The value of sociology by Les BackThe seeds of the current crisis have had a long gestation period. It is a mistake to think that our present situation is solely a product of the public spending review and the political opportunity that has been seized by the coalition government to force us to oversee our own privatization. The current crisis emerges out of a long sequence of transitions that have transformed the nature of the university. As Bill Readings has argued the university’s relationship to the nation state is no longer what Schiller or Humboldt thought of as a cultural function to foster national tradition and history through the canonisation of knowledge. The university of culture – albeit for an elite select few – was replaced by what Readings refers to as a post-historical university no longer preoccupied with the past. Rather it is concerned only with the pursuit of ‘excellence’ through auditing mechanisms like the Research Assessment Exercise or the Research Excellence Framework. Today via the Browne report the post-historical university is morphing into the neo-liberal university of commerce where knowledge is valuable only if it has a marketable exchange value or the potential for policy relevance. The problem we face, as a discipline and individually as practitioners of the craft of sociology, is how, and on what terms, do we make the case for the value of sociology and sociological values? Do we try and show our usefulness to the economy or our impact on policy and thus accept the parameters and values of what I am calling the university of commerce, or do we insist on expanding the parameters of worth and develop the confidence to articulate a set of counter values? I think it would be a mistake to confine our argument for sociology only within the terms set by Lord Browne and the advocates of the university of commerce.
Sociology is valuable because is challenges individualism in the era of the ‘fresh page of the present.’ The individualisation of collective relations, the evaporation of history, the loneliness of personal responsibility all seems to suggest the importance of the relation between the individual and history. “Personality is a strange composite,” wrote Gramsci from the loneliness of his prison cell. “A product of the historical process to date which has deposited in you an infinity of traces, without leaving an inventory.” The promise of sociology must be the invitation to develop such an inventory. It should identify how we are produced as subjects as biographies so that we can be more than what we are already, more than those scripts. Perhaps it is also a matter of socialising the failings that neo-liberalism forces us to experience privately. For academic sociologists we must dismantle the personal complicities and collective entanglements with the way the institutional forms of audit (via the RAE/ REF) have colonised our sociological imaginations.
I have been thinking about this a lot in relation to students in the middle of their final year. What is the promise of sociology for them as they start to contemplate graduation in the midst of a financial crisis and with a large and unjustifiable debt? The rhetoric of the ‘new capitalism’ and flexibility, being qualified for jobs that haven’t been invented yet is nothing more than hokum. Perhaps, the promise of sociology is to provide ways understanding what is before them and imagining ways to act in a society full of moral complexity, a world of ‘skills extinction,’ contingency and uncertainty or what Zygmunt Bauman calls liquid life and liquid love. “At no turning point in human history did educators face a challenge strictly comparable to the one presented by the current watershed” writes Bauman in his latest book 44 Letters from the Liquid Modern World (Polity, 2010). The university is a place to prepare students for a life in such a society, to learn how information mediates the way they understand themselves and their place in the world. It is where we must all learn how to judge between fabricated realities and distinguish them from our most intimate and profound personal commitments.
Les Back, Goldsmiths University of London
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Why understanding can’t be bought or sold by Les Back“I need to get the most out of this because I am paying for it,” I overheard a first year say to her friend as she dashed to an induction meeting in September. The marketisation of the university has turned campuses into places of commerce and competition. As we all know, the increase of student fees is accelerating that process as well as dividing and ranking the sector. Lecturers fear that students will become increasingly demanding and insistent in exercising their rights as consumers. The National Student Survey (NSS) will be the mechanism through which the government and HEFC will adduce satisfaction of students. While I share many of the reservations about the adequacy of the NSS to measure educational value, blaming the consumerism of students for our current situation is tactically wrong.
One of the damaging effects of the prioritisation of research within the auditing of ‘excellence’ in universities was the devaluing of teaching. I think we have to open up a critical conversation with students about what the changes in higher education is doing to them as well as to the profession. “The more it costs, the less it’s worth,” students shouted in protest to the introduction of fees and indebtedness. The reduction of education to a thing that can be bought and sold corrodes the value of what we do in the classroom.
A thought can’t be purchased, neither can a leap of imagination be bought or a link between a private trouble and a public issue. The idea that education promises a straightforward return on a financial outlay cheapens what is precious about it. It is entirely logical that students should start to see themselves as paying customers. I think it is incumbent on staff to make their teaching worth the price it has cost. Nevertheless, thinking and intellectual growth cannot be purchased ‘off the peg’.
