Sociology, Sociologists, and Core-Periphery Reflections

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Fran Collyerperiphery reflections−Sociology, sociologists and core

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Sociology, sociologists and core–periphery reflections

Fran CollyerUniversity of Sydney

AbstractThis article reports on a citation-context analysis of journal articles from Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States of America. Examining publications from the sociology of health and medicine, the study draws a number of conclusions about the state of sociology, inter-country relationships between knowledge workers, and national systems of sociological knowledge production. It finds that core–periphery relations define significant features of sociological work, impacting on citation patterns, inter-country collaboration and the selection of reference materials. Core–periphery relations are also found to influence the sociological production of knowledge across the Australian university sector.

Keywordscitations, global knowledge production, knowledge, periphery, sociology

Sociologists are increasingly aware of themselves as academic workers within a global system, where their work is generated within locally situated institutions but shaped by the social relations and material conditions of the broader social context. Recent efforts to examine intellectual workers in a truly global society (rather than solely a Euro- and US-centric one), have resulted from a union of the sociology of knowledge and theories of globalization (see Alatas, 2006; Connell et al., 2005; Connell and Wood, 2002). This developing school of thought rejects the interpretation of globalization as an homogeniz-ing or equalizing force, and insists on reconnecting it with the processes of imperialism and cultural domination (Connell, 2007a: 376). Thus it builds an alternative framework derived from world systems analysis (Wallerstein, 1979, 1974) and Sklair’s (1995, 2001) thesis on transnational capitalism. The result is a theory of the global system of knowl-edge production which operates in a similar way to other aspects of the economic sys-tem. Just like the latter, it is hierarchical, infused with the relations of power, and

Corresponding author:Fran Collyer, Department of Sociology and Social Policy, RC Mills A26, University of Sydney, NSW 2006. Email: [email protected]

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Collyer 253

characterized by a fundamentally unequal relationship between the intellectual ‘core’ and its periphery.

A variety of terms have been developed to describe these relations. Gareau (1988) uses the older, yet still apt terminology of imperialism, oligopoly and Third World social science. Langer (1992: 4, 6) refers to the ‘theory producing centres’ and uses the term ‘indigenisation’ to question the applicability of Western sociology to non-European civi-lizations and cultures. Sanda (1988: 195) employs the terms ‘subordination’ and ‘under-development’ to refer to the operation of sociology in the Third World. For Alatas (2006: 13), discussion centres around the ‘world social science powers’ of the United States, the United Kingdom and France. These countries are said to generate large amounts of pub-lished research, and to have a significant influence on the other, ‘consuming’ countries. Hountondji (1990: 7–8) speaks of ‘scientific dependence’, of the subordination of pre-colonial knowledges to world systems of knowledge, and the reduction of colonial knowledge production to data banks for export to ruling countries. Connell (2007b) uses another set of terms, speaking of the ‘global metropole’ or key intellectual centres (Europe and North America), when referring to the well-resourced and capital-exporting countries. Opposed to this global centre is the ‘South’, a term referring not to geographi-cal location but a social category which seeks to ‘emphasise relations – authority, exclu-sion and inclusion, hegemony, partnership, sponsorship, appropriation – between intellectuals and institutions in the metropole and those in the world periphery’ (Connell, 2007b: viii–ix).

Despite the growing interest in the possibility of a world system of knowledge pro-duction and exchange, theoretical development has barely kept pace. We now have more knowledge about the challenges faced by public intellectuals and academic workers in the ‘global South’, but little conceptual clarity about the operational mechanisms driving the world knowledge system. In contrast, we have had nearly 40 years to debate Wallerstein’s (1974, 1979) original thesis about the world economy and subject this to analysis. Scholars have debated its logics, developed various typologies (e.g. Arrighi and Drangel, 1986) and raised questions about the historical formation of the system (e.g. Arrighi, 1998; Skocpol, 1977), the characteristics positioning countries in the core rather than periphery (including their level and type of industrial development, see Tsokhas, 1996: 198), their local political systems (e.g. Alexander, 1989; Taylor, 1985) and capac-ity to convert economic into political power in world exchange (Tsokhas, 1992). Scholars have even pondered the possibility of whether the industrialization of the periphery or the de-industrialization of the core might imply transformation or even an end to the cur-rent system (Arrighi, 1990). If we are to pattern a system of knowledge production on Wallerstein’s original model of tradable commodities and exchange relations, there needs – at the very least – to be more comparative analysis of the system of production and exchange in knowledge commodities. This will enable analysis of its variation from core to periphery and we might, in the future, better theorize the factors and mechanisms of its operations.

