As Savage and Burrows (2007: 894) point out, the popularity of the in depth interview in British sociology stems from an intellectual reaction to the excesses of Parsonian functionalism: responding to talk of reference groups, norms and values with the valorization of intensely idiographic methods which are geared towards the elaboration of people’s own values in their own terms,  seen as particularly significant when dealing with marginal or oppressed groups liable to be squeezed out of the functionalist world view. While they are certainly correct to say that the value of such in-depth interviews needs justification once it is removed from this initial context of critical reaction, I’m less convinced of the arguments they cite for its diminishing relevance. They argue that,

Not only are the world-views of diverse populations now routinely presented to us in the popular and new media in such a manner that their summary characterization by sociologists is no longer as necessary (or as interesting) as once it was, but some of the social transactional research technologies discussed above are now also able to produce nuanced representations of the lifeworlds of quite specific populations groupings, for example (Savage and Burrows 2007: 894-895)

The ubiquity which which ‘everyday life’ is presented in a situated way within the popular and new media surely represents, if we step back from the urgency which understandably animated their argument, an opportunity for the rethinking (rather than the move away from) in-depth interviews and other methods animated by a similar impulse to capture the particularities and nuances of situated lives. Perhaps I’m being hopelessly optimistic (it happens) but the same state of affairs Savage and Burrows cite as indicative of the growing irrelevancy of in-depth interviewing instead indicates to me that the potential public interest in the results of such research has never been higher. Furthermore, in a complex and confusing world increasingly characterised by what seems likely to become endemic economic and political instability, I’d suggest this public interest might extend to work which traces out the linkages between private troubles and public issues… with the essential caveat that linking one to the other, presenting the findings of research in a way that interests and influences diverse and overlapping publics, necessitates a rethinking of the public role of the sociologist. Perhaps involving a generalisation of the orientation of the public intellectual, adapted for a digital age and thus freed from any grandiose pretensions and removed as far as possible from its inscription within the status hierarchies of the academy:

The Internet, however, can make these connections because it permits economical, finely calibrated “narrowcasting,” that is, the transmission of specific information to specific interest groups. Of course print and — to a much lesser extent — radio and television also allowed some narrowcasting. Academic journals and industry newsletters are perhaps the best examples. But the scale of narrowcasting on the Internet is orders of magnitude greater than anything known before. Take the blogosphere for example. Here tens of thousands of interest-specific public intellectuals talk to tens of thousands of interest-specific publics concerning every imaginable interest. If you want to know about it — beer brewing, Italian shoes, organic chemistry — you can probably find someone with considerable expertise blogging about it. That’s truly remarkable.

The university presses are well-positioned to take advantage of Internet narrowcasting precisely because they essentially manage a group of experts — authors with books — who are very motivated to reach their publics. Every author wants an audience, even academic authors. The university presses have traditionally helped their authors find their audiences by publishing and promoting books. It’s time to admit that they largely failed, not for any lack of trying, but because the book was the wrong tool. Blogs, podcasts, videos, and types of “programming” not yet conceived or invented offer a much better method of reaching the myriad of communities of interest. If university presses use these methods, everyone wins: the author gets an audience, the audience gets a public intellectual, and the university press fulfills its public-spirited mission. (Poe 2012)

Poe’s essay makes a broader point about the role for university presses in ‘narrowcasting’ research communication by academics within an institution. But I think it also highlights the manner in which digital tools mean that ‘public engagement’ (for all the bagge that term carries within the modern academy) could become ubiquitous. Whether it should or not remains a contested question. But where I do agree with Savage and Burrows is that empirical sociology in general, as well as certain qualitative approaches in particular, face an unprecedented crisis. Without some creative attempt to rethink the public face of such activities in view of the challenges they face, irrelevance and decay surely beckons. However the ‘descriptive turn’ advocated by Savage and Burrows strikes me as defeatism. We can surely do better. We can at the very least try.

Mark Carrigan is editor of the Sociological Imagination. He blogs here and tweets here.

Charles Wright Mills’ body of work was substantial by any standards but for someone who died at the age of forty-five it was remarkable. The range and substance of Mills’ work is impressive but even more so is its originality, vitality and humanistic motivation: in short, its sociological imagination. In his still celebrated if now less influential work, The Sociological Imagination (1959), Mills addresses issues of sociological theory and method and particularly the practical application of the subject. However, in this piece I refer to a wide range of Mills’ work to illustrate that he was not only a great sociological mentor but also practised what he advocated.

Mills’ own sociological imagination was inspired by what he referred to as the classic sociological tradition the main feature of which is ‘the concern with historical social structures: and that its problems are of direct relevance to urgent public issues and insistent human troubles (S I: 28). Mills links personal troubles with public issues and threads biography into the historical structural dynamic. The achievement of the classic tradition lies in the creation of models of society that illuminate the impact of social change on people and on their potential for response. These models generate and inform theory but are developed at a more general level than specific theories. Thus Marx’s dialectical model of historical change and Weber’s concept of the role of ideas in history give orientation to theory and research. For Mills the issue is not about which model is ‘correct’ but their ability to illuminate large vistas of the social landscape. In addition to clarifying the relationships of the triad of social structure, historical change and biography, Mills argues that sociological imagination necessarily generates political perspective because of the understanding it gives of the human condition (S I chapter 10). Mills himself was emphatic in drawing practical conclusions from his sociological work. This brought him into sharp conflict with what he referred to as the ‘crack-pot realism’ of managerial liberals such as Daniel Bell whom he felt were reducing social issues to mere matters of ‘expert’ planning and administration. Similarly, he attacked ‘abstracted empiricism’ within sociology – the gathering of facts with little reference to their wider meaning or application. Mills’ Ph.D. was on American pragmatism and all his work carries the tone of someone who intended to make a difference.

