For those who might not know, Sociology
for the Public(s) or Organic Public Sociology is a discussion initiated by Michael
Burawoy, Professor of Sociology at University
of California- Berkeley Eastern Europe . His work is based on extensive
ethnographic fieldwork in factories in US, Hungary
and Russia
At the last BSA conference,Burawoy
himself acknowledged the legitimacy and the
importance of his work/approach for the understanding and explanation of social
and economic transformations in Western and Eastern European capitalism. From my
point of view, he is a model for the way research should be carried out and
developed further in explanations, comparisons, theoretical constructions and
activism. His debate on organic critical public sociology was initiated in 2004
when he became the president of ASA. Since then he
published a series of articles and debates in Critical Sociology .Many of his lectures given at world wide known universities were
dedicated to his new conceptualization of public sociology: organic
public sociology or sociology for the public(s)
The
debate of public sociology dates back to inter-war times. Nevertheless, Burawoy
was the one to extend its meanings to activism and civic action as part of a
division of sociological labour which includes different forms of sociology:
professional sociology, policy oriented sociology, critical sociology and
organic public sociology.
Briefly,
Burawoy’s ‘organic public sociology’ is sociology
for the public (s)– for those people we
write about and work with. They should be the main audience, our publics, and
knowledge should be dedicated to them and their empowerment. Sociological knowledge has to support those people we write about and produce, in
Habermasian terms, a form of communicative
action, which is not necessarily consensual. In general terms, Burawoy’s discussion is a continuation of Habermas’ conceptualization of public
sphere, Gramsci’s writings on organic intellectuals and Polanyi’s criticism on the market economy/ discussion on social and cultural embeddedness of the economy.
Following
Burawoy’s distinction we have two forms of public sociology: traditional public
sociology and organic public sociology. In the following I give a detailed and analytical presentation of both, a critical summary which aims to clarify issues less understood or explored and expand the meanings of Burawoy' s discussion to new directions for a critical reflexive sociology.
Traditional public sociology
The
main discussion dates back to Habermas’ conception of critical public space, which, in his view, should act independently from the state
and the market. However the public sphere is mediated and threatened by the
expansion of the commercial media and the constitution of the welfare state. In Habermas view, the latter generated forms of clientelism for
citizen in relation with the welfare state and diminished the critical capacity
of the publics and civil society. Habermas argues that public sphere from within the civil society should keep and perpetuate
autonomy and provide spaces of resistance
and criticism in relation with the state
and bureaucratization of social life
(in his terms lifeworld).
Drawing
from Habermas’ conceptualization of critical
public sphere, public sociology advocates for the study of issues of public
concern or ,how we usually call them in sociology, social problems: poverty,
discrimination, right abuse, violence, inequalities etc. They should be current issues which affect or
disempower different groups, categories of populations. On the other hand, sociological research should be in the attention of mass-media, governance representatives, civil society etc. and become the focus
of public debates in an assiduous project of finding solutions to contemporary
social problems.
The
products of knowledge should be made accessible to larger audiences , in newspapers/magazines focused on critical social issues. They should be written in accessible
language and deal with issues of public concern as stated above (Ex: poverty, discrimination,
humanitarian aid, economic crisis etc ).
The
main contemporary advocate of this form of public sociology is Craig Calhoun,
well known sociologist, American Professor, president of American Social
Research Council and director of London School of Economics.
Burawoy’s organic public sociology and
sociology for the public(s)
Burawoy
does not change the name of the debate but he comes with a new understanding of
public sociology that should
constitute itself in interaction with the public
(s) - groups of people affected by social problems (migrants, refugees,
working class, underclass) and politically unrepresented. In this
context, sociological work and sociologists should involve them directly in
activist projects (eg. support given to local initiative groups, community
associations able to initiate their own development projects ). In other words, the sociological knowledge should have a communicative
relation with its public (s) and main
aim of solving problems faced by politically unrepresented, supporting them
in their fight for equal rights and better conditions of life.
