Shifts in Scholarly Attention among World Regions

University Of North Carolina At Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill NC

Investigators

Abstract

SES-1123509 Charles Kurzman University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Abstract How Social Science Maps the World How does American social science observe the world? This project examines social-scientific journal articles, books, doctoral dissertations, and disciplinary awards to see how often each world region has been studied over the past half-century. The dataset that this project generates will allow us to track the trends in scholarly attention to various parts of the world, and to test theories in the sociology of social science about how researchers select subjects for study. The patterns that emerge from this research will help to inform social scientists and educational policymakers about trends and possible gaps in scholarly attention to different regions of the world. The internationalization of American higher education has been a longstanding concern in academia and in policy circles; this work moves the debate beyond the overall level of internationalization to a more detailed break-out of internationalization by region. The project includes a dissemination phase in order to present the results of this research to annual meetings of national professional organizations, in order to spur discussion of the research findings and explore educational policy responses.