Mills’ work amply demonstrates the principles underpinning his concept of the sociological imagination. In less than ten years he published three books that substantially analysed the social structure of the United States. The first, New Men of Power (1948) presented the leadership of the American trade union movement as integrated within rather than a challenging the American economic establishment. The second, White Collar (1951), analysed the rise of the new American middle class largely employed in the proliferating offices of the public and private sectors. This was followed by his magnum opus of structural analysis The Power Elite (1956) that remains a standard reference for understanding the workings and overlaps of the American economic, military, and political elites. This triad of publications had almost an anticipatory as well as contemporary relevance. It describes a declining and weakened industrial working class with an increasingly self-interested leadership; a white-collar class cemented within a still highly unequal occupational structure by media-led consumerism and its own desire for security; and a substantially autonomous elite only marginally disrupted in its pursuit of power, wealth and status by democratic processes. This was a very different vision of the United States and of Western societies than that adopted by those he saw as ‘conservative liberals’ such as Talcott Parsons and Daniel Bell who declared an ‘end of ideology’ long before Francis Fukuyama made the same mistaken judgement.

As Mills’ edited collection of classic sociological reading, Images of Man (1960) shows, he particularly admired European sociology. He was less impressed with his contemporary American colleagues. The one structural model that Mills found utterly wanting was Parsons’ social systems theory which he saw as prime example of ‘grand theory’. Mills’ ridiculing of Parsons’ abstract style had a serious point behind it – that such abstraction can take on a life of its own, divorced from the realities of everyday social life. More substantively, Mills argued that Parsons’ emphasis on consensus legitimised the social status quo and failed to address what for Mills is fundamental to the social dynamic – power conflict. In contrast to Parsons, he focused on who takes decisions and in whose interest and argued that elites invariably pursue their own self-interest (‘the idea of the responsibility of the powerful is foolish’ SI: 213). As he succinctly observed: ‘Men (sic) are free to make history, but some men are freer than others’ (S I: 201). 

Mills regarded ‘abstracted empiricism’ as the mirror opposite of ‘grand theory’ but as having a similar outcome – a failure critically to address the status quo and therefore a tacit endorsement of it. He associated abstracted empiricism with the proliferation of bureaucracy and what he saw as the reduction of social and moral matters to issues of management. Mills was as suspicious of ‘experts’ and ‘managers’ as of the elites they served arguing – again contra Daniel Bell – that fundamental matters of domestic and foreign policy should be widely debated. Like Habermas, and perhaps a little romantically, he occasionally harked back to a period when better-informed ‘publics’ debated key issues of policy. Mills certainly made his contribution to re-igniting such debates.

Mills’ model of society was an elites/mass rather than a class one. It is very much the first part of this dual model that Mills is remembered for – whether or not one agrees with it. A problem with the elites/mass model is that it tends to see the ‘mass’ as somewhat inert. In fact, Mills did share the view of many of his ‘conservative liberal’ antagonists as well as that other luminary of the left, Herbert Marcuse, that the masses were indeed rendered dully somnolent by the tedium of routine work and the soporific effect of the mass media. However, unlike his liberal critics, Mills embarked on an intellectual struggle to produce a new radical analysis of social change in the distinctly discouraging context of the conservative and reactionary nineteen fifties. His own analysis precluded him from privileging the traditional working class or, still less, the new white-collar class in the search for a key agency for change. However, Mills demonstrated a consistent concern for both the new poor of mature capitalist society and for those of the emerging world. As far as the former are concerned he had a prescient understanding of how what came to be referred to variously as ‘the dependent population’, ‘the underclass’ and ‘the marginal’ would become perceived as almost the residual ‘problem’ of modern society – resistant to endless plans to organise them. About the poor of the emerging world Mills was able in his later writings to be more optimistic. Although he railed against what he saw as the abuse of power in the bullying of Castro’s Cuba (Listen Yankee, 1960) and American militarism (The Causes of World War Three, 1958) he realised that in time the balance of power would shift – as, indeed, we are now seeing. 

In so far as Mills did tentatively observe an emerging agency for change in Western societies, it was among intellectuals, particularly young intellectuals. This was not mere wishful thinking on his part as he lived long enough to witness the stirrings of radicalism among young people in higher education both in the United States and Europe. As the following quotation from Mills’ Letter to the (British) New Left shows, he was sensitive to the need to re-explore the ethical and cultural values of radicalism: ‘As for the articulation of ideals, there I think your magazines have done there best work so far. That is your meaning – is it not – of the emphasis on cultural affairs.’ Mills had an enormous influence on the values and thinking of American student movement of the early nineteen sixties and had he lived might have been able to guide it away from the excesses of the late sixties. The Port Huron Statement (1962), the manifesto of the newly formed Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) amply reflected Mills’ belief in participatory democracy and practical humanism.

