Public Sociology Research Articles

My Journey in Public Sociology

Nancy Wang Yuen on Going Public.

Toward an Integral, Professional-Public Sociology: The Example of Gordon W. Allport

There has been much recent debate within sociology regarding academic versus applied approaches, as well as how to integrate these during a career. Sociologists interested in such issues might find both inspiration and an exemplar in social psychologist Gordon W. Allport. Well known for his leadership role in both personality and psychological social psychology, Allport has still not gained widespread recognition for his sociological contributions, especially his “public sociology.” As an undergraduate, Allport embraced the tradition of “social ethics” as taught at Harvard, which focused on social problems and social policy, and on individual engagement. Over the first two decades of a half-century career, Allport adapted to his “hard science” organizational and professional contexts and earned a tenured position primarily by building up a naturalistic psychology. But beginning in the early 1940s, he increasingly re-engaged with social ethics and overt reform efforts, with a focus on the social psychology and sociology of rumor, prejudice and racial and religious discrimination. Though a key architect of the interdisciplinary Department of Social Relations, he came to see that project as excessively value-neutral and he lobbied to revive a clear ethical commitment. Fittingly, Allport ended his career as the first incumbent of the Richard Clarke Cabot Professorship of Social Ethics. In this way, he bridged naturalistic psychology, sociology and social ethics in order to create an integral science oriented toward social justice.

Возможна ли социология для трудящихся классов сегодня?

Татьяна Степановна Лыткина – кандидат социологических наук, старший научный сотрудник, Институт социально-экономических и энергетических проблем Севера Коми НЦ УрО РАН. Адрес: 167982, Сыктывкар, ул. Коммунистическая, д. 26. Е-mail: tlytkina@yandex.ru
 Светлана Сергеевна Ярошенко – кандидат социологических наук, доцент, кафедра сравнительной социологии, факультет социологии, Санкт-Петербургский государственный университет. Адрес: 191124, Санкт-Петербург, ул. Смольного, д. 1/3. Е-mail: svetayaroshenko@gmail.com
 Цитирование: Лыткина Т.С., Ярошенко С.С. (2019) Возможна ли социология для трудящихся классов сегодня? // Мир России. Т. 28. № 1. С. 101–123. DOI: 10.17323/1811-038X-2019-28-1-101-123
 В статье анализируются возможности приращения социологического знания о росте социального неравенства через изучение трудящихся и прежде всего рабочего класса, вынужденного продавать рабочую силу в условиях снижения статуса. Через обращение к истории социологической мысли рассматривается значимость категории социального класса для становления социологии как науки. Данный тезис также проводится через анализ особенностей развития российской социологии в дореволюционный и советский периоды. Выделяется не только отличительная черта российской социологии – противостояние власти и ученых, – но и доказываются маловероятность эволюции общества без социологии и проблематичность развития социологии без общества и знания о его классообразующих механизмах. Настоящее состояние российской социологии характеризуется как инволюционное, связанное с замыканием социологов на своих интересах и противоречиях. В то время как в условиях глобализации рынка идет поиск компромисса между разными классами и требуется новое обращение к рабочему классу, российские социологи предпочитают творить социологию, пренебрегая интересами рабочих. Доказывается, что исследование текущих процессов в обществе исходя из перспектив рабочего класса способствует сокращению противоречий и может быть полезно как при реконструкции устаревших теорий, так и в разработке новых подходов. Это требует не только объединения усилий социологов в продвижении внутренней критики, но и развития публичной социологии, способствующей диалогу с обществом и лучшему пониманию происходящего.

Empiricism and Its Fallacies

The scholar most associated with "public sociology" responds to steven lubet’s prosecutorial approach and argues that, if looking for falsehoods is the point of empiricist ethnography, looking for falsifications is the point of theory-driven ethnography.

Prospects for the Development of Sociology in Russia in the XXIst century (discussion with V. Ilyin, K. Clement, I. Olimpieva, E. Zdravomyslova, A. Temkina, A. Kondakov, M. Burawoy, March 24, 2015)

The purpose of the discussion is to discuss the prospects for the development of Russian sociology: its possibilities to explain what is happening in Russian society, to respond to social challenges and to represent the interests of those social strata that are crowded out to the periphery along with global market development. Russian sociologists who study social inequality from different perspectives and develop critical discourse in Russian sociology participate in the discussion: Vladimir Ilyin (St. Petersburg State University), Karin Clement (St. Petersburg State University), Irina Olimpieva (Centre for Independent Social Research), Elena Zdravomyslova and Anna Temkina (European University St. Petersburg), Alexander Kondakov (European University St. Petersburg), with closing remarks — Michael Burawoy (University of California, Berkeley). Moderator of the discussion — Svetlana Yaroshenko (St. Petersburg State University). Can sociology be independent of society and the processes occurring in it? What is the relationship between sociologists and society today? What are the prospects of sociology as a science, as a profession and as a vocation? What are the features of social order for sociological research and how does it affect the commercial environment? How relevant is the class approach to today’s social theory? Does today’s Russia need a public sociology and what should it be? What are the most relevant dimensions of social inequality? These and other issues were discussed during the discussion.

