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This article develops an alternative vision of public sociology. Whereas public sociology is often defined through the actions of professional sociologists, this article calls for a recognition of reverse tutelage in public sociology. Here, publics are seen as sociological interlocutors who can, and often do, produce sociological theories and analyses that can inform professional sociology. I demonstrate this reverse tutelage by focusing on anticolonial and anti-racist social movements, including the Zapatistas, Black Lives Matter, Palestine Action, and Cops Are Flops. I highlight how they produce sociological theories of power, neoliberalism, race, bordering, and violence that can orient professional sociology toward relational forms of analysis that build connections between different sites of resistance. In doing so, I highlight how the boundary between what Burawoy terms "professional" and "critical" sociology is much more porous than initially theorized and that critical sociology—from wider publics—can significantly shape professional sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The question of "why we are in disaster studies" can be essential to reflect on discourses and practices – as students, researchers and professors – in constituting an oppressive disaster science and finding ways to liberate from it. Design/methodology/approach: This paper is based on autobiographical research and institutional ethnography to observe and analyze the discourses and practices about career trajectories as students, researchers and professors in disaster studies. Findings: The paper provides some categories, concepts, theoretical approaches and lived experiences helpful for discussing ways of liberating disaster studies, such as public sociology of disaster. Originality/value: Few papers have focused on professional trajectories in disaster studies, bringing insights from public sociology and questioning oppressive disaster science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to decenter the academy as the gatekeeper of knowledge, while presenting a critique of 'public sociology' and 'public-facing' scholarship. I argue that public sociology's aim to make research more 'accessible to a wider audience' presupposes that the university has something to offer to this audience in the first place. This not-so-tacit arrogance only further privileges the university as the primary site of knowledge production, while rendering invisible the many knowledge producers outside the academy. As public sociology continues to curry favor with mainstream media, politics, and policy institutes, it reveals a steadfast faith in the state and capital, while obscuring radical alternatives. In turn, public sociology functions as a counterinsurgency tool via professionalization. Conversely, a counter-public sociology refuses to comply with oppressive state protocols. Instead, it seeks to dismantle them. A counter-public sociology aims not to affirm the university, but to insist that this current academic enterprise remains untenable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taking our lead from Karl Mannheim's sociology of knowledge theory, and utilizing qualitative content analyses of data extracted from editorials, articles, and public-facing documents, this current editorial details the story of how the myriad of editors for the Journal of Teacher Education (JTE) safeguarded a space to highlight ideas essential to research of preservice and inservice teacher education within an ever-changing global context for nearly 75 years. Fourteen JTE editorships over four eras— competency, reformation, legitimization, and resilience —are laid bare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The document is an obituary for Jeffrey Escoffier, a significant figure in the gay liberation movement. Escoffier was known for his activism, publishing endeavors, public scholarship, and theoretical interventions in various fields such as sex work studies, histories of sexuality, socialist theory, pornography studies, sociology, dance studies, and gender and sexuality studies. He was a mentor and inspiration to many, offering advice and support to fellow scholars. Escoffier passed away on May 20, 2022, leaving behind a legacy of generosity, warmth, and scholarly rigor. [Extracted from the article]

This essay underscores the importance of public sociology and the critical and policy outcomes it encourages. The work also notes the importance of translating sophisticated theory and high quality, intricate methods for public consumption. The essay concludes by reviewing the growth of public sociology in the field at large and the special focus Sociological Forum has built in this area since 2015. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is a terrifying time to be LGBTQ in America. In the first 2023 legislative session alone, Republican lawmakers introduced more than 100 new bills specifically targeting transgender youth. This is part of a coordinated, multi‐state attack on transgender Americans about which there is open and very public acknowledgement. If you look, you'll see medical and psychiatric governing boards, major human rights organizations, policymakers, researchers like myself, and parent activists scrambling to speak back in what has become an impossible rhetorical landscape. The single most powerful move conservative lawmakers have made is to place transgender Americans and our advocates on an endless hamster wheel of response to a seemingly never ending series of aggressions. Part of how homo‐ and cis‐sexism function is to set the contours of public debate. This is a reflection on being a sociologist in the midst of these ongoing cultural conversations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bellah's 'Civil Religion in America' (1967) caught a moment in the American academy. It quickly became a much debated concept and although interest in the concept has periodically waxed and waned, the explication and contention continue fifty years later. It was both a great success and an albatross for Bellah himself, as the debates about the concept frustrated him to the point where he stopped using the phrase. In his consideration of Bellah's work, including civil religion, Bortolini's book provides a useful case for thinking about the dynamics of authorial intention, scholarly debates, and public interpretations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article "Nor Any Drop to Drink: Flint's Water Crisis (2018)" discusses the ongoing water crisis in Flint, Michigan, which began when the state switched Flint's water supply to the polluted Flint River in 2014, leading to health problems for residents.Topics include the Flint water crisis, the impact on residents' health, and the role of documentary filmmaking in addressing environmental injustice.