It is not difficult to imagine that Mills might have found himself at odds with the dominant contemporary state and corporate directed regimes of research and of the constraints they put on young scholars. His comments in The Sociological Imagination on research and the problem of funding remain relevant. He of course recognises the need for funds but also warns against the conditions that can come with it. He suggests that sometimes it may be better to work small-scale but independently rather than chase expensively funded research whose findings and interpretation may be ‘managed’ by the funding agency. What he MIGHT have made of the current state dominated research regimes is anybody’s guess. In a piece of advice that may seem trite and simplistic in the light of the complexity of the contemporary context of research, Mills’ advocates that the researcher should think and observe. But it is precisely because Mills’ makes what he terms ‘the craft of sociology’ accessible that is his genius 

Mills’ book, The Sociological Imagination, has inspired generations of young and not so young social scientists. This is partly because he wrote a great book – once voted the second most important sociological book of the twentieth century after Weber’s Economy and Society, partly because he practised what he advocated, but also because he was an inspiring and, in the best sense of the word, idealistic human being. Mills the sociologist, campaigner and character fused to generate a charisma to which there is no recent or present comparison in social science.  He retained a grounded utopianism that he defined as a commitment to an attainable but radically fairer and more equal future. His message is no less relevant now.

Bibliography   

Mills, C.W. (1948) New Men of PowerAmerica’s Labor Leaders. Oxford University Press.

Mills, C.W. (1951) White Collar: The American Middle Classes. Oxford University Press.

Mills, C.W. (1956). The Power Elite. Oxford University Press.

Mills, C.W. (1958) The Causes of World War Three. Simon and Schuster.

Mills, C.W. (1970 (1959)). The Sociological Imagination. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Mills, C.W. (1960) Listen Yankee: The Revolution in Cuba. Ballantine Books.

Mills, C. W. (1967 (1962)) Letter to the New Left. In Horowitz

I. (ed.), Power, Politics and People: The Collected Essays of C. Wright Mills. Oxford University Press, pp. 247-259.

Mike O’Donnell is Emeritus Prof of Sociology at Westminster University

Disclaimer: Whilst we intend to use only original pictures and other material, sometimes this doesn't quite happen. If you see material on here that you believe is being used without permission, please email and let us know, and we will ensure that the problem is remedied immediately. This work is licenced under a Creative Commons License RSS feed. This site uses the Basic Maths theme for WordPress, designed by Khoi Vinh & Allan Cole.

Jan 18, ’11 8:00 AM

One of the very paradoxes of the tuition fees and education cuts’ odyssey that has heated the political debate over the past few months lies in the way in which political leaders seem to be utterly shocked by the anger and uproar that their measures have generated throughout the public.

Following the sharp analysis of Les Back, such incomprehension is rooted in the filters that class privileges place on politicians’ ability to understand and make sense of the social world. Once empowered and invested with the privileges of their role, it seems, politicians develop a pronounced detachment from the social reality of the country. As a consequence, they become unable to face up with sober senses what they are doing, and what could be possibly wrong with it.

From this angle, the widening of the class divide, which is likely to become the new rationale of the UK education system, is both symptom and symbol of the inherent lack of socio-logical perspective within the political class. Recently, Sociology has been classified by Conservative and Liberal Democratic politicians as a ‘low cost’ discipline – however, one might wonder how much (social and political) value their own policies could actually gain if only a pinch of ‘sociological imagination’ was added to them…

Disclaimer: Whilst we intend to use only original pictures and other material, sometimes this doesn't quite happen. If you see material on here that you believe is being used without permission, please email and let us know, and we will ensure that the problem is remedied immediately. This work is licenced under a Creative Commons License RSS feed. This site uses the Basic Maths theme for WordPress, designed by Khoi Vinh & Allan Cole.

Disclaimer: Whilst we intend to use only original pictures and other material, sometimes this doesn't quite happen. If you see material on here that you believe is being used without permission, please email and let us know, and we will ensure that the problem is remedied immediately. This work is licenced under a Creative Commons License RSS feed. This site uses the Basic Maths theme for WordPress, designed by Khoi Vinh & Allan Cole.

Compiled by Albert Tzeng

Public Sociology Bibliography:

FROM THE ASA

The 1988 ASA Presidential Address by Herbert J Gans

Gans, H. (1989). “Sociology in America: The Discipline and the Public.” American Sociological Review 54(1):1-16

The 2004 ASA Presidential Address by M Burawoy

Burawoy, M. (2005). “For public sociology.” American Sociological Review 70(1): 4-28.

Burawoy, M. (2005). “2004 American sociological association presidential address: For public sociology.” British Journal of Sociology 56(2): 259-294.

ASA (2005) Public Sociology and the Roots of American Sociology: Re-Establishing Our Connection to the Public – Interim Report and Recommendations submitted by the ASA Task Force on Institutionalizing Public Sociologies to the ASA Council, July 2005.

Available at http://pubsoc.wisc.edu/e107_files/public/tfreport090105.pdf

ASA (2008). A symposium on public sociology : Looking back and forward, American Sociological Association.

BOOKS on Public Sociology

Agger, Ben (2001, 2007). Public Sociology: From Social Facts to Literary Acts. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

Firsr published before ‘public sociology’ popularized and therefore not written with Burawoy’s conceptualization in mind. This book is a critique of the writing style of professional sociologists (under the scientific aura) which made it inaccessible to the public reader. Ironically, the book itself was criticized by its own extensive use of postmodern terminology.

Blau, J. R. and K. E. Iyall Smith (2006). Public sociologies reader. Lanham, Md., Rowman & Littlefield.

Clawson, D. (2007). Public sociology: Fifteen eminent sociologists debate politics and the profession in the twenty-first century. Berkeley, CA; London, University of California Press.