Inside the student movement there is an awareness that the changes in the new university environment threaten to cost them more than just a large debt. An atmosphere of instrumentalism undermines the university’s ability to foster a place where we can ‘think together’ about difficult problems and practise what Fichte called the “exercise of critical judgement”. They will be forced to weight the value of their learning as balance between financial cost and speculated benefit. I don’t think students want to be placated like customers, they want engagement and to be challenged and pushed to think harder.
“The art of living in a world oversaturated with information is yet to be learned” writes Zygmunt Bauman. Perhaps, there is another challenge that concerns the art of learning in such a world. Can we simply vilify students for not doing the reading set for this week’s seminar? Or, is it time to think again about the adequacy of the lecture/seminar format for teaching the craft of sociology? I think perhaps the only positive thing about the current situation is that it is forcing a re-assessment of our role as teachers. We have to insist on other measures of worth and reflect honestly on the values we bring to life when we are teaching.
Les Back, Goldsmiths University of London
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In this interview I talk to Les Back about the opportunities for sociology in a time of crisis. He argues that there has never been a greater opportunity to rethink the craft of sociology than there is at present. He’ll be speaking on these themes at the first BSA Digital Sociology event in a couple of months time. Follow us on Twitter or e-mail me if you’d like to be kept informed about the event.
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Why Nick Clegg needs a degree in sociology by Les BackLooking back over the past months one of the enduring images in my mind is the sense of hurt displayed in the body language of Nick Clegg, and even David Cameron, at the level of anger that has been directed at them over tuition fees and the education cuts. ‘We’re nice guys after all, we don’t really have a choice’ you can almost hear them thinking. They seemed personally shocked by the suggestion that they are implicated in a grave injustice, almost as if the outcry is incomprehensible. Perhaps, this is because, speaking sociologically, the public anger is incomprehensible to them.
In a way, their inability to have anticipated the furore and anger over tuition fees is an argument for sociology itself. The filters that class privilege places on their ability to make sense of the social world explain this incompre-hension. For the Liberal Democrat there is something desperate and pathetic in their empty gestures at radicalism. Simon Hughes, Deputy Leader, stated recently that Oxbridge and elite Russell Group Universities should restrict the proportion of applicants from private schools. At the same time, these changes and differential fees will undoubtedly reinforce the class divided nature of education. The private secondary school close to where I live charges £12,000 a year to educate a child. They pride themselves on their ‘excellent record of gaining places at Oxford and Cambridge’. So, for those families paying £9,000 a year for University fees this is a 25% reduction in their annual investment on their children’s future. Equally, Norman Lamb’s ‘outrage’ at the racism and ubiquitous whiteness of Oxbridge colleges on Question Time is another example of desperate attempts to strike a radical pose.
The situation in HE now is so profoundly different from anything we have seen before that we just cannot know what is ahead. Whatever that future might be, a sociological imagination will be an increasingly valuable resource to try and make sense of what is unfolding. Claire Callender warned a decade ago that the fear of student debt inhibits widening access to university. As she herself has noted despite this there has been a measure of success in widening student participation and the changes to student fees that were implemented in 2004 did not halt this. Last year HEFC reported “young people living in the most disadvantaged areas who enter higher education has increased by around +30 per cent over the past five years.” However, according to Sir Martin Harris, Director of Fair Access, for the top third selective universities, the proportion of disadvantaged students “remained almost flat.” There may be an increased measure of access to higher education but there has been little change with regard to where the most advantaged students go to university. The choices students make according to Claire Callender and Jonathan Jackson: “reflect their material constraints as well as their cultural and social capital, social perceptions and distinctions, and forms of self-exclusion – all of which are class bound”.
There is something very Victorian about the way Liberal Democrat politicians refer to the image of the clever but excluded poor students of Bermondsey and elsewhere. It is precisely the politician’s privilege that makes them unable to face up with sober senses to what they are doing. Maybe it would be worth the money for Nick Clegg and Simon Hughes to apply for a place on a degree programme in sociology? There might be some intense staff competition to have those courses added to their teaching loads.
Les Back, Goldsmiths University of London
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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.
C. Wright Mills is best remembered for his highly acclaimed work The Sociological Imagination, in which he set forth his views on how social science should be pursued. Hailed upon publication as a cogent and hard-hitting critique, The Sociological Imagination took issue with the ascendant schools of sociology in the United States, calling for a humanist sociology connecting the social, personal, and historical dimensions of our lives.
When Pete Seeger was sociology major at Harvard University, Thomas and Znaneicki's The Polish Peasant had been published but Talcott Parson's The Social System had not. Parsons was on the faculty, however, and so was Robert Merton, though they weren't the reason Pete dropped out of Harvard after one year.
When the history of how a good crisis went to waste gets written up, it will surely contain a big chapter on the failure of our academic elites. Because just like the politicians, the taxpayer-funded intellectuals at our universities have missed the historic opportunities gifted to them by the financial collapse.
