Is who you know as important as what you know? Mapping the invisible colleges supporting academic prestige https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2019/10/09/is-who-you-know-as-important-as-what-you-know-mapping-the-invisible-colleges-supporting-academic-prestige/…
That was vague and the graphs were unhelpful, but I think I get what they’re talking about. If you backtracked phd advisors of authors from all papers on a topic in any field you’d get a small cluster. That’s just how research grows. The social justice stuff feels bolted on.
There’s the old networks books by Duncan Watts, Barabasi
Duncan Watts’ takedown of Malcom Gladwell’s tipping point idea is a good intro to the difficulty of doing this sort of research well. The tempting narratives tend not to hold up. https://fastcompany.com/641124/tipping-point-toast…