Granovetter能得诺贝尔奖?看看《弱关系》是怎么被ASR退稿的

这是一篇纯纯纯- 蹭热点的文章。。

因为朋友都在传，说格兰诺维特能得诺贝尔经济学奖。。去年还没留意到在这时段有这样传闻。但我google了一下，英文界几年前就传这事。。

无意发现一篇blog，说了Mark Granovetter名篇The Strength of Weak Ties (AJS, 1973。不是ASR！！) 一文的早期版本，投稿ASR遭拒的经历。挺有趣。

热点来也！【阅读原文，至此blog】

1. ASR给格兰诺维特的拒信的摘要：

This is the rejection letter ‪Granovetter‬ received from American Sociological Review in 1969 on an early version of his seminal “The Strength of Weak Ties” paper. Not even “revise and resubmit”.

2. AJS 1973发表之后
Eventually this pioneering research was published in 1973 in American Journal of ‪Sociology‬ and became the most cited paper in the Social Sciences, with about 30,000 39,000 【注：已经到了4.5万了】citations according to Google Scholar.

3. 拒信全文
It could be a heartening opportunity to look at the reviewers’ remarks, such as:
– “…it should not be published. I respectfully submit the following among an endless series of reasons that immediately came to mind.”
– “… I find that his scholarship is somewhat elementary.. [he] has confined himself to a few older and obvious items”
拒信的全文 (a link to the full letter)

4. 格兰诺维特遭ASR退稿后的反应

Besides that there is an instructive point here, as Granovetter pointed out in his email to Shamus Khan: “I’d note also that this rejection illustrates the importance of framing. I framed the original draft [of “The Strength of Weak Ties”], which I wrote in grad school, as a treatment of “alienation”, more or less in response to the ideas of Louis Wirth and others that the city was an “alienating” place. The editor therefore sent the paper to reviewers who seemed to be European-oriented alienation theorists, who rightly saw that I was not talking about alienation as Marx did, but failed to imagine that there might be any other valid way to talk about it, as you can see from their comments. When I later revised the paper for AJS, I pulled all references to alienation out, and it obviously fared much better.”

Let me finish with the conclusion of one of the reviewers: “Finally, if I have taken the liberty of extensive criticism, it is because the paper at least provocative. That is what Author himself hopes for his paper. But it is not enough.“

Well, the lesson is clear: keep up and keep going!

（Sociological 理论大缸第151期）

往期回顾：

【151-154期预告】4位英国中生代社会学理论家的作品：场域/存在论……【延后一期】