Sociology and Its Others: Reflections on Disciplinary Specialisation and Fragmentation
by John Scott
University of Essex
Sociology after Fordism: Prospects and problems
- John Holmwood⇓
- John Holmwood, School of Sociology and Social Policy, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK Email: john.holmwood{at}nottingham.ac.uk
Abstract
A number of commentators have suggested that the shift from a Fordist to a post-Fordist regime of political economy has had positive consequences for sociology, including the reinforcement of critical sociologies (Burawoy, 2005; Steinmetz, 2005). This article argues that, although disciplinary hierarchies have been destabilized, what is emerging is a new form of instrumental knowledge, that of applied interdisciplinary social studies. This development has had a particular impact upon sociology. Savage and Burrows (2007), for example, argue that sociological knowledge no longer has a privileged claim to authority and is increasingly in competition with social knowledge produced by the private sector and agencies of the public sector. The response of many sociologists to such claims has been to reassert the importance of the discipline as the purveyor of critically relevant knowledge about society. The article traces how the idea of internal critique within sociology has developed to embrace ‘knowing capitalism’ (Thrift, 2005), at the same time as declaring the impossibility of sociological knowledge. The critique of sociology also becomes the critique of critique and what remains is the instrumentalization of knowledge. Where many sociologists continue to claim a special interest in critical knowledge, the article suggests that, in contrast, we potentially confront the problem that such knowledge may itself be facing a crisis of reproduction.
Article Notes
John Holmwood is Professor of Sociology at the University of Nottingham, UK. He is also Chair of the UK Council of Heads and Professors of Sociology. His main research interests are the relation between sociological theory and explanation, and social stratification and inequality. His current research addresses the challenge of global social inquiry and the role of pragmatism in the construction of public sociology. He has recently held a Leverhulme Research Fellowship on the moral economy of inequality. Address: School of Sociology and Social Policy, University of Nottingham, University Park, Nottingham NG7 2RD, UK [email: john.holmwood{at}nottingham.ac.uk]
- © SAGE Publications 2011
doi: 10.1177/1368431011417937 European Journal of Social Theory November 2011 vol. 14 no. 4 537-556
- » Abstract
- Full Text (PDF)
- References
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
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The BSA has created this blog in response to the budget cuts announced in the Government's Comprehensive Spending Review. We hope to address your concerns, engage with the challenges sociology faces as the cuts take shape and tackle the issues that matter to you, the sociologist.
Jan 18, ’11 8:00 AMOne 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
Over the last few years there has been one passage of academic social science text that has stayed with me more than any other. The issue it raises concers the way in which the sociological imagination is located and deployed within cultural spheres that we might not necessarily see, at first sight at least, as being at all serious or socio ...
Oct 18, ’11 8:00 AMIn 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?”
I was once asked by Mark Carrigan, editor of The Sociological Imagination, what I have learnt from studying Sociology, this was my brief response: "In a nutshell, Sociology has given me specific tools that have become invaluable to me personally and professionally. I think it is a discipline which teaches the techniques and politics behind t ...
I got my doctorate in sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the exact same place C. Wright Mills got his doctorate in sociology. I know this because we shared some of the same professors there and, even more importantly, because when I had to file a little index card in the Sociology Office with the title of my dissertation ...
The Coming Crisis of Empirical SociologyAbstract
This ar ticle argues that in an age of knowing capitalism, sociologists have not adequately thought about the challenges posed to their expertise by the proliferation of `social' transactional data which are now routinely collected, processed and analysed by a wide variety of private and public institutions. Drawing on British examples, we argue that whereas over the past 40 years sociologists championed innovative methodological resources, notably the sample survey and the in-depth interviews, which reasonably allowed them to claim distinctive expertise to access the `social' in powerful ways, such claims are now much less secure. We argue that both the sample survey and the in-depth interview are increasingly dated research methods, which are unlikely to provide a robust base for the jurisdiction of empirical sociologists in coming decades. We conclude by speculating how sociology might respond to this coming crisis through taking up new interests in the `politics of method'.
doi: 10.1177/0038038507080443 Sociology January 2007 vol. 41 no. 5 885-899
- » Abstract
- Full Text (PDF)
- References
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.
Apr 25, ’12 8:00 AMIn 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.
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.
Mark Carrigan is editor of the Sociological Imagination. He blogs about stuff here and tweets about things here.
Note: This list was written as a quick response to this post on Freakonomics, "Sociology and Political Science Deserve The Hatchet." The photograph above is of one of the very first American sociologists, Anna Julia Cooper, who received her doctorate from the University of Paris-Sorbonne in 1924. 1.