleman, James S. Berger, Peter Duncan, Otis Habermas, Jürgen Granovetter, Mark Portes, Alejandro Mills, C. Wright Tilly, Charles Lipset, Seymour M. Beck, Ulrich

19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36

Becker, Gary Massey, Douglas Becker, Howard S. Putnam, Robert D. Goldthorpe, John Collins, Randall DiMaggio, Paul Castells, Manuel Bell, Daniel Bauman, Zygmunt Hochschild, Arlie Gouldner, Alvin Inglehart, Ronald F. Latour, Bruno McAdam, Douglas Allison, Paul Wacquant, Loïc Garfinkel, Harold (continued)

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. Korom, Star Sociologists, Socio-Historical Studies of the Social and Human Sciences, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13938-3

219

220 Appendices (continued) No.

Scholar

No.

Scholar

37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44

Meyer, John Smelser, Neil Wallerstein, Immanuel Luhmann, Niklas Powell, Walter Urry, John Alexander, Jeffrey Lazarsfeld, Paul

45 46 47 48 49 50 51

Esping-Andersen, Gøsta Erikson, Robert Wright, Erik O. Burawoy, Michael Abbott, Andrew Boudon, Raymond Elster, Jon

Information on all Nobel Laureates can be found here: https://www.nobelprize. org/prizes/lists/all-prizes-in-economic-sciences

Appendix A2: Department Rankings Economics Rank

Sociology Rank

11 12 13 14 15 16

University Top 5 MIT Harvard Stanford Princeton Chicago Top 6–10 Yale UC Berkeley Oxford Minnesota Northwestern Top 11–20 LSE Pennsylvania Carnegie Mellon Rochester UC Los Angeles Wisconsin

17 18

Michigan Duke

16 18

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

University Top 5 Harvard UC Berkeley Oxford Cambridge Chicago Top 6–10 a Stanford UC Los Angeles Yale Columbia LSE Top 11–20 Toronto Princeton ANU Canberra Michigan McGill National University, Singapore British Columbia Wisconsin (continued)

 Appendices 

221

(continued) Economics 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

Cambridge Columbia Top 21–30 CalTech UC San Diego Penn State Maryland Johns Hopkins Brown University College London New York Toulouse Stockholm School of Economics

41 42

Top 31–40 Purdue Cornell Virginia Boston The Hebrew University Illinois–Urbana Brussels/ECARES Queen’s University, Ontario Aarhus Pittsburg Top 41–50 EHESS, Paris Pompeu Gabra

43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50

Iowa SUNY–Stony Brook Western Ontario British Columbia Paris I ANU Canberra Louvain/CORE Toronto

31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40

Sociology 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 27 29 30

31 31 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 42 44 45 46 47 48 49 50

MIT Melbourne Top 21–30 Manchester Peking New York Cornell Sydney Duke Edinburgh Pennsylvania Monash Chinese University Hong Kong Top 31–40 Warwick Texas at Austin Amsterdam New South Wales Freie Universität Berlin Johns Hopkins Hong Kong North Carolina Leiden Illinois–Urbana Top 41–50 UC Santa Barbara Humboldt Universität Berlin UC San Diego UNAM, Mexico Northwestern Otago Copenhagen Trinity College, Dublin Lancaster Sciences Po

Notes. For economics, rankings are taken from Amir and Knauff (2008), and for sociology, from the QS World University Rankings edited by Quacquarelli Symonds (2016) a Five elite institutions (i.e., École des Mines, Collège de France, EHESS, Max-Planck-­ Institute for Research into Conditions of Living, and the European University Institute) that were not included in QS Ranking were assigned to the status group “top 6–10” for sociology

222 Appendices

References Amir, Rabah and Malgorzata Knauff. 2008. Ranking Economics Departments Worldwide on the Basis of PhD Placement. The Review of Economics and Statistics (90) 1, 185–190. Quacquarelli Symonds. 2016. QS World University Rankings. https://www. topuniversities.com/university-rankings-articles/world-university-rankings/ qs-world-university-rankings-subject-2016-out-now

Index1

A

Abbott, Andrew, 40, 75, 172, 173, 208 Academies, 23, 28, 67, 70, 88, 114, 150 Academy of Arts and Sciences, 182 American Academy of Sciences, 179 French Academy of Sciences, 69, 87 National Academy of Sciences, 22, 69, 108, 179 Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, 4, 27 Agrégation de l’enseignement supérieur, 54 Alexander, Jeffrey, 14, 52, 126n9, 208 American Economic Association (AEA), 40, 94