The Promise and Pitfalls of Public Sociology

The Promise and Pitfalls of Public Sociology

Por uma sociologia pública: repensar a deficiência na ótica dos direitos humanos

In this article we recover the proposal of Michael Burawoy on the place of Public Sociology in the framework of contemporary Sociologies, applying it to the Studies of Disability. This new scientific field is characterized and the results of a qualitative study examining violations of human rights of persons with disabilities in Portugal and the socio-political factors that underlie it are discussed. It concludes with the pertinence of a Public Disability Sociology that gives voice to the disabled, giving space for a viewpoint of and about the issue of deficiency in contemporary Sociology, while also considering knowledge construction and social intervention.

Values and Public Sociology: A Tension Between Unity and Pluralistic Social Movements

Values and Public Sociology: A Tension Between Unity and Pluralistic Social Movements

The Revival of Public Sociology?: Based on the Unfolding of Sociology in Korea and South Africa

The Revival of Public Sociology?: Based on the Unfolding of Sociology in Korea and South Africa

For public (and recontextualized) sociology: The promises and perils of public engagement in an age of mediated communication

ABSTRACTThis article argues for the analysis of public engagement as an essentially mediated activity. Although recent studies note that academic knowledge is increasingly available for consumption by nonacademic audiences, they tell us little about how it gets recontextualized while passing through the hands of media professionals on its way toward such audiences. In Burawoy’s (2005) influential call for the rebirth of public sociology, as in the debates his work provoked, the media is treated solely as a means for the transportation of knowledge. But as this article demonstrates, the media does not simply transport knowledge; it also, and at the same time, translates that knowledge in various, rhetorically consequential ways. Focusing on the mediated trajectory of an attempt by a group of academics to connect with audiences beyond academia, their initial contribution is compared to its subsequent translation(s) across various British newspapers. A discursive analysis reveals the techniques via which a classic form of public sociology came to be recontextualized such that, remarkably, these authors were left appearing to voice nothing but their own petty prejudices. The article concludes by noting that where public engagement involves mediation, public sociology should pay more attention to the recontextualizing affordances of media discourse.

Public sociology, social justice and struggles in the era of austerity-and-crises

This article examines the potential for dialogic engagement between the academic disciplines of sociology and social work, on the one hand, and political/social struggles for equality and social justice, on the other. Particular strands of sociology engage with, connect to and articulate struggles of marginalised, oppressed or exploited communities. The article draws on global debates to examine the potential for a public sociology of social justice and equality, which is intimately connected to social work. It illustrates how knowledge from struggles and what is labelled as mobile commons can and must inform sociology, social work and emancipatory praxis.

Concussion in Sport: Public, Professional and Critical Sociologies

This article explores the emerging agenda in relation to concussion in sport to illustrate the threats and opportunities currently faced by the sociology of sport as an academic sub-discipline. The article begins by delineating aspects of the “crisis” in sociology, Burawoy’s call for an enhanced public sociology as a (part) solution, and responses to these ideas within the sociology of sport. It then identifies how the engagement of sociologists in this terrain must be understood in relation to the recent medicalization of sports-related concussion, and illustrates the impact of this on sociologists of sport through an examination of recent social scientific scholarship in relation to concussion. It argues that a successful public sociology of sport should be predicated on the subdiscipline’s distinctive contribution to the production of knowledge. To this end, the article concludes by reporting the findings of an empirical study of concussion in English professional soccer, to outline a framework for sportrelated health research, and thus the basis on which a socially influential sociology of concussion in sport could develop.

It's All Been Done Before: Rethinking Objectivity and Values in Public Sociology Debates.

It's All Been Done Before: Rethinking Objectivity and Values in Public Sociology Debates.

‘Going Underground’: A Tube Worker’s Experience of Struggles over the Frontier of Control

Mainstream media representation of London Underground (LU) workers typically foregrounds their alleged militancy, greed and negligence towards the travelling public. This knee-jerk tendency obscures the voices, expressions and experiences of workers themselves. This article enriches public sociology by giving Stephen, a Tube driver and former LU station worker, a platform to share his vivid story. Stephen’s voice reveals deep sociological insights into the realities of workplace struggles over the shifting ‘frontier of control’ at LU, and graphically captures uneven and fluid patterns of individual/collective resistance to restructuring and ‘modernization’. His lived experiences of managerial control and worker autonomy, interfacing with different degrees of alienation, new technology and customer engagement, have changed over time as ‘passengers’ become ‘customers’ and ‘give and take’ employment relations dwindle.