We propose a framework for citizen social science that brings together three reinforcing elements of a research project – scale, citizen-leadership, and publicness – to improve qualitative research. Our framework was born out of necessity; a desire to involve ordinary citizens, in researching public issues, with limited funding. We illustrate the application of our framework using insights from research we have led, involving first, a series of qualitative studies of state and civil society organizations working on community engagement by three separate years of public policy students; and second, a qualitative study on the system for processing salary and injury disputes for low-waged migrant workers in Singapore conducted by over 100 volunteers and activists. Drawing on a review of the literature and our own experiences, we speak to the advantages and trade-offs of adopting this approach and suggest practical methods for conducting citizen social science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article draws a decade of experience editing and publishing TheSocietyPages.org, and four more years editing Contexts magazine. Both projects work to bring sociological research and insight to broader public audiences, visibility, and impact. Here we build upon Herbert Gans' original call for public sociology and his emphasis on the translation and dissemination of sociological research, insight, and context on social issues and problems for broad public audiences. We begin by detailing the general challenges of such communication‐oriented public outreach and engagement. We then use our work with The Society Pages, one of the largest sociological hubs on the internet, as a case study for doing this work and addressing these challenges. Key points of emphasis include: (1) the core challenges and key principles of writing for general, nonacademic audiences; (2) organizational and infrastructure‐related needs and some pragmatic recommendations for institutionalizing publicly engaged sociology; and (3) the critical role of graduate students in these endeavors. We conclude that sociologists ourselves are best positioned to share our work with public audiences and we identify some benefits for the discipline in doing such engaged scholarship over a sustained period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this essay, I lay out my motivations for doing publicly engaged sociology, emphasizing both the joys and the challenges of this work, and some of the key lessons that I have learned. I explore my attempts to impact policy at the federal level and the local level of my university, as well as efforts to shape changes across academia during the COVID‐19 crisis. I have found it meaningful to be working toward all of these changes. Moreover, making sense of the spaces that I inhabit, collecting data, exploring patterns, and connecting it to social theory, has deepened my thinking as a sociologist, and bettered my research more broadly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

B Douglas Hartmann b is Professor of Sociology at the University of Minnesota. B Chris Uggen b is a Regents Professor in Sociology, Law, and Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota and co-editor and publisher of TheSocietyPages.org. In addition to community-engaged sociology, her research and teaching focus on the sociology of reproduction and birth, medical sociology, and sociology of the family. [Extracted from the article]

