Within group-based hierarchies, advantaged groups often possess a disproportionately large share of positive social value, or all the material and symbolic things for which people strive (Sidanius & Pratto, 1999). What is positive social value of an academic discipline? An inexhaustive list of what might be termed academic positive social value includes the following: employment at top universities, salary, editorial positions (power to shape the field), size of collaborative network, and number of citations (see Table 1). At the heart of group-based inequality is differential access to activities, positions, and goods that are valued within the given social system (i.e., the structure of privileges; Bourdieu, 1984). Group-based inequality often includes access to prestigious positions, unequal rewards associated with those positions, sorting mechanisms rooted in criteria that benefit those in prestigious positions, as well opportunity hoarding of rewards (Tilly, 2003). Importantly, many of these factors not only combine in different ways, but are generative and mutually-reinforcing. Consistent with work illustrating that bias manifests in systemic ways within academic disciplines (Tetlock, 2017), we expect patterns of bias to emerge that benefit the elite on outcomes relevant to academic positive social value.

Independent of societal disadvantages linked to specific group memberships (e.g., race, gender), research suggests there are clear group-based disparities within academic disciplines as a function of resource and social capital. As a starting point, disciplinary social capital shapes both doctoral admissions and recruitment to faculty positions (Bauder, 2020). In addition, applicant pools are often narrowed to a select number of people from high-resource environments and/or those with connections to stars of the field (Mai et al., 2015). Prestigious institutions typically hold both resources and a disproportionate number of stars (i.e., social capital). Accordingly, a large body of work suggests that prestige of one’s doctoral institution is the single best predictor of not only whether a person is hired into a faculty position (e.g., in the United States 80 percent of tenured faculty come from 20 percent of the universities; Wapman et al., 2022), but also level of the position’s prestige (Clauset et al., 2015). Thus, much of employment (who gets it and where) is directly linked to resources of one’s institution and/or status of one’s social networks. Within the societal context, sociological research suggests that where you are born is one of the strongest determinants of future success (O’Rand, 2006), even when holding constant for ability/talent (Alexander et al., 2014). We suggest one’s academic origin is one of the strongest predictors of employment.

Beyond admissions and employment, there are disparities on a variety of other disciplinary outcomes as a function of resource and/or social capital, all of which are linked to scholars’ entire career trajectory. At the most basic level, both resource capital (e.g., teaching load; teaching assistants for a class) and social capital (e.g., who is and isn’t allowed to avoid academic labor) shape the time that scholars have to devote toward research (Joseph & Hirshfield, 2011). The resources of an institution are also associated with research productivity (Zhang et al., 2022) and explain changes in individual scholar citations (Allison & Long, 1990). Productivity, in turn, shapes disparities in academics’ salaries, which are of course also tied to resources of institutions (Ehrenberg, 2003). Importantly, social capital alone (independent of resources) can also greatly impact scholars’ entire career trajectory. With respect to social capital, many factors relevant to a scholar’s productivity and academic life are shaped by connection to influential stars of the discipline, such as inclusion in collaborative projects (Rubin & O’Connor, 2017), manuscript decisions (Nazar et al., 2022), and promotion (Pezzoni et al., 2012; Wieczorek et al., 2020). Those with low and high social capital, for example, are evaluated differently by editors (Huber et al., 2022); illustrating that the same work or accomplishment is valued differentially as a function of academic fame (Lin, 2000). Moreover, social capital shapes narrowing of applicant pools and selection decisions for many powerful/high-status positions (e.g., editors; Rynes, 2006), as well as influencing external funding awards (Murray et al., 2016).

In sum, although some inequality is the result of individual differences in talent, work-ethic, or skill, as well as societal-based inequities, we suggest a great deal of inequality within academic disciplines is rooted in systems, structures, processes, and biases that privilege an elite tier while disadvantaging the periphery within the discipline. Resource and social capital greatly impact who is deemed eligible (opportunities) and ultimately gets (outcomes) a variety of valued goods within academic disciplines. Indeed, as others have noted, “Despite the confounded nature of merit and social status within measurable prestige, the observed hierarchies are sufficiently steep that attributing their structure to differences in merit alone seems implausible” (Clauset et al., 2015, p. 5). It is important to note that the cumulative advantages the elite possess are often passed along to others in their peer network or younger generations (e.g., “the next generation”; Tilly, 2003).

