Abstract
Sociologists tend to publish either in the form of articles in scholarly journals or in the form of books. This paper attempts to show that not only do specific university departments have scholarly cultures emphasizing one or the other, but that structural and demographic factors — such as location, public or private status, and size — are correlated with each. Book departments tend to be found at exclusive private universities in or near big cities on both coasts, while article-producing departments tend to be in land grant universities in the South and Midwest. Recognizing that such publication decisions are not purely scientific in nature but are also partially socially constructed ought to allow us to have more diversity in how departments structure their scholarly cultures.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
1988 Guide to Graduate Departments of Sociology 1988. Washington, DC: ASA.
1989a Guide to Graduate Departments of Sociology 1989. Washington, DC: ASA.
American Sociological Association 1989b “Alice S. Rossi wins Common Wealth Award.” Footnotes, April:1.
Blalock, Hubert M. 1989 “The real and unrealized contributions of quantitative sociology.” American Sociological Review 54:447–460.
Bourdieu, Pierre 1988 Homo Academicus. Peter Collier, tr. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
DeMott, Benjamin 1988 “Rediscovering complexity.” The Atlantic 262:67–74.
Jones, Lyle V., Gardner Lindzey, andPorter Coggeshall, eds. 1982 An Assessment of Research-Doctorate Programs in the United States: Social and Behavioral Sciences. Washington: National Academy Press.
Lepenies, Wolf 1988 Between Literature and Science: The Rise of Sociology. R. J. Hollingdale, tr. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Logan, John R. 1988 “Producing sociology: Time trends in authorship of journal articles 1975–1986.” The American Sociologist 19:167–180.
1967 “On the history and systematics of sociological theory.” In On Theoretical Sociology: Five Essays, Old and New: 1–37. New York: Free Press.
1976 Sociological Ambivalence. New York: Free Press.
Powell, Walter, W. 1985 Getting into Print: The Decision Making Process in Scholarly Publishing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Tuchman, Gaye, withNina Fortin 1989 Edging Women Out: Victorian Novelists, Publishers, and Social Change. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Van Valey, Thomas and Kathleen A. Tiemann 1989 “Chairs of graduate departments: Where do they come from?” Footnotes, February:4–9.
Webster, David S., Clifton F. Conrad, andEric L. Jensen 1988 “Objective and reputational rankings of Ph.D.-granting departments of sociology, 1965–1982.” Sociological Focus 21:177–198.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Wolfe, A. Books vs. articles: Two ways of publishing sociology. Sociol Forum 5, 477–489 (1990). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01115097
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01115097