Public Sociology Research Articles

Community-Based Research Experiences with Nepali Partners During COVID-19

COVID-19 has affected the research studies of undergraduate students and has caused projects to go in directions or face obstacles that are not expected. Our research group took part in a public sociology class and worked with partners from Nepal to study teacher’s perspectives of the Nepali education system during COVID-19. During this research experience, we navigated obstacles with communication, cultural sensitivity, time constraints, COVID-19, and research methodology. In this article, we share how we overcame these obstacles. We illustrate the benefits we found from this research project experience, the lessons we have learned, and the future advice we have for both ourselves and for other undergraduate students that are conducting research during COVID-19.

Performance as Critical Resistance: Playwriting and Public Sociology

In this article, I argue that playwriting and performance can act as powerful forms of activism that bridge academic work and public engagement. I analyze my experiences writing and producing a stage production that mobilizes knowledge from my research about queer antiracism in Toronto. This methodological discussion is contextualized within the current political moment that positions work in the humanities as irrelevant and elitist. Performance as a method of knowledge mobilization emerged from interviews with queer peoples and community organizers. I found through conversations with participants that academic forms of knowledge mobilization, such as publishing in peer-reviewed journals, would not necessarily be accessible to community members or appropriate for encouraging discussion and social action at the local level. Participants suggested a range of antiracism organizing strategies, most of their suggestions centered on increasing the understanding and the value of the arts. I decided to meet the challenge of engaging in effective knowledge mobilization that would be in service to the community by developing a stage production called We without You that focuses on the opinions and experiences of participants. I found that producing a stage production based on academic research had powerful social effects that are not possible through traditional knowledge dissemination methods. This article encourages academics to broaden their ideas about effective knowledge mobilization; to position their work as useful and relevant to social issues and as a means of critical resistance against polarization within and outside academia.

Applying Social Science to Bring Resident Stakeholders into Pollution Governance: A Rural Environmental Justice Public Health Case Study

The purpose of this engaged public sociology study was to use social science to bring resident stakeholders into the process of governing pollution production in a rural community. The community has cancer clusters. Residents have concerns about direct exposure to pollution production in their neighborhood by a steel recycling plant that has been cited numerous times for environmental violations. The facility has been under voluntary remediation since 2009, but neighborhood residents were marginalized from the governance process. This case study details how social science was used to bring neighborhood residents’ concerns about direct exposure to toxic air pollution into remediation governance. A curricula-as-research model was developed to provide an engagement framework that guided the case study as it progressed through a series of six stages over five years. The principal investigator maintained this collaboration by integrating the project into courses, securing small grants, developing an affordable air pollution monitoring method, and convening multiple community meetings. The air monitoring results are analyzed and discussed. Finally, the impact of the case study on the company, the state environmental management agency, local government, the nonprofit partner, and residents’ sense of human agency is evaluated.

Writing sociological fiction

The value of fiction for public sociology and within qualitative research is well established. However, questions about process remain. Drawing from three contemporary projects – a novel, a series of short stories, and a collection of micro-fiction – this article focuses methodological attention on how sociological imagination may be crafted in and with fiction. In particular I discuss the poetics and aesthetic form of a story: the language, mode of storytelling and voice(s) with which a story is told; and the imagery and sensory qualities which bring a story-world to life. By bringing conceptual considerations together with practical concerns, this article aims to extend the considerable body of work on the value of fiction for the production and dissemination of social research.

A feminist public sociology of the pandemic: Interviewing about a crisis, during a crisis

AbstractWidespread school closures due to the coronavirus‐2019 (COVID‐19) pandemic have left US parents—especially mothers—doing increasing amounts of family labor as they oversee their children's remote learning. In this article, I reflect on the process of interviewing 112 US parents, primarily mothers, about their experiences of pandemic‐related school closures, amidst the pandemic itself. These interviews were largely intensely emotional experiences. I reflect on the emotions of both respondents and researcher to argue that carrying out such interviews in the midst of a crisis can function as a form of care work. I propose the idea of a feminist public sociology of the pandemic that has three primary aims: bearing witness to the experiences of those impacted by the pandemic, making a record of those experiences, and helping scholars and the public to think about the pandemic sociologically, ideally in such a way that will aid in the creation of policy responses that address and reduce this suffering.

МИССИЯ СОЦИОЛОГА В СОВРЕМЕННОМ РОССИЙСКОМ ОБЩЕСТВЕ

Modern Russian society is characterized by rapid development of the sociological industry. The purpose of this article is to examine the development of academic sociology, the formation of public sociology and the introduction of a comprehensive training of a new generation of sociologists-researchers through the prism of the professional activity of academician M. K. Gorshkov. The author comes to the conclusion that due to the valuable contribution of the scientist to the development of sociological thought in the Russian Federation, and the establishment of scientific schools and unique platform for training a new generation of sociologists (School of young sociologist), in the nearest future Russian society will be characterized not only by high quantitative indicators of development of domestic sociology, but also her deep meaningful component.

A Boy’s Journey: Public Sociology for in and Out of the Classroom

This essay is a response to Stein (2019; 2020) and his use of lived experience to tell the story of violence and the Holocaust. I discuss these works’ contributions to public sociology and teaching.

