How Do Academic Elites March Through Departments? A Comparison of the Most Eminent Economists and Sociologists' Career Trajectories.

This article compares the career trajectories and mobility patterns of Nobel Laureates in economics with those of highly cited sociologists to evaluate a theory advanced by Richard Whitley that postulates a nexus between the overall intellectual structure of a discipline and the composition of its elite. The theory predicts that the most eminent scholars in internally fragmented disciplines such as sociology will vary in their departmental affiliations and academic career paths, while disciplines such as economics with strong linkages between specialties and shared standards of excellence will be dominated by a more homogeneous elite. The comparison provides strong empirical evidence in favor of Whitley's theory. The careers of the most eminent economists are closely tied to the top five departments of the discipline, whereas the career pathways to eminence in sociology are largely unpredictable.

The Prestige Elite in Sociology: Toward a Collective Biography of the Most Cited Scholars (1970-2010).

This study is the first to systematically identify the most recognized scholars in sociology in the 1970s and 2010s by citation counts. This is achieved on the basis of a newly generated text corpus of approximately 49,000 pages, which encompasses various genres of literature (encyclopedias, handbooks, journals, textbooks). Investigations into common characteristics reveal that, in the 1970s, elites typically received their PhD from Columbia University, Harvard University, or the University of Chicago. The contemporary elite is partly European. In general, eminence is short-lived (<40 years). Over time, the elite has remained socially heterogeneous, but becomes more mobile and increasingly moves between universities. Coverage in specialist and generalist journals suggests that elite status in sociology cannot be achieved simply by dominating multiple communities inside sociology; elite sociologists are typically well received in the discipline's core.

The political sociologist Seymour M. Lipset: Remembered in political science, neglected in sociology.

Seymour M. Lipset was one of the leading scholars of his generation in political science and sociology. Empirically, this article highlights divergent receptions of Lipset in both disciplines: while Lipset experiences increasing visibility in political science, his visibility in sociology turns out to be rather transitory. To better understand these divergent legacies, this paper identifies major topics in Lipset's oeuvre and reconstructs the ideas that received the most attention in both disciplines since the 1950s. It becomes apparent that the demise of Lipset in sociology can be explained through his decreasing impact on social stratification research and the fact that three major contributions, Political Man, Party Systems and Voter Alignment, and Some Social Requisites of Democracy, never entered the sociological canon. In contrast, Lipset's work on democracy has gained a strong foothold in political science and his groundbreaking 'cleavage theory' is of continuing relevance to political scientists.

The enduring importance of family wealth: Evidence from the Forbes 400, 1982 to 2013.

The richest 1 percent in the United States is a largely unexplored group, despite its ever-increasing share of the national wealth. The Forbes roster of the richest Americans has often been used to demonstrate the fading of nineteenth-century hereditary fortunes. Based on full panel data from the annual American Forbes 400 ranking (1982-2013), this article goes beyond previous work by examining not only the sources of the very wealthy but also the factors that increase or decrease the likelihood of remaining listed among the American super-rich and the typical patterns of mobility. We find that heirs are more likely to remain listed in the Forbes 400 roster than self-made entrepreneurs, all other things being equal. While scions of great wealth are less likely to drop completely from the list, they are nevertheless more likely to fall gradually in ranking than are self-made multimillionaires. Even though entrepreneurship matters increasingly for becoming super-rich, we conclude that it is first and foremost the ability of rich family dynasties to retain control over corporations and to access sophisticated financial advice that makes fortunes last.