Our classification diverges from a strict focus on underrepresented identities at the national or societal level and thus is a more expansive framework for understanding inequality within disciplines. It is, of course, difficult to provide robust evidence for a group-based social system in which not only the groups, but also the processes operate in an informal manner. Nevertheless, we view our work as a commentary (rather than an empirical case) and suggest our approach is a necessary and complementary framework to other frameworks (e.g., focused on societal identities) for understanding inequality within academic disciplines.

At the heart of all group-based hierarchies are the ideological mechanisms that maintain the hierarchy, convincing both the advantaged and disadvantaged groups that either: (1) there is no group-based social system or (2) that the system is fair, just, and legitimate (Sidanius & Pratto, 1999). We move to explore the role of legitimizing myths in obscuring group-based hierarchy and providing justification for inequality based on resource and social capital.

Hierarchy-enhancing legitimizing myths are the values, beliefs, causal attributions and ideologies that provide moral, intellectual, and instrumental justification for group-based hierarchy (Sidanius & Pratto, 1999). We do not have the space in the present work to identify and provide support for how capitalism and neoliberalism within academia (Coşkan et al., 2021), as well as racial capitalism or white supremacy (Hassan, 2023), for example, bolster and justify group-based hierarchy in the terms we have defined. Nevertheless, a variety of legitimizing myths obfuscate the group-based hierarchy within academic disciplines and provide justification for disparate outcomes related to academic positive social value. We now note how the notion of meritocracy, aggregated bias, and individual elite minority exemplars, may be especially relevant to legitimizing the group-based hierarchy of academic disciplines.

Some might suggest there is no hierarchy based on resource capital or social capital and all inequality within disciplines is a function of disparities in individual work ethic/talent or societal based inequities (i.e., that meritocracy largely exists in most academic disciplines). Indeed, many “liberal” people in academia strongly believe in meritocracy and that their personal accomplishments are solely a function of their own hard work. However, meritocracy and the protestant work ethic are two central legitimizing myths that uphold stable group-based hierarchies (Sidanius et al., 1992). Indeed, as others have noted, the notion of meritocracy provides the illusion of mobility and is the single greatest obstacle to equal opportunity within many social systems (Guinier, 2015). Meritocracy frames disadvantage in terms of individual deficits in skill and effort—which not only leads to a politics of humiliation (Markovitis, 2019), but also blunts group-based resistance by those disadvantaged within the system.

From a social dominance perspective, two of the proximal processes for group-based hierarchy are 1) aggregated individual discrimination and 2) aggregated institutional discrimination. Consistent with a framework that suggests bias manifests in systematic ways within academic disciplines (Honeycutt & Jussim, 2020), we suggest there are numerous aggregated individual-level biases against those in the periphery of academia expressed by those in power of the discipline. Beyond implicit and explicit favoritism toward those connected to stars in the discipline, aggregated individual-level biases include: bias against what questions are deemed acceptable to ask, method(s) bias (e.g., against qualitative studies), measurement bias, role models, idea suppression, citations, interpretation of findings, epistemic bias (e.g., which ideas are canonized as integral to the discipline’s scope of knowledge production) and everyday negative interpersonal bias (within departments, universities, and the larger discipline). Many of these biases are represented in the negative treatment of academics from a variety of countries around the world (i.e., those in the periphery; e.g., Majority World/Global South or Southern and Eastern Europe; Bou Zeineddine et al., 2022). Similarly, there are clear biases based on race/ethnicity (e.g., the need for a White comparison group; Stanley, 2007; Wang, 2016; review procedures; King et al., 2018) and gender (e.g., variance in citations and citation impact; Nosek et al., 2010). At the institutional level, both standard of practice discrimination (i.e., rules and procedures that have a discriminatory effect, such as criteria for promotion) and individual-mediated institutional discrimination (e.g., individual biases of the powerful that manifest in institutional policies) result in disparate treatment of those in the elite and periphery. For example, with respect to institutional standards and practice, many of the criteria for external funding make it challenging (if not impossible) for those around the world, such as in Latin America, the Middle East (Saab et al., 2020) or the Majority World more broadly (Bou Zeineddine et al., 2022), to be awarded funds. Individual-mediated institutional discrimination is prevalent in the norms and values of the elite group dominating the culture of most academic disciplines, such as in conferences, group meetings, or in response to social/political events (e.g., disciplinary public statements). Similarly, those in the elite group (and editors) can reward a focus on certain topics, but not others—thereby socializing and molding scholars to disproportionately attend to specific topic areas, at the expense of others.