In this article, I focus on community‐engaged sociology (CES) conducted by faculty members, in partnerships between universities and community partners, and situated within the context of a university‐based research center (UBRC). There has been scant research on UBRCs and their impacts, and I highlight the role that these centers can play in contributing to or impeding outcomes in CES. Beginning with an overview of the institutional context within which I conduct CES, I then discuss three case studies of collaborations with different traits and varying degrees of success. I examine some common challenges that all three collaborations faced, discuss the differences between project (easier to achieve) and institutional (more difficult to achieve) goals, and analyze the reasons for differential results in meeting outcomes. Finally, I conclude by proposing recommendations on how we can better support and boost the work of UBRCs in CES. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some literature on public sociology conceives of students as a public rather than potential or real practitioners of this type of sociology. There is a dearth of texts reflecting on graduate student training in public sociology and the trade‐offs they face. In this paper, I engage in a reflexive account of my experience doing public sociology, as I partnered with nonprofits to conceptualize, research, and write a report on the effects of stripped citizenship in Colombia after a mistaken administrative decision deprived 40,000 mostly binnational Venezuelan‐Colombians of their nationality in that country. This report has served as part of strategic litigation and to raise public awareness of the harmful policy. I argue that three things are key for graduate students to engage in public sociology and have been overlooked. First, training in public sociology, especially training with elements of apprenticeship, can develop the publicly engaged sociological imagination and toolkit, which is key to identifying opportunities for interventions in the midst of fieldwork, and models for interventions. Second, support from established professors. And third, local, contextual knowledge is indispensable. I also discuss ways to offset some of the trade‐offs that graduate students are likely to face when doing public sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I make parallel claims about the potential for "believing" as a methodological and political practice: it is a skill that can link the academic and political, and it is crucial for public sociology. Drawing on my experience of simultaneously being a sitting state senator and a university professor, I argue that while professional sociology is premised on and starts with skepticism, doubt, and criticism, public engagement as sociologists must, to a greater extent, be premised on reception and welcome of ideas. We need prosocial, courageous frameworks to realize the practical and ethical potential of sociology. Believing can do three things: it can help make our work more robust by exploring more ways of knowing (making us better scholars); it can help us create more and better connections with others doing such work (making us better organizers); and can help our social systems be more responsive and adaptive (it gives us better institutions). I outline how I see this happening. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Publicly engaged sociology seeks to use our research and work to engage stakeholders within and beyond the university to analyze and fight inequality or injustice, and to address other issues society faces. Sociologists who do such work help universities (and other institutions) keep their social contract to use our work to make society better. This Special Issue continues the Eastern Sociological Society's work on publicly engaged sociology, including the 2022 creation of Public Sociology Awards for Early Career and Post‐Tenure scholars, and my Presidential Address. Contributors to this volume can hopefully serve as examples to younger sociologists, because these articles describe how the authors have done excellent basic research and used it to address societal problems, and have navigated hazards of such work, including the MeSearch gaze. Contributors do publicly engaged sociological work from the most macro‐level, such as analyzing how algorithms promote division and undermine democracy or how to better disseminate sociological work to wider audiences, to work on national policies to create more equitable universities, to the local contexts, including working to promote play for elementary school students, or oust sheriffs responsible for family separation, or restore citizenship stripped from naturalized immigrants. Authors range across the spectrum of sociological careers, from current doctoral students, to postdocs, to tenured professors, to the American Sociological Association's 2024 President. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

She received her undergraduate degree from Wellesley College and her PhD in sociology from the University of Pennsylvania. B Sari R. Alfi-Nissan b is a PhD candidate at the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Bar-Ilan University. B José Pereira Coutinho b PhD in sociology (ISCTE - University Institute of Lisbon), full member at the Research Centre for Theology and Religious Studies (CITER-UCP) and the Centre for Global Studies (CEG-UAb), invited assistant professor in the PhD program in theology of the Catholic University of Portugal (UCP). Her main research interests include sociology of health and illness, health communication, e-health technology adoption, sociology of knowledge. [Extracted from the article]

This paper examines the idea of sociological film that encourages sociological imagination, which refers to the capability to recognize the intersection of biography and history. The paper identifies six key dimensions of sociological film through a thematic analysis of different classic approaches to sociological imagination: sociological life, structure-actors relationship, critical perspective, academic awareness, fluidity of meaning, and promotion of sociological imagination. This paper provides concrete examples to demonstrate the distinctive features of sociological film and how it relates to, and differs from, other films that address social issues, including documentary films. The paper argues that sociological film is essential in fostering sociological imagination by offering a unique lens for analyzing and understanding social phenomena. Sociological film has the potential to inspire social change by increasing awareness about significant social issues and promoting critical thinking and reflection. The paper concludes by emphasizing the significance of collaboration between sociologists and filmmakers in advancing sociological imagination through the medium of sociological films. It highlights the importance of actively engaging with the public in visual research methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"For a Socially Engaged Faith" by Felix Wilfred is a collection of essays and lectures that explore the concept of public theology in the Asian context. Wilfred argues that theology must address the suffering and systemic injustices faced by marginalized communities, rather than focusing solely on dogmatic propositions. He calls for a socially engaged faith that combines spirituality with social activism, emphasizing the need for creative public theology that involves thinkers, artists, and intellectuals from various religious backgrounds. Wilfred also discusses the importance of Pope Francis's critique of capitalism and the market, and how it aligns with the goals of public theology. This thought-provoking and accessible volume will be of interest to theologians, ethicists, and scholars of Asian Christianity. [Extracted from the article]

B Tara Opsal b is an Associate Professor of Sociology and the Director of Undergraduate Studies at Colorado State University. B Felicia Arriaga b is an assistant professor of sociology at Appalachian State University. B Laura C. Atkins b is an Associate Professor of Sociology and the Associate Dean of Arts and Sciences at Jacksonville University. [Extracted from the article]

