Current Sociology

Volume 62 Number 2 Monograph 1 March 2014 Current Sociology Journal of the International Sociological Association/ISA Association Internationale de Sociologie/AIS Asociación Internacional de Sociología/AIS Special Issue: Precarious Engagements: Combat in the Realm of Public Sociology Guest Editor: Michael Burawoy Articles Preface 135 Michael Burawoy Introduction: Sociology as a combat sport 140 Michael Burawoy The sociological windmill Amphibious sociology: Dilemmas and possibilities of public sociology in a multimedia world 156 César Rodríguez-Garavito In times of civil war: On being a schizophrenic (public) sociologist 168 Nandini Sundar Critical engagement in fields of power: Cycles of sociological activism in post-apartheid South Africa 181 Karl von Holdt The political minefield Complex entanglements: Moving from policy to public sociology in the Arab world 197 Sari Hanafi Worker–intellectual unity: Trans-border sociological intervention in Foxconn 209 Pun Ngai, Shen Yuan, Guo Yuhua, Lu Huilin, Jenny Chan and Mark Selden Interdependent power: Strategizing for the Occupy Movement 223 Frances Fox Piven Communicative Methodology: Successful actions and dialogic democracy 232 Ramon Flecha and Marta Soler Inconvenient truths Sociology’s interventions: Engaging the media and politics while remaining a social scientist 243 Michel Wieviorka Gender’s crooked path: Feminism confronts Russian patriarchy 253 Anna Temkina and Elena Zdravomyslova Inconvenient truths: A public intellectual’s pursuit of truth, justice and power 271 Walden Bello Conclusion Sociology as a vocation: Moral commitment and scientific imagination 279 Michael Burawoy Appendix: Global pedagogy in a digital age 285 Laleh Behbehanian and Michael Burawoy Visit http://csi.sagepub.com Free access to tables of contents and abstracts. Site-wide access to the full text for members of subscribing institutions. CSI62210.1177/0011392113514722Current SociologyPreface 514722research-article2014 Preface CS Current Sociology Monograph 2014, Vol. 62(2) 135 –139 Preface © The Author(s) 2014 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0011392113514722 csi.sagepub.com The last decade has seen a flourishing debate on public sociology. I count 35 symposia published in diverse journals and edited books in China, Russia, Brazil, South Africa, France, Germany, Denmark, Iran, Italy, Canada, Poland, Hungary, Norway, Finland, Portugal, England as well as the United States. That does not include the numerous singular articles and translations that have appeared in many languages. The idea of public sociology, however, is not new. There have been a litany of calls for public engagement, starting with Marx’s much quoted thesis about changing the world as well as understanding it and Durkheim’s claim that sociology would not be worth an hour’s labor if it were simply speculative. Indeed, in many countries of Latin America or South Africa public sociology has a well-developed tradition. So, why now the deluge of rancorous dispute? First, and most obviously, the answer must lie with the historical conjuncture. We are living in an era of market fundamentalism in which markets are typically seen as the solution to all problems – from poverty to climate change, from economic decline to political instability. Sociology has a long tradition – from Marx, Weber and Durkheim to Parsons, Polanyi, Bourdieu and Wallerstein – of contesting market perspectives and the utilitarian theories of action upon which they rest. The tradition extends to feminism, subaltern studies, postcolonial theory and more generally sociology from the Global South. Sociology’s critique of marketization is all the more pertinent at a time when the production of knowledge itself is being commodified through the privatization of the university. As the university becomes ever more dependent upon selling knowledge – both the dissemination of existing knowledge and the creation of new knowledge – the very existence of sociology, as well as other disciplines, becomes precarious. In response sociology may be packaged to serve corporate clients who want to sell their products or to help state agencies discern networks of terrorism, what I call policy sociology. Alternatively, sociologists might seek to convince other communities, them- selves suffering from marketization, of the critical perspectives that have defined sociology’s traditions, what I call public sociology. This latter task, however, is far from easy as sociology has to compete with many other messages backed by powerful organizations – media conglomerates, states, corporations – equipped with enormous resources. Not only does sociology have puny resources compared with its competitors in the public sphere but its messages often go against deeply held common sense. Public sociology has a Sisyphean task. The temptation is either to retreat back into the university or sell its goods to the highest bidder rather than undertake public sociology. When the latter path is chosen there is a second temptation – to forsake sociology and pander to common sense, a populist distortion of public sociology. 136 Current Sociology Monograph 1 62(2) Table 1. The academic division of labor. Academic audience Extra-academic audience Instrumental knowledge Professional Policy Reflexive knowledge Critical Public Apart from the historical conjuncture, it was also the framing of public sociology as one of four types of sociology that provoked discussion and debate. These were not simply four faces or four orientations to sociology, but four ways of practicing sociology: professional, critical, public and policy. As four different ways of doing sociology, they formed a division of labor, with specialization in one or more of these types. Academic careers can be seen as moving from one type to another. This division of disciplinary labor derived from two fundamental questions, all too easily repressed: Knowledge for whom? (whether for academic audiences or extra-academic audiences) and Knowledge for what? (whether instrumental knowledge concerned with means or reflexive knowledge concerned with the discussion of ends). Cross-tabulating the two dimensions gave rise to four quadrants: instrumental knowledge focused on puzzles in research programs (professional knowledge) or on problems defined by clients (policy knowledge) while reflexive knowledge focused on critical conversations about the foundations of knowledge organized in disciplines (critical knowledge) or public conversations about values to be pursued in society (public knowledge) (Table 1). Each type of knowledge had its own notion of truth, its own politics, its own basis of legitimacy, its own mode of account- ability. Each type of knowledge suffered from its own pathology when it separated itself from the other types – professional knowledge becomes self-referential, critical knowledge becomes dogmatic, policy knowledge becomes a captive of power and public knowledge becomes populist or faddish. As in any division of labor the different components do not form a harmonious whole but a hierarchy of relations of antagonistic interdependence. This provided a framework for understanding how sociology varied over time within a given national context but also how it varied between and among countries – variations marked by the balance among the four sociologies – so that in some countries public sociology might prevail while in others professional, critical or policy sociology might dominate. Moreover, any academic discipline could be understood in terms of the articulation of these four types of knowledge. The framework generated intense disputes. Each combatant wanted to reduce the division of labor to their own particular type of sociology, taking the offensive against the other types by pathologizing them. Professional sociologists would attack public sociology for dumbing down sociology in order to make it publicly acceptable. Policy sociologists would accuse public sociology of ‘politicizing’ sociology and, thus, jeopard- izing their influence which rested upon the scientific neutrality of sociology. Critical sociologists would criticize professional sociology for disguising the value foundations of its research and policy sociologists for being the servants of power. Public sociologists might criticize professional sociology for being irrelevant, devoted to the ritualization of scientific practice. As the defender of all four types of sociology as integral to the Preface 137 discipline, I became the defender of everyone’s enemy and bore the brunt of hostile attacks from all quarters. But this only seemed to vindicate the validity of the four-fold scheme as an underlying framework. A different dispute emerged as the public sociology debate traveled to different countries. Was the above scheme another particularity parading as a universal? Was the very idea of a distinctive public sociology only appropriate to a context where the discipline was heavily weighted toward the professional? Did public sociology assume meaning only in a context where professional sociology was dominant? After all in many countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America, sociology was viewed as inherently oriented to public issues – why else do sociology? Indeed, here the problem was often the underdevelopment of professional sociology, or, if not its underdevelopment, its domination by Northern sociology as evinced in the adoption of Northern text books for teaching and Northern theories for research – text books

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