Finally, consistent with work illustrating that the existence of a few token members of underrepresented groups in high status positions bolsters support for the social system (e.g., perceptions of individual mobility; Danaher & Branscombe, 2010), we suggest the presence of a few minorities in the elite of an academic discipline functions in a similar way within the disciplinary social system. Within many disciplines, there are a small number of minority group members (defined within the specific national context) that attend prestigious institutions of the nation and who, in turn, receive all or most of the benefits of elite group membership. These individuals are seen as success stories for individual mobility (both in the national context and the academic discipline; often irrespective of their initial individual-level privilege—such as socio-economic status). Though disadvantaged and certainly likely to be the target of a variety of prejudices, however, to the extent that they are products of elite group membership (e.g., attended a well-resourced prestigious institution with connections to stars of the field), they are relatively advantaged within the group-based social system of the academic discipline.

In practice, therefore, members of minoritized groups within the academic elite—through no fault of their own—may indirectly obscure the stark inequality within the academic discipline as a function of resource and/or social capital. To be clear, we note the role of individual token minorities not to take away or disparage these individuals within elite spaces, but to demonstrate how their presence may ultimately serve to blur recognition of inequality as a function of our group-based classification—rooted in resource capital and social capital within the academic social system. This analysis is consistent with frameworks that illustrate how a select number of well-positioned people from underrepresented groups often receive a disproportionate number of resources (e.g., from institutes or centers), blur identification of inequality, and ultimately help to maintain group-based inequality within social systems (e.g., professional managerial class: Liu, 2021; elite capture: Taiwo, 2022). Accordingly, we suggest that minoritized individuals within the national context that attend prestigious institutions (and are effectively a part of the elite of the discipline) illustrate the need for a more nuanced understanding of the meaning of advantage and disadvantage within the group-based academic social system.

In sum, the notion of meritocracy, aggregated discrimination, and the presence of a few minorities in elite spaces all serve as legitimizing myths, to help blur recognition of the group-based social system based on resource and social capital and provide justification for inequality. The starkest manifestation of group-based hierarchy within a social system is clear disparities in the composition of who disproportionately obtains the material and symbolic things for which people strive. As noted earlier, if one were to classify people along resource and social capital dimensions to designate group membership as elite or periphery within academic disciplines, an extraordinarily disproportionate number of outcomes are possessed by members of the elite group. The factors we have highlighted, as well as other legitimizing myths, ensure that academics fail to conceive of their academic discipline as a social system in the terms we have noted, which results in a lack of identity or group-based consciousness around periphery group membership. Moreover, for those in the periphery, notions of meritocracy and individual mobility provide an illusion of inclusion, which leads to a version of cruel optimism (Berlant, 2011). Academic cruel optimism might be conceived as the attachments a scholar has to the material or aspirational “good life” of academia and the negative psychological effects of working with low resources/social capital, meaning this good life is not attainable, but always appears possible.

Within many academic disciplines, diversity issues are typically understood as a ‘problem’ that functions primarily at the site of societal disparities within any given societal context. Accordingly, the solutions to the problem of diversity, or lack thereof, are often rooted in a need to (a) manage individual or committee-level biases against underrepresented groups or (b) seek to provide support for underrepresented groups within the national-societal context. A reclassification of people and places into levels of resource and/or social capital at the meso level of academic group-based social systems, however, provides an additional lens for understanding the problems of diversity.

