Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

A view from above: The evolving sociological landscape

  • Published:
The American Sociologist Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

How has sociology evolved over the last 40 years? In this paper, we examine networks built on thousands of sociology-relevant papers to map sociology’s position in the wider social sciences and identify changes in the most prominent research fronts in the discipline. We find first that sociology seems to have traded centrality in the field of social sciences for internal cohesion: sociology is central, but not nearly as well bounded as neighboring disciplines such as economics or law. Internally, sociology appears to have moved away from research topics associated with fundamental social processes and toward social-problems research. We end by discussing strategies for extending this work to wider science production networks.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Abbott, Andrew. 2001. Chaos of Disciplines. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).

    Google Scholar 

  • Baldi, Stephane. 1998. “Normative versus Social Constructivist Processes in the Allocation of Citations: A Network Analytic Model.” American Sociological Review 63: 829–846.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bender-deMoll, Skye and Daniel A. McFarland. 2006. “The Art and Science of Dynamic Network Visualization.” Journal of Social Structure (Forthcoming).

  • Callon, Michel, John Law, and Arie Rip. 1986. Mapping the Dynamics of Science and Technology (Dobbs Ferry, NY: Sheridan House).

    Google Scholar 

  • Cappell, Charles L. and Thomas M. Guterbock. 1992. “Visible Colleges: The Social and Conceptual Structure of Sociology Specialties.” American Sociological Review 57: 266–273.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Courtial, Jean-Pierre and John Law. 1989. “A Co-Word Study of Artificial Intelligence.” Social Studies of Science 19:301–311.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Daipha, Phaedra. 2001. “The Intellects and Social Organization of ASA 1990-1997.” The American Sociologist 32: 73–90.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Durkheim, Emile. 1966. The Rules of Sociological Method. Translators Sarah A. Solovay and John H. Mueller. (Toronto, Ontario: The Free Press).

    Google Scholar 

  • Ennis, James G. 1992. “The Social Organization of Sociological Knowledge: Modeling the Intersection of Specialties.” American Sociological Review 57: 259–265.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Freeman, Linton. C. 1972. “Segregation in Social Networks.” Sociological Methods and Research 6:411–430.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Frickel, Scott and Neil Gross. 2005. “A General Theory of Scientific/Intellectual Movements.” American Sociological Review 70: 204–232.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Friedrichs, Robert W. 1970. A Sociology of Sociology (New York: Free Press).

    Google Scholar 

  • Garfield, Eugene, Irving H. Sher, and Richard J. Toprie. 1964. The Use of Citation Data in Writing the History of Science (Philadelphia, PA: Institute for Scientific Information).

    Google Scholar 

  • Gieryn, Thomas F. 1999. Cultural Boundaries of Science: Credibility on the Line (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).

    Google Scholar 

  • Gouldner, Alvin W. 1970. The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology (New York: Basic Books).

    Google Scholar 

  • Griffith, Belver C, Henry G. Small, Judith A. Stonehill, and Sandra Dey. 1974. “The Structure of Scientific Literatures II: Toward a Macro-Microstructure for Science.” Science Studies 4: 339–365.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Guimera, Roger and Luis A. N. Amaral. 2005. “Functional Cartography of Complex Metabolic Networks.” Nature 433: 895–900.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hargens, Lowell. 2000. “Using the Literature: Reference Networks, Reference Contexts, and the Social Structure of Scholarship.” American Sociological Review 65: 846–865.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • He, Q. 1999. “Knowledge Discovery through Co-Word Analysis.” Library Trends 48: 133–159.

    Google Scholar 

  • Horowitz, Irving L. 1993. The Decomposition of Sociology (New York: Oxford University Press).

    Google Scholar 

  • Kling, Rob. 1990. “More INformation, Better Jobs? Occupational Stratification and Labor-Markets Segmentation in the United States’ Information Labor Force.” The Information Society 7: 77–107.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kuhn, Thomas. 1970. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press).

    Google Scholar 

  • Law, John, S Bauin, J.P. Courtial, and John Whittaker. 1988. “Policy and the Mapping of Scientific Change: A Co-Word Analysis of Research in to Environmental Acidification.” Scientometric 14: 251–264.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Leydesdorff, Loet. 2004. “Top-Down Decomposition of the Journal Citation Report of the Social Science Citation Index: Graph and Factor-Analytic Approaches.” Scientometrics 60: 159–180.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Light, Ryan. 2004. “Balkanized or Boundless: The Structure of American Sociological Publication.” Masters Thesis, The Ohio State University.

  • Moody, James. 2001. “Peer Influence Groups: Identifying Dense Clusters in Large Networks.” Social Networks 23: 261–283.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • —. 2004. “The Structure of a Social Science Collaboration Network: Disciplinary Cohesion from 1963-1999.” American Sociological Review 69: 213–238.

    Google Scholar 

  • Moody, James, Daniel A. McFarland, and Skye Bender-DeMoll. 2005. “Dynamic Network Visualization.” American Journal of Sociology 110: 1206–1241.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pool, Ithiel d. S. and Manfred Kochen. 1978. “Contacts and Influence.” Social Networks 1: 5–51.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Shiffrin, Richard M. and Katy Borner. 2004. “Mapping Knowledge Domains.” Proceedings of the National Academies of Science 101: 5183–5185.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Small, Henry and Belver C. Griffith. 1974. “The Structure of Scientific Literatures I: Identifying and Graphing Specialties.” Science Studies 4: 17–40.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Turner, Stephen and Jonathan Turner. 1990. The Impossible Science: An Institutional Analysis of American Sociology (Newbury Park, CA: Sage).

    Google Scholar 

  • Whittaker, John, Jean-Pierre Courtial, and John Law. 1989. “Creativity and Conformity in Science: Titles, Keywords & Co-Word Analysis.” Social Studies of Science 19: 473–496.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Authors
  1. James Moody
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Ryan Light
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Additional information

Associate professor of sociology at Duke University. He has published broadly on the dynamics of social networks, and is currently working on questions related to the evolution of science networks and network diffusion. He can be reached at jmoody777@soc.duke.edu. Ryan Light is a Ph.D. candidate at The Ohio State University. His dissertation focuses on the structure of scientific networks and its effects on knowledge production.

Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the 2005 American Sociological Association meetings and colloquia at Duke University, Indiana University, UC-Irvine, and UC-Santa Barbara, and we thank the participants for many fine comments, with special thanks to Lisa Keister. Work on the clustering algorithm used here is partially funded by NIH grants DA 12831 and HD41877 and NSF grant 1TR/SOC-0080860.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Moody, J., Light, R. A view from above: The evolving sociological landscape. Am Soc 37, 67–86 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12108-006-1006-8

Download citation

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12108-006-1006-8

Keywords

Search

Navigation