Of particular concern in this article is the production of sociological knowledge in Australia – a country of indeterminate status in the world system. For some, Australia is classified as a country of the ‘core’ (Arrighi and Drangel, 1986; Taylor, 1988), though elsewhere as part of the periphery or semi-periphery (Alatas, 2003; Connell, 2007b: 212;



254 Journal of Sociology 50(3)

Wallerstein, 1979: 100). Surprisingly, Wallerstein’s original model specified few of the characteristics of the semi-periphery, though two of these are relevant for our analysis. The first is that the semi-periphery sits in a location between the core and the periphery where it is open to exploitation by core countries while simultaneously able to trade to advantage among the countries of the periphery (see Wallerstein, 1979: 71–2). The sec-ond is that it has a political role in the international division of labour, deflecting the tensions of the periphery which would otherwise be directed at the countries of the core (see Wallerstein, 1974: 349–50). In subsequent research by other scholars, the semi-periphery has nevertheless become a default category for a diverse range of countries that fit neither the core nor periphery with regard to their level of industrialization, level of dependency or history of development (e.g. Canada and Russia, Algeria, Cuba and Vietnam). In some senses, the indeterminacy of the concept of the semi-periphery, and the lack of consensus over its precise economic (as well as political) role within the world system, provides room for theoretical development in this rapidly emerging field.

If we are to better understand the inequalities of knowledge production and exchange in the global arena, and acknowledge, as does Connell (2007b: 213), that the ‘production of knowledge is a very different enterprise in an affluent peripheral country such as Australia and a poor peripheral country such as Indonesia’; then the concepts of core and periphery may help provide for a process of mapping these patterns of diversity and simi-larity. Important claims have been made about the marginalization of the periphery within this global knowledge system. For instance Langer (1992: 9) argues that societies outside Europe are viewed in sociology as ‘objects’ rather than ‘a source of knowledge worth being integrated’; Connell (2005: 13) suggests the periphery is merely a ‘data mine’, a source of ethnographic material for the theory-makers of the metropole; while Hountondji (1983, 1990: 7–8, 2002) points to the continuing location of sociological theory in the metropole; Descarries (2003: 625) to the identification of scholarship in the core as important and universal, but in the periphery as secondary, culturally related and particular; and Nandy (1983) to the exclusion, or rather overly narrow selection of ideas from the periphery. Despite the compelling nature of such claims, considerable research and theoretical development remains to be done if we are to identify the many mecha-nisms through which knowledge production is shaped within this tripartite system of core, semi-periphery and periphery.

How do these mechanisms differentiate the countries of core from those of the periph-ery and semi-periphery? And what is the nature of the global division of labour of this system? Perhaps a peripheral country is one in which its publications do not appear in the major citation indices, or where national universities are absent and research is taken up by foreign foundations or agencies (as found for instance in sub-Saharan Africa, see Mouton, 2010: 66). Perhaps a country of the semi-periphery might be defined simply by its interim position in the world system, with some representation in the citation indices, the presence of a small number of its universities in the second or third tier of world rank-ings, but where a PhD from an overseas university remains essential for individual advancement (as found in China, see Ping, 2010: 74), or where only public or state-owned universities and research institutes are present (as in India, see Krishna and Krishna, 2010: 77). Alternatively, we might eschew the trait system of classifying coun-tries and suggest a more dynamic approach to understanding the significance of country



Collyer 255

location in the operation of the world knowledge system. Whatever our approach, it is clear that without systematic mapping and analysis of the tripartite global knowledge system we can only speculate about the relationship between a country’s location, the knowledge-related practices of its academic workers, and the system of rewards and exclusions through which control over expert knowledges in the metropole is reproduced and maintained.

