What parts of the world does American social science consider worthy of scholarly attention? Analyzing the geographic focus of more than 2 million bibliographic records of journal articles, books, and dissertations, the study finds a weak trend toward internationalization of US social-scientific attention over the past half-century. Moreover, the share of scholarly attention devoted to particular regions has remained surprisingly stable over this period, with Western Europe remaining the primary focus of internationally-oriented work. Shifts in US national security priorities, international trade, student demand, and demographic characteristics account for only a small portion of the variation in the rate of social-scientific publications on world regions, lending credibility to the view that scholarly attention is shaped in large part by inertia that is built into academic institutions and cultures.
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