LOOKING BACK AT 25 YEARS OF SOCIOLOGY AND THE ANNUAL REVIEW OF SOCIOLOGY

This essay engages the daunting task of encapsulating and reflecting on the 25 year history of the Annual Review of Sociology. After giving a short account of my own involvement in ARS, I give a brief rendition of what sociology as a field has been during the past quarter century—that is, what was “out there” to be reflected in the pages of ARS. I lay out some statistics on trends in the size, countries, and universities represented, coauthorship patterns, and gender ratios in ARS. These statistics are very informative but contain few surprises. Next I trace and analyze an issue that has commmanded the attention of editors of ARS throughout its history—unity or diversity of sociology as a discipline. Finally I conclude that the ARS does indeed reflect the field in ways that can be documented, but that this process of reflection is subject to many imprecisions generated by the editorial process itself.