Multispecies Networks

Visualizing the Psychological Research of the Committee for Research in Problems of Sex

Datos Bibliográficos

ID4912931
AutoresMark Pettit (0000-0001-9038-0497), Michael Pettit, Darya Serykh, Christopher D Green (0000-0002-6027-6709)
Año2015
Volumen106
Número1
Páginas121-149
Fecha de publicación2015-03-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaIsis (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0021-1753 • E-ISSN: 1545-6994
EditorialUniversity of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1086/681039
PMID26027310
OpenAlexW2024940590
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas11
Referencias citadas61

In our current moment, there is considerable interest in networks, in how people and things are connected. This essay outlines one approach that brings together insights from actor-network theory, social network analysis, and digital history to interpret past scientific activity. Multispecies network analysis (MNA) is a means of understanding the historical interactions among scientists, institutions, and preferred experimental animals. A reexamination of studies of sexual behavior funded by the Committee for Research in Problems of Sex between the 1920s and the 1940s demonstrates the applicability of MNA to clarifying the relations that sustained this area of psychology. The measures of weighted degree and betweenness can highlight which nodes (whether organisms or institutions) were particularly "central" to this network. Rats featured as the animals most widely studied during this period, but the analysis also reveals distinct institutional and disciplinary cultures where different species were favored as either surrogates for humans or representatives of more general biological groups

Betweenness centrality · Centrality · Discipline · Epistemology · Period (music · Sexual behavior · Social science · Sociology · Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes · Psychedelics and Drug Studies · Psychology · Race, Genetics, and Society · Social Psychology