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Philosophers of science have long noted the conservative role of the textbook in reproducing the dominant ideas of a disciplinary field (e.g. Kuhn 1979). In the mid-1930s, Ludwig Fleck (1979, pp. 111ff.) distinguished state-of-the-art "journal science" written for "specific" experts, from handbook (vademecum) science (which translates journal science for "general" experts), popular science (for non-experts), and textbook science (which introduces initiates to the expert system). Fleck argued that each component of the circle produces its own type of knowledge, or model, of the discipline. Handbook science selectively systematizes the larger world of journal science, while textbook science is one step further removed. In his path-breaking and oft-cited work, Kuhn (1996 [1963], 1979) argues that textbook modes of presentation produce stable and formulaic presentations of the dominant paradigm within a field. Because textbooks cannot meaningfully engage state-of-the-art debates at the core of the field, they are inevitably, and perhaps irredeemably, misleading from the standpoint of journal science (see also Brooke 1998).
The Fleck/Kuhn model of the textbook has withstood the test of time. Research scientists in virtually all fields would accept its descriptive accuracy. But the contexts in which textbooks are produced, and the specific mechanisms that reinforce retrograde textbook content, have remained largely unexplored (Michael 1998, Platt 2008a). In particular, textbooks are unique scholarly products aimed at large and growing markets as systems of higher education expand around the world. A best-selling textbook can generate hundreds of thousands, and in a few select cases, millions of dollars of revenue each year. They are not only written by authors, but also produced by organizational and market processes unlike those found anywhere else in the universe of scholarship and higher education.
When sociology textbooks have been examined, it has been almost entirely through analyses of their content.1 Content analysis has been used to document textbook shortcomings (e.g. how a particular topic is [mis]treated in textbooks), or to use textbooks as a source of data to identify the "conventional wisdom" or "lowest common denominator" of the discipline (e.g. Ferree and Hall 1996, Lynch and Bogan 1997). But the description of content does not explain it. In spite of disciplinary research tools capable of turning our texts...