The Development of Specialties in Social Science: The Case of Ethnomethodology

Abstract

* This paper is based in part on material to appear in Chapter 8, 'Ethnomethodology; The Specialty that Came in from the Cold', in Nicholas C. Mullins, Theories and Theory Groups in Contemporary Sociology (New York: Harper and Row, 1973). The author wishes to thank Lindsey Churchill, Aaron Cicourel, Hugh Mehan, Carolyn Mullins and Norman Storer, who contributed substantially to the early drafts of this paper; also Science Studies' anonymous reviewer, whose comments helped in the process of refocusing this data more theoretically. 1 Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, I962). 2 Derek J. de S. Price, Little Science, Big Science (New York: Columbia University Press, I 963). 3 For a summary of evidence see Belver C. Griffith and Nicholas C. Mullins, 'Coherent Social Groups in Scientific Change: Invisible Colleges May be Consistent Throughout Science', Science, 197 (15 September 1972), 959-96. 4 Diane Crane, 'Social Structure in a Group of Scientists: A Test of the Invisible College Hypothesis', American Sociological Review, 34 (June I969), 335-52. 5 David L. Krantz, 'The Separate Worlds of Operant and Non-Operant Psychology', Journal of Applied Behavioral Analysis, 4 (197i), 61-70. 6Belver C. Griffith and A. J. Miller, 'Networks of Informal Communication among Scientifically Productive Scientists', Communication among Scientists and Engineers, Carnot E. Nelson and Donald K. Pollock (eds.) (Lexington, Mass.: Heath Lexington Books), 125-40. 7 Nicholas C. Mullins, 'A Model for the Development of a Scientific Specialty; The Phage Group and the Origins of Molecular Biology', Minerva, 10 (January 1972), 51-82. 8 Op. cit. note 3.