Which humanities/social science discipline has the most influential bunch?

[giacomo]

"Influential" may be replaced with "paradigm-changing," "downright smartest," etc., I suppose.

Anthropologists? Economists? Historians? Legal scholars? Linguists? Philosophers? Political Scientists? Sociologists?

There's a good possibility that this might go down as the stupidest thread subject in the history of the Forums, but, hey, it's still May. Let's do some mindless things while we still have time.

[RefurbedScientist]

Stupid, no. Dangerous? Probably.

Insofar as structuralism is/was the central paradigm for sociology and anthropology, then you can that back to linguistic structuralism and Saussure. That's one point for linguistics. But then it was Levi-Strauss who generalized structuralism to apply to other social structures (e.g. Kinship). So there's a point for anthropology.

You can see where this going....

[RefurbedScientist]

Ah I see now I may have mistook your initial question. You mean contemporary scholars, right?

Economists seem more likely to become columnists for the NYT, for whatever that's worth...

[SocHope]

As an undergrad I majored in History - a lot of people didn't think it was a great idea, but they sort of knew what I meant. I did a MA in comparative education and had a tough time explaining to people what that was all about. I'm not even going to try to explain to people what a doctoral program in Sociology is about! I currently work in the social sciences research field and my roommate of two years recently admitted she still has no idea what I do. I guess the point I am trying to convey is that things that seem hugely influential to me and others in my field might have little to no meaning to the wider populace.

But that being said, I guess economists get a lot of attention because most people have a vague sense that what happens in the economy will affect their pocketbook. I think the public can also find anthropological and sociological research interesting (if written in a relatable and compelling fashion) because it helps them understand and explain the people and world around them.

I don't think I'm really answering the question so I'll just shut up now...

[giacomo]

@SG: Yup, contemporary. I guess I wanted the question to be a more general, open-ended one. I'm curious now, though, to what extent could the question be understood dangerous (as in your initial understanding of it)?

@SH: I do think you did answer the question. It was pretty ambiguous anyway. But I guess I didn't want it to be specific ("influential to the general audience," "influential to scholars," "influential to you," etc.). I think your observation ("things that seem hugely influential to me and others in my field might have little to no meaning to the wider populace") is right on.

[cogcul]

I think there is a big difference here between academic influence and influence on for example policy or more generally, how the public understands what is going on in society. If we are talking about policy (etc.) then its probably the administrative sciences such as economics and political science. Economics especially has been perhaps the main discipline for delivering the premises for public debates. If its makes economic sense according to standard theories of how the economy works there is a good chance it will be carried out, in some cases even if the public really would prefer it not to happen. The typical example here is some welfare good (or labor regulation) that has to be cut because it makes economic sense.

As for academia, I don't know, I think sociologists might be the best at applying insights from other fields. But I often find theories or discoveries in linguistics, anthropology and psychology to be the great at creating those initial insights or ways of looking at the world that make it possible to explain something new in sociology.

[RefurbedScientist]

@ cogcul makes an important distinction. In terms of influence on policy, I think economists win.

But we should also add the "popular press" to our analysis. In that respect, I think evolutionary psychology is in vogue, as is genetic explanations for social behavior (see recent Scatterplot thread for interesting discussion on this). I would put Steven Pinker in this category, perhaps.

I think evolutionary psych will have an influence in the other social sciences, at least in the short term. Behavior economics, for example, seems influenced by this field.

But if we step back from the so-called cutting edge and look at ideas that are most pervasive across the humanities and social sciences, we will find that many originated in sociology. Look at this list of the most cited authors in the humanities (which includes here the social sciences, I think, because this is a UK publication) in 2007, taken from Web of Science data. You'll find that six of the top ten are identified as sociologists (and I would agree that they are, other thread on postmodern sociology notwithstanding).

So it appears that the "big ideas" that are being used by academics in many disciplines come largely from sociology. However, many of these are social theory writ large. That is, people talk a lot more about Foucault's social theory of discourse than his sociological (comparative historical) methods. The distinction here may not be necessary (what's the difference between social theory and sociology, anyhow?), but it's telling that something about sociology makes it perhaps more conducive to producing theories that can generalize to other fields.

Network theory might be the "next" major social science paradigm that originated (or at least incubated) in sociology and spread to almost every other corner of academia. (I say "next" because networks are of course already being used in every field, but it's still relatively new compared to, say, Goffman).

[ThisSlumgullionIsSoVapid]

In terms of influencing or capturing the attention of the general public I would say economists and psychologists. Though, maybe if people knew how to differentiate sociology from psychology then they might attribute some of their interests more towards sociology instead of thinking any and everything that has to do with human behavior is psychology. Although I am a double major in psyc and soc currently as an undergrad, I can't tell you how many times I have had to put up with people assuming sociology is psychology. "What are you going to grad school for?" "A PhD in Sociology." "Oh, that's interesting! Do you want to be a therapist? Are you analyzing me!?"

Edited May 8, 2012 by ThisSlumgullionIsSoVapid