network is correlated with being highly productive, in part because it facilitates
rapid transmission of cultural capital.
Because of the proliferation of papers, if one relies entirely on reading the
literature as an outsider, one is less likely to know where to look. A random
overview through the literature by journal browsing, or worse yet by indexing
and abstracting services (whether in print media or electronically on-line),
which overload the channels rather than focusing them, will not lead one to
the key cultural capital to follow up. Again, one needs the advantage of being
intellectually and socially connected to the core.
In the research sciences, innovation depends on familiarity with the latest
research technology (Price, 1986: 237–253). Such knowledge is usually tacit
and informal, passed around by personal contact, rather than the subject of
published papers. This is another resource monopolized by those close to the
active core of the research community.
Do these structures make the modern research sciences more sharply stra-
tified in comparison to non-science fields? Large numbers of scientists and a
reliance on expensive, rapidly changing research technologies force the pace of
intellectual competition. A smaller field, such as philosophy, or indeed any of
the humanities, does not put such a premium on rapid access to a moving front
of soon-to-be-outdated information or research equipment. Still, the degree of
stratification of cultural capital may be roughly the same, in that the more
slowly moving fields are also less differentiated into specialties; what compe-
tition does exist is all focused on the same central claims for intellectual
importance. And here there is a crunch, a limited amount of attention space,
which allows only a small number of intellectual positions to be recognized at
any one time.
These processes affect the cumulation of EE both positively and negatively.
At the top, individuals who have good access to cultural capital through their
previous experience, their mentors, and their participation in core social net-
works have high EE. They are enthusiastically attached to their field, work
very hard at exploiting their opportunities, and receive very high rewards in
the form of recognition. They are best able to monitor the level of competition;
although they may often have the experience of being forestalled in publication
by a rival (as Hagstrom, 1965, shows), they also are able to beat others much
of the time. They move on an accelerating (or high constant) level of EE. This
is what gives them the reputation of being “creative” individuals.
At the low end there is a population which is transient. I would attribute
their transience to their low EE, and that in turn to the weak structural position
for access to crucial cultural capital. They appear as “the kind of person” who
always has troubles—obstacles, distractions, family and financial difficulties—
which just seem to keep them from ever getting their work done. This is where
we find the familiar writer’s block of failing intellectuals, the “dissertationitis”
Coalitions in the Mind • 45