Of tribes and totems: An author cocitation context analysis of Kurt Lewin’s influence in social science journals

This study used author cocitation context analysis (ACCA) to explore the intellectual structure of two Lewinian social science journal communities. ACCA is a variant of White’s (2000) ego-centered citation analysis, in which the focal author name serves as a filter. Articles citing Lewin between 1972 and 2001 in the Journal of Social Issues and Human Relations, sponsored by Lewinian specialties served as the test bed. Procedures conducted on cited author names—cluster analysis, multidimensional scaling, principal components analysis, and Pathfinder network analysis—generated coherent maps for each journal that maintained a “Lewinian” focus. The maps displayed the range of subject themes of interest to the specialties, which is consistent with Lewin’s importance to the specialties. Classifying all citations to Lewin as Totemic or Substantive assessed citation function. Results were convergent with the MDS maps in that Lewin’s work was used most frequently in a Substantive (central) way. Use of Lewin’s work did not conform to expectation in that the number of articles citing Lewin increased overall and the proportion of Totemic (peripheral) citations did not increase over the time studied. Analysis of Lewin’s works and concepts cited was also congruent with the specialties’ subject focus—JSI authors focused on social justice issues and HR authors used organization and small group research.Ph.D., Information Science -- Drexel University, 200