This article offers a small step towards furthering our understanding of the world knowledge system. It draws from an empirical study of sociological knowledge about health and medicine in three countries – Australia, Britain and America – to illustrate some of the ways core–periphery relationships can shape the production of knowledge and the academic practices of workers in the countries of the core and the periphery. Bibliometric and citation indicators have been employed elsewhere in the literature to examine differences in scientific styles between, for instance, colonial and non-colonial science (Arvanitis et al., 2000; Chatelin and Arvanitis, 1992). In this study a variation on existing citation methodology, developed by Collyer (2009, 2012), is applied. The meth-odology – citation-context analysis – shows the orientation of academic workers toward the global knowledge system, and includes a set of empirical indicators constructed to provide evidence of dependency, that is, control of the country’s knowledge production by a coalition of other, more powerful countries.

The study and its method

The empirical study contrasts the publications of a group of authors from Australia – a ‘peripheral’ or semi-peripheral nation – with those from two ‘core’ countries, the United Kingdom and the United States. The focus is on sociology, for members of this discipline have been asking questions for some time about the impact of globalization and the changing academic market on the social sciences (e.g. Akiwowo, 1988; Baldock, 1994; Keim, 2011; Loubser, 1988; Macintyre, 2010; Sanda, 1988; Willis, 1982, 1991). In order to analyse the impact of core–periphery relations on the large and heterogeneous disci-pline of sociology, one speciality was selected. This was the sociology of health and medicine, a field with many substantive similarities across the three countries (Collyer, 2011, 2012; Willis and Broom, 2004). Evidence was sought through a quantitative analy-sis of refereed articles, published since 1990, in the journals closely associated with the national professional associations of each country: the Health Sociology Review (HSR) (Australia), the Sociology of Health & Illness (SHI) (United Kingdom), and the Journal of Health and Social Behavior (JHSB) (United States). Given the propensity of these journals to primarily publish authors from their own country, and publish papers with a specific methodological persuasion (qualitative in the case of HSR and SHI, and quanti-tative for JHSB); papers were also collected from the Journal of Sociology, Social Science & Medicine, the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health and refereed conference proceedings from The Australian Sociological Association. The pro-portion of papers from each journal and country is shown in Table 1, with an overall study population of 842 papers.

Papers from these journals were selected if they could be regarded as refereed research articles. A few rejoinders or commentaries and research notes were included, but only




where these offered substantial, and fully referenced analyses of an issue. Book reviews and editorials were excluded. Codes were developed to capture each article as a ‘case’, with demographic details (e.g. author name, country and university affiliation) as well as manuscript content (e.g. country focus, percentage of reference materials from country of origin, citations, etc.). These two sets of variables – demographic and manuscript content – enabled cross-tabulation between the independent variables (indicators of the location or context of a paper) and the dependent variables (e.g. information about cita-tion practices and the substantive focus of the paper). This method is best described as citation-context analysis due to its capacity to map some of the effects of global location on knowledge production.

The originating country of each paper is taken from the institutional affiliation of the first author as provided on the manuscript. This provides an indicator of ‘professional citizenship’ rather than personal nationality at the time of publication. A few of the more prolific authors appear on the database on more than one occasion but fewer than 5 per-cent shifted (either temporarily or permanently) to new institutions in new countries, indicating the general reliability of this variable as a country indicator. Moreover the majority of papers are sole-authored (55 percent), strengthening the classification of papers by country, and where there are collaborations, these are almost wholly published with authors from the same country (a matter discussed in some detail below).

The relative strengths of the study’s method include its reliance on journal articles rather than books, as the former are thought to best reflect the majority of health sociol-ogy research (Willis, 1991: 49). While some have argued for the inclusion of books in any scoping study of sociology (e.g. Halpern and Anspach, 1993: 288), it should be pointed out that books and journals are written for different audiences and purposes, and are therefore not directly comparable. A second strength is found in the manual, rather than computer-generated data of the study. Studies relying on computer-generated key word analyses (e.g. Seale, 2008), are subject to inaccuracies as papers are often replete

Table 1. The study population – journals and countries, 1990–2011.