About everything commendable about the idea of Burawoy

Nichols, L. T. (2007). Public sociology: The contemporary debate. New Brunswick, N.J. ; London, Transaction Publishers.

Jeffries, V. (2009). Handbook of public sociology. Lanham, Md., Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

Earlier Books Relevant to the Sociology-Public Link

Merton, R. K. (1972). Varieties of political expression in sociology. An american journal of sociology publication. Essays by robert k. Merton [and others], etc. Chicago & London, University of Chicago Press.

Carey, J. T. (1975). Sociology and public affairs : The chicago school. Beverly Hills ; London, Sage Publications.

SPECIAL JOURNAL ISSUES

Social Problem

51(1), 2004, Going Public: Scholarship in Pursuit of Social Justice

Public Sociologies: A Symposium from Boston College Michael Burawoy, William Gamson, Charlotte Ryan, Stephen Pfohl, Diane Vaughan, Charles Derber, Juliet Schor

Marital Suitors Court Social Science Spin-Sters: The Unwittingly Conservative Effects of Public Sociology Judith Stacey

A Tale of Three Discourses: Doing Action Research in a Research Methods Class Stephen R. Couch

Why Don’t They Listen to Us? Fashion Notes on the Imperial Wardrobe Joel Best

Social Force

82 (4), 2004, Commentaries & Debate

Introduction to a Debate on Public Sociologies Catherine Zimmer

Public Sociologies: Contradictions, Dilemmas, and Possibilities Michael Burawoy

The Vacant “We”: Remarks on Public Sociology François Nielsen

Why Public Sociology May Fail David Brady

The Arrogance of Public Sociology Charles R. Tittle

Critical Sociology

31(3), 2005

Michael Burawoy

The Critical Turn to Public Sociology
Critical Sociology 2005 31: 313-326. [PDF]

Joan Acker

Comments on Burawoy on Public Sociology
Critical Sociology 2005 31: 327-331. [PDF]

Stanley Aronowitz

Comments on Michael Burawoy’s “The Critical Turn to Public Sociology”
Critical Sociology 2005 31: 333-338. [PDF]

Gianpaolo Baiocchi

Interrogating Connections: From Public Criticisms to Critical Publics in Burawoy’s Public Sociology
Critical Sociology 2005 31: 339-351. [PDF]

Rose M. Brewer

Response to Michael Buroway’s Commentary: “The Critical Turn to Public Sociology”
Critical Sociology 2005 31: 353-359. [PDF]

Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi

Can Burawoy Make Everybody Happy? Comments on Public Sociology
Critical Sociology 2005 31: 361-369. [PDF]

Walda Katz-Fishman and Jerome Scott

Comments on Burawoy: A View From the Bottom-up
Critical Sociology 2005 31: 371-374. [PDF]

John Urry

The Good News and the Bad News
Critical Sociology 2005 31: 375-378. [PDF]

Michael Burawoy

Rejoinder: Toward a Critical Public Sociology
Critical Sociology 2005 31: 379-390. [PDF]

American Sociologist

36 (3-4), 2005. A Conversation about “Public Sociology”

37(2), 2006. The Possibilities of Sociological Knowledge

38(3), 2007. Public Engagement and Hope

40 (4) Public Sociology: Problematics, Publicity and Possibilities

British Journal of Sociology

56 (2), 2005 Continuing the public sociology debate

Continuing the public sociology debate – Editor’s preface Bridget Hutter

2004 ASA Presidential address: For public sociology Michael Burawoy

56 (3), 2005 Continuing the public sociologies debate – replies to Michael Burawoy

Foreword Bridget M Hutter

How not to become a museum piece Ulrich Beck

For public social science John Braithwaite

The promise of public sociology Craig Calhoun

Publicizing sociology Richard Ericson

Bookmarks for public sociologists Amitai Etzioni

A guarded welcome John A Hall

Comments on Michael Burawoy’s ASA Presidential Address Christine Inglis

What is ‘public sociology’? Why and how should it be made stronger? Ragnvald Kalleberg

Four sociologies, multiple roles Stella R Quah

Digging in the penumbra of master categories Saskia Sassen

Who will speak, and who will listen? Comments on Burawoy and public sociology John Scott

On the relevance of ethnography for the production of public sociology and policy Diane Vaughan

Response: Public sociology: populist fad or path to renewal? Michael Burawoy

57 (2), 2006 Debate on British sociology and public intellectuals

British sociology and public intellectuals: consumer society and imperial decline Bryan S Turner

Replies to Bryan S Turner

The intellectuals and capitalism Philippe Fontaine

Comments on Turner David Frisby

Notes towards a renaissance in British sociology: a response to Turner Steve Fuller

The racial threat Patricia Hill Collins

Who’s a public intellectual? George Ritzer

Comment on Bryan S Turner, ‘British sociology and public intellectuals: consumer society and imperial decline’ Neil Smelser

Sociology- the BSA Journal

41 (5), 2007

John Holmwood and Sue Scott

Editorial Foreword: Sociology and its Public Face(s)
Sociology 2007 41: 779-783. [PDF]

Stephen Turner

Public Sociology and Democratic Theory
Sociology 2007 41: 785-798. [Abstract] [PDF]

Marinus Ossewaarde

Sociology Back to the Publics
Sociology 2007 41: 799-812. [Abstract] [PDF]

Neil McLaughlin and Kerry Turcotte

The Trouble with Burawoy: An Analytic, Synthetic Alternative
Sociology 2007 41: 813-828. [Abstract] [PDF]