The concept of 'organic public
sociology'
Burawoy was inspired by
Gramsci's discussion on ‘organic
intellectuals’, which mainly refers to the active participation of intellectuals
in representing and supporting the interests of a certain class in the public sphere. Usually
high and middle classes have their own organic
intellectuals and need less support compared with those weak, poor, socially excluded or contextually
vulnerable in a society. To shed more light on the use of the concept of 'organic intellectuals' I offer here a quote from Gramsci-Prison Notebooks:
“If the intellectuals had been
organically the intellectuals of those masses, and if they have worked out and
made coherent the principles and the problems raised by the masses in their
practical activity, thus constituting a cultural and social bloc. The question
posed here was the one we have already referred to, namely this: is a
philosophical movement properly so called when it is devoted to creating
a specialized culture among restricted intellectuals groups, or rather when, in
the process of elaborating a form of thought superior to "common sense
" and coherent on a scientific plane, it never forgets to remain in
contact with the "simple" and indeed finds in this contact the source
of the problems it sets out to study and to resolve. Only by this contact does
a philosophy become "historical", purify itself of intellectualistic
elements of an individual character and become "life". Antonio
Gramsci
In a Gramscian understanding, sociologists need to become organic intellectuals for
the politically unrepresented groups in society. They should represent interests of 'the excluded',
support their rights and raise public debates on their everyday life problems, which
are usually considered ‘private’ – depoliticised, devoided of
struggle and power inequalities. As Burawoy recommends, problems faced by neighbourhoods, local
communities, groups of migrants, street people, local cases of discrimination,
which are not to the attention of government or mass- media, should become
issues of public concern for which sociologists can actively seek solutions.
Categories of people
sociologists should study and work with
For those who advocate a public sociology it becomes incomprehensible how
sociologists can approach with such an audacity a contemporary social reality
fraught with serious social economic problems: poverty, violence,
discrimination, exclusion, inequalities etc. A critical picture will portray a
sore truth. While studying groups or people who enjoy the treat of an expensive social and cultural life, some others (both in Europe and outside of Europe) are deprived of rights
and basic conditions of existence: EU citizen
threaten with expulsion from Europe, excluded (street people, drug
addicts, sexually abused), people living in ghettos, experiencing extreme
poverty , refugees risking their lives to escape
totalitarian regimes and seeking asylum in Western Europe, workers left in
unemployment or even dramatically shot when they protest against an unfair
management (see the South African mining conflict).
I
know I portrayed a dire landscape but I think it is the best way for us to wake
up from a bourgeois dream of the privileged and reflect on the role of
sociology. The question we should ask ourselves before starting any kind of research,
which might lead to a boring and futile production of knowledge is the
following: How socially important is what
we study? And what categories and groups of people need to be represented by
our research and helped directly through civic activism and communicative
action?
As Burawoy
suggests sociologists should mainly research and work with those ‘marginalized’, ‘weak’ or ‘vulnerable’ groups – migrants,
refugees, those suffering of terminal illnesses (cancer, AIDS), discriminated and generally the unrepresented groups by public and
political agendas etc. They are the ones who need sociologists’ intervention and
they are those publics, sociology
should work with, produce knowledge for, find solutions for their problems and
support their rights- Sociology for the Public
(s)!
Furthermore, the form of communicative action is not unidirectional and consensual but it
is rather dialogical and reflexive in which both parts are involved in a common
project.
In
a symbolic manner, I would say that all those studies romanticising and depoliticising
the social, mirroring a bohemian rhapsody of welfare, happiness and stability
are part of the circuit of capitalist knowledge production, which sustains a
sociological bourgeois self in continuous expansion. The latter does not cease
to grow in communication (opposite pole of communicative action) with the
academic industry, but on the contrary tends to reproduce itself and
manufacture a social reality dislocated from its tensions and exclusionary
practices, that might cause its inner dissolution. That is the dynamic of power,
which does not find itself locations but circulates
the space of knowledge, both endows and controls subjects sharing the same
sphere. Although in my writings I contend with Bourdieu’s analytical model of
social reproduction I concede that the academic field is a reflection of
structural power relations, which do not get expression and limit their actions
to the academic sphere itself but they are in permanent interactions with the
capitalist system through a successful circulation of capital which succeeds to
create nodes of control/power diffusion (academic sociological knowledge might be one) from
where the system can expand further beyond its systematic violence.
In
other words, academics are less in a
struggle with the constituted power, the system, their stable source for fantasizing and
philosophizing the social, mainly depoliticised and disconnected from political
agendas, far from controversies, conflicts, violent manifestations of power. What do they actually practice? A non-reflexive sociology, with minimum critical
engagement with the social tensions, daunted by the governmental power, which prefers to evade into historical or theoretical imaginaries and succumbs in an
underground production of knowledge. As one academic stated “Who are we to
criticise World Bank? That is a powerful institution. We are just
simple academics”. I am not sure how things are in UK
but in Eastern Europe, Latin America, Africa ,
where transnational governmental actors practice their neoliberal imaginaries
of development, sociologists are main consultants and collaborators in the
production of governance- knowledge. Therefore, the question is not who are we
to criticise? but how can we challenge and reconfigure the governmental power ?
for which sociologists are many times submissive-participants in its inner
formulations.
Sociological knowledge for whom?
