Charles Crothers

• BA (Waik) BA (Hons) PhD (VUW)
• Auckland University of Technology

Purpose Citations can be used in evaluative bibliometrics to measure the impact of papers. However, citation analysis can be extended by a multi-dimensional perspective on citation impact which is intended to receive more specific information about the kind of received impact. Design/methodology/approach Bornmann, Wray, and Haunschild (2019) intro...

An ambition of many sociologists is to be socially useful, to ensure that their work has some social impact. The level of commitment to this goal and how it is accomplished depends on the sector of knowledge production sociologists are located within. This chapter attempts an overview of the various modes of social knowledge production in Aotearoa...

Since the turn of the Millenium there have been active developments of social indicator frameworks in New Zealand, alongside related efforts of economic, environmental, and health indicators. The first phase included the Ministry of Social Development’s Social Report and the – still on-going - Quality of Life Project alongside living standards stud...

Citations can be used in evaluative bibliometrics to measure the impact of papers. However, citation analysis can be extended by considering a multi-dimensional perspective on citation impact which is intended to receive more specific information about the kind of received impact. Bornmann, Wray, and Haunschild (in press) introduced the citation co...

Death and the advent of a variety of anniversaries are occasions when a discipline reflects on the accomplishments of its members, propounded by host universities, scholarly associations, focused conferences, journals, as well as the more normal course of the unfolding of a scholar’s influence. The paper attempts to assemble Robert K Merton’s posth...

The infrastructure affecting the production of sociological knowledge in NZ is outlined and its various effects pinpointed. Links between local and international sociologies are discussed. The expected asymmetrical pattern is found, but some reverse cultural traffic is also documented. The various forms of output from NZ sociology are documented, e...

The establishment and key features of the subsequent history of each of NZ’s main Sociology departments is traced. The first wave of establishments in the 1960s was pushed by neighbouring disciplines but arguably resisted by ‘Oxbridge’ higher administration officials. Two more departments were established in the 1990s, and there was some geographic...

The main accomplishments of the various specialties and overlapping areas with neighbouring disciplines within NZ over time are traced and their relationship within and to mainstream ‘Sociology’ sketched. Most remain rather latent subject areas where teaching is carried out at separate sites, while a few have developed active networks of scholarshi...

The scatter of early sociology-related projects are plotted and related to the overall state of the NZ intellectual climate at various times. The earliest studies were either high-level or completely empiricist and statistical, but gradually theoretically developed projects appeared with empirical support, including fieldwork, as the research infra...

The accomplishments of NZ sociology are summed up, and some of the influences shaping these at different periods are outlined. Different generations of sociologists active in particular periods are shown to have had major impacts on NZ sociology as it has developed. The argument is developed at three levels: the rise and fall of departments, of spe...

‘This book provides a comprehensive survey of the discipline that relates both the successes and challenges of creating and sustaining a sociological perspective within this small semi-peripheral society.’ —David Pearson, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand ‘A thoroughly fascinating account of the growth of New Zealand Sociology which a...

Many social commentators have considered that alongside the fiscal transparency enjoined by contemporary New Zealand governments, there should be a complementary social responsibility reporting. This task is usually assigned to social indicator frameworks. However, at present (as the 2017 election looms) there is a faltering in the provision of soc...

The Critical Realist meta-theoretical position in sociology and other social sciences has tended to remain on the margins of the mainstream. Porpora develops the case for reconstructing sociology through the more active deployment of Critical Realist tenets. In developing his reform agenda, Porpora reviews the contribution Critical Realist views co...

A comparison of data from the five surveys (2007, 2009, 2011, 2013, 2015) of New Zealanders use and attitudes towards the internet and digital technologies

Journals may set themselves one or several of a range of missions, but often a national Sociology Association’s journal is concerned to be a vehicle assisting in the shaping of that country’s ‘national sociology’, while maintaining some openness to international sociology. This personalised case study of New Zealand’s sociology journal discusses th...

The history of empirical social research projects tends to be downplayed in histories of National Sociologies and indeed sociology more generally. The history of New Zealand social research began with the iconic ‘Littledene’ study and then showed broadly similar patterns over time with Sociology departments hosting somewhat empiricist community sur...

The aim of this study is to identify patterns of discrimination and changes over time in New Zealand. This study is based on data gathered through the General Social Surveys conducted bi-yearly between 2008 and 2014. Analysis showed that overall levels of discrimination reported have remained mostly unchanged between 2008 and 2012, but has increase...

Jon Elster has contributed to critiquing and also extensively constructing the standards against which to judge social science explanations, and rational choice theory, extending into institutional designs ensuring that analytical work obeys the injunction of methodological individualism and identified plausible mechanism, which explain outcomes, a...

Although the palpably powerful nature of social structures and their effects seems obvious, it has taken social scientists – and particularly sociologists – a long time to develop adequate conceptions that both are philosophically defensible and also lead to empirical research. During the ‘golden age’ (in the late nineteenth century and for much of...

As they develop, academic disciplines (and their constituent specialties) generate research outputs, theoretical and methodological commentaries, and collective perspectives (particularly disciplinary histories and other collective memories). In addition, there are ‘backstories’ of how the research outputs are produced from the underlying infrastru...

