Creating Sociological Awareness: Public and Applied Sociology

Abstract

Introduction The following review essay focuses on three books that demonstrate how the complexity of socio-cultural issues can be broken down into specific patterns of behavior and symbols that define and give meaning to human activ ity, attitudes, social structures, and gender identity. Each employs variations of applied sociological research methods combined with an approach that has recently been labeled public sociology. Sociologists for many years have successfully balanced the application of scientific rigor with sociological theory as the foundation for exploratory investigations into a range of social problems in order to create a more informed populous and to facilitate social change; public sociologists seek to reach out to multiple publics in a manner that both facilitates an understanding of sociolog ical subject matter and instills a sense of empowerment and awareness among mem bers of disenfranchised groups (Klayman 2007). Despite critics' somewhat obtuse descriptions of this hybrid sociological prac tice, public sociology incorporates the theo retical and methodological tools of the disci pline. It is not, as some would have it, a partisan unscientific enterprise (Deflem 2005). Several well-known books by public soci ologists, including Steven Fraser's (1995) The Bell Curve Wars: Race, Intelligence and the Future of America, Massey and Denton's (1993) American Apartheid and Ehrenreich's (2001) Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, influenced the popular socio political discourse at the time of their publi cation. These, as well as many other works of public sociology, have tempered the neolib eral rhetoric championing cuts in welfare and other social programs, the devastating impact of urban isolation and poverty, and stereo types of the working poor. As exemplary works of Public Sociology, these books spoke to people at both ends of the eco nomic spectrum and elucidated complex social problems.