The Role of Public Sociology in the Development of Cultural Policies in Chile: a Transformation of Cultural Expertise

This paper seeks to analyze the policies on the cultural field implemented in Chile in recent years, explaining how expertise became fundamental and, more specifically, how this expertise evolved from that of an expert intellectual to that of an expert professional. The paper is based on the general hypothesis that the cultural field needs to be viewed in the context of a growing differentiation and autonomization of Chilean society, but that there are some interesting nuances to its evolution, particularly with regard to the transformation of expertise. This article argues that the expert in culture has a twofold nature, which is illustrated through drawing a timeline from the 1980s to the present, marking certain milestones in Chile’s national and cultural history. This timeline incorporates the intellectual work of two of Chile’s most important contemporary sociologists and experts in culture and cultural policies, Manuel Antonio Garreton and Jose Joaquin Brunner. A sample of their publications is analyzed and then contrasted to documents on cultural policy since the approval of the country’s institutional framework for culture in 2003, when the National Council for Culture and the Arts was created, gauging the influence of the expert intellectual on this new institutional framework and the thrust of public policies on culture. The paper concludes that the figure of the expert in culture has shifted from the “expert intellectual” to the expert of a professional kind, although the theoretical work of the former has continued to influence the debate around cultural policies to this day.

Is Public Sociology Possible? Reconstruction of Sociology through Communicative Action

Is Public Sociology Possible? Reconstruction of Sociology through Communicative Action

Дискурсивное насилие как инструмент социологической легитимации идеологического порядка разделенного общества

В статье рассматриваются особенности социального порядка разделенных обществ. Ставится вопрос о роли социологического дискурса в легитимации социальной разделенности. Внимание акцентируется на необходимости саморефлексии социологического сообщества. Раскрываются особенности функционирования социологического дискурса в разделенном обществе как инструмента легитимации.
 Для достижения поставленной цели – выявления степени идеологической ангажированности дискурса публичной социологии – анализируются материалы, которые были опубликованы на официальном сайте Украинского центра экономических и политических исследований им. А. Разумкова в течение 2018 г. Анализ основывается на заголовках публикуемых данных; также анализируемая информация выделяется тематически. Обозначаются маркеры дискурсивного насилия в материалах, публикуемых на официальном сайте исследовательского центра.

A place to stand: Digital sociology and the Archimedean effect

With the advent of the internet, particularly Web 2.0, sociologists have been called to take up the challenges and the promises of the web. In the face of this, sociologists are caught up in debates and practices concerned with how to ethically approach and develop appropriate methods/methodologies for the field. While these are important endeavours, more robust debate needs to take place on the unintended consequences of the promises of the internet, as well as the power relations that are at play in what we term the ‘digital social’. Employing the metaphor of the Archimedean screw and Archimedean point, this article argues that the space we now find ourselves in is unprecedented; it is one which simultaneously demands the empowerment of research and yet results in the stripping away of its foundation. The Archimedean effect demonstrates that the promises of the internet have not been fulfilled resulting in the evolution and de-evolution of the digital social framed by the reinforcement of existing power relations. Yet, rather than viewing this as a time of crisis, we should see it as a defining moment for our discipline, one where the demands of public sociology need to be adopted broadly.

The Public Sociologist as a University-Community Hybrid: Lessons from Feminism

Feminism is well versed in conversations about engaged scholarship and has provided important critical commentary on Michael Burawoy’s campaign for public sociology in recent years. This paper draws from feminist perspectives to argue for reflexivity, praxis, and interdisciplinary work as key pillars for public sociology. I then draw from my own experiences doing feminist work in community-engaged settings to consider various limitations of Burawoy’s notions of traditional and organic public sociology. To move past this dichotomy, I put forward a conceptual model for understanding public sociologists as public intellectuals, community-engaged scholars, community educators, and/or advocates and activists. In considering how researchers might navigate these various roles, I argue that discussions of expertise and universities as value-laden institutions are important to build sustainable practices. Overall, the strength of public sociology is that it acknowledges these blurred boundaries and allows for the development of collaborative forms of expertise to address social problems. However, there is additional theoretical work to be done, as well as practical supports developed, to enable feminist researchers in particular to successfully navigate these roles.

Symbolic Interaction, Public Sociology, and the Potential of Open-Access Publishing

Symbolic interactionists can gain much by engaging more with public audiences. One way to do this is through open-access publishing, such that the content of interactionist research is freely available to the global public. We reflect on the issue of public sociology within symbolic interactionism, considering the recent impact of digital technology and social media. Within this context, we consider the rise of the open-access movement in scholarly publishing, and consider strategies to better realize open-access in the symbolic interactionist field. We argue that doing this will greatly benefit the development of a more public interactionism moving forward.