The American Fame Game: Academic Status and Public Renown in Post-war Social Sciences

• In Event: 340 - Section on Science, Knowledge, and Technology Paper Session. What Would Bourdieu Do? New Approaches to Field Studies in Science, Knowledge and Technology

Abstract

The contemporary debate about the relationship between public intellectual work and academic status has been dominated by the assumption that, when it comes to scholars, writing to the public is tantamount to career suicide. Do academics actually lose status in their field when they write to the public? We answer this question with an empirical study of a cohort of high-status social scientists in the post-War period in the United States, through a fuzzy set Qualitative Comparative Analysis based on academic publications and citations, and data on scholars’ writings and mentions in popular media over a 60-year period. While our analysis shows that most elite scholars decline in influence over time, irrespective of public renown, the one scholar who manages to maintain academic status over decades has one of the strongest presences in popular media. We conclude our paper with a discussion of the implications of these findings for the understanding of reputation dynamics.

Authors

• Vanina Leschziner, University of Toronto

• John VP McLevey, University of Waterloo

• Neil G. McLaughlin