E. Stina Lyon

Viola Klein: Forgotten Émigré Intellectual, Public Sociologist and Advocate of Women
Sociology 2007 41: 829-842. [Abstract] [PDF]

Karim Murji

Sociological Engagements: Institutional Racism and Beyond
Sociology 2007 41: 843-855. [Abstract] [PDF]

Gregor McLennan

Towards Postsecular Sociology?
Sociology 2007 41: 857-870. [Abstract] [PDF]

Gurminder K. Bhambra

Sociology and Postcolonialism: Another `Missing’ Revolution?
Sociology 2007 41: 871-884. [Abstract] [PDF]

Mike Savage and Roger Burrows

The Coming Crisis of Empirical Sociology
Sociology 2007 41: 885-899. [Abstract] [PDF]

Geoff Payne

Social Divisions, Social Mobilities and Social Research: Methodological Issues after 40 Years
Sociology 2007 41: 901-915. [Abstract] [PDF]

Stevi Jackson and Amanda Rees

The Appalling Appeal of Nature: The Popular Influence of Evolutionary Psychology as a Problem for Sociology
Sociology 2007 41: 917-930. [Abstract] [PDF]

David Skinner

Groundhog Day? The Strange Case of Sociology, Race and `Science’
Sociology 2007 41: 931-943. [Abstract] [PDF]

Paul Wakeling

White Faces, Black Faces: Is British Sociology a White Discipline?
Sociology 2007 41: 945-960. [Abstract] [PDF]

Jennifer Platt

The Women’s Movement and British Journal Articles, 1950—2004
Sociology 2007 41: 961-975. [Abstract] [PDF]

Canadian Journal of Sociology

34(3), 2009

Public Sociology in Canada: Debates, Research and Historical Context	Abstract PDF
Rick Helmes-Hayes, Neil Mclaughlin	573-600

Rethinking Burawoy: Reflections from Canadian Feminist Sociology	Abstract PDF
Gillian Creese, Arlene Tigar McLaren, Jane Pulkingham	601-622

Drifting Apart? The Institutional Dynamics Awaiting Public Sociology in Canada	Abstract PDF
Scott Davies	623-654

Professional, Critical, Policy, and Public Academics in Canada	Abstract PDF
Robert Joseph Brym, M. Reza Nakhaie	655-670

What Do ‘We’ Know That ‘They’ Don’t? Sociologists’ versus Non-Sociologists’ Knowledge	Abstract PDF
Anne Mesny	671-696

Mapping the Social Space of Opinion: Public Sociology and the Op-Ed in Canada	Abstract PDF
Lisa Kowalchuk, Neil McLaughlin	697-728

Public Sociology in Print: A Comparative Analysis of Book Publishing in Three Social Science Disciplines	Abstract PDF
Alex Mochnacki, Aaron Segaert, Neil Mclaughlin	729-764

What Do Public Sociologists Do? A Critique of Burawoy	Abstract PDF
Avi Goldberg, Axel van den Berg	765-802

The Three Axes of Sociological Practice: The Case of French Quebec	Abstract PDF
Jean-Philippe Warren	803-830

Engaged, Practical Intellectualism: John Porter and ‘New Liberal’ Public Sociology	Abstract PDF
Richard Helmes-Hayes	831-868

Disciplinary Mosaic: The Case of Canadian Sociology	Abstract PDF
Michael Burawoy	869-886

Society in Transition- Journal of the South African Sociological Association 35(1), 35 (2) 2004

Sotsiologicheskie Issledovaniya (Russuan) 35(4), 2009

Contemporary Sociology- a Journal of Reviews

37 (6), 2008 A Symposium on Public Sociology

Valerie Jenness, David A. Smith, and Judith Stepan-Norris

Editors’ Note: Public Sociology: Looking Back and Forward
Contemporary Sociology: A Journal of Reviews 2008 37: ix-x. [PDF]

Kenneth C. Land

Whither Public Sociology?
Contemporary Sociology: A Journal of Reviews 2008 37: 507-511. [PDF]

Pepper Schwartz

The Contested Territory of Public Sociology
Contemporary Sociology: A Journal of Reviews 2008 37: 512-515. [PDF]

Judith Blau

A Better World. Possible? But of Course!
Contemporary Sociology: A Journal of Reviews 2008 37: 515-519. [PDF]

J. Steven Picou

In Search of a Public Environmental Sociology: Ecological Risks in the Twenty-First Century
Contemporary Sociology: A Journal of Reviews 2008 37: 520-523. [PDF]

Douglas Klayman

Creating Sociological Awareness: Public and Applied Sociology
Contemporary Sociology: A Journal of Reviews 2008 37: 524-530. [PDF]

Current Sociology 56 (3), 2008

Dennis Smith

Editorial: Beyond Greed, Fear and Anger
Current Sociology 2008 56: 347-350. [PDF]

Michael Burawoy

What is to be Done?: Theses on the Degradation of Social Existence in a Globalizing World
Current Sociology 2008 56: 351-359. [Abstract] [PDF]

Alberto Martinelli

Sociology in Political Practice and Public Discourse
Current Sociology 2008 56: 361-370. [Abstract] [PDF]

Dennis Smith

Globalization, Degradation and the Dynamics of Humiliation
Current Sociology 2008 56: 371-379. [Abstract] [PDF]

