Civic Engagement and Public Sociology

Abstract

While the tools of civically engaged higher education (service-learning, community-based research, etc.) existed in sociology classes well before the onset of what some call the “civic engagement movement,” they have quickly shifted from margin to center as key building blocks for sociology’s own trend toward public sociology. While we examine the precarious rise of both civic engagement and public sociology, we argue that lacking strong social movements as shaping forces, the social justice potential for both civic engagement and public sociology must come from practitioners’ links to community-based politics and social movement organizing. Such connections still ground teaching and scholarship in the real politics of everyday life: people, institutions, and communities.