Towards a new canon? Rewriting the history (and the future) of sociology

In the U.S., over the three past decades, there has been a huge interest in W.E.B. Du Bois and in Black scholars; only recently we are witnessing the proliferation of works on their role as founders of U.S. sociology. While there are differences between them, they all converge in seeing W.E.B. Du Bois as a pioneer of scientific sociology in the United States and a pioneer of public sociology, combining sociology and activism, relevant for contemporary political struggles including the contemporary Black Lives Matter movement. Indeed, alongside the scientific debate regarding the history of U.S. sociology, there is a parallel discourse about the objectivity of the social sciences, and both are increasingly attracting attention and controversy. In this note the Author will focus on the role of Du Bois in founding the discipline in the United States, the relevance of the Atlanta Sociological Laboratory, the debate on objectivity and neutrality as a pre-condition for science, and the call for a “Du Boisian sociology”.

Fertile Soil for Organic Public Sociology: Community-Based Natural Resource Management

Where do public sociology and the study of natural resources meet? One promising intersection is at community-based natural resource management. At this juncture there are multiple opportunities for rural sociologists to embrace the tenets of public sociology, as espoused by Michael Burawoy. By working with an active, thick, and local ‘civil society’, rural sociologists have the opportunity to improve livelihoods as well as contribute to the sustainability of the natural resource base that so many depend upon. This article examines these possibilities by discussing three domains for rural sociologists to apply public sociology to community-based natural resource management: participation, empowerment, and knowledge coproduction. This article makes an explicit call for rural sociologists to ‘go public,’ and by doing so challenge the underlying structures of marginalization and inequity that have characterized public involvement in natural resource management through the contemporary era of resource management in the United States.

The Meaning of “Racism”

This article explores the meanings of racism in the sociology of race/ethnicity and provides a descriptive framework for comparing theories of racism. The authors argue that sociologists use racism to refer to four constructs: (1) individual attitudes, (2) cultural schema, and two constructs associated with structural racism: (3) preexisting consequential inequalities, that is, racial dominance, and (4) processes that create or maintain racial dominance. The article compares this framework with a content and citation analysis of 1,037 sociology journal articles published from 1995 to 2015, a period stretching from a major call to renew sociological attention to racism, to the founding of the American Sociological Association journal, Sociology of Race and Ethnicity. The authors find six communities organized around distinctive citations and using different meanings of racism. They conclude by pushing toward the question of what racism ought to mean by discussing the implications for both sociological research and public sociology.

Augustus Granville Dill: A Case Study in the Conceptualization of a Black Public Sociology

Black sociology developed as a response to mainstream, white sociology’s failures to address the condition of Black people in the Unites States. Central to the practice of Black sociology is that it necessitates sociological work be used, where possible, for the benefit of Black people. The contemporary practice of public sociology has similar aims of bringing sociological knowledges to various publics to address their particular issues. The public sociology literature, though, fails to conceptualize or articulate praxes of public sociology that are constructed to address the unique needs of various communities. Using the biography of the little-known Black, queer sociologist Augustus Granville Dill (1881–1956) as a case study, the authors conceptualize a practice of Black public sociology as one of many public sociologies. Like Black sociology before, Black public sociology is a rearticulation of established sociological practice that centers on Black people and Black communities. Using the most comprehensive biography of Dill published to date, the authors examine how he transitioned from knowledge producer to knowledge disseminator via the practice of Black public sociology. This article, then, serves to highlight a Black, queer foreparent of the discipline and to use his forgotten story to inform the practice of contemporary public sociology.

The politics of migration research: research focus and the public identities of migration researchers

ABSTRACT This special issue focusses on how migration and diversity researchers experience and perform their role as academic experts in politicised public debates about migration and diversity. In a world wherein experts are increasingly demanded for policy development and wherein migration as well as ethnic, racial and religious diversity are among the themes dividing voters the most, migration and diversity researchers find themselves in a challenging position. How do they view their obligation to participate in public debate and how does their identities as researchers relate to such participation? This special issue will discuss the impact and implications of these challenges in the Scandinavian context, although the theme of researchers’ roles in politicised public debate is of a broader relevance both to other geographical regions and to other controversial research fields. Debates on public sociology, on the science/media interface, and on present challenges to academic expertise more generally, are central to the discussion.

Of Modernity and Public Sociology: Reflections on a Career So Far

My research so far has followed an interest in the classic concern about the social consequences of modernization, which led me to study urbanism, personal networks, the history of technology, and most extensively, American social history. A commitment to public sociology led me to a book on inequality, Contexts magazine, contributions to general media, a blog, and badgering sociologists about their writing. Some consistent themes include trying to address big questions with middle-range empirical work, focusing on ordinary lives and living, insisting on rigorous evidence whatever the method, and communicating with as wide an audience as lucidly as possible. The article closes with a few lessons learned.

