Visualizing the Expanding Space of Consecration in American Sociology,1980–2020

The Space of Consecration in American Sociology

A little over a decade ago, Joel Best (2008) identified a “proliferation” in awards given by sociological associations. Beginning in the late 1970s, the number of awards increased over tenfold, such that over 100 awards were bestowed in 2006. Best (2008) attributed much of this proliferation to the segmentation of sociology into multiple associations (many further segmented into sections), each seeking to legitimate its work and enhance its prestige. This visualization asks whether this trend has continued by examining awards bestowed by the American Sociological Association’s (ASA) constituent sections.

Sociologists have good reasons to be interested in these trends. Sociological awards, like all prizes, are instances of consecration—the act of officially recognizing something as outstanding or particularly valuable. Although consecration is an important phenomenon in all fields of cultural production (Cattani, Ferriani, and Allison 2014; Childress 2017), it plays particularly important roles in academic fields. Scholarly publishing is increasingly characterized by the “problem of excess” (Abbott 2014), where more publications on any given topic vie to be read without clear ways to determine their relative quality. In such a context, peer recognition that a publication is outstanding can help publicize important work, augment an author’s reputation, signal the importance of new or controversial methods or sources of data, and boost the winners’ careers (English 2009; Merton 1968). At the same time, because the “filters” applied by consecration to scholarly work are neither objective nor neutral (Lamont 2009), prizes may be vehicles for perpetuating intradisciplinary inequalities and gender bias (Emmelhainz and Slaughter 2020; Lincoln et al. 2012).

Our findings (Figure 1) are drawn from a comprehensive review of 2,539 awards for publications given by ASA sections from 1980 to 2020 and reveal three major trends. First, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of awards given by ASA sections. There was only a single award in 1980, 9 in 1990, and 39 in 2000. By 2010, however, the number of awards nearly doubled to 72 and rose to an all-time high of 135 in both 2018 and 2020. This increase does not appear to be driven by the number of sections themselves, which has remained stable (at just over 50) since 2010. Instead, the growth in awards seems related to an increase in honorable mentions: whereas only five honorable mentions were awarded before 2001, at least 37 were awarded in 2020 alone.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 1.

The Expanding Space of Consecration in American Sociology, 1980–2020.

Second, there has been a marked increase in awards within the last five years—from 89 in 2015 to 135 in 2020. This occurred not only while the number of sections remained constant but while both ASA overall and section memberships declined dramatically. In other words, awards proliferated even as the pool of candidates for them shrank.

Third, and perhaps related, there has been dramatic growth in the number of multiple-award-winning authors. An author was first recognized by more than two sections in 1997, and by 2020, there were 36 such authors. This dynamic seems partially independent of the growth in awards ¹ : Between 2000 and 2010, awards increased by 185 percent and multiple awardees from 0 to 9; from 2010 and 2020, awards grew by 188 percent, but multiple awardees quadrupled to 36. Within this consecrated elite, moreover, lies a sociological hyper-elite of 17 authors who have received awards from at least six different sections.

These shifts suggest the space of consecration in American sociology has continued to expand and that factors other than segmentation may be important. There could simply be more high-quality sociological work being published, and so award committees might have far more difficult choices before them. Additionally, although segmentation within ASA may have stabilized, organizational forces may still play a role: The number of awards each section is permitted to give has increased since 2003, and isomorphism may have forced reluctant sections to join the consecration parade. The increase in both honorable mentions and multiple-award winners, however, suggests the effects of both symbolic inflation (the declining value of an award in the context of prize proliferation) and a deteriorating academic job market. Sections may have responded by giving more prizes (especially via honorable mention), and scholars may have responded by applying more widely for those prizes in an effort to improve the odds both of individual scholars and subdisciplines in an increasingly competitive job market.

Supplemental Material