IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/new/wpaper/1520.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Is there a New Economic Sociology Effect? A Topic Model on the Economic Orientation of Sociology, 1890 to 2014

Author

Listed:
  • Adel Daoud

    (Department of Sociology and Work Science, University of Gothenburg and Department of Economics, New School for Social Research)

  • Sebastian Kohl

    (Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies)

Abstract

The conventional story tells us that since the birth of the discipline of sociology, the economic orientation of the discipline has peaked twice: the first peak was during the classical era between 1890 and 1920; the second peak was sometime after 1985, marking Granovetter´s Economic Action and Social Structure paper. We have tested this story by using all full-text articles provided by JSTOR between the periods 1890 to 2014: this contains 142 040 articles and 157 journals. We used a combination of topic modelling (machine learning applied to text) and multilevel modelling (regression) to accomplish this. We have found the following. (1) there is strong evidence for the first peak, but contrary to this narrative, we also find a decreasing proportion of economic topics over the last century. (2) The rise of the new economic sociology as a sub-discipline of sociology, comes not in the form of an increasing focus on general economic issues, but rather in the form of a particular topic mix of organization and social-theory research. (3) We show, accordingly, that this particular topic mix reached its bottom and started to rise by the 1929; it peaked by 1989. (4) We suggest, therefore, that Granovetter´s article (and the new economic sociology) does not mark the beginning of a second peak – as the conventional story has it – but it is rather a product of a preceding sociological interests, innovations, and orientation towards socio-economic theory development. (5) Moreover, we discover that neither the classics nor the new economic sociologists contribute much to an empirical (applied) type of economic topic found in industrial relations and political economy research. In conclusion, the future impact that the discipline of sociology might have on economic oriented research in the social sciences, will most likely require (a) less of a within- and between disciplinary fragmentation that is most likely hampering the potential contributions sociologists can make; (b) more of engaging with applied economic affairs and thus bridge current sub-disciplinary divides. This is crucial in the age of austerity and if we seek to conceive of better socio-economic theories than existing economic theories.