Michel Wieviorka

Some Considerations after Reading Michael Burawoy’s Article: `What is to be Done? Theses on the Degradation of Social Existence in a Globalizing World’
Current Sociology 2008 56: 381-388. [Abstract] [PDF]

Adam Habib

Speaking `Truth’ to All Forms of Power: Reflections on the Role of the Public Sociologist in South Africa
Current Sociology 2008 56: 389-398. [Abstract] [PDF]

Shen Yuan

Strong and Weak Intervention: Two Pathways for Sociological Intervention
Current Sociology 2008 56: 399-404. [Abstract] [PDF]

Elena Zdravomyslova

`Make Way for Professional Sociology!’: Public Sociology in the Russian Context
Current Sociology 2008 56: 405-414. [Abstract] [PDF]

Ruy Braga, Sylvia Gemignani Garcia, and Leonardo Mello e Silva

Public Sociology and Social Engagement: Considerations on Brazil
Current Sociology 2008 56: 415-424. [Abstract] [PDF]

Amita Baviskar

Pedagogy, Public Sociology and Politics in India: What is to be Done?
Current Sociology 2008 56: 425-433. [Abstract] [PDF]

Michael Burawoy

Rejoinder: For a Subaltern Global Sociology?
Current Sociology 2008 56: 435-444. [Abstract] [PDF]

Labour & Industry 19(1-2), 2008

Work and Occupation 36 (2), 2009

Michael Burawoy

The Global Turn: Lessons From Southern Labor Scholars and Their Labor Movements
Work and Occupations 2009 36: 87-95. [Abstract] [PDF]

Marco Aurélio Santana and Ruy Braga

Brazil: The Swinging Pendulum Between Labor Sociology and Labor Movement
Work and Occupations 2009 36: 96-109. [Abstract] [PDF]

Ching Kwan Lee and Yuan Shen

China: The Paradox and Possibility of a Public Sociology of Labor
Work and Occupations 2009 36: 110-125. [Abstract] [PDF]

Sharit K. Bhowmik

India: Labor Sociology Searching for a Direction
Work and Occupations 2009 36: 126-144. [Abstract] [PDF]

Sakhela Buhlungu

South Africa: The Decline of Labor Studies and the Democratic Transition
Work and Occupations 2009 36: 145-161. [Abstract] [PDF]

Soon-Kyoung Cho

South Korea: Toward a Collective Public Sociology of Labor
Work and Occupations 2009 36: 162-176. [Abstract] [PDF]

Other notable Journal articles

Vaughan, D. (2006). “NASA revisited: Theory, analogy, and public sociology.” American Journal of Sociology 112(2): 353-393. – an interesting case study of how sociological expertise is negotiated in the process of being communicated via wider readers

Keith, M. (2008). “Public sociology? Between heroic immersion and critical distance: Personal reflections on academic engagement with political life.” Critical Social Policy 28(3): 320-334.

Gans, H. J. (2010). “Public ethnography; ethnography as public sociology.” Qualitative Sociology 33(1): 97-104.

WEBSITE of INTEREST

Entry ‘Public Sociology’ on Wikipedia

Oct 18, ’11 8:00 AM

In this essay, Wolfgang Streeck, recounts an experience of being at an international social science conference a few years where Michael Burawoy issued his famous call for ‘public sociology‘. Streeck recalls being struck by the paradoxical situation faced by sociologists in the early 21st century: while there has never before been so many people “well trained in analysing and explaining the social life”, the most powerful leaders produced by that most sociologically sophisticated generation had been George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. In spite of the “star-studded social science departments from Harvard to Stanford” there was a “progressive decay of the politics and economy of the United States” which continues to this day.

Thus he asks – does US sociology have a problem of demand? Within the ‘quality newspapers’, there is regular input from psychology, neuroscience, evolutionary biology and, of course, economics. Even what were relatively marginal branches of economic theory (e.g. behavioural economics and neuroeconomics) received media coverage, with their marginality and novelty seemingly a sufficiently interesting ‘news hook’ to justify their inclusion in some publications. But where is sociology? Why is it absent? At best reports of sociological findings on certain topics make themselves known but not the rationale, theories, methods or methodologies underpinning these conclusions. Rather than summarising his analysis, we thought we’d highlight his key question instead. In our view this is the most important issue facing contemporary sociology. Why is this the case and how can we fix it?

“Why is sociology absent in public debates … why do sociologists have so little confidence in their work that they talk about it only to each other, rather than to the world at large?”

Celebrating the 50th anniversary of C. Wright Mills’ death, Sociological Imagination pays a respectful and moving tribute to the man who gave this forum its name through the legacy of his classic 1959 book, The Sociological Imagination, a veritable manifesto for the moral canon of radical sociology in America during the roaring 1960s and 1970s. Considering ‘the life, legacy and ideas of this unique man and what they mean for Sociology in an age of austerity’, my modest contribution to this homage to C.W.Mills is not merely a love-letter to an inspirational role model but an excuse to tease the contents of the book in order to shake up a few virtues and vices of the sociological discipline today as I witness them daily in the process of performing a biopsy on (public) sociology through the writing of my PhD. The inspiration that established the ferment for this article originates in Aditya Chakrabortty’s search for ‘fresh voices’ in political science and sociology and my personal suspicion that Mills’ Sociological Imagination stands as graceful interlocutor  in a(ny) debate on what sociology is about, what it is for, what does it do and what it may mean, especially in times of austerity; a theme that was in fact addressed in the 2012 BSA conference hosted by the University Leeds last April. Instead of reviewing the outburst of controversy that Chakrabortty’s  Guardian article sparked however, the focus here is on the discussion it opens up and the lessons that Mills’ grand oeuvre might have to offer, not didactically but experientially.