American Economic Review, 57, 120 American Journal of Sociology (AJS), 18, 42, 53, 57, 70, 114, 156, 159, 162, 172–174, 173n2, 176, 196 American Men of Science (AMS), 22 criticism, 23 star system, 24 American Political Science Association (APSA), 142 American Psychological Association (APA), 94 American Sociological Association (ASA), 108, 185n9 formerly: Society, 41, 43, 47n7 president, 43, 57, 94, 108, 141, 179 Section on Sociology of Culture, 164n12

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. Korom, Star Sociologists, Socio-Historical Studies of the Social and Human Sciences, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13938-3

223

224 Index

American Sociological Review (ASR), 18, 29, 41, 42, 47n7, 53, 57, 70, 97, 99, 156, 162, 164, 172–174, 176, 195, 205 Anthropology, 3, 75, 202, 213 Archival material, 24, 181n6 Aristotle On Rhetoric, 192 Aron, Raymond, 1, 153 Awards, 2, 4, 5, 28, 30, 31, 67–70, 88, 89, 117, 150, 171, 181, 202 APA Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions, 94 European Amalfi Prize for Sociology and Social Sciences, 68 Fields Medal, 69 Holberg Prize, 68 Médaille d´Or, 153 National Medal of Science, 176, 177 Princess of Asturias Award, 68 W.E.B. DuBois Career of Distinguished Scholarship Award, 94 B

Bales, Robert F., 133, 134, 206 Barber, Bernard, 49 Bauman, Zygmunt, 85, 105, 151, 208, 210 Liquid Modernity, 105, 210 Beck, Ulrich, 109, 151, 208, 210 Becker, Gary, 55 Becker, Howard S., 18, 85, 122 Belgium, 54 Bellah, Robert N., 49, 50, 208

Bendix, Reinhard, 112, 139, 146, 151 Berger, Peter, 96, 212 Berkeley, University of California, 109, 116, 139, 153, 163 Biographical data, 22 Biography, collective, 8, 103–129 Blau, Peter M., 50, 73, 105, 112, 152, 178, 183, 206 The American Occupational Structure, 152 Blossfeld, Hans-Peter, 97 Boltanski, Luc, 204 Boring, Edwin G., 24, 28 Boudon, Raymond, 30 Bourdieu, Pierre, 1, 3, 7, 30, 32, 73, 75, 78, 82, 84, 120, 137, 138, 151, 153–166, 208, 210–212, 212n3 capital, 166, 211, 212 La Distinction, 155, 162 Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture, 155, 158 British Journal of Sociology (BJS), 71 Burawoy, Michael, 113, 210 Bureau of Applied Social Research (BASR), 48, 138, 178–179, 187, 207 Burgess, Ernest W., 19, 42, 43 Butler, Judith, 112 C

Cambridge University, 22, 112, 136 Canada, 54, 143, 203 Career, 22, 44, 54, 57, 65, 103–129, 144, 153, 154, 172, 175, 192, 196, 201 academic, 6, 7, 58, 114–116, 125, 127, 139, 177, 185, 190

 Index 

data, 65 mobility, 114, 117, 122–124, 126, 128 trajectory, 107, 114, 120–122, 124, 140 Castells, Manuel, 73, 108, 109, 116, 128, 208 Cattell, James McKeen, 15, 22–24, 24n9, 185n9 Celebrity, 66 Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS), 108n3, 112, 139, 140, 179–181 Chicago, University of, 12, 17–19, 42, 43, 45, 46, 50, 108, 109, 113, 118, 120, 121, 126, 128, 136, 153, 162, 163, 184, 206 School of Sociology, 42, 47, 49 Citation/citations, 5, 6, 27, 29–32, 41, 53, 56, 56n10, 57, 65, 67–70, 72n6, 75, 77, 78, 85, 90–94, 96, 97, 137, 142, 145–147, 151, 154, 156, 158–162, 173, 176, 208, 210, 213 ceremonial type, 26 correlates of, 28, 31, 69, 88 longitudinal analysis, 99, 143 methodological type, 26, 29 ranking device, 31 Cole, Jonathan, 26, 50, 65, 178, 183, 210 Cole, Stephen, 26, 50, 55, 65, 70, 192, 210 Coleman, James S., 3, 50, 73, 105, 106, 139, 141, 178, 178n5, 206, 210