The journals No. of papers

Australia United Kingdom United States

Health Sociology Review 207 57% 17 7% 8 4%Journal of Health and Social Behavior

– – – – 89 40%

Sociology of Health & Illness 30 8% 213 85% 41 18%Social Science & Medicine 16 4% 18 7% 87 39%Journal of Sociology 57 16% 3 1% – –Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health

8 2% – – – –

TASA Conference Proceedings 48 13% – – – –

Total (n = 842) 366 100% 251 100% 225 100%

Note: Totals may not add to 100 percent due to rounding. Nationality based on the country affiliation of the first author (as stated on the manuscript).



Collyer 257

with misspellings (e.g. Scrambler rather than Scambler), inaccurate sources (e.g. manu-scripts ascribed to the wrong authors), missing citations (a very common problem), and the non-inclusion of reference materials such as books, reports, unpublished papers and papers from journals which are not indexed. The method in use in this study, in contrast, relies on the careful reading and systematic coding of each article by a researcher with an appropriate familiarity with the field. The citation-context analysis method is also more rigorous than review-based analyses containing personal selections of well-known texts (e.g. Willis, 1982, 1991). Finally, this study, with its alternative method of analysing evidence from the written manuscript, overcomes problems associated with question-naires and the self-reporting of a participant’s alleged use of overseas journals, confer-ence attendance or local/global orientation (e.g. Connell et al., 2005). Coding reliability was ensured through the blind re-coding of a random selection of articles and, where necessary, the re-building of codes and re-coding until full reliability was achieved. The statistical program SPSS was used to record and analyse the data. Ethical clearances were unnecessary, but the financial support of the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Sydney is acknowledged and appreciated.

Authors and collaboration

The extent to which academics and knowledge workers are oriented toward, or ‘con-nected’ to the world has been measured in various ways, including through their use of the internet, telephone and email (e.g. Connell and Crawford, 2007; Connell et al., 2005). One of the measures in this study is the extent to which co-authored papers are based on collaboration with ‘in country’ or ‘out of country’ partners.

The first point to note from the study population is that the proportion of single-authored papers from Australia is higher than from the UK and the USA. Among the Australian authors, 68 percent (or 250/366) of the papers are sole-authored, compared with 49 percent (or 122/251) from the UK, and 40 percent (or 90/225) from the USA. This difference largely reflects the low level of funding available to Australian sociologists, encouraging small studies which can be conducted with few resources. The trend in all three countries has been toward larger authorship teams between 1990 and 2011 (statisti-cally significant, where p = .001), but in the Australian case this has involved only a shift from single- to double-authored papers of about 7 percent, with no change in the propor-tion of papers with three or more authors. In contrast, there are relatively more papers from the UK with three or four or more authors over the same period. For instance, while only 2 percent of the papers in the 1990s are authored by four or more individuals, a decade later this rises to 19 percent of the UK papers. Likewise in the USA, we see a shift to larger authorship teams, and the number of papers authored by four or more individu-als rises in the second decade from 11 to 18 percent of the USA papers. This suggests that while there is a strong element of individualism among knowledge workers, as other studies have found (Connell and Crawford, 2007: 199–200), factors in the broader fund-ing environment appear to be re-shaping knowledge production practices. This is evident particularly in the UK, where an increase in commissions and grants from health and medical sponsors seems to be encouraging the growth of larger collaborative teams (Collyer, 2012: 228). In contrast, in Australian sociology, despite the efforts of the




Australian Research Council (ARC) and the universities to encourage collaboration, multiple authorship remains uncommon.

When sociologists publish with others, who do they collaborate with? Among the multi-authored papers, a comparison was made between the ‘professional citizenship’ of the first and second authors. As described in Table 2, among the Australian first authors, 91 percent collaborated with other Australian-based authors, and other partners came mainly from the USA (3 percent) or the UK (3 percent). A similar pattern appeared in the UK, with 92 percent of collaborations occurring ‘in-house’; and likewise in the USA, with 95 percent of collaborations occurring with others from the USA. Cross-country collaborations increased very slightly in the second decade in both Australia and the UK (by 5 percent and 7 percent respectively), but decreased in the USA (by 85 percent).

