American, French & German Sociologies Compared through Link Analysis of Conference Abstracts

Abstract

Our team of researchers has already analyzed and published the results of the link analysis – co-occurrence of key words in texts – of the 2004, 2006 and 2009 conferences of the French Sociological Association ( Association française de sociologie, AFS), which regularly included over 1,000 presentations. We have also analyzed and published the results concerning the 2004 German Sociological Association ( Deutsche Gesellschaft für Soziologie, DGS) conference, which included just over 400 presentations. Here we analyze and present the results concerning the link analysis of the 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2006 American Sociological Association (ASA) conferences which include more than 8,000 presentations. The two-dimensional density / centrality structure of these conferences permits us to describe the network of themes in each of these national sociologies and to compare them one with another.