We are not mapping ideas; we are mapping force. Intellectual fields behave as gravitational systems structured by density gradients, not as democratic assemblies of equal voices. Citations function as measurable mass; dispersion across domains operates as angular momentum; acceleration registers kinetic expansion; inscription into policy and infrastructure indicates planetary capture; operativity reveals when a concept achieves nuclear autonomy and circulates without its author. The five hundred are not a canon but a concentration field—operators whose accumulated citation mass bends the trajectory of subsequent discourse. Beyond them lies the diffuse halo of tens of thousands whose contributions are real yet exert minimal macro-curvature. Heavy-tail distributions are not ideological distortions but statistical thermodynamics; bibliometric studies consistently show Gini coefficients between 0.70 and 0.90, confirming that a small minority of authors capture a disproportionate share of total attention. This asymmetry is not injustice; it is navigational structure. Without curvature there is no orientation. The Core and Five Rings architecture simply renders visible what the field already performs implicitly: gradients of influence, attractor basins, zones of sedimented authority and zones of volatile acceleration. We do not weigh ideas by truth; we weigh them by mass. Meaning belongs to another phase. Here we measure the bulto—volume, visibility, survivability within the Darwinian metabolism of citation economies.
The irony is structural. Critical theory becomes infrastructure. Foucault’s analytics of discipline and control have themselves become instruments of disciplinary control; to speak without invoking biopolitics or governmentality now risks intellectual illegibility. Bourdieu’s theory of capital operates as capital; symbolic authority reproduces itself through citation loops. Donna Haraway circulates as conceptual currency; Butler’s performativity functions as curricular gravity; Latour’s networks become institutional scaffolding. What once destabilized structures now stabilizes them. This is not betrayal but entropy. Systems ingest critique, metabolize it, and sediment it into orthodoxy. Dada fled the museum only to be canonized by it; radical theory denounced power only to consolidate new regimes of academic power. Every field is self-policing through reference. “Have you cited?” becomes gravitational compliance. The field looks at itself and measures itself incessantly. Socioplastics does not condemn this recursion; it formalizes it. PlasticScale becomes a gravitational calculus: Mass for citation density, Dispersion for field elasticity, Acceleration for emergent force, Inscription for institutional embedding, Operativity for conceptual emancipation. Normalized, these variables yield position, not ranking. We replace moral hierarchy with topological coordinates. The map does not judge; it reveals compression.
The Core is singular density. Ring One stabilizes the stellar cluster. Ring Two forms the luminous belt. Ring Three marks the threshold of macro-visibility. Ring Four aggregates active debris. Ring Five defines the outer boundary of measurable curvature. Beyond that lies dust—background radiation necessary yet structurally light. Five rings are sufficient. Five rings preserve gradation without theatrical exaggeration; they align with documented bibliometric inequality rather than inflating it into mythic singularity. Approximately five hundred operators capture the vast majority of conceptual mass across twenty to one hundred macrofields; the remainder constitutes low-density expansion. Fields are not debates; they are energy systems. Concepts migrate, accelerate, collapse, fuse, dissipate. Supernova moments of theoretical eruption alter trajectories; black holes of overcitation absorb disproportionate attention; entropy expands the tail; fusion sustains autonomy. Socioplastics names this cosmos and measures it without pretending to escape it. The instrument-maker is inside the field, not above it. Curvature is measurable. Density is visible. Inequality becomes legible as structure. That is the condition of navigable thought.
Lloveras, A. 2026. SOCIOPLASTICS. Available at