As a rhetorical preamble to my argument, I submit that A. Chakrabortty’s inflammatory remarks about sociology and political science are true or false, justified or unfair, timely or irrelevant depending on what we think sociology is for, about and what it might mean for us and others. I therefore take the liberty to offer some thoughts off the top of my head and from the bottom of my heart about how I think sociological imagination fits into the questions raised above, guided by a personal, perhaps idiosyncratic, possibly eccentric but certainly passionate reading of Mills’ book.

My personal exposure to The Sociological Imagination coincides with my sociological adolescence, skimming the book distractedly during a train journey, never expecting that I would stumble upon a powerful vision for sociology that had more to do with the alchemy of the vocation rather than the text-book science of sociology. To make matters worse, reading Mills presented me with an opportunity to treat sociology as a comment about the very process of doing sociology as well as inspiring an understanding of the discipline as a creative, imaginary pursuit, and not a dry, computational model of research. Sociology immediately appeared as an intellectual endeavour that could do things not through its science but through its imagination urging sociologists to be ‘intellectual craftsmen’, not ‘cheerful robots’ to pick two popular quotes from the book.

But what is sociology for? 

Mills’ book provides no direct answer to this question, but it does inspire a way of answering it if one is to embrace the intellectual craftsmanship of playful experimentation with ideas rather than succumbing to the incipient robotism of absolute facts and iron certainties.  Following that playful route, we may suggest that sociology is the intellectual enterprise which mobilises sociological imagination as the fuel for understanding what society is. Sociological imagination then becomes exactly what Mills’ dreamed it would be; a community medium of exchange, wedding ‘private troubles’ with ‘social issues’. For the purposes of this article then sociology and sociological imagination become Siamese twins, inseparable from each other like Aristophanes’ androgynous in Plato’s Symposium. If sociology then is sociological imagination’s better-half, what does their marriage look like? Paraphrasing Henri Bergson’s famous quotation in Pierre Hadot’s (2009) exposé on philosophy, sociology becomes not the construction of a system of knowledge but ‘the resolution made once to look naively at the world’. Sociology then, like philosophy becomes a tool for imaginative day-dreaming of ‘the possibility of living together differently, with less misery or no misery’ and ‘developing an art of living permanently with uncertainty’ as Bauman (2000) hopes for both ‘writing sociology’ and dealing with ‘the trouble of being human these days’. Sociology, dressed in its most imaginative clothes ceases to be a discipline, or a science but gradually also becomes what it imagines itself to be; a space, a culture, an attitude, a lifestyle, a stage, a ritual, an institution, a movement, a profession, a brand name, a community, a tool for articulation of human concerns.

But what is sociology about? 

Sociology-as-sociological-imagination is about satisfying the curious impulse to ask questions similar to the one’s torrentially posed by Sam Selvon’s  flâneurian narrator in the short story My Girl and the City; ‘What is all this, what is the meaning of all these things that happen to people, the movement from one place to another, lighting a cigarette, slipping a coin into a slot and pulling a drawer for chocolate, buying a return ticket, waiting for a bus, working the crossword puzzle in the Evening Standard’. What seems to be a literary departure from sociological matters however, couldn’t fit better Mills’ very own contention that ‘whatever sociology may be, it is the result of constantly asking the question, what is the meaning of this?’ Vague though this may sound, Mills insists that ‘Sociologists of my sort would like to study what people want and what people cherish’ and viewed this way sociology becomes the private detective and the architect of our social life; that very shaky edifice we build out of scraps, dogmas, childhood inquiries, chance remarks and anything our imagination might compel us to add to this perfunctory list.

So what does sociology do? 

Sociology does what we ask it to do with the sociologist faced with the dilemma that Mills poses between acting as ‘philosopher king’ or ‘advisor to the prince’. With sociological imagination as its code, its software and its politics, sociology not only defamiliarises the familiar, excites the routine, unsettles the prejudicial, shows what we live by, what we want, what the passage of time has showed we wanted, if we want now what we wanted then but also aspires to become what C.L.R. James (1963) called ‘the welfare state of the mind’; acting as society’s very ambassador, its spokesperson, its legislator and interpreter, to borrow from Zygmunt Bauman’s (1989) homonymous book. Sociologists such as Michael Burawoy (2005) have gone as far as to consider sociology the very defender of civil society so would it be too risky to toy with a view of sociology as the author of society’s imaginary constitution?  Merging Mills’ ideas to Cornelius Castoriadis’ (1998) The Imaginary Institution of Society, would it go too far to suggest that if we are the society drafting its very constitution, dreaming up its institutions, deciding upon its future through our established rites, reflexes and norms, sociology might be our vehicle for doing so? Would it be too much to argue that sociology becomes society’s user manual, our guide to the labyrinth of human affairs?

And what does sociology mean?

Sociology means what we want it to mean, it can mean an imaginary craft or a research technique, it can inspire and contribute to the world through the flowering of its imagination, or it can raise funds, it can defend higher education from the salivating jaws of unbridled corporatism or it can facilitate it, it can teach experientially and interpret critically, or it can conform, it can look at holistic massage through a Foucauldian lens or it cannot overlook sociological imagination as a way of looking at things through one’s own lens, it can support austerity or it can promote prosperity not of any nation now, but the imagination.