Discerning the Heart and Soul of Public Sociology

ABSTRACT This article tells the story forged from a research partnership among the authors and their respective organizations over two decades of partnership, of research practiced in a different key than many who engage in research have chosen. Building on Michael Burawoy’s (Burawoy 2005) articulation of public sociology, we present a protocol about a “way” of practicing public sociology, about human qualities by which and through which community-based research can be practiced, and what the authors have come to understand as the “heart and soul” of practicing sociological research.

Open Research Projects and Public Sociology: Students Communicating Creatively in the Classroom and Beyond

Open Research Projects and Public Sociology: Students Communicating Creatively in the Classroom and Beyond

After the Storm: Inter-disciplinary Dialogic Discourses With a Post-Fishing Community.

This paper is a critical evaluation of a unique approach to working with disadvantaged communities, which involves inter-disciplinary collaboration between an Applied Theater (AT) director and a sociologist. The application of the approach, in a community disadvantaged by the loss of industry, provides the case study basis for the evaluation. Between 2014 and 2017 community participants from Eyemouth, southeast Scotland, worked with an artistic team led by director Fiona MacPherson1, and a sociologist, Carol Stephenson, to develop a creative performance of the town's fishing disaster of 1881. This inter-disciplinary project was facilitated through dialogic discourses between community participants, AT director and sociologist in which the equalization of relationships, meaning-making and active listening were established as shared values and processes. The paper makes four claims. Firstly, sociological observation of the negotiation of the creative process revealed previously hidden and nuanced social interactions, which could later be examined in greater detail with the AT director and in focus group discussions with community participants. Second, the use of dialogic discourses in the critical appraisal of AT practice by the sociologist ultimately enabled the inter-disciplinary sharing of practice, ideas and theories that were mutually beneficial. Third, the creative process revealed insights into the lived experience of post-industrial communities and enabled public sociology discourse, which ultimately prompted social activism within the case study community. Last, while the inter-disciplinary approach is labor intensive and demands high levels of commitment to the shared values associated with dialogic discourses, it provides a new and innovative way of working with, and for, disadvantaged communities.

Introduction: Engaged Anthropology vis-à-vis Michael Burawoy’s Public Sociology — A View from Poland

Engaged anthropology is analyzed in this text as part of the engaged social sciences. The author uses Michael Burawoy’s concept of public sociology and Thomas Hylland Eriksen’s concept of public anthropology to organize the anthropological field and distinguish four types of anthropology: academic; critical; applied; and public and engaged. Public anthropology is understood here as the participation of anthropologists in public debate while engaged (in the strict sense of the term) on behalf of a community under study. This introduction to Engaged Anthropology in a Time of Growing Nationalism [Antropologia zaangażowana w czasie nacjonalistycznego wzmożenia; Kultura i Społeczeństwo 2020, no. 2] presents the main issues of the volume’s papers on the theoretical and practical problems of engaged anthropology as seen from Poland.

Art-based Public Sociology

Dieser Beitrag reflektiert eine zweisemestrige Lehrforschung im Fachbereich Soziologie an der Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena. Erforscht wurde mittels einer teilnehmenden Beobachtung der Prozess des ersten internationalen Echtzeit-Architekturfestivals »72 Hour Urban Action«, das vom 2. bis 5. Mai 2019 inmitten der Großwohnsiedlung Lobeda-West in der Peripherie von Jena stattfand. Die Mission der architektonischen Intervention bestand darin, zehn neue Orte der Begegnung zu schaffen und die Anwohner*innen des Quartiers für die Gestaltung des öffentlichen Raumes zu aktivieren. Als Feldforscher*innen arbeiteten wir eng mit Stadtplaner*innen, Kulturschaffenden und Künstler*innen zusammen und wurden zu einem Teil des Untersuchungsgegenstandes. Wir entwickelten künstlerische Präsentationsformen und trugen relevantes Wissen über den Stadtteil zur Realisierung des Architekturfestivals bei. Welche Potenziale eine partizipative Stadtraumentwicklung und welche Rolle performative Sozialwissenschaft dabei spielen kann, soll in diesem Beitrag ausgeleuchtet werden.

What Is the Social Responsibility of Social Scientists to Influence National Security Affairs?

Mainstream scholars of IR favor policy-relevant research, that is the agenda to influence government policymakers by offering policy recommendations. In this article, I offer a different perspective by presenting alternative arguments about social scientists’ responsibility to influence. By drawing on themes of public sociology and critical sociology, security studies and public policy, I argue that the core of this responsibility is to seek to influence policy via engagement with the public rather than with policymakers.

Writing Justice/Performing Injustice: Reflections on Research, Publicity, and the Birmingham Trojan Horse Affair

This article discusses issues of public communication. It does so in terms of the ethics of verbatim theatre and public sociology. The issues raised are exemplified through the Birmingham Trojan Horse affair, which has been subject to extensive media reporting and public inquiries of various kinds as well as legal processes. In that sense, there have been various “courts of public opinion” where the affair has been “staged.” In this article, it is understood as an injustice visited upon a community of British Muslims and the teachers and governors responsible for their schools, an injustice that was largely a consequence of provocative media reporting and peremptory government action. The article addresses the role of verbatim theatre in staging the injustice for public reflection and the role of public sociology as a project of writing for justice.