How International Are International Congresses?

Our study pursues two goals: to present a new method for the analysis of weighted bimodal networks and to show that world congresses lead to fewer international contacts among the contributors than is generally assumed. The study shows that this tendency to endogamy can be observed in the contributors of international congresses. For this purpose two world congresses in the field of sociology are analyzed: the world congress of the IIS in Stockholm (2005) and that of the ISA in Durban (2006). Proceeding from data about the home countries of the contributors in the diverse sessions, a weighted, bimodal network is developed by entering the number of contributors from all the different countries of origin for each session. An analysis of this network represents the focal point of this study. In this context the maximum number of (possible) relationships of attendees from one and the same country is of special interest. These quantities are subjected to a statistical analysis by comparing them to analogously calculated quantities obtained from 1000 randomly drawn bimodal networks with the same marginals as those under discussion. It is found that the homogeneity of the geographical origin of the contributors within the sessions of an international congress is much greater than would be expected by pure coincidence. This holds true even without taking into account the fact that co-authors often come from the same country. Authors Christian Stegbauer is currently a lecturer in sociology at the University of Frankfurt. Research interests include investigating the fundamental of sociology with the aid of network analysis; communications sociology and cultural sociology. Alexander Rausch studied mathematics an physics and is currently working as a senior consultant at the Computing Center of the University of Frankfurt. Teaching: Lectures in Social Network Analysis. Research interests include formal sociology, positional analysis, analysis of bimodal networks. Please address correspondence to Christian Stegbauer at [email protected]