References:

Bauman, Z. (1989) Legislators and Interpreters. London: Polity.

Bauman, Z. (2000) “On Writing Sociology”.  Theory, Culture and Society Vol.17 (1): 79-90

Burawoy, M. (2005). “For public sociology.” American Sociological Review 70(1): 4-28.

Castoriadis, C. (1998) The Imaginary Institution of Society. Massachussets: MIT Press

Hadot, P. (2009) The Present Alone is Our Happiness. Stanford: Stanford University Press

James, C.L.R (1963) Beyond A Boundary. London: Hutchinson

Mills, C.W. (1959) The Sociological Imagination. New York: Oxford Univeristy Press

Selvon, S. My Girl and the City. Available at: http://www.srs-pr.com/caribbean-lit/selvon-my-girl.pdf [Accessed 23 May 2012]

Lambros Fatsis is a final year DPhil student at the School of Law, Politics and Sociology at the University of Sussex. His doctoral thesis concentrates on discussions of public sociology, the role of the University and intellectuals, while other research interests include black music, urban culture and the history and sociology of the Jamaican soundsystem. He also performs as a reggae selector/radio presenter under the name Boulevard Soundsystem and is a contributor of Billboard magazine on reggae music.

In a recent article Aditya Chakrabortty argued that economics has failed us but sociology has been unable to offer any alternatives. In this podcast I talk to Melanie Simms of Warwick Business School, who signed this group letter to the Guardian, about work sociology and its relevance to the big questions which Chakrabortty accuses the discipline of having no answers to. Explore some of these issues further in a special edition of Work, Employment and Society which is freely available until the end of May.

Was Aditya Chakrabortty right about Sociology?

Apr 25, ’12 8:00 AM

In this podcast Les Back discusses the enduring significance of C. Wright Mills to sociology. He mentions a (fantastic) book during his talk which we’ve embedded below.

Les Back on Sociology’s Promise

Underlying much sociological explanation is an attempt to bridge the gap between the ‘micro’ and the ‘macro’ within the context of a specific empirical inquiry. As the authors put it, “in the human and behavioural sciences, the analytical connection or co-relation between individual and social processes, between cognitive (mental) and social (group) structures, or between ‘habitus’ and ‘field’ … is often understood and elaborated as the big problem of bridging the ‘micro’ and ‘macro’ levels” (Lydaki and Tsekeris 2011: 68). The apparent diversity with which this ‘gap’ is characterised within social theory points to the intractability of the underlying issue: how do we make sense of the relationship between the individual actors we see around us and the wider social order which appears to shape but also be shaped by their actions? The dualisms which proliferate within social theory do so, in part, as a result of a failure to resolve this underlying question. An inability to establish consensus on the underlying explanatory question posed by social research has, as its flip side, the continual elaboration of a sometimes strikingly imprecise conceptual vocabulary which attempts to come to terms with various aspects of this foundational challenge: “constructivism-positivism, subjectivism-objectivism, intentionalism-functionalism, agency-structure, individual-society, or micro-macro” (Lydaki and Tsekeris 2011: 70). Depressingly large tracts of sociological discourse have proceeded from the personal investments and logical entailments which stem from occupying one side or another of these dualisms. Even as the last couple of decades have seen a variety of attempts to bridge these dichotomies, or even abandon them entirely as terms of reference, these moves have in turn bred new dichotomies (e.g. structurationist and post-structurationist) which, perhaps as the one last sign of my past life as a Rortyean philosophy student, never cease to appal me on an aesthetic level.

Drawing on the work of Nicos Mouzelis, Lydaki and Tsekeris argue that this “pluralization of approaches seriously impeded the epistemologically healthy capacity for meta-theory  - that is, for a sincere, uninterrupted and open-ended dialogue between opposing worldviews and paradigms” (Lydaki and Tsekeris 2011: 71). The proliferation of competing paradigms, often driven by technical polemics rather than practical disagreement over shared aims, worked to erode the common frame of reference within which sociologists were able to evaluate ‘theories’ as competing ways of making sense of underlying practical questions of explaining the social world. It contributed to a ghettoization of social theory, with its practical implementation too often limited to those who, having seen the explanatory gains which emerged from a particular approach, ensconced themselves within it and worked with others to elaborate it within its own theoretical terms of reference e.g. bourdieusian theory. As a consequence, social theory ossifies as, with the conceptual logics of particular theoretical approaches increasingly insulated from the practical logics encountered in the practice of social research, the point of social theory becomes increasingly unclear. Likewise the uses to which social theory is put within social research become less helpful than they would otherwise be because of this broader lack of clarity. It almost seems, perhaps, that social theory becomes something which sociologists are self-conscious about. In a way it should be. The characteristics which many find frustrating about contemporary social theory are, I wish to argue, indicative of things having gone badly wrong. They are a sign of people having talked too much, for too long, about predominately practical issues which, it seems, we might have come to some sort of working agreement on if circumstances had been different. My point is not that we should all agree on one ‘paradigm’ but simply that the fixation on ‘paradigms’ has precluded a consensus about the practical purposes which these sorts of discussions should serve.

Tsekeris, C., & Lydaki, A. (2011). The micro-macro dilemma in sociology: Perplexities and perspectives. Sociologija, 53(1), 67-82. doi:10.2298/SOC1101067T

Mark Carrigan is editor of the Sociological Imagination. He blogs about stuff here and tweets about things here.