The small number of inter-country collaborations in our sample makes it difficult to generalize about international interaction among Australians, but the trend is for a very low level of collaboration with non-European or non-American countries. The same trend was found in another Australian study of knowledge workers:

If our respondents had worked abroad, it was almost always in the UK or USA. Current overseas links mentioned in the interviews were usually to the same countries. This pattern of ‘quasi-globalisation’, that is, orientation to the global metropole rather than to Australia’s own region or to global society as a whole, is common in the Australian intellectual workforce. (Connell, 2006: 9)

Use of local or international material

A second part of our analysis has been to examine the reference materials cited in the journal papers as evidence of a global or local orientation. All citations in the reference

Table 2. Authors and collaboration – Australia, the UK and the USA.

Country of second author No. of papers

First author, Australia First author, UK First author, USA

Australia 106 91% 4 3% 1 1%Africa – – 1 1% – –Bulgaria 1 1% – – – –Canada 1 1% 1 1% 1 1%Jamaica – – – – 1 1%New Zealand 1 1% – – – –Russia – – – – 2 2%Sweden – – 2 2% – –United Kingdom 4 3% 119 92% 2 2%United States 3 3% 2 2% 128 95%

Total (n = 456) 116 100% 129 100% 135 100%

Note: Totals may not add to 100 percent due to rounding. Nationality based on the country affiliation of the first and second authors. Only papers with two or more authors included in this table (n = 456).



Collyer 259

lists of all papers were examined. Each paper was coded according to its percentage of locally authored reference material. Papers were then re-coded into two categories, low or high, with the ‘high’ group referring to papers reliant on reference materials primarily from the country in which the (first) author was working at the time of publication (50 percent or more), while papers in the ‘low’ group use fewer local materials and rely instead on materials authored in other countries (less than 50 percent of materials).

As indicated in Table 3, there are markedly different patterns from authors in each country. Australian authors are more likely to source their reference materials from over-seas, while their colleagues from the UK and the USA are much higher users of their own country’s materials. In other words, only 33 percent of the Australians are high users of their own locally produced publications, compared with the 79 percent of UK authors and 98 percent of USA authors who are high users of local materials. Another way of explaining this statistically significant relationship is to state that Australian authors tend to look ‘outward’ for their sociological material, while UK and USA authors focus inward and source ‘in-country’.

When this issue is examined to see if there have been changes over time, a shift is apparent toward a greater use of overseas material for both UK and USA authors but not for Australian authors in the second decade (statistically significant, where p = .000). The already high use of overseas material for Australian authors continued, while authors in the USA showed a small increase of 4 percent in the second decade towards using over-seas material, and those in the UK showed a somewhat larger increase of 8 percent.

A sense of place in the global system

A third aspect of the analysis was to examine the papers for indications of whether the authors articulate a sense of their place within the global system. This indicator measures the way an author introduces their topic or subject of study, or constructs a title for their paper. Some authors are reflexive about their location, and make it immediately and readily appar-ent that their paper is about hospital services in the north of England or the problems encoun-tered by children with disabilities in Wollongong, Australia. Others, however, do not disclose the location of their study, perhaps assuming this to be apparent to the readership or that their subject has universal relevance. This latter group of authors often write as if their readers are in the same room, country and time period as themselves, with little thought for the many differences in understanding and experience from one society to the next.

Table 3. Use of reference material – country comparisons.

Local or overseas material Australia UK USA

Low use of local materials 235 67% 49 21% 5 3%High use of local materials 117 33% 187 79% 199 98%

Total (n = 792) 352 100% 236 100% 204 100%

Note: Totals may not add to 100 percent due to rounding. Nationality based on the country affiliation of the first author. Statistically significant using Pearson’s Chi Square (p = 0.000). Figures do not include the 48 articles where the author is studying a country other than their own, though this removal does not itself make a statistical difference.




The results of this variable are shown in Table 4. Here we can see an entirely different level of reflexivity between the Australian and American authors. Most of the Australians in our study are highly reflexive (68 percent), clearly stating the location of their study. Most British authors in our population are equally so, perhaps due to their location within the European Union. The majority of the American authors in contrast do not contextu-ally locate their study.

Key texts and citations

The final measure in our study consists of an examination of the key authors cited by Australia-, UK- and USA-based authors in this field of research. This provides an indica-tor of the extent to which there might be a common academic culture between the soci-ologists of different countries, and whether the system might be porous or closed. The results are shown in Table 5, where the first pair of columns lists the most popular authors cited by Australian-based authors, plus the usual place of work for each of those authors. The second and third pairs of columns indicate the choices of UK- and USA-based authors respectively.