225

Collins, Randall, 51, 135, 173, 174, 207, 208 The Sociology of Philosophies, 135 Columbia University, 15, 18, 22, 39, 41, 45–51, 104–106, 112, 113, 120, 124, 128, 129, 138, 139, 147, 163, 175–179, 183–185, 193, 194, 206 Rare Book & Manuscript Library, 175n4, 176, 187 Sociology Department, 105, 178 Competition, 5, 15, 18, 164n12, 202, 205 Comte, Auguste, 205 Connell, Raewyn, 85, 204 Content analysis, 159, 161 Coser, Lewis, 17, 47n7, 48, 172, 177–179, 185 Crane, Diana, 56, 77 Cultural sociology, 6, 79, 156 Curtis, Charles P., 104 D

Darwin, Charles, 21 Davis, Kingsley, 73, 75, 205–207 Declaration of Principles of Academic Freedom and Tenure, 16 Derrida, Jacques, 137, 209 Dictionary of National Biography, 107 Diffusion, 7, 15, 82, 86, 137, 153–165, 208, 211, 213 carrier groups, 166 channels of, 155–157 patterns, 8, 210 DiMaggio, Paul, 75, 85, 155, 160, 162, 208

226 Index

Discipline/disciplines, 2–8, 12, 13, 15, 18–22, 26, 28, 29, 39–58, 65–68, 70, 77, 78, 82, 85, 90, 92–96, 106, 107, 112n5, 114–118, 120, 122–124, 126, 127, 129, 133, 136, 137n3, 138, 142, 143, 145, 147, 151, 158, 167, 172, 185, 196, 201–214 core of, 2, 31, 51, 55, 70, 96, 156 discipline-elite nexus, 201–208 fragmentation of, 152, 154, 166, 210 intellectual structure of, 7 low-consensus, 5 openness of, 2, 5, 75, 112 social science, 31, 39, 40, 42, 55–58, 75, 213 what is, 39–44, 67 See also Specialties Duke, James B., 12 Duncan, Otis D., 73, 97, 152, 206 Durkheim, Émile, 18, 40, 51, 73, 151, 203 L’Année sociologique, 18 Les règles de la méthode sociologique, 40

Elite, 2–4, 6, 21, 31, 32, 45–47, 51, 58, 68–87, 103–129, 136, 139, 147, 150, 152, 162, 163, 166, 171–197 prestige, 1, 1n1, 5, 7, 8, 65–68, 73, 78, 84, 107, 113, 114, 133, 201–214 Ellwood, Charles A., 19 Sociology and Modern Social Problems, 19 Eminence, 6–8, 21, 24–32, 50–52, 65–68, 70–88, 90, 92–94, 96, 97, 99, 105, 109, 116, 122, 202, 210, 213, 214 fall from, 133–167 half-life of, 4 rise to, 4, 117, 133–167, 209 Encyclopedia Britannica, 93, 96, 108 Eponyms, 93, 94, 96 Esping-Andersen, Gøsta, 85 Ethnomethodology, 133, 134 European Journal of Sociology (EJS), 71 European Sociological Review (ESR), 99 Excellence, 3, 4, 28, 30, 31, 49, 54, 112, 117, 194, 206 breeds excellence, 206

E

École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS), 109, 153 Eisenstadt, Shmuel, 3, 211 Elias, Norbert, 209 Über den Prozess der Zivilisation, 209 Eliot, Charles W., 13

F

Fellowship, 108, 108n3, 115, 126, 138, 177, 181, 192 See also Guggenheim Foundation Foucault, Michel, 73, 75, 88, 96, 208 Fox, Renée C., 48n8, 49, 51, 179, 187 France, 53, 54, 108n4, 153, 203, 204

 Index 

Friedman, Milton, 96, 121 Fromm, Erich, 137, 209 Fulbright program, 53 Functionalism, 113n6, 204–206 G

