It is somewhat boring that my annual list of the most cited works in sociological journals always puts Bourdieu’s Distinction at the top. That was going to be the case again this year, so I decided to change the sorting algorithm to measure “hotness”.

An article’s hotness is the number of cites it received in sociological journals this year divided by the log of the number of years since publication. This means that a work that was published in 2010 and cited 18 times in 2014, like Putnam and Campbell’s American Grace scores slightly higher than something that was cited 34 times last year but published in 2000, like Putnam’s Bowling Alone. I tried different variations of what to put in the numerator and denominator, but this method 1) had the most pleasing mix of new and old things and 2) knocked Distinction all the way down to #2.

So, the 63 hottest articles in sociology last year were:

Sampson, Robert J. Great American city: Chicago and the enduring neighborhood effect. University of Chicago Press, 2012. Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A social critique of the judgment of taste. Harvard University Press, 1984. England, Paula. “The gender revolution uneven and stalled.” Gender & Society 24.2 (2010): 149-166. Vaisey, Stephen. “Motivation and Justification: A Dual‐Process Model of Culture in Action.” American Journal of Sociology 114.6 (2009): 1675-1715. Lareau, Annette. Unequal childhoods: Class, race, and family life. Univ of California Press, 2003. Charmaz, Kathy. “Constructing grounded theory: A practical guide through qualitative research.” (2006). Ridgeway, Cecilia L. Framed by gender: How gender inequality persists in the modern world. Oxford University Press, 2011. McPherson, Miller, Lynn Smith-Lovin, and James M. Cook. “Birds of a feather: Homophily in social networks.” Annual review of sociology (2001): 415-444. Putnam, Robert D., and David E. Campbell. American grace: How religion divides and unites us. Simon and Schuster, 2012. Ruggles, Steven, et al. “Integrated public use microdata series, current population survey: Version 3.0.[machine-readable database].” Minneapolis: University of Minnesota 20 (2010). Putnam, Robert D. Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community. Simon and Schuster, 2000. Raudenbush, Stephen W., and Anthony S. Bryk. Hierarchical linear models: Applications and data analysis methods. Vol. 1. Sage, 2002. Swidler, Ann. “Culture in action: Symbols and strategies.” American sociological review (1986): 273-286. Fligstein, Neil, and Doug McAdam. A theory of fields. Oxford University Press, 2012. Musick, Kelly, and Larry Bumpass. “Reexamining the Case for Marriage: Union Formation and Changes in Well‐being.” Journal of Marriage and Family 74.1 (2012): 1-18. Coleman, James S. “Social capital in the creation of human capital.” American journal of sociology (1988): S95-S120. West, Candace, and Don H. Zimmerman. “Doing gender.” Gender & society 1.2 (1987): 125-151. Glaser, Barney G., and Anselm L. Strauss. The discovery of grounded theory: Strategies for qualitative research. Transaction Publishers, 1967. Steensland, Brian, et al. “The measure of American religion: Toward improving the state of the art.” Social Forces 79.1 (2000): 291-318. Edin, Kathryn, and Maria Kefalas. “Promises I can keep.” Berkeley, CA: University of California (2005). Correll, Shelley J., Stephen Benard, and In Paik. “Getting a Job: Is There a Motherhood Penalty? 1.” American journal of sociology 112.5 (2007): 1297-1339. Wildeman, Christopher, Jason Schnittker, and Kristin Turney. “Despair by association? The mental health of mothers with children by recently incarcerated fathers.” American Sociological Review 77.2 (2012): 216-243. Rivera, Lauren A. “Hiring as cultural matching the case of elite professional service firms.” American Sociological Review 77.6 (2012): 999-1022. Massey, Douglas S., and Karen A. Pren. “Unintended consequences of US immigration policy: explaining the post‐1965 surge from Latin America. “Population and development review 38.1 (2012): 1-29. Goertz, Gary, and James Mahoney. A tale of two cultures: Qualitative and quantitative research in the social sciences. Princeton University Press, 2012. Timmermans, Stefan, and Iddo Tavory. “Theory construction in qualitative research from grounded theory to abductive analysis.” Sociological Theory 30.3 (2012): 167-186. Lamont, Michèle. “Toward a comparative sociology of valuation and evaluation.” Sociology 38.1 (2012): 201. Benford, Robert D., and David A. Snow. “Framing processes and social movements: An overview and assessment.” Annual review of sociology (2000): 611-639. Goffman, Erving. “Stigma: Notes on a spoiled identity.” (1963). Amato, Paul R. “Research on divorce: Continuing trends