Social Forces at 90

This volume of Social Forces marks the 90th anniversary since it was founded in 1922 by sociologist Howard W. Odum. He served as editor until 1954; a full list of editors is provided in the front matter of this and every issue of Social Forces. The first article to appear in the journal was by Franklin H. Giddings, on the topic of “The Measurement of Social Forces.”

During the years since its founding, Social Forces has been recognized as a top journal of social research nationally and internationally. It has always sought to highlight the best in sociological inquiry while at the same time exploring the realms shared with social psychology, anthropology, political science, history and economics.

Reflecting on the Past

To celebrate this milestone anniversary, we highlight some of the articles published in the journal during the past five decades that have been especially significant statements on important topics. When deciding which articles to emphasize, I was guided by two main considerations: first, I’ve selected articles that have been especially influential as measured by citation counts and other usage statistics. Second, the articles chosen cover a range of topics that have been well represented in Social Forces through the years.

I asked the authors of these articles to write a short piece in which they reflect on questions such as: What do you know now that you wish you had known when you first wrote the article? How have your views on the topic changed since you wrote the article? How has the article influenced subsequent research on this topic? And, what is your (brief) assessment of the current state of research on this topic? I am grateful to the authors of these articles, all of whom responded enthusiastically to my invitation to write their reflections.

The articles represent a varied mix of the types of high-quality social science research and theorizing that has been published in Social Forces over the years: theoretical statements on subjects such as social movement organizations, delinquency and trust; discussions of measurement issues involved in studying topics such as tie strength in social networks, residential segregation and religion; and empirical analyses of economic stratification, family structure and child well-being and the gender division of household labor. All of these articles have held up remarkably well over time and still have much to say about the topics that they address.

Reflections on these articles are printed in this issue of Social Forces. In addition, Oxford University Press is producing a virtual online issue that will include the reflections along with links to the original articles. This virtual issue will be made freely available to everyone.

Looking Ahead

Moving forward, Social Forces will continue to publish high-quality empirical research and theory across a variety of social science disciplines. While the journal has always published comparative and international research, such articles will receive even greater priority in the future. As I outlined in a previous editorial, the strategic goal of Social Forces is to become the leading international social science research journal. Our internationalization strategy has several components, including an expanded International Editorial Board and efforts to increase the journal’s readership by scholars in countries across the globe. One way of doing the latter is by forming affiliated relationships with various national social science associations around the globe. As of this writing, we have established organizational affiliations with the German, Israeli and Korean Sociological Associations, and we are in active discussions with a number of others.

In addition, this issue of Social Forces initiates a new interior visual design. The front matter shows the inroads Social Forces is making internationally. The most obvious example of this is the map with the international affiliates, which we hope to fill in further over time. The typeface has also changed: there is a bigger visual differentiation among the elements such as author name(s), the abstract and the beginning of the main text; this is due to the use of a combination of serif and sans serif typefaces. The different heading levels are also more differentiated than they have been in the past, which should...