12 Facts About Public sociology

Public sociology is a subfield of the wider sociological discipline that emphasizes expanding the disciplinary boundaries of sociology in order to engage with non-academic audiences.

Burawoy and other advocates of public sociology encourage the discipline to engage with issues that are of significant public and political concern.

Debates over public sociology have rekindled questions concerning the extra-academic purpose of sociology.

Public sociology raises questions about what sociology is and what its goals ought to be.

Elsewhere, Burawoy has articulated a vision of public sociology that is consonant with the pursuit of democratic socialism.

Calhoun has entered the debate about public sociology, critically evaluating the project of public sociology while acknowledging its specific "promise", and arguing that "how sociology matters in the public sphere is vital to the future of the field".

E-public sociology is a form of public sociology that involves publishing sociological materials in online accessible spaces and subsequent interaction with publics in these spaces.

Debate over public sociology is having far reaching consequences for how many sociology departments teach and do sociology, with several reorienting their programs to encompass elements of public sociology.

Specifically, Burawoy's vision of public sociology has been critiqued both by "critical" sociologists and by representatives of academic sociology.

In other words, rather than good professional sociology being mutually interactive with public sociology, I believe that public sociology gets in the way of good professional sociology.

Public sociology is not a plea to make sociology more relevant to the many publics in society nor to connect sociology democratically to political activity.

Yet public sociology instead is a quest to subsume sociology under politics, a politics of a specific kind, not in order to foster sociological activism but to narrow down the sociological discipline to activist sociology.