There are systemic and longstanding inequalities in sport participation for culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) migrants. Drawing on theoretical foundations of critical pedagogy and social justice education, as well as a public sociology perspective, this paper examines the development of an action research (AR) project to support the co-creation of inclusive climates in sports clubs in CALD communities in Melbourne, Australia. We use artefacts from collaborative sessions, interviews, and surveys to analyse the AR's impact on participating community sport leaders' awareness and practice. The findings indicate how the collaborative process of assessing clubs' diversity and inclusion climates affected participants' awareness of inequities and exclusionary practices, and how the co-creation of strategies for change brought together diverse perspectives. We reflect on the implications and limitations of the AR for research practice aimed at promoting equitable social inclusion for CALD migrants in community sport. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although public historians and public intellectuals were present in the United States long before the 1970s and 80s, in those decades these terms emerged as focal points for intensified debates about the roles to which they pointed. Those debates shared more than chronological proximity; they had common questions and concerns. As The Public Historian marks its forty-fifth year, comparing discussions about public historians to those about public intellectuals casts new light on a question posed at the outset and present since: what is public history? This comparison highlights the development of public history as a process—rather than the public historian as a role or public history as a product—and locates it in a broader reconfiguration of academic authority in the public sphere over the last fifty years, which included “public intellectuals” and movements for public sociology, public philosophy, and public humanities. Whereas the authoritative voice remained central to the role of the public intellectual, the process of public history was the ground for a shift to shared authority. Developments in theory and practice in the field of public history therefore resonate beyond it: they constitute one of the richest bodies of work grappling with the always-contested place of experts, professionals, and intellectuals in American democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this interview, Dr Prudence Carter, 2021–2022 President-Elect of the American Sociological Association, discusses how sociology can contribute to anti-racist futures across national contexts. Her insights point to the need for greater self-awareness in sociology regarding race and racism, for clarification of our aims and for better articulation and translation of popularized theoretical concepts, such as structural racism, to the general public. To achieve radical inclusion in the future, she highlights the importance of engaging in public and policy sociology, by explaining and substantiating policies and practices derived from our research. She also underscores the significance and value of comparative cross-national and multidisciplinary collaborative research. Most importantly, she brings to the fore the necessity of imagining new epistemological and methodological approaches to study the conditions that will enable our societies to attain equitable and anti-racist futures. Fundamentally, this involves extending our sociological imaginations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mainstream scholars of IR favor policy-relevant research, that is the agenda to influence government policymakers by offering policy recommendations. In this article, I offer a different perspective by presenting alternative arguments about social scientists' responsibility to influence. By drawing on themes of public sociology and critical sociology, security studies and public policy, I argue that the core of this responsibility is to seek to influence policy via engagement with the public rather than with policymakers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is a version of Professor Smith's Presidential Address as delivered at the annual meetings of the Eastern Sociological Society in Boston, March 2022. Most sociologists go into the field hoping our work will help address the inequalities or injustices we study, but academic institutions and careers strongly guide most of our work away from the engagement needed to have such impacts. With others, I argue for changes in academic careers and institutions to better recognize, promote, and reward publicly engaged sociology, which would help academia honor its social contract. I briefly engage Burawoy's concept of public sociology, then propose types of publicly engaged sociology that align with how many sociologists do such work: Reframing/Debunking Sociology, Institutionally Engaged Sociology, and Community Engaged Sociology. Next, I analyze several obstacles to publicly engaged—and especially community engaged—sociology, including epistemic assumptions and evaluative practices stemming from instrumental positivism, belief in a canonical Hawthorne effect as a clean experimental finding, and a bias against research that helps research participants or partners. Finally, I offer advice and strategies to younger sociologists wishing to do such work and recommend ways academic institutions and practices could better support publicly engaged sociology, including by training students and faculty in how to do it, creating a Journal of Publicly Engaged Sociology, and amending ASA's Code of Ethics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past 15 years, sport scholars have expressed an increased interest in public sociology, while the rapid acceleration of digital media has led to significant shifts in the sport media landscape. In this paper, we analyze our experiences at the confluence of these two trends as scholarly bloggers about hockey. We present self-reflexive personal vignettes—centred around themes of engaging publics, marginality, and negative outcomes—and use intersectional analysis to critique how our privileges and social locations enabled or constrained our public engagement. In doing so, we raise theoretical and practical questions about the possibilities and challenges associated with sport scholars' digital public engagement and provide fresh contributions to ongoing debates about public sociology of sport. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tragically, this hypothetical scenario has come true in the form of Russia's war in Ukraine, which has abruptly isolated Russia from a significant share of the global community. The first one addresses the evolution of citizenship legislation in post-Soviet Russia, disentangling the government's attempts to legislate on who belongs to the nation and who does not. In its rearticulation of Russia's new national identification as a normal experience, the book overcomes the juxtaposition of nation states and global trends. [Extracted from the article]