From our perspective, part of the problem of achieving adequate diversity lies in the failure of academic disciplines to acknowledge the demographic composition of elite/periphery in their respective discipline, coupled with merit criteria that ignore disciplinary context. With respect to demographic disparities, both within and across nations, sociocultural and structural patterns of power tend to privilege Whites (Harris, 1993), those from prestigious institutions (Binder et al., 2016), and those with higher socio-economic status (Rahman Khan, 2012). As a result, and consistent with how inequality operates at the societal level (e.g., racial capitalism; Burden-Stelly, 2020), many groups are not only less likely to be included in the elite group of disciplines, but academia itself, including: working-class people (irrespective of race/ethnicity), religious people or specific religious minorities, people belonging to lower castes, military veterans, LGBTQ+ minorities, minorities within national context, and those from non-western countries around the world (i.e., the neglected ‘95%’; Arnett, 2008). Lack of representation sometimes also generalizes to political orientations for specific disciplines within national contexts (e.g., those who are politically conservative in the social sciences and liberal people in finance in the United States). Accordingly, the tiered, group-based social system of most academic disciplines will show clear systematic demographic and regional patterns in the composition of those in the elite and periphery group memberships. These demographic disparities in the composition of the elite and periphery, coupled with decontextualized merit criteria that ignore disciplinary context, can help situate the difficulty of achieving diversity (at least partially) in evaluation procedures that ignore the meso-level of the disciplinary system. For example, the production-dependent merit criteria of many disciplines means that only those at elite institutions have the output necessary to be seen as qualified, leading to a situation in which a select few underrepresented individuals from elite institutions are seen as the only “qualified” applicants for many positions—leading to the refrain “there just aren’t enough qualified minority applicants!” Thus, the pool of “diverse” applicants shrinks and is minimized as a function of merit criteria, composition of the elite, and evaluation—all working together at the meso-level. Many evaluations relevant to the “problem” of diversity lack disciplinary context by not only ignoring resources of people/places, but also failing to acknowledge the way in which the degree and nature of social capital shapes opportunities, outcomes, and experience of underrepresented groups (e.g., even in elite spaces, racial/ethnic minorities will have less social capital in those predominantly White spaces).

Individuals (labs), committees (admissions; hiring), and disciplinary organizations (leadership; conference representation) have a great deal of control over the current (e.g., employment) and future (e.g., admissions to labs and doctoral programs) composition of their discipline. If greater attention of diversity-improvement efforts were focused and organized around training, pipeline programs, employment, and leadership as a function of elite and periphery group membership (i.e., resource capital and social capital), we would expect a variety of new solutions to emerge around diversity. Our reclassification encourages those interested in achieving diversity to focus on the meso level of the group-based system of their respective academic discipline. Understanding the interrelated nature of individuals and the disciplinary social system expands the notion of the problem. Accordingly, disparities in demographics at elite/periphery institutions, production-focused merit criteria, and evaluation lacking disciplinary context – with respect to resources and social capital – all shape diversity outcomes. One consequence of our framework, and consistent with past work that has described the “visibles” and the “not-so-visibles” of academic disciplines (Lubek, 1976, p. 321), is that it helps to illuminate that in thinking about diversity, some sites may receive too much attention (e.g., prestigious institutions or people connected to stars of the field) and some too little (e.g., small public universities; minority-serving institutions; specific countries or regions).

Much of the discussion and analyses regarding both the problems and solutions for scientific disciplines facing crises have been rooted in micro (individual) level frameworks (e.g., pre-registration; Gonzales & Cunningham, 2015), but we suggest many of these issues would be better understood as manifestations of the discipline as a social system and/or the tiered group-based hierarchy (i.e., meso-level issues). Many scientific disciplines have faced crises rooted in the value, generalizability, and utility of scientific findings, including the failure of findings to generalize to most of the world (Henrich et al., 2010), the replication crisis (Nosek et al., 2012), fraud (Simmons et al., 2011), and generalizability of the work to naturally-occurring settings (Cialdini, 2009). We suggest that many of these issues (and others facing social scientific disciplines) may be rooted in incentive structures within the academic social system, as well as the predominant sociocultural profile of the people and place(s) of the elite group.