and new developments.” Journal of Marriage and Family 72.3 (2010): 650-666. Vaisey, Stephen, and Omar Lizardo. “Can cultural worldviews influence network composition?” Social Forces 88.4 (2010): 1595-1618. Allison, Paul David. Fixed effects regression models. Los Angeles: Sage, 2009. Thoits, Peggy A. “Mechanisms linking social ties and support to physical and mental health.” Journal of Health and Social Behavior 52.2 (2011): 145-161. Martin, John Levi. The explanation of social action. Oxford University Press, 2011. Massey, Douglas S. and Nancy Denton. American apartheid: Segregation and the making of the underclass. Harvard University Press, 1993. Lamont, Michèle, and Virág Molnár. “The study of boundaries in the social sciences.” Annual review of sociology (2002): 167-195. Alba, Richard, and Victor Nee. Remaking the American mainstream: Assimilation and contemporary immigration. Harvard University Press, 2009. Ridgeway, Cecilia L., and Shelley J. Correll. “Unpacking the Gender System A Theoretical Perspective on Gender Beliefs and Social Relations.” Gender & Society 18.4 (2004): 510-531. Carrabine, Eamonn. “Just Images Aesthetics, Ethics and Visual Criminology.”British Journal of Criminology 52.3 (2012): 463-489. Geller, Amanda, et al. “Beyond absenteeism: Father incarceration and child development.” Demography 49.1 (2012): 49-76. Williams, Christine L., Chandra Muller, and Kristine Kilanski. “Gendered organizations in the new economy.” Gender & Society 26.4 (2012): 549-573. Schwartz, Christine R., and Robert D. Mare. “Trends in educational assortative marriage from 1940 to 2003.” Demography 42.4 (2005): 621-646. Erving, Goffman. “The presentation of self in everyday life.” Garden City, NY: Anchor (1959). DiMaggio, Paul. “Culture and cognition.” Annual review of sociology (1997): 263-287. Morgan, Stephen L., and Christopher Winship. Counterfactuals and causal inference: Methods and principles for social research. Cambridge University Press, 2007. Gonzales, Roberto G. “Learning to be illegal undocumented youth and shifting legal contexts in the transition to adulthood.” American Sociological Review76.4 (2011): 602-619. Bourdieu, Pierre. “The forms of capital.(1986).” (2006). Harris, Kathleen Mullan, and National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. “Waves I & II, 1994–1996; Wave III, 2001–2002; Wave IV, 2007–2009 [machine-readable data file and documentation].” Chapel Hill, NC: Carolina Population Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 10 (2009). Gross, Neil. “A pragmatist theory of social mechanisms.” American Sociological Review 74.3 (2009): 358-379. Small, Mario Luis. “How many cases do I need?’ On science and the logic of case selection in field-based research.” Ethnography 10.1 (2009): 5-38. McLanahan, Sara. “Diverging destinies: How children are faring under the second demographic transition.” Demography 41.4 (2004): 607-627. Granovetter, Mark S. “The strength of weak ties.” American journal of sociology(1973): 1360-1380. Gottfredson, Michael R., and Travis Hirschi. A general theory of crime. Stanford University Press, 1990. Hamilton, Laura, Claudia Geist, and Brian Powell. “Marital name change as a window into gender attitudes.” Gender & Society 25.2 (2011): 145-175. DiMaggio, Paul J., and Walter W. Powell. “The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields.” American sociological review (1983): 147-160. Kennedy, Sheela, and Larry Bumpass. “Cohabitation and children’s living arrangements: New estimates from the United States.” Demographic research19 (2008): 1663. Acker, Joan. “Hierarchies, jobs, bodies: A theory of gendered organizations.”Gender & society 4.2 (1990): 139-158. Bail, Christopher A. “The Fringe Effect Civil Society Organizations and the Evolution of Media Discourse about Islam since the September 11th Attacks.”American Sociological Review 77.6 (2012): 855-879. Biernacki, Richard. Reinventing evidence in social inquiry: Decoding facts and variables. Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. Wildeman, Christopher, and Christopher Muller. “Mass imprisonment and inequality in health and family life.” Annual Review of Law and Social Science 8 (2012): 11-30. Passel, Jeffrey S., Gonzalez-Barrera A. D’Vera Cohn, and Ana Gonzalez-Barrera. Net Migration from Mexico Falls to Zero–and Perhaps Less. Pew Research Center, 2012. Lichter, Daniel T. “Childbearing among cohabiting women: Race, pregnancy, and union transitions.” Early adulthood in a family context. Springer New York, 2012. 209-219. Esteve, Albert, Ron Lesthaeghe, and Antonio López‐Gay. “The Latin American cohabitation boom, 1970–2007.” Population and development review 38.1 (2012): 55-81.

A more complete list, with citations sorted into clusters, is available.