Galton, Francis, 21, 22, 22n8 Garfield, Eugene, 26n10, 28, 69, 75 Garfinkel, Harold, 49, 134 Gatekeeper, 7, 171–176, 171n1, 179, 196 gate-opener, 7, 181–196 Generation, 43, 49–51, 67, 70, 73, 96, 105, 136, 137, 207, 208 Genius, 21 Germany, 13–15, 54, 65, 104, 112, 203, 204 Berlin, University of, 14, 14n2 Giddens, Anthony, 30, 73, 85, 120, 125, 151, 185, 202, 208 Giddings, Franklin H., 16, 40, 41, 47 Gilman, Daniel C., 13 Goffman, Erving, 73, 96, 153, 208, 211 Goldthorpe, John, 84, 154 Google Scholar, 30, 92–94, 92n12, 96 Gouldner, Alvin, 50, 52, 88, 178, 185, 205–207, 209 Granovetter, Mark, 211, 212, 212n2 embeddedness, 211, 212n2 Greenspan, Alan, 96 Guggenheim Foundation, 108n3, 195 fellowship, 108, 112 Gumplowicz, Ludwig, 40

227

H

Habermas, Jürgen, 73, 112, 128, 208 Habilitation, 54 Harper, William R., 13, 42 Harvard University, 12, 13, 15, 18, 45–50, 55, 103, 104, 112, 113, 118, 120–123, 126, 128, 129, 133, 134, 139, 144, 147, 155, 162, 177, 187, 206 Department of Social Relations, 48, 49 Society of Fellows, 104 Hermanowicz, Joseph C., 106 Higher education, 12–14, 116, 129, 136, 153, 166 Hirschi, Travis, 78 Historical International Classification of Occupations (HISCO), 109, 113 Hochschild, Arlie R., 85, 88 Hollingshead, August B., 17 “Climbing the Academic Ladder,” 17 Homans, George C., 103, 104, 206, 207 Hughes, Everett C., 47, 50, 206 Humboldt, Wilhelm, 13, 14, 14n2 Lehr-und Lernfreiheit, 13 memorandum, 13, 14 I

Ideas, 5–8, 12–14, 17, 21, 22, 25, 40, 44, 45, 49, 50, 56, 58, 67, 70, 73, 77, 78, 82, 85, 88, 93, 134–137, 142, 143, 150, 152, 154–156, 162, 164n12, 166, 172, 178, 203, 207–210, 212, 214

228 Index

Ideas (cont.) originality of, 8, 137 transferability of, 211 Institutionalization, 5, 50 International Encyclopedia of the Social (and Behavioral) Sciences, 75, 108, 195 Ivy League, 103 J

Johns Hopkins, 12, 13, 15, 18, 163 Journal/journals, 7, 19n5, 20, 22, 28, 41, 47n7, 52–54, 56n10, 58, 67, 70–87, 92, 94, 96, 122, 137, 137n3, 140–142, 147, 153, 158–162, 164, 171–175, 195, 196, 201, 205, 206, 212 citation, 5, 29, 156 sample analysed, 70 in sociology, 18, 19, 57, 70, 79, 82, 83, 85, 97–99, 120, 145, 146, 154–157, 173 JSTOR, 19, 19n5, 146–149, 146n9, 147n10, 185n9 K

Katz, Elihu, 154, 155 Krugman, Paul, 96

Lazarsfeld, Paul F., 48, 49, 51, 73, 138, 178, 206, 207 Leontief, Wassily, 124 Lewin, Kurt, 171, 172 Lieber, Francis, 39 Lindbeck, Assar, 27, 28n11 Linz, Juan, 139 Lipset, Seymour, M., 6, 32, 47, 50, 51, 73, 77, 105, 137–152, 166, 178, 183, 191, 197, 206, 209–211 Class, Status, and Power, 146 democracy research, 152 Divided Academy, 150 lecture series, 138, 152 Lipset-Zetterberg hypothesis, 151 Political Man, 141, 142, 142n6, 146, 150–152, 209, 211 political sociology, 6, 140, 141, 141n5, 152 Social Mobility in Industrial Society, 151 “Some Social Requisites of Democracy,” 147 London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), 109 Luhmann, Niklas, 78, 97, 128, 204 Lynd, Helen M., 19 Middletown, 19, 20 Lynd, Robert S., 19 M

L

Lamont, Michèle, 53, 137, 153, 154, 164, 164n12, 174, 209 Latour, Bruno, 208

Market, 3, 20, 41, 43, 55, 58, 90, 156, 201 academic, 19 labor, 7, 97 Marquis Who's Who, 108