Two significant points should be noted. First, our Australia-based authors are similar to the British in their propensity to cite local authors, for 48 percent (or 10/21) of the most cited authors for the Australians are other Australia-based authors, and 52 percent (or 11/21) of the most cited among the British authors are other British authors. In stark contrast, 100 percent of the American-based authors cite other American-based authors, showing a very insular approach toward the source of reference materials in that country.

A second point of interest lies in the contrast between Australia-based authors and their counterparts in the UK and USA. Australia-based authors share 57 percent (12/21) of their Top 21 list with the British-based authors, though only two of these are Australia-based (Lupton and Turner). In contrast, there is very little sharing between the USA and UK, with only 19 percent (4/21) of the authors on the most cited lists common to both countries. These figures again indicate an in-country orientation for both UK and USA authors, and an outward orientation for the Australians. They also lend further support to the view that there is a greater level of shared culture between the core countries – Britain and America – than there is between these and the periphery (or semi-periphery), though it is apparent that the latter country is decidedly more insular than the former. Scholars from the periphery may have their works utilized by scholars in the core

Table 4. A sense of place – reflexivity in the authors.

Australia UK USA

Low reflexivity 116 32% 83 33% 143 64%High reflexivity 250 68% 168 67% 82 36%

Total (n = 842) 366 100% 251 100% 225 100%

Note: Totals may not add to 100 percent due to rounding. Nationality based on the country affiliation of the first author. Statistically significant using Pearson’s Chi Square (p = 0.000).



Collyer 261T

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research countries only when they publish in European, American or British journals, or publish with international publishers such as Sage or Oxford and are actively marketed (e.g. Lupton). Moreover, high citation rates within their own countries are no guarantee of being acknowledged by scholars from core countries (e.g. Willis, Collyer, Short and White), and journals from the core research countries, particularly the US, have long been noted for their lack of inclusion of foreign authors (Arvanitis and Chatelin, 1988: 133).

Differences within Australia

This final section examines whether a similar patterning of relations, as found between the UK, USA and Australia, might also be in operation within Australia. If the UK and USA are representative of core countries, and Australia a country of the periphery or semi-periphery, it is hypothesized that similar relations of exclusion, hegemony and appropriation might be expressed between the better-resourced, high-status, well-established universities and the newer, less well-resourced institutions within Australia.

For purposes of analysis, the Australian universities were classified according to Marginson’s (1999) typology, which hierarchically organizes the institutions with regard to the timing of their establishment, and, not incidentally, coincides with their prestige and market power. The dominant position in this hierarchy is taken by the ‘Sandstones’ (e.g. the Universities of Sydney and Melbourne), which were the first to be established and the wealthiest in terms of assets and research income (Marginson, 1999: 18–20). The ‘New Universities’ (e.g. Swinburne, Southern Cross or the University of Western Sydney), at the bottom of the hierarchy, are less successful in competing for research funds, provide access to students from more diverse and lower socio-economic back-grounds, and seek to differentiate themselves in the academic market by offering more vocational courses. Such differences in orientation are treated by Marginson (1999: 20) as post hoc rationalizations:

The match between institution and students is a function not of niche position, in which specialist courses match to particular needs, but of the unequal workings of supply and demand within a common system-wide competition. Vertical differentiation remains the dominant element.

In our study we reported above on the differences between the three countries with regard to their use of local rather than overseas reference materials, finding the core countries to be very high users of their own local materials, and Australia, in contrast, a high user of overseas materials. Table 6 compares these country differences with those found in the internal Australian university system. What these figures reveal is while there is not a reversal of this trend between the various Australian universities, the Sandstones are more likely than the New Universities to mimic the pattern of the core-country universities and look inward for materials, while the less well-resourced univer-sities are more outwardly oriented and seek reference materials from overseas.

