Trend and Changes in American Sociological Pursuit: A Review of Major Sociological Journals from 2000 -2023

• In Event: 40212 - Open Call: Section on History of Sociology and Social Thought Paper Session

Abstract

For the past decades, sociology has been striving to make its discussion more relevant to American
and global society. Scholars have called for attention and efforts to be made to promote public
sociology, engagement with studies on the global South, intersectionality, and critical race theory.
In lieu of the rapid change in global and U.S. society and unprecedented events such as the
COVID-19 pandemic, such attention is much needed. Yet, we lack understanding of how and if
sociology has made progress in becoming more inclusive and engaging with concurrent social
issues. To have a better understanding of the changes and the trend of sociological inquiries in
the twenty-first century, we selected flagship journals in sociology: Annual Review in Sociology,
American Journal of Sociology, Annual Review of Sociology and Social Problem as our data, and
we use R-facilitated LDA topic modeling tools to examine the consistency and changes.

Authors

• Jane Jia-Yin Wang, University at Albany, SUNY

• Jeewoo Shin, University at Albany, SUNY

• Jungmin Shin, University at Albany, SUNY

• Chunxu Fang, University at Albany, SUNY