With respect to replication and generalizability, there is the issue of how the predominant sociocultural demographic composition of the elite group of academic disciplines (e.g., based on race/ethnicity; class; national country of origin) may have a narrow and unrepresentative perspective or lived experience. It is important to note that for a majority of the world, most people’s lived experience is characteristic of those in the periphery, not those in the elite of academic disciplines. The overreliance on WEIRD samples has been thoroughly reviewed (Cheon et al., 2020; Henrich et al., 2010) and continues to be an issue with online data collection (e.g., overrepresentation of those with higher education in online samples; Hitlin, 2016). However, we would suggest that the narrow sociocultural profile of the elite is presented in all parts of the production of knowledge: theorizing, the lens of researchers, measurement, samples, reviewers, and editors. It could be argued that the predominant profile, experience, and perspective of many academic disciplines has been, and is, of a liberal White person that attended a well-resourced prestigious university in a Western country. It seems reasonable to conclude one’s life experiences and viewpoints likely shape a person’s assumptions, goals, and interpretation of data as a scientist (e.g., what is considered normal behavior or who is considered problematic; Teo, 2010)—indeed, this assumption is foundational to the claims of standpoint theory as a counterpoint to traditional epistemologies (Haraway, 1988; Pohlhaus, 2002). Importantly, there is also a predominant place profile: White, suburban, Western, and well-resourced, with work suggesting these spaces have their own independent effects on human behavior (Brink et al., 2019; Mani et al., 2013; Piff et al., 2010). Accordingly, the problem of replication and generalizability may at least partially be a function of predominant sociodemographic profiles of the elite within academic disciplines.

Incentive structures within academic disciplines also may help to explain other outcomes. In most academic disciplines, status is conferred by way of production (e.g., research productivity; journal or book publications). Of course, as others have noted, the values of a research culture that disproportionately focuses on production may implicitly incentivize a schism between what is good for scientists and what is good for science (Nosek et al., 2012). The goal of productivity may implicitly influence how individual scientists theorize, design studies, collect data, interpret results, and even review studies. Thus, we view a portion of the problem of scientific fraud practices (e.g., p-hacking; Simmons et al., 2011) as partially shaped by production-focused merit criteria and incentives structures within the academic social system. Akin to a philosophy that suggests speed is sometimes detrimental to quality (e.g., the slow food movement; Petrini & Padovani, 2006), then, it is possible that the quality of science might benefit from slowing down as well (Berg & Seeber, 2016; i.e., de-incentivizing fast production). Having made the case for a group-based system that functions based on resource and social capital and identified some implications of this system, we now examine ways to reduce group-based inequality.

A great deal of work has painstakingly detailed excellent suggestions for reducing inequality within academic disciplines, including how to improve diversity in faculty hiring (DeLisi et al., 2022; Finkelstein et al., 2016; O’Meara et al., 2020), reduce the impact of university status in employment (Clauset et al., 2015), reduce regional bias (Bou Zeineddine et al., 2022), decolonize (Adams et al., 2015; Durrheim, 2024; Reddy & Amer, 2023), strengthen support for racial/ethnic minorities (Dupree & Boykin, 2021; Saab et al., 2020), or how to create open/inclusive disciplines (Ledgerwood et al., 2022). In addition, there are clear guidelines for improving how science is conducted, reported, and reviewed (Buchanan et al., 2021). Thus, there is an abundance of guidelines, which suggests the problem is not in the knowing (i.e., lack of information; ignorance), but in the doing (i.e., taking concrete actions). Thus, we note the need for action and implementation. To the extent that individuals often exhibit a gap in their self-reported principles and actions (Dixon et al., 2017; including liberals; Glasford, 2022), we suggest institutions, disciplines, and organizations move toward an evidence-based testing framework: test, implement, and evaluate practices on the basis of metrics rooted in analyzing group-based patterns on material outcomes.