 Index 

Marshall, Alfred, 39 Marx, Karl, 51, 74, 85, 138, 151 Massey, Douglas, 208 Mead, George H., 17 Mind, Self, and Society, 17 Merton, Robert K., 1, 7, 15, 15n3, 21, 32, 48–51, 73, 75, 77, 78, 85, 88, 93, 96, 104, 106, 107, 113n6, 127, 137–139, 171n1, 175–197, 205–207, 211 editing, 179 mentees, 48 “Puritanism, Pietism, and Science,” 177 recommendation success rate, 190 “Science, Technology and Society in Seventeenth-Century England,” 107 Social Theory and Social Structure, 85, 159, 211 Methodology, 5, 6, 20, 25, 26, 29, 40, 43n4, 48, 51, 57, 67–70, 88–99, 113, 115n7, 138, 144, 203, 205, 211, 212, 214 qualitative vs. quantitative, 31, 49, 56 quantification of research, 30 Migration, 208, 213 Mills, C. Wright, 1, 88, 206, 207, 209 Mobility, 114, 117, 122–124, 126, 128, 141, 143, 147, 151, 171n1 researchers, 151 social, 141, 143, 147, 151 Myrdal, Gunnar, 203 An American Dilemma, 203

229

N

Networks, 20, 50, 51, 125, 126, 135, 136, 154, 164, 180, 207, 210, 212, 212n2 Nobel, Alfred, 3, 27 Nobel Prize, 4, 21, 27, 28, 68, 69, 94, 96, 136, 177, 185 forecast, 28 selection procedure, 28 O

Occupation, 109, 124, 164 father’s, 108, 113, 117 See also Profession Ogburn, William F., 47, 49 P

Paradigm, 5, 45n6, 46, 47, 50, 54, 78, 133, 134, 204, 211 Pareto, Vilfredo, 66, 66n1, 104, 133 Park, Robert E., 19, 42, 43, 47, 49, 50, 206 Introduction to the Science of Sociology, 19, 43 Parsons, Talcott, 5, 19, 48–51, 48n8, 55, 73, 75, 77, 84, 85, 96, 113n6, 122, 127, 197, 202, 205–209 AGIL scheme, 50 The Structure of Social Action, 19, 159 Peer/peers, 4–6, 16, 17, 20, 21, 23, 24, 27, 40n1, 58, 65–69, 75, 87, 88, 90, 99, 116, 145, 150, 171–174, 176, 195, 196, 201, 202, 211, 214 attention, 2, 67

230 Index

Peer (cont.) judgment, 21 Poetics (journal), 79, 156, 162 Prestige, 1, 1n1, 2, 5, 7, 8, 27, 28n11, 31, 45, 51, 53, 65–69, 73, 78, 84, 87, 92, 94, 107, 113–115, 120–123, 126, 133, 152, 162, 182, 184, 201–214 economy, 202 Princeton Institute for Advanced Study, 116 University, 108n3, 116, 153, 162, 163, 184 Profession, 20, 49, 122 publishing, 7, 18, 136, 196 teaching, 13, 15–18, 23, 45, 54, 106, 114, 117, 153, 171n1, 183, 185, 187, 189 tenure, 57 See also Occupation Professorship, 6, 39, 108, 109, 112, 114–116, 115n7, 119–126, 139, 171, 181, 191, 192 promotion to, 31, 120 Prosopography, 103–107 See also Biography, collective Psychology, 21, 22, 24–26, 29, 90–94, 205, 214 Publication genre, 20, 141 Putnam, Robert, 85, 211 R

Randomness, 117, 129 Reception, 7, 8, 23, 84, 85, 96, 105, 137, 138, 142, 144–147, 150, 152, 153, 155, 156, 159, 162, 166, 208–210, 213 trajectory, 143

Recognition, scholarly, 32, 68–70, 213 Recommendation letter, 7, 181–195 Recruitment, 54 endogamous, 54 Revolution, 13, 41 academic, 13 formalist, 41 marginalist, 41 Riesman, David, 13, 139 Ritzer, George, 88, 93, 113n6 Rivalry between scholars, 41 Rockefeller, John D., 12, 20, 20n7 Institute for Social and Religious Research (ISSR), 20 Rockefeller Foundation, 53 Rose, Arnold M., 203 Ross, Edward A., 41 Russell Sage Foundation (RSF), 179, 180 S

