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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]