Similar patterns emerge when we return to our variable measuring reflexivity (a sense of place within the global system). The first few columns of Table 7 show the country



Collyer 263

comparisons already discussed, where Australian authors are much more likely to locate and contextualize their studies than are the American-based authors. In the final two columns, the differences between Australian universities are shown. While these are not as marked as those between core and peripheral countries, they nevertheless indicate that authors working in the elite universities are less likely to contextualize their work than their counterparts in the ‘New Universities’. This suggests a similar tendency for authors from the more powerful countries and institutions to be less reflexive about their location within the global system, for they reveal less interest in possible differences in the expe-riences and understandings of others.

Discussion and conclusion

All inter-country relationships are in some sense unique, and need to be considered on a case-by-case basis. Nevertheless this study of sociological knowledge production from three countries has shown that it is possible to examine the nature of this relationship using the concepts of ‘core’ and ‘periphery’, and a set of empirical indicators of depend-ency and centrality. These have revealed a level of intricacy in the relations of knowledge production, for though some of these relations have definitive and unequivocal impacts on the academic workers located in various parts of the production system, others are more subtle in the extent to which they encourage reflexivity or orient practices.

To take first of all the least subtle of these production relations, we might focus on the stark differences which operate between the countries of the core and those of the periph-ery or semi-periphery. Taking the USA and the UK as examples of the former, and

Table 6. Country comparisons – use of local reference materials.

UK USA Australia Sandstones New universities

Low use of local materials 21% 3% 67% 63% 72%High use of local materials 79% 98% 33% 37% 28% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100%

Notes: Percentages may not total 100 percent due to rounding. For the comparison between the three coun-tries, n = 792. For the comparison between Australian institutions, n = 353. Percentages indicate the number of papers in each category showing either a high or low usage of local materials. For instance, 33 percent of Australian authors in our population are high users of local (Australian) materials. The categories of ‘Sand-stones’ versus ‘New Universities’ are based on Marginson’s (1999) typology.

Table 7. Reflexivity: country and Australian university comparisons.

UK USA Australia Sandstones New Universities

Low reflexivity 33% 64% 32% 36% 28%High reflexivity 67% 36% 68% 64% 72% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100%

Note: Percentages may not total 100 percent due to rounding. For the Australian data, n = 354. For the country comparisons, n = 792. Universities classified according to Marginson (1999).




Australia as one of the latter, this study has empirically demonstrated some of the differ-ences in knowledge production practices resulting from global location. Scholars in core countries have been shown to rely primarily on their own locally produced reference materials and to incorporate few ‘foreign’ perspectives. Elsewhere this has been referred to as a low level of ‘domestication’, that is, a tendency not to adopt texts from elsewhere, and modify them to ensure local relevance (i.e. domesticate them) (Gareau, 1988: 177). In addition, the trend for core countries is to limit inter-country collaborations, undertak-ing work ‘in-house’ with others from the core, ignoring often explicit government poli-cies to collaborate with developing countries (Arvanitis and Vessuri, 2001: 201). Sociology in the periphery in contrast, is characterized by an orientation toward the metropole, a strong reliance on ‘core’ country reference material, and, as has been argued elsewhere, a tendency to regard local material as weak and unimportant (Arvanitis and Chatelin, 1988: 113). This dependence on the concepts, theories and publications of the ‘core’ countries has been the observation of Alatas (2006: 15) in the Singaporean con-text, Sall (2010: 45) in Africa, and Connell and colleagues (2005: 17) in Australia:

Australian intellectual workers keep up their international connections so carefully because they need to. Asked whether ‘In order to keep up with developments in my field, one must read books and journals published abroad’, 75 percent of our respondents agreed. Perhaps the most important issue is where people would look for innovation. Asked ‘When you are in search of new ideas or methods, which country are you most likely to look to?’, only 27 percent of respondents said Australia or New Zealand. Nearly twice as many, 48 percent, said North America; 16 percent nominated a European country (including the UK), and few mentioned anywhere else. As a group, it seems, our respondents are acknowledging the realities of cultural dependence. (Connell et al., 2005: 17)

The study has also indicated a small number of less obvious differences between the core countries of the UK and the USA in the knowledge practices of their authors. Although there is little to distinguish the two countries with regard to their mutual lack of interest in reference materials from non-core countries; they are not alike in their lev-els of reflexivity, because authors from the UK are much more likely to contextualize their studies than those from the USA. Likewise, scholars in Britain engage with a broader range of reference materials, particularly materials deriving from Europe and the USA. Such findings suggest future studies of core–periphery relations should take some care with the classification of countries, allowing for differences within, as well as between, categories.