If
the role of sociology is to produce ‘communicative
action’ then the next task/effort is to make sociological knowledge accessible
to those we write about but also to other categories of public(s) (social workers, public sector employees,
teachers etc) and to larger audiences in general. High quality academic knowledge is published in international peer-reviewed journals which require paid subscriptions,
affordable only to universities, especially western universities, or big public institutions. On the other hand, academics looking for a successful career are
in a constant pressure to publish in high ranked journals and
offer less time for civic engagement with the public (s) and critical public
sphere.
In this way, academic sociological knowledge becomes almost inaccessible to individual readers who are
not part of the academic sphere, or even to academics who reside in countries
with low research budgets, unable to pay expensive subscriptions for academic data
bases. The latter issue can raise a different discussion about the way academic
systems/sociologies around the world can communicate and share the same knowledge.
From my experience they do not communicate too much and sociologies originated
in periphery are kept in a sort of isolationism in relation with the mainstream
knowledge ,which paradoxically does not seem to bring any social change or
support to civil societies/communities. So it can be said that the lack of
communicative action extends to global academic field, which is affected by the
same unequal system of distribution of knowledge.
Scope of sociological knowledge
Applied sociology and ‘organic public
sociology’
Sociology
outside academy takes most of the time the form of applied sociology. Nevertheless, applied
sociology is not equal to public sociology. One of the main reasons is that sociological
knowledge produced in private research institutes, is commodified, sold to beneficiaries: government, public institutions, EU institutions,
transnational development organizations (WB, UNDP) market oriented organizations
but also NGOs and generally to all those who afford buying knowledge. In this case,
sociologists work for clients/beneficiaries, and not
directly for those categories of people the research is about.
Nevertheless,
many of these projects ordered by different economic and governmental actors
come to improve conditions of existence of groups affected by social problems
(poverty, unemployment etc). Yet, the general direction of implementation
and governance is given by the actor who buys the knowledge. Sociologists
have less or no control over the product of sociological research and the way is going
to be implemented in the development program. The knowledge produced is the
property of the beneficiary. Therefore, applied knowledge is not public , it is the property of beneficiaries who afford
buying the rights over the products of the process of knowledge.
The
whole discussion can be extended
further to the process of privatization
of knowledge in the circuit of capitalist production. Nevertheless, the
good part is that a large part of the reports on unemployment, poverty,
discrimination produced for the governance are made public and presented in media, which can (at least for the
projects I have worked for ,as part of different research teams) partially increase the
participation of ‘marginalized’ or ‘unrepresented’ groups in the public sphere
and underpin forms of self governance.
The
weak side of these projects of development is that the support given to the 'marginal’/’excluded’ is mediated by big governmental
actors who leave less space for
civic criticism/involvement.
As
Burawoy argues sociologists should not mainly work for external forms of
governance (state, private institutions and development organizations which
give direction of governance) or market oriented organizations (World Bank,
UNDP etc). They should rather support forms of
self –governance and civic initiatives (e.g. associations, initiative groups able to fight for their
rights/organize community development projects) for those weak dependent on state or helpless in relation
to market forces (e.g. unemployed, people with disabilities etc.)
Organic public sociology and ‘division
of sociological work’
Burawoy
does not isolate ‘organic public
sociology’ from other forms of sociology: professional (academic), critical sociology or policy oriented
sociology. He considers that most of the time they interact and overlap.
Sociologists can be involved simultaneously in professional and public
sociology; critical sociology and public sociology; policy oriented and organic public sociology. Nevertheless, the interactions between these forms of sociologies
are debateable. Further questions can be asked: how a sociologist who works for
the government can keep being critical with the state governance and get
involved in civic action? I guess Burawoy mainly refers to academic
sociologists, who do not face so many constraints ,.compared to those who work
outside academia, less able to be critical or produce critical
public sociological knowledge. These issues can be questioned further in
connection to what Bourdieu and Luic Wacquant called Reflexive Sociology: From which position sociologists can express
their critical views and how their opinions can become relevant and gain authority in
“the struggle of defining the truth’ and social reality? As far as the sociological knowledge is
produced only in the realm of academic field, with minimum critical communication
with public (s), governance/governmental power, sociologists are less
actors in the symbolic struggle of establishing the truth
(eg. directions of governance) and less able to produce social change.
Organic Public Sociology and Civil
Society
Following
Gramsci and Polanyi, Burawoy considers that sociology becomes public when is disconnected from the market, media
forces and state directions of governance and it is directly involved in the
support and development of civil society. The concept of civil society
refers to people, of course, but in a way that all those in need become able,
through associative behaviour to participate in the process of decision making,
to fight for their own rights, oppose resistance to state abuses, or inequalities produced by the
market etc. Their voices and opinions should be represented in public and
political sphere and not always in the control of a commercial mass-media, which
might alter their image. This form of ability and empowerment has to be
supported by sociologists and the whole production of knowledge has to come in the support of
civil society and self governance of those groups with lower degrees of
participation in the democratic process.
