Abstract
Comment on Michael Burawoy’s “Sociology as a Vocation” (CS 45[4]:379–393)
Michael Burawoy has made a powerful case for “public sociology.” The last decade has seen an enormous expansion of interest in the concept, much of which has been shaped by the concern that “public sociology,” as an openly partisan enterprise, could endanger sociology’s standing and legitimacy. We share Burawoy’s concerns about the state of the discipline and, like him, are concerned about its future. However, in our view, Burawoy’s proposals for revitalizing sociology are likely to result in it becoming less relevant and less legitimate as an academic vocation.
Burawoy first developed the idea of public sociology in his ASA Presidential Address in 2004. It would appeal beyond the instrumental practices of the academy, and its purpose was to bring sociology “into a conversation with publics” (2005:7). In a world shaped increasingly by “market tyranny and state despotism” (2005:24), public sociology, with its distinctive focus on “civil society and the defense of the social,” would come to play a significant role. This role would be carried out in three ways: by reaching a public audience beyond the confines of academia; by improving public well-being through contributing to the betterment of society and the lives of its members; and through the development of a critical imagination, “exposing the gap between what is and what could be” (2005:8).
Now, in an essay in Contemporary Sociology (45[4]), Burawoy asks “what does it mean to live for sociology today” (2016:379) in changed political conditions. In particular, we now live in “an epoch when the university and civil society are in retreat, assailed by neoliberal rationality” (2016:380). The subjugation of the university to market forces and business imperatives threatens sociology as a vocation and consequently the utopian imagination central to the sustenance of public sociology. In effect, the choice between making money and making a better world has been decisively skewed in favor of the former; it is easier to “live off” sociology than to “live for” sociology.
This changed environment has prompted a reevaluation of public sociology. Now, its task is to enter “into a conversation with wider publics about alternative orders informed by science” (2016:382; italics ours). Moreover, it should perform this normative task on the basis of a distinctive sociological tradition, resisting calls for an integrated social science. At the heart of that tradition, for Burawoy, is the defense of civil society and the aspirations for a better world that would hold “state and market in check.” The sustainability of sociology “depends on its connections to civil society” (2016:379) and on the “growth of global cosmopolitan governance” (2016:391). Recent events such as the Brexit vote in the UK and the nomination of Donald Trump as the Republican candidate for the U.S. presidency would suggest that the “civil society of global dimensions” necessary for public sociology to take root may yet be some way off. Unsurprisingly, the rallying-call tone of the 2004 address seems less confident in 2016: the sociological tradition “must be revitalized,” but this will be “a sociology without guarantees.”
Despite these shifts brought about by changed historical circumstances, Burawoy (2016:379), while answering his question “what does it mean to live for sociology today,” has not avoided the shortcomings of his original model. We have space to consider only three of them.
First, it is difficult to attach an exact meaning to Burawoy’s main concepts, especially to the term “civil society.” His arguments here draw on the work of Polanyi (2001), who emphasized the key role of the state in reducing the uncertainty generated by a system of market exchange. By managing the ways in which market exchange becomes embedded in social relations, the state provides an important counter-movement to the unrestricted development of a laissez-faire economy. As a believer in democratic politics, Polanyi was firmly of the view that struggles to protect the rights of workers and other vulnerable groups were a necessary part of the same counter-movement. Moreover, when such struggles were successful and resulted in laws, these needed the support of the state to be effective.
This is a nuanced conception of the relationship between the state, market forms of exchange, and politics, one in which the boundaries between civil society, the state, and market exchange are indistinct. In contrast, Burawoy’s distinction between markets, the state, and civil society is schematic, suggesting that all three are discrete rather than deeply imbricated and that growing marketization has given this tripartite model renewed significance. Tellingly, for Burawoy there is a singular force challenging the development of public sociology in the modern university, namely, marketization.
This brings us to our second concern. While we are in full agreement with Burawoy about the effects of subjecting universities to market forces and regarding them as businesses shifting educational product, we would also argue that marketization alone is not the only factor shaping what universities are becoming. Technology has played an increasingly influential role in changing the nature and responsibilities of universities. For example, MOOCs have had a significant impact on the reformulation of knowledge as a data science, while the role of universities as providers of PhDs for private research industries has been greatly enhanced. Furthermore, the role of social and digital media on the public, politics, and journalism is reshaping “civil society” in profound ways (for example, by creating a “post-truth” public that distrusts experts and will vote Trump rather than read sociology).
In short, contemporary society is “now finding itself in a struggle for self-preservation” in which it is necessary to grasp “the astonishing wonder of modern life” (Sloterdijk 2016:6). Burawoy’s notion of a public sociology does not seem to have such an objective. This is our third concern. Burawoy’s (2016:381) vision of “what drives our commitment to sociology” is too limited a program. It threatens to make sociology a wonder-free zone, one in which curiosity and the right of research not to have immediately measurable impact and outcomes, of the right of the academic not to be useful, have been eliminated. Curiosity and wonder are also refractory to commodification, but they do not figure in Burawoy’s conception of sociology as a vocation. They are everywhere the victims of programs, party lines, and any sort of fundamentalist politics; the absence of them in universities is partly responsible for the “plodding moralism,” “colorless imaginations,” and the “culture of playing it safe” that Abbott (2007) rightly deplores. Curiosity and wonder are the engines of science. They should also be the basis for pursuing sociology as a vocation.