The Sociology of Academic Networks

[This is a guest post by Lincoln Mullen, a PhD student at Brandeis University and a historian of religion and early America. He's also one of the organizers of THATCamp New England. You can follow him on Twitter at @lincolnmullen.--@jbj]

I’m a historian who is spending a month in the company of sociologists, studying religious congregations and social change. In crossing these disciplinary boundaries, I’ve been fortunate to read a great deal of sociological works that I would otherwise not encounter. Among these is Randall Collins’s theoretical work, Interaction Ritual Chains (2004).

Collins’s describes his work as a “radical microsociology,” meaning that he theorizes about the rituals by which people interact with others, from large groups, to person-to-person relationships, to the imaginary conversations that a person engages in his or her mind. I’m ambivalent about parts of the theory, but I’m intrigued by his central claims: “occasions that combine a high degree of mutual focus of attention … together with a high degree of emotional entrainment … result in feelings of membership that are attached to cognitive symbols; and result also in the emotional energy of individual participants, giving them feelings of confidence, enthusiasm, and desire for action in what they consider a morally proper path” (42). In other words, when people interact their shared attention trains each other to be in a group with a shared purpose.

Though that theory is dense, I find it powerful for explaining many things, not least of which is the way parts of the academy work. If part of the mission of ProfHacker is to make plain the hidden (even unconscious) rules of the academy, then Collins’s explanations of the sociology of academic networks and of academic writing can be helpful.

I’ll take up Collins’s ideas of academic writing in a later post, but first let’s look at his ideas about academic networks.

Collins says that thinking is a social process. (Hint: sociologists think that everything is social.) He observes that important thinkers tend to be the students of important thinkers and to have important thinkers as students themselves. He also notes that the best scholars have personal contacts with the other best thinkers, whether allies or enemies. These groups are “not merely the clubbing together of the already famous, but groups of would-be thinkers who have not yet done the work that will make them famous.” This is not to say that only “important” scholars move on the work of scholarship, but that the social structure focuses on such eminent individuals, who “work extremely long hours, seemingly obsessed with their work.” Perhaps most important, Collins insists on the importance of direct interaction between scholars, especially face-to-face interaction. He writes, “What one picks up from an eminent teacher … is a demonstration of how to operate in the intellectual field of oppositions. Star intellectuals are role models … but in a fashion that cannot be picked up at a distance, and only by seeing them in action.”

Collins’s sociology goes a long way towards explaining the unpleasant side of the academy, such as the emphasis on academic celebrities and the plight of scholars who are never embedded in the academic social network. But it also offers ways of thinking about the academy that can help you hack your own career:

• Get a mentor. This is hardly a unique observation, but it bears repeating. Good mentors don’t just teach you what you need to know to be a scholar, they teach you how to be a scholar.
• Participate in small groups—meeting face to face—to refine your work. Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century debating clubs might be out of style, but writing groups aren’t. Small, frequent gatherings can provide the kinds of social thinking that produces great scholarship. If possible, reach outside your own institution when forming your group. And participating in an intensive, collaborative group, such as the month-long seminar that I’m engaged in now, will help you generate ideas that a month of reading and writing alone never could.
• Making a place for yourself at academic conferences. As universities become increasingly budget-conscious, there is more and more skepticism that face-to-face conferences are worth the money. But it is at conferences where you can discern the social shape of your discipline.
• Reach out to scholars whose work you admire. On the whole, senior scholars have been overwhelmingly generous whenever I’ve contacted them or introduced myself to them. (Forget the few exceptions.)
• Be the collegial colleague yourself. This point might not be as susceptible to empirical proof as the others. But if scholarship is essentially social, then you owe it to your fellow scholars to behave with courtesy and generosity, which will help your work as it helps others.

Do you have strategies for working within the social networks of academe? Let us know in comments!

Photo by Flickr user David Michael Morris / Creative Commons licensed