Public sociology and worker education

Abstract

In this essay, we discuss the role of South African social sciences in trade union education. South African academia has a long history of engagement with the world around it, in what Michael Burawoy calls ‘public sociology.’ During the anti-apartheid struggle, universities were one of the central sites of struggle – where progressive academics and students formed a formidable alliance with communities, labour and the underground liberation movement. In this regard, disciplines like sociology, history and politics engaged the world and resisted state oppression through creating alternative narratives to the apartheid state. History from below, public sociology and engaged political studies were the direct manifestations of this process, making universities vibrant spaces of debate, engagement and resistance. At the same time, South African unions were pioneering ‘social movement unionism’ – that is, trade unions linking up with communities – in the common struggle against apartheid, integrating labour issues with political and civil rights issues. One notable feature of the South African experience is the role of public sociology, in which labour scholars worked in close relation to the burgeoning labour movement. The role of progressive academics – both students and professors – in facilitating the development of a powerful, creative and respected labour movement in the 1980s and 1990s is well recognised.