This study of health sociology in three countries was not designed to reveal differ-ences between peripheral or semi-peripheral countries, nor to ascertain the appropriate global category for Australian academic workers. Nevertheless a comment or two is required about knowledge production in this location because it is apparent from the lit-erature that there are some very important differences between countries often placed alongside one another in the periphery or semi-periphery. Compared with, for example, Singapore, where few texts other than European or Western ones are studied, and local materials used only for empirical material to demonstrate the relevance of Western con-cepts and theoretical frameworks (Alatas, 2006: 15), Australia has been developing its own scholars and perspectives on the sociology of health and medicine. In this sense



Collyer 265

Australia might be appropriately classified as in an intermediary position in the world system. At the same time, however, measures of peripherality must take into account the problems for Australian sociologists posed by the very similarity of their culture to that of the metropole, where it is difficult to articulate the more subtle variations in habit, attitude, practice and structure. Loubser (1988: 184) makes a similar point with regard to Canada, and Langer observes that sociology in Western countries is not homologous but fragmented across many culturally dependent communities, and:

the socio-cultural dependency in sociology exists not only between the West and the Third World but also inside the Western system. And here the dependency might even be stronger, because with respect to the now more or less common ‘grammar’ of modernity, the participating societies are more homologous but still do not have the same opportunities.… The inclination to rely on ‘big brothers’ is strong, also because they seem to be so similar … [and hence] the national milieus do not generate significant alternative interpretations of life anymore. (1992: 5)

Thus Australian scholars are in a unique position in the world system, for while they rarely engage with scholars of their own region, but read and cite the knowledge produc-tions of the metropole, they nevertheless vigorously enter into the local production of acceptably Western scholarly works and celebrate their own local theorists.

Finally, this study of sociological knowledge production has thrown up some varia-tions within Australia itself. Intra-country relationships between the well-resourced and the least-resourced Australian universities display some of the characteristics of depend-ency. Like the workers of the ‘core’ countries, those in the elite universities of Australia rely more on local materials and are less reflexive than their counterparts in the less prestigious and less well-resourced institutions. This intra-country pattern may be inter-preted as evidence of a greater confidence in local scholars and knowledge products among those in elite universities, or, alternatively, as the result of greater pressure on workers in the non-elite universities to turn toward the global metropole in the competi-tive arenas of publishing and funding. A less positive interpretation of these trends sug-gests the former group of institutions encourage a more insular approach to knowledge production and the global context.

We might choose between the same set of alternatives in drawing conclusions about differences between knowledge production in the core and periphery. In some contexts, a high reliance on local materials might be a sign of a vigorous internal intellectual cul-ture, where concepts and theories are abundant, relevant, useful and more appropriate than imported products. In others, this may be a sign of isolation from the rest of the world, where the scholars see no reason to examine the ideas or concepts of others. The choice between these possible conclusions cannot be made without further inquiry into the work context of sociologists and the functioning of the global system. Certainly the findings of this study offer only a glimpse at the world of sociologists. All societies need a vigorous, local sociology to ensure the recording and analysis of relevant events and histories, but there also needs to be a reciprocal, global exchange of ideas and a participa-tory form of theory construction. Only this will ensure that concepts and frameworks do not parade as universal when they are, in truth, culturally specific. The value of this study may lie in its demonstration of the extent to which the metropole–periphery relationship,




laid down over two centuries of European colonialism and migration, continues to domi-nate the production of sociological knowledge in Australia and elsewhere.

Funding statement

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

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Author biography

Fran Collyer is in Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Sydney. Her research interests include the privatization of the health care system, the history of sociology, the formation and ordering of disciplines (and other bodies of expert knowledge), and the global system of knowl-edge production. She is the National Convenor of the Health Thematic Section of TASA, former editor of the Health Sociology Review (2004–9) and author of Mapping the Sociology of Health and Medicine: America, Britain and Australia Compared (Palgrave Macmillan).



Sociology, Sociologists, and Core-Periphery Reflections

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