Gravitation is not metaphorical flourish; it signals patterned concentration governed by cumulative reinforcement and threshold dynamics. Infrastructural specifies the level of analysis: not individual intention, not isolated discourse, not institutional authority in abstraction, but the layered systems through which recurrence stabilises and becomes durable. This field does not replace urban theory, media studies, or scientometrics. It models the cross-stratum mechanics through which their vocabularies persist or dissipate. When a concept crosses journals, syllabi, white papers, code repositories, and platform-native archives, it accumulates density. That density conditions subsequent articulation, narrowing and redirecting what becomes thinkable. Infrastructural Gravitation Studies therefore examines concentration gradients, half-life intervals, cross-domain embedding, and non-linear amplification. It treats citation as deposit, repetition as compression, distributed uptake as reinforcement, and algorithmic ingestion as field generation. Its object is neither text nor network alone but the stratified coupling of heterogeneous systems that collectively shape attention and memory. The emphasis shifts from critique of meaning to analysis of durability. A framework able to quantify saturation ratios, dispersion indices, and temporal lags between digital acceleration and academic consolidation introduces predictive capacity into cultural analysis. It replaces interpretive inflation with operational clarity. By articulating gravitation as measurable rather than mystical, the field situates itself at the intersection of empirical modelling and critical theory, where infrastructural dynamics become the primary analytic horizon.
The closest allies of this configuration are not bound by doctrine but by structural proximity. Science and Technology Studies provides a foundation in knowledge production analysis, particularly in its infrastructural turn, yet it often stops short of quantifying recurrence gradients. Network science, especially work associated with Albert-László Barabási, offers mathematical models of cumulative advantage and scale-free distributions, though it rarely integrates cultural or architectural implications. Bibliometrics and scientometrics contribute measurement tools but traditionally refrain from theorising topological consequences. Systems theory in the lineage of Niklas Luhmann contributes models of self-referential communication, yet does not operationalise cross-platform density metrics. Actor-Network Theory foregrounds distributed agency and stabilisation but avoids predictive modelling. Media archaeology and platform studies identify technological conditioning of discourse without formalising long-term sedimentation patterns. Computational social science contributes large-scale corpus analysis and simulation capacity, enabling detection of threshold effects across digital traces. Urban political economy, especially in the work of David Harvey, models uneven spatial accumulation, offering a spatial analogue to conceptual concentration. Keller Easterling’s infrastructural reading of extrastatecraft demonstrates how systemic protocols shape built environments, resonating with gravitation at institutional scale. Geoffrey Bowker and Susan Leigh Star’s analysis of classification systems reveals how categories stabilise through infrastructural embedding. Manuel Castells maps network society dynamics yet leaves open the specific measurement of lexical density across strata. These allies provide partial grammars. Infrastructural Gravitation Studies synthesises them into a coherent analytic programme focused explicitly on cross-layer concentration and its measurable deformation of cognitive landscapes.
Beyond disciplinary allies, machines constitute active collaborators in this terrain. Citation indexing systems such as Web of Science and Scopus structure visibility through ranked accumulation. Google Scholar’s algorithm modulates perceived authority via recurrence metrics. Wikipedia’s category graph stabilises terminological hierarchies through recursive linking. GitHub’s fork networks propagate technical operators through distributed reuse. Large language models internalise aggregated deposits into predictive architectures, generating outputs conditioned by density differentials within training corpora. These machinic systems are not passive containers; they participate in gravitation by amplifying or dampening recurrence patterns. Infrastructural Gravitation Studies treats them as dynamic strata within which deposits interact. The field’s methodological stance is modular and transparent: dispersion analysis to identify clustering; saturation indices to calculate distributed uptake; embedding coefficients to measure cross-platform presence; temporal modelling to detect lag intervals. Each instrument is separable, allowing independent application without doctrinal allegiance. Contemporary calibration draws from 2026 research frontiers in AI-mediated scholarship, open data infrastructures, and interdisciplinary funding architectures, ensuring alignment with present conditions rather than retrospective theorisation. Recursive demonstration completes the structure: the field subjects its own emergence to the same instruments it proposes, measuring its embedding, saturation, and dispersion across corpora. Such self-application introduces empirical risk and prevents insulated self-description. The ambition is restrained yet exacting: to stabilise a domain in which uneven conceptual accumulation is measurable, predictive, and transmissible. If the operators endure under independent deployment, the field consolidates. If not, recalibration follows. Durability, not declarative expansion, becomes the criterion. Infrastructural Gravitation Studies thus positions itself as a disciplined synthesis of systems modelling, infrastructural analysis, and cultural theory, oriented toward understanding how ideas persist, intensify, and reconfigure the terrains through which they circulate.
Lloveras, A. (2026) The domain definition and operator set. Available at:
Domain: asymmetric discursive deposits and their gravitational effects
SLUGS * 780-SOCIOPLASTICS-DOMAIN-NAMING