This general support for civil society
and disconnection from state, media and the market makes sociology public – Sociology for the public (s) - Sociology for the civil society!
From my point of view, the discussion around the role of civil society , its relations/dynamic with the state and market is one of the most interesting and important critical issues for sociological domain of knowledge production. It has as main theoretical reference Foucault- Habermas debate on 'the subject centred reason', perspective endorsed by Habermas but mainly rejected by Foucault in his counter discourse on modernity.
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“I
am interested in what Habermas is doing. I know that he does not agree with what
I say –I am little more in agreement with him –but there is always something
which causes me a problem. It is when he assigns a very important place to
relations of communication and also a function that I would call ‘utopian’. The
thought that there be a state of communication which would be such that the
games of truth could circulate freely, without obstacles, without constrain and
without coercive effects, seem to me to be Utopia.” (Interview with Foucault
1984)
In his critical discussion on civil society and public space, Habermas differentiates between lifeworld and the system
as two antagonistic domains of action and value. The first is the realm of
processes of socialization, cultural reproduction and social integration
reproduced through communicative action.
It gets expression in the public sphere,
upholds the formation of civil society
and maintains boundaries with the state and the market. The lifeworld is continuously colonized by the system (extension of law in the public life-'juridification',bureaucratization) to which struggles against to formulate acts of criticisms
and resistance.
For
Habermas, lifeworld and civil society are spaces of relative
autonomy, outside of the distorting power forces. The bureaucratization of the lifeworld can be resisted and challenged
by the civil society through
expressions and material instantiations of a developed critical public space. Nevertheless, the autonomy of public sphere and civil society formed in
opposition with state is rather an idealistic image ,which has been criticised
for reifying liberal imaginaries of a
civil society as a private space. Civil society is itself constituted by the liberal state and cannot be disentangled from the already existent power relations and neoliberal discourses which pervade both the public sphere and political arenas.On the other hand, Foucault’s discussion on governmental power dislocated from the
state comes as a fundamental critique of the idea of civil society as a separate
site of criticism and resistance.
"I have not spoken about civil society. And on purpose, because I hold that the theoretical opposition between the state and civil society which traditional political theory belabours is not very fruitful" (Foucault 1991)
In my view, the understanding of civil society as part of neo-liberal governmentality poses challenges to the organic public
sociology itself. Which civil society can we support? Habermas’
imagined autonomous civil society? or the already constituted one by the capitalist state and neo-liberal governmentality? While
I endorse Foucault’s disbelief in the existence of a civic space, outside of
power relations, separate and opposed to state and governmental power, I would
not subscribe to a total disqualification of the understanding of civil society
as source of resistance and criticism. However, Foucault gives the direction
for managing the double game of power in the process of subjectivation. In his approach, the subject is not an ontological reference but rather s/he is invested and
constituted by power as agent ,contextually able to challenge
the foundational power. Foucault’s problematization of the subject can be translated further into the civil society dynamic (not an autonomous fixed entity), which should be
considered part of a hegemonic processuality/struggle in which state, market
and media are co-participative forces.
"I have not spoken about civil society. And on purpose, because I hold that the theoretical opposition between the state and civil society which traditional political theory belabours is not very fruitful" (Foucault 1991)
Starting
from Foucault’s criticism and the questions raised in this presentation I am planning to start a new debate on critical sociology which, from my point
of view, should be at the core of all the other forms of sociology mentioned by
Burawoy and a source of critical directions for the practice of organic public
sociology.
Political Involvement and Sociology
The last but not least, Burawoy advocates for political involvement of
sociologists who should express in
public debates their opinions related to current programs of governance,
political debates, conflicts. They should take sides (support for workers'
associations, women’s andmigrants’ rights but also in matters of national
interest- e.g.public expenditures on
production of military technology etc), express their criticism and political
options in media events but also participate in social movements, activist
actions in support of those less represented in society.
Instead of conclusions
This
critical summary comes to clarify and generate new theoretical and empirical openings for Burawoy’s ‘organic public
sociology’ or ‘sociology for the
public(s)’, which unfortunately is, sometimes, misunderstood and not acknowledged
by those who initiate debates on public sociology. The name of ‘organic public
sociology’ can be replaced with another terminology, but Burawoy’s discussion has to be
acknowledged.
I guess, presentations on public
sociology should start from a legitimate act of reflection on the personal production
of sociological knowledge and activism and ,why not, of positionality in the
academic field vs public sphere, which makes a social scientist more or less
able to speak truth to power. I hope more of us will be directly involved in
working with the unrepresented, acknowledge Burawoy’s conceptualisations and, in this way, create a base for genuine discussions on public
sociology.
Biblio
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