Robert Dahl (1915–2014) was a prominent political scientist whose academic career was based at Yale University and his studies focused on democracy from the theoretical, empirical, and normative perspectives. He also examined power (or influence) as a central concept and was a leader in the application of behavioral approaches to the study of polit...

The use of the Internet for voting and other related purposes is a key area of discussion worldwide, although only touched on in a few New Zealand publications. It is seen by many as something of a panacea - a 'technical fix' - that might repair the falling rates of participation in democratic elections, while others are horrified that it might sub...

M?ori?organized in a settlement hierarchy of wh?nau, hap?, and iwi?have occupied New Zealand for over the last eight hundred years, having developed a sophisticated culture. Dispossession of land and deterioration of culture and society followed settlement by Pakeha over the past two hundred years, but a M?ori renaissance during the last forty year...

Scholarly work in sociology in different places and at different times is guided (often simultaneously or sequentially) by a variety of traditions that take different forms (e.g., sometimes in quite formal 'schools') and emphasize different aspects of scholarly activity (metatheoretical, theoretical, methodological, ideological, etc.) and that rise...

The purpose of the special issue is very largely to record the past, but also to provide a platform for consideration of the future (which implies a review of the present). Each article provides early and subsequent ‘key events’ as well as aspects such as major research outputs (selection); key personnel; organisational arrangements and their effec...

Dalziel and Saunders have developed an integrated framework for understanding and monitoring EWB and for providing criteria against which government economic decision-making might be assessed, with the crucial ‘steering mechanism’ being the preferences ’revealed’ through time-use survey data. A sociological perspective would add to this expressed v...

It is argued that the philosophical approach of ‘critical realism’ is of considerable importance in providing a framework to guide the development of useful social science analyses, but that its impact is limited by its poor ‘public relations’ and lack of engagement with ongoing social analyses. There are several major issues which critical realism...

We live in a world heavily infiltrated by systematic social research sponsored by universities, governments, think-tanks and private enterprise which is then, variously turned into public and private stocks of social knowledge with varying usefulness. Some overview of the volume of survey research can be garnered from surveys on surveys and from in...

Our university hosts a diverse student cohort and, in certain discipline areas, international students and domestic students whose first language is not English outnumber their English-speaking peers. On the whole, group projects with these cohorts are challenging, and in particular, the allocation of marks is fraught with difficulty. Awarding the...

The New Zealand survey literature and available data-sets are ransacked for information on public views on class in its various dimensions over the last four decades, while endeavouring to note but avoid too detailed consideration of a host of other information which has some – but less - relevant to this topic. A loose and flexible conceptual fram...

Data on a large set of workplace ethnographies published from 1940 to 2002, compiled by Randy Hodson, are analyzed to show the trends over time in the production of such ethnographic work, its shifting disciplinary base, the relevance of the personal backgrounds of its authors, the contributions made by academic amateurs, the changing roles of gend...

The Oxford Handbook provides an extensive and innovative review of developments in Analytical Sociology (AS) which is a theory program which seeks to develop ‘thin explanations’ of social phenomena by understanding their micro-foundations through explicitly developed models and then tracing through the broader consequences of these actions and inte...

Opportunity structure theory explains the entrepreneurial opportunities open to immigrant entrepreneurs in either non-ethnic or ethnic markets. But it focused on the low skilled immigrants of three decades ago and ignored the impact of the economic environment, in particular in different cities, on the entrepreneurial opportunities of immigrant ent...

Since the mid-1980s, New Zealand has experienced extensive economic, social and political reforms. The economic impact of these changes has been closely monitored and much commented upon. However, the social impacts of the reforms on different categories of families and households are less well understood. This article presents data from a project...

The way in which children are questioned in forensic contexts can impact on the accuracy of their responses. Past studies have shown that children were often questioned in the New Zealand courts in ways that profoundly contradict best practice. This study analyses the questions posed to 18 child witnesses by forensic interviewers, prosecutors, and...

In 1990, New Zealand became the first common law country to introduce a comprehensive legislative package of reforms for child witnesses, including provision for children to testify via alternative modes, namely, admitting video-recorded forensic interviews as the child's evidence-in-chief and testifying at trial via closed-circuit television (CCTV...

To provide a factual foundation for understanding of the trajectory of the development in British sociology a content analysis of the journal articles in the main generalist British sociology journals is provided. This contributes both an overall picture, and allows an account of contrasts between the journals. Attention is focused on the extent to...

Along with other Western countries, New Zealand began developing a social indicators programme during the 1970s, but this early period of progress was followed by a languishing of interest in their use that lasted until the turn of the century. The recent renewal of interest in the use of social indicators and social reporting has led to the develo...

1st publ Bibliogr. na s. 160-173

New Zealand has experienced a marked increase in immigration since the early 1990s, which has fostered greater ethnic diversity. However, little is known about the changing patterns of spatial differentiation among ethnic groups. Using the New Zealand Census data from 1991 to 2006, we examine the patterns of Asian, Maori, and Pacific people residen...