SAGE Handbook of Sociology, 72 Samuelson, Paul A., 96, 121 Science, 4–6, 11n1, 13, 14, 21–24, 27, 29, 31, 39–43, 45, 45n6, 46, 48, 50–53, 55–58, 56n10, 65–67, 69, 71, 72, 75, 104, 105, 107, 109, 134, 135n1, 137, 140–147, 150, 152, 171, 174–177, 180, 183, 185, 195, 201, 204, 207, 209–211 hard, 2n2, 3 soft, 2, 2n2, 3 Scientific ethos, 53 Scientific progress, 134 Scientometrics, 144, 210, 213 h-index, 93, 94, 96 Second World War, 45, 48, 177, 203

 Index 

Shiller, Robert J., 3 Sills, David L., 72, 75, 93, 96, 138, 206 Simmel, Georg, 17, 40 Zur Soziologie der Familie, 40 Small, Albion, 18, 42, 42n3, 196 Smelser, Neil, 48, 49, 51, 195, 196 Social background, 106 Social Forces (SF), 18, 70, 159 Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), 26n10, 28, 29, 56, 56n10, 79, 79n8, 142, 173, 176 Social Science Quotations (SSQ), 93, 94, 96 Social Science Research Council (SSRC), 138, 179, 181 Social stratification, 17, 144, 146, 151, 166, 210 Sociology/sociologies, 2–8, 18–21, 29–32, 39–58, 65–70, 72, 73, 75, 77–79, 82, 84, 85, 87, 90–94, 96–99, 106–110, 112–129, 133–135, 137–158, 160, 162, 164, 166–167, 172, 173, 175–179, 182, 183, 185, 190–197, 202–214 American, 7, 113, 203 distintegration, 5, 6 divides within, 6, 209 fragmented/fragmentation, 2, 3, 5, 31, 52, 58, 77, 123, 152, 154, 166, 204, 205, 210, 213 golden age of, 45, 47, 175, 206 history of, 49, 66, 203 institutionalization of, 48 mass vs. elite, 51, 166 pluralism in, 52–55 schools of thought within, 5, 45, 49, 52, 207

231

of science, 50, 176, 177, 183 textbook, 6, 75, 166 what is?, 43 Sorokin, Pitirim, 112, 177, 206, 207, 209 Specialties, 5, 6, 8, 52, 56, 58, 67, 77, 78, 84, 85, 97, 107, 129, 164, 166, 173, 210, 211 Spencer, Herbert, 11, 25, 39, 74 The Study of Sociology, 11, 39 Stiglitz, Joseph, 96 Stinchcombe, Arthur, 31, 56, 117, 129, 179, 193, 194 Stouffer, Samuel A., 51 Style, intellectual, 180 Sumner, William G., 11, 42n3 Survey research, 57, 58, 204–206 Sweden, 28n11, 203 T

Tappan, Henry, 13 Textbook, 5, 6, 11, 18, 19, 23, 29, 43, 47, 70–72, 75, 88–96, 134, 151, 166 citations, 29, 70, 88–96 as genre, 70 Introduction to the Science of Sociology, 19, 43 Sociology and Modern Social Problems, 19 Theory, 3, 21, 28n11, 43n4, 48, 49, 51, 52, 55, 77, 93, 96, 97, 113n6, 134, 150, 164, 172, 205, 207, 208, 210–212 Thomas, William I., 42 Tilly, Charles, 73, 85, 88, 208 Tiryakian, Edward A., 45, 46, 49, 207 Top 1%, 103, 173, 174

232 Index

Tower of Babel, 58, 129 Translation, 14, 85, 135n1, 154–156, 159, 162, 209 U

Universalism, 15, 15n3 University, 17–19, 22, 42, 47, 48, 52, 103, 108, 109, 112, 113, 116–118, 124, 125, 126n9, 128, 136–140, 144, 153, 155, 176–179, 185, 187, 203, 206 reform, 15 research, 5, 11–16

W

Wacquant, Loïc, 153, 162 Wallerstein, Immanuel, 40, 124, 128, 208 Watson, Robert I., 24, 28 Weber, Max, 51, 73, 84, 104, 151, 195, 203 Whitley, Richard, 7, 56, 203 The Intellectual and Social Organization of the Sciences, 56 Y

Yale University, 11, 12, 15, 42n3, 52, 121, 124, 126, 137, 162

V

Veblen, Thorstein, 12 The Higher Learning in America, 12 Vidich, Arthur J., 46 Volcker, Paul, 96

Z

Zuckerman, Harriet, 1n1, 3, 87, 171n1, 183, 185