SOCI 286 - Public Sociology

Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)

In the nearly 200 years since the inception of sociology, a fundamental tension has persisted in the discipline between its scientific ambitions and need for scholarly legitimacy on the one hand, and its moral obligations to society – including issues of equality and justice – on the other. Today, this tension often manifests in debates around the role of public sociology, which the late Michael Burawoy argued is necessary for balancing and complementing the more dominant “professional” ethos of academic sociology, especially in the United States. In this course we examine public sociology in its historical and contemporary iterations to question why sociology as a practice and body of knowledge matters today in the wake of attacks on higher education and the rise of neo-fascism but also new and enduring movements for justice. In doing so we consider topics such as the relationship between theory and praxis; the role of organic intellectuals and public intellectuals; and the entanglements of sociology, public policy, and activism. We study the work of “classic” public sociologists such as W.E.B Du Bois, Jane Addams, and C. Wright Mills along with more recent scholars such as Angela Davis, Cornel West, David Graeber, Matthew Desmond, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Naomi Klein, Tressie McMillan Cottom, and Ta-Nehisi Coates in order to apprehend and imagine public sociology in all of its possibilities (and limitations) as a tool for building collective futures. John Andrews.

Two 75-minute periods.

Course Format: CLS