How much do sociologists write about economic topics? Using big data to test some conventional views in economic sociology, 1890 to 2014

Sociological self-understanding is that the frequency of economic topics in sociology has peaked twice: first during the classical era between 1890 and 1920 and second after Mark Granovetter's most cited 1985 article. This paper tests this established view using all JSTOR sociology articles from 1890 to 2014 (142,040 articles, 157 journals). Combined topic and multilevel modeling found strong evidence for the first peak but the proportion of economics topics has also been decreasing over the past century. The rise of a New Economic Sociology as a subdiscipline of sociology came with the increasing focus on general economic issues but also with a topic mix of organization and social-theory research. The paper shows that this specific topic mix began to increase from 1929 peaking by 1989 and suggests that the New Economic Sociology, rather than marking the beginning of a second peak, is more a product of the other general currents of organization sociology and social theory. The paper also finds that this subdiscipline is internally diverse in topics and rather male dominated.