Book chapter
The Impact of Cultural Materialism: A Bibliometric Analysis of the Writings of Marvin Harris
Studying Societies and Cultures, pp 32-67
01 Jan 2015
Abstract
We are able to create CAMEO portraits because scholars tend to cite their intellectual forebears and thereby trade in what Robert Merton (1968:56) called the “coin
of recognition.” Citation is a universal norm of science and scholarship that transcends
material or epistemological allegiances (White, 2004). It reflects the social nature of
science where research paradigms change systematically and an individual scholar’s
career relates to others to form a recognizable lineage of knowledge (see Merton, 1976;
Cronin, 1984, 2005). Thousands of individual information-seeking behaviors and decisions about what to take heed of, read, and cite are recorded in footnotes and cited
reference lists. These choices are constrained by a scholar’s skills, a shared literature
and disciplinary history, and the social organization of the scholarly workforce. The
arrangements by which scholars keep informed and avoid information overload are
adaptive features of a socioecological system of “public knowledge” (Wilson, 1977)
and “external memory” (White, 1992). By framing these arrangements in a cost-benefit model, scholars’ searching and handling of resources in libraries and information
systems can be seen to follow the same behavioral ecological principles used by human
and animal foragers as they exploit their natural environments (Sandstrom, 1994, 1998,
1999, 2001). CAMEO profiles are based on cumulative, empirical traces of scholars’
decision-making behavior. Thus, the CAMEO profile of Marvin Harris is not a finished
portrait but instead a work in progress as today’s researchers and social thinkers either
neglect or make new use of the past. Like archaeological evidence, however, the patterns
detectable using bibliometric techniques tend to be robust and persist over time.
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Details
- Title
- The Impact of Cultural Materialism: A Bibliometric Analysis of the Writings of Marvin Harris
- Creators
- Pamela Effrein Sandstrom - Indiana University – Purdue University Fort WayneHoward D. White
- Publication Details
- Studying Societies and Cultures, pp 32-67
- Publisher
- Routledge
- Resource Type
- Book chapter
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- College of Computing and Informatics; [Retired Faculty]
- Scopus ID
- 2-s2.0-85044556121
- Other Identifier
- 991020785741704721