Networks, Paradigms and Careers in the Academic Field: Sociology in Germany and the United States

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This project assumes an increasing superimposition of the institutional economic competition between universities for competitive advantages on the individual scientific competition of scientists for progress of knowledge and recognition. It is assumed that this competition enhances the differentiation of the academic field into centre, semi-periphery and periphery, the canonization of knowledge along with a standardization of methods and the differentiation and standardization of careers. How far this development advances depends on the degree of centre/semi-periphery/periphery differentiation of a country’s academic field and the homogeneity of the existing knowledge as well as the standardization of methods of a discipline. Furtheron, the opposite effect of the expansion of science as a result of the growing number of professorships as well as scientific journals and subjects of research has to be taken into account. To account for these conditions, the investigation of the discipline of sociology looks at the changing academic fields in two countries that differ in these respects: the USA and Germany, which display higher respectively lower levels of centre/semi-periphery/periphery differentiation as well as expansion of science and higher respectively lower degrees of homogeneity of their knowledge and of standardization of methods. The time span of the investigation comprises 2000 to 2018. The investigation aims at testing a research approach which can be transferred to other subjects of the sociology of science and beyond.