Context, Location, and Space: The Continued Development of our ‘Geo-Sociological’ Imaginations

The history of sociology has been one of borrowing and synthesizing methods and theoretical frameworks form sister disciplines
in largely a reciprocal fashion. While these transitions are often well documented and attributed to a progression towards
an “improved” sociology, a recent increasing interest in the spatial context in which individual and group actions occur has
largely gone unnoticed. The current manuscript takes a historical approach in implementing a pseudo content analysis of all
articles ever published in mainstream sociology journals. The results show that while sociology has historically been a leader
within the social sciences concerning ecological analyses, a recent boom in its presence has solidified its place within the
discipline. Ultimately, this is not surprising given the core tenets and roots of the discipline. However, what is somewhat
surprising is the relative absence of acknowledgement of such a transition outside of the sub-disciplines of demography, criminology
and rural sociology. This manuscript looks to those areas as evidence of future work in the more general field of sociology
and couples that argument with historical results substantiating the trend.