Citations to the Feud Literature by Academic Nationality of Author and of Source Cited

made in Europe unaddressed by the Americans, and one finds sophisticated methodological advances advocated and practised only by Americans. We subsequently decided to test more systematically this impression of American and European ethnocentrism. Our indicator of such ethnocentrism was the proportion of citations by a scholar of American or European "academic nationality" to c o n a t i o n a l s . W e expected to find that Americans most frequently cited other Americans and Europeans other Europeans. A systematic and searching review of the literature was conducted using a snowball sampling technique. Ultimately, the sample generated approximately 2,000 references from 50 authors. Each reference was coded for (1 ) the academic nationality of the author and (2 ) the academic nationality of those cited. Academic nationality was primarily established by place of academic training. Thus, individuals who received their academic training in the United States or Europe exclusively were classified as American and European respectively. Individuals educated across continents were classified as EuroAmericans, as were those trained in Canada, Israel, and South America. Those who were trained at South African, Australian, Indian, and New Zealand universities were classified as European. Table 1 presents our major findings. Of 637 citations made by Europeans, fully 79% are to other Europeans. This is strong support for our impression of a schism. While Americans appear to be somewhat less ethnocentric in this field, for whatever reason,2 over 60% of the citations by Americans are to other Americans. The Euro-Americans split their citations, with more falling to Europeans ( 4 8 % ) than to Americans (35%). The relationship between the academic nationality of those cited and the academic nationality of the citing scholar is fairly clear and moderately strong. In an area of universal significance such as the theoretical literature dealing with revenge, such a covariation needs explanation. We suggest that, aside from the simple, structural and crucial qualification of differential access to sources (i.e., some are not available in any given library), there may be other, and in some ways more serious, factors to be taken into account. We have suggested that the questions asked and the methods favoured appear to differ from Europe to the United States and that in this context it becomes understandable that Europeans tend to cite Europeans and Americans Americans. Scholars cite the work they deem most relevant to their own, which in practice tends to be work conducted on the basis of the same premises, the same assumptions, and the same scientific canons (Kuhn 1962). This, in turn, leads us to conclude once again that science in practice may fall far short of Merton's (1957) norm of "communality" (international access to and sharing of findings).