Suggested Citation

  • Adel Daoud & Sebastian Kohl, 2015. "Is there a New Economic Sociology Effect? A Topic Model on the Economic Orientation of Sociology, 1890 to 2014," Working Papers 1520, New School for Social Research, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:new:wpaper:1520
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.economicpolicyresearch.org/econ/2015/NSSR_WP_202015.pdf
    File Function: First version, 2015
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Grimmer, Justin, 2010. "A Bayesian Hierarchical Topic Model for Political Texts: Measuring Expressed Agendas in Senate Press Releases," Political Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 18(1), pages 1-35, January.
    2. Beckert, Jens & Streeck, Wolfgang, 2008. "Economic sociology and political economy: A programmatic perspective," MPIfG Working Paper 08/4, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies.
    3. Beckert, Jens & Besedovsky, Natalia, 2009. "Die Wirtschaft als Thema der Soziologie: Zur Entwicklung wirtschaftssoziologischer Forschung in Deutschland und den USA," MPIfG Discussion Paper 09/1, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies.
    4. Grün, Bettina & Hornik, Kurt, 2011. "topicmodels: An R Package for Fitting Topic Models," Journal of Statistical Software, Foundation for Open Access Statistics, vol. 40(i13).
    5. Feinerer, Ingo & Hornik, Kurt & Meyer, David, 2008. "Text Mining Infrastructure in R," Journal of Statistical Software, Foundation for Open Access Statistics, vol. 25(i05).
    6. Heilbron, Johan, 1999. "Economic sociology in France," economic sociology. perspectives and conversations, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, vol. 1(1), pages 4-9.
    7. Beckert, Jens, 2000. "Economic sociology in Germany," economic sociology. perspectives and conversations, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, vol. 1(2), pages 2-7.
    8. Eugene Garfield & A. I. Pudovkin & V. S. Istomin, 2003. "Why do we need algorithmic historiography?," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 54(5), pages 400-412, March.
    9. Shlomo Argamon & Jeff Dodick & Paul Chase, 2008. "Language use reflects scientific methodology: A corpus-based study of peer-reviewed journal articles," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 75(2), pages 203-238, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Daoud, Adel & Kohl, Sebastian, 2016. "How much do sociologists write about economic topics? Using big data to test some conventional views in economic sociology, 1890 to 2014," MPIfG Discussion Paper 16/7, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies.
    2. Lehotský, Lukáš & Černoch, Filip & Osička, Jan & Ocelík, Petr, 2019. "When climate change is missing: Media discourse on coal mining in the Czech Republic," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 129(C), pages 774-786.
    3. Yanto Chandra & Li Crystal Jiang & Cheng-Jun Wang, 2016. "Mining Social Entrepreneurship Strategies Using Topic Modeling," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(3), pages 1-28, March.
    4. Stefano Sbalchiero & Maciej Eder, 2020. "Topic modeling, long texts and the best number of topics. Some Problems and solutions," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 54(4), pages 1095-1108, August.
    5. Beckert, Jens, 2009. "Pragmatismus und wirtschaftliches Handeln," MPIfG Working Paper 09/4, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies.
    6. Cho, Yung-Jan & Fu, Pei-Wen & Wu, Chi-Cheng, 2017. "Popular Research Topics in Marketing Journals, 1995–2014," Journal of Interactive Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 40(C), pages 52-72.
    7. João Guerreiro & Paulo Rita & Duarte Trigueiros, 2016. "A Text Mining-Based Review of Cause-Related Marketing Literature," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 139(1), pages 111-128, November.
    8. Arina Wischnewsky & David‐Jan Jansen & Matthias Neuenkirch, 2021. "Financial stability and the Fed: Evidence from congressional hearings," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 59(3), pages 1192-1214, July.
    9. Lino Wehrheim, 2019. "Economic history goes digital: topic modeling the Journal of Economic History," Cliometrica, Springer;Cliometric Society (Association Francaise de Cliométrie), vol. 13(1), pages 83-125, January.
    10. Abhinav Khare & Qing He & Rajan Batta, 2020. "Predicting gasoline shortage during disasters using social media," OR Spectrum: Quantitative Approaches in Management, Springer;Gesellschaft für Operations Research e.V., vol. 42(3), pages 693-726, September.
    11. Doblinger, Claudia & Surana, Kavita & Li, Deyu & Hultman, Nathan & Anadón, Laura Díaz, 2022. "How do global manufacturing shifts affect long-term clean energy innovation? A study of wind energy suppliers," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 51(7).
    12. Andres, Maximilian & Bruttel, Lisa & Friedrichsen, Jana, 2023. "How communication makes the difference between a cartel and tacit collusion: A machine learning approach," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 152(C).
    13. Hudson Golino & Alexander P. Christensen & Robert Moulder & Seohyun Kim & Steven M. Boker, 2022. "Modeling Latent Topics in Social Media using Dynamic Exploratory Graph Analysis: The Case of the Right-wing and Left-wing Trolls in the 2016 US Elections," Psychometrika, Springer;The Psychometric Society, vol. 87(1), pages 156-187, March.
    14. Sun, Katherine Qianwen & Slepian, Michael L., 2020. "The conversations we seek to avoid," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 160(C), pages 87-105.
    15. Rieger, Jonas & von Nordheim, Gerret, 2021. "corona100d: German-language Twitter dataset of the first 100 days after Chancellor Merkel addressed the coronavirus outbreak on TV," DoCMA Working Papers 4, TU Dortmund University, Dortmund Center for Data-based Media Analysis (DoCMA).
    16. Benjamin Bagozzi, 2015. "The multifaceted nature of global climate change negotiations," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 10(4), pages 439-464, December.
    17. Sanders James & Lisi Giulio & Schonhardt-Bailey Cheryl, 2017. "Themes and Topics in Parliamentary Oversight Hearings: A New Direction in Textual Data Analysis," Statistics, Politics and Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 8(2), pages 153-194, December.
    18. Garner, Benjamin & Thornton, Corliss & Luo Pawluk, Anita & Mora Cortez, Roberto & Johnston, Wesley & Ayala, Cesar, 2022. "Utilizing text-mining to explore consumer happiness within tourism destinations," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 139(C), pages 1366-1377.
    19. Anke Piepenbrink & Elkin Nurmammadov, 2015. "Topics in the literature of transition economies and emerging markets," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 102(3), pages 2107-2130, March.
    20. Christian WEISMAYER, 2022. "Applied Research in Quality of Life: A Computational Literature Review," Applied Research in Quality of Life, Springer;International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies, vol. 17(3), pages 1433-1458, June.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:new:wpaper:1520. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Mark Setterfield (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/denewus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.