Reflections on public sociology: Public relations, disciplinary identity, and the strong program in professional sociology

Abstract

Public sociology is an attempt to redress the issues of public engagement and disciplinary identity that have beset the discipline over the past several decades. While public sociology seeks to rectify the public invisibility of sociology, this paper investigates the limitations of it program. Several points of critique are offered. First, public sociology's affiliations with Marxism serve to potentially entrench existing divisions within the discipline. Second, public sociology's advancement of an agenda geared toward a ~'sociology for publics" instead of a "'sociology of publics" imposes limitations on the development of a public interface. Third, the lack of a methodological agenda for public sociology raises concerns of how sociology can compete within a contested climate of public opinion. Fourth, issues of disciplinary coherence are not necessarily resolved by public sociology, and are potentially exacerbated by the invocation of public sociology as a new disciplinary identity. Fifth, the incoherence of professional sociology is obviated, and a misleading affiliation is made between scientific knowledge and the hegemonic structure of the profession. Finally, the idealism of public sociology's putative defense of civil society is explored as a utopian gesture akin to that of Habermas' attempt to revive the public sphere. The development of a strong program in professional sociology is briefly offered as a means to repair the disciplinary problems that are illustrated by emergence of the project of public sociology. Introduction: Sociology and Its Public FaceMichael Burawoy is right--if sociology is to thrive, it needs a stronger public presence. Sociology has an unconvincing presentation of self, and is wracked by a marked inability to establish and manage a coherent and public face. In many respects, sociology is all but invisible to the public eye, dominantly overshadowed by its social science brethren--psychology, economics, and political science. The David Boyns is an assistant professor in Sociology at California State University at Northridge. He specializes in sociological theory and its fundamental role in facilitating sociological research. His recent work is directed toward the investigation of forms of epistemology in sociology, in particular the role of the scientific process. He can be contacted at david.boyns @csun.edu. Jesse Fletcher is an M.A. candidate in sociology at California State University at Northridge. Jesse hopes to gain his Ph.D. in sociology upon completion of his M.A. His primary interests lie within the creative combination of theory and methodology for the furtherance of scientific sociology. He is a musician, and would very much like to be involved in the revitalization of the sociology of music in America. He can be contacted at socalsociophile@yahoo.com.The emergence of public sociology by a sociologist of an overtly Marxist orientation raises the question of the ideological orientation of "public sociology." As Boyns and Fletcher 9

Tweet, tweet, tweet: A content analysis of nonprofit organizations’ Twitter updates

“…Qué distingue a un sociólogo de otro profesional es una cuestión con cientos de respuestas lo que provoca una falta de señas de identidad características. La Sociología es una disciplina multivocacional y polisémica, con la consecuente falta de un discurso disciplinario coherente y pérdida de identidad hacia la profesión (Boyns & Fletcher, 2005). El análisis del contenido del conocimiento producido en blogs, vídeos y redes sociales revelará cuáles son los principales temas tratados y discutidos por la población, y por tanto es una aproximación a descubrir qué distingue y caracteriza a los sociólogos y su profesión.…”

“…Debido a que la audiencia de estas fuentes online es mayor, el análisis de su contenido y usuarios es una oportunidad para comprender el conocimiento con más visibilidad y alcance a la población general. En la Sociología, el análisis del conocimiento producido y divulgado en blogs, vídeos y redes sociales online resulta interesante de ser analizado debido a la voluntad de varios sociólogos por hacer más pública y visible esta ciencia (Burawoy, 2005;Jeffries, 2009;Kalleberg, 2005), el creciente interés de la población por conocer temas sociales (Cárdenas, 2015), y el reto de discernir cuál es la identidad del sociólogo (Boyns & Fletcher, 2005;Díaz-Catalan, de Luxán, & Navarrete, 2016).…”

The Calling of Sociology: Beyond Value-detached Professionalism and Partisan Activism

“…Yet, they agree that sociologists should not "bring their professional skills to the aid of some particular political project" (Abbott, 2007: 204) and that their professional associations "should not take an official position on political issues" but rather keep the position of political neutrality (Massay, 2007: 145). Instead of devoting their work to promoting a specific political programme, sociologists should concentrate on building a body of reliable knowledge in accordance with the canons of science (Tittle, 2004;Boynes and Fletcher, 2005) and try "to understand how the world actually works" and not "how the world should be" (Turner, 2005: 44). In other words, they criticise Burawoy for politicising sociology and for trying to impose on sociologists who hold a multiplicity of moral orientations and political agendas his own partisan goals as a purpose of sociological practice (Nielsen, 2004(Nielsen, : 1619Boynes and Fletcher, 2005: 16;Abbott, 2005: 204).…”

“…Hence, the theory which is selected by the canons of scientific appraisal will simply be the best of the sexist rivals. And the very content of science will be sexist -no matter how rigorously we apply objective standards of assessment in the context of justification" (the original source unknown, quoted in Brown, 1989: 157 Turner (2005) and Boynes and Fletcher (2005) argue for the necessity of objective, value-free research if sociology is to have any impact, they seem to ignore that objectivity is not identical with value-neutrality, that the very act of constructing the categories of analysis, collecting data and building the theory involves values. Yet, denying the value-neutral character of sociology does not imply that sociologists should surrender the discipline's scientific integrity to their personal values and preferences or that they should not aim at preventing their own value judgments from influencing directly the outcome of their research.…”

Towards a Pedagogy of Public Criminology

“…(This is explicitly acknowledged by Loader & Sparks (2010, p772), who talk about the concept of public criminology as a work in progress, or "whatever that might turn out to mean".) There is little doubt that the concept has come to be associated with Burawoy's presidential address to the ASA but this has been heavily criticised for the ambiguity surrounding its central concepts -professional, critical, policy and public sociology (see eg Boyns & Fletcher 2007) -and the failure to elaborate concrete proposals for practice (Brady 2004). Given the contested nature of the Burawoy typology and the uncertainty which surrounds it; the systematic way in which the concept is operationalised by Carrabine et al; and the comprehensive nature of their definition, it is this definition of 'public criminology' that this paper adopts.…”