Social science structures of communication in Chile: Local and global networks

This paper (1) analyzes the connections of Chilean social science with central countries in comparison with those established with the same country and other Latin American countries, especially regarding theory; and (2) analyzes the structures of communication and collaboration in the field of social science in Chile. Concerning the second point, it examines the hypothesized effects of cohesion and fragmentation coming from: (1) paradigmatic framing (positivist, interpretative, and critical), (2) type of institution of knowledge production, (3) scientific discipline and (4) researchers’ gender. It is based on content analysis of academic publications, and on social network analysis applied to a data base of almost thirty thousand bibliographical references generated for this research from the universe of published investigations by Chilean social scientists in a period of seven years, in the 2000s, in magazines and books, nationals and foreigners. The results show that, regarding international communications, there is a small proportion of connections with other Latin American countries, but that the national connections are relatively important and particularly those with a group of local theorists occupying central positions in the network. On the other hand, it is found a scientific field noticeably fragmented by discipline and gender; regarding gender, in addition, the structure of women networks is characterized by symmetry, horizontality and greater density in comparison with those of men. The scientific paradigms have a fragmentation effect on the subfields of anthropology and political science, but much less in sociology, where it was discovered the operation of an important group of brokers, paradigmatically hybrids. The structure of scientific relations also is influenced by the different types of institutions of production (old and public universities, new private universities, regional universities, independent centers, international organisms). In general, the scientific network is shaped by the combined effect of epistemic cultures and power relations.