Sociology’s Gendered “Ritual Nods”

White male European and American voices dominate sociology. New analysis makes me wonder: are we reproducing inequality through our “ritual nods” to social theory?

Sociologist Rafael Pereira published an analysis of the most-cited authors in sociology papers. The analysis was limited to the Google Scholars Citations page. Pereira finds that the top sociology citations favour cis white men from Europe and America, with Foucault, Bourdieu and Weber being the most frequently cited authors.

SocProf points out that women sociologists, such as Saskia Sassen and Arlie Hochschild, are not cited nearly as frequently. SocProf muses that this extends beyond academic papers into sociology blogging.

Part of the problem, as SocProf points out, is that our discipline requires us to acknowledge our key thinkers.  Neal Caren previously showed that many of the papers cited in sociology are at least 10 years old, showing that our collective preference for citing the ‘established classics’ means reaching back to older texts.

Yes, our early founding fathers were white men – but feminism, postcolonialism and queer theory have had – and continue to have – a profound impact on our discipline, by ensuring we re-examine power relations and knowledge discourses. This doesn’t mean we abandon our “forefathers,” but critically examining their legacies as well as giving equal weight to white women and minorities.

Our “ritual nods” to the classics replicates a cyclical problem: if we continue to only consider male white theorists as the premier “classic” texts, we inadvertently exclude the contributions of others. Yet if we don’t cite these already-highly-cited authors, we are likely to encounter peer-review and editorial criticisms.

Perhaps we tend to cite these cis white male authors from Europe and America because the majority of sociology publishing is skewed towards particular topics. Feminism, postcolonialism and queer theory arose as a set of critiques about the established sociological paradigms. In 2008, John Germov and Tara Renae McGee conducted an analysis of the papers published in the Journal of Sociology, which shows that class, stratification and mobility were the primary subjects being written about up until the 1990s, although industrial sociology and the sociology of work remain popular today.

Feminism, gender, sexuality and families have featured heavily since the 1970s. These are areas where cis-women sociologists and LGBTQIA theorists have made great strides to shift sociological theory and methods.

Indigenous issues did not feature in the top five subjects until the 2000s. 

Sociological theory seems to be stuck in the cycle of inequality we have set out to break down. That is, our citations replicate the domination of some elite voices over others.

What do you think? Is sociology reproducing social inequality due to the way we use social theory? Does this stem from the way we teach sociology or the way in which academic publishing is set up?