Krygier (p. 198) even rightly mentions that Selznick felt intellectual affinity with Hilary Putnam's philosophical work - without, however, elaborating this important point. Krygier coined the term "Hobbesian idealism" for Selznick, to grasp a seemingly paradoxical combination of ambitious ideals with a realism of power; Selznick's own self-characterization was "humanistic naturalism." Robert Bellah, the great sociologist of religion, is a case in point, as is his long-time Berkeley colleague Philip Selznick, one of the crucial contributors to the sociology of law and organization. [Extracted from the article]

While Stuart Hall is often acknowledged as a public intellectual, it is argued here that a better way of understanding his practice is as an interventionist, whose public engagements are always set in a specific context. This way of seeing Hall draws on his own words and from approaches to intellectual work that foreground how scholars present themselves. Combining this approach with Hall's own reading of Gramsci as a grounded intellectual, this article then illustrates the idea of Hall as an interventionist sociologist through three examples of his public works on race and racism, exemplifying his well-known use of conjunctural analysis. Thus, the purpose of this article is twofold: first it seeks to 'disambiguate' Hall from the public intellectual label; and secondly in resituating him it highlights his public engagements on race as interventions in and as sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

B Scott W. Allard b is the Daniel J. Evans Endowed Professor of Social Policy at the Evans School of Public Policy and Governance, University of Washington. His research interests are situated at the intersection of cultural sociology, medical sociology, phenomenology, and the sociology of the senses. B Donatella Della Porta b is a professor of political science, founding dean of the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences and Director of the PhD program in Political Science and Sociology at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Florence, where she also leads the Center on Social Movement Studies (Cosmos). [Extracted from the article]

According to the sociology of public problems, the construction, visibility, and stabilization of a public problem require the mobilization of collectives of citizens interested in the issue, which act as an active entity in demanding actions and policies. One such issue is the depopulation of rural areas in Spain, which has shifted from a geographically localized problem to a matter of state policy. This article investigates the influence of framing in this process, analyzing a corpus of 5,980 headlines from newspapers in the Aragon, Castile-La Mancha, and Castile and Leon regions of Spain as well as from two national media outlets, corresponding to the period 2012-2021. Through the application of statistical analyses of lexical frequency in stages, the most significant terms in the evolution of the media's coverage of the issue have been identified, which has made it possible to observe the appearance and displacement of concepts and their relationship to the most important milestones of social and political mobilization. In addition, its power to stir up sentiment in socio-political discourse has been explored. The consolidation of depopulation as a stable element in the Spanish media agenda, going beyond the regional sphere and having a presence dissociated from specific events through time, in contrast to what occurred some years ago, stands out. Finding a media-friendly frame -empty Spain [España vacía] and emptied Spain [España vaciada]-may have been a key element in this. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current racial climate, the subsequent protests taking place in the state of Minnesota, and the social spotlight that followed, brought forth the importance of creating anti-racism initiatives in higher education. This article describes a significant curriculum redesign of an undergraduate social determinants of health (SDOH) course to include a module on examining social and community context with an emphasis on racism, discrimination, and violence. Course materials focused on a notorious urban housing project subject to media scrutiny, and a corrupt political system that resulted in policies perpetuating generational segregation, poverty, and violence. SDOH factors are presented in an upstream public health approach from the lens of individuals, and their perceptions of top down, uncontrollable institutional level forces that impact their quality of life. This module aims to disrupt students' deep-rooted understanding about underserved urban populations and introduces them to a nuanced understanding of intersectionality around five key SDOH. The module incorporates an intersectional analysis within the praxis of public health and sociology to explore discrimination, institutional racism, and segregation beyond public health data driven indicators that examine race and disparate health outcomes. We found that preconceived notions of student knowledge, behavior, and belief systems contribute to the stereotypical views of urban, poor minority populations. Students discovered that despite neighborhood dysfunction, residents created strong social cohesive networks, were political advocates for change, and sought promised governmental economic opportunities. Students are better informed about "those" people in "bad" neighborhoods that struggle to overcome decades of institutionally designed obstacles created from subversive policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reading public sociology with Burawoy amounts to an engagement with the process of being and becoming a sociologist. The blending of text and context offers a hermeneutics in which theory and theorist are political actors striving for dialectic of utopia and anti-utopia. In such a scheme this article turns inward to the context of sociology and anthropology in South Asia to adjudge the limits and possibility of public sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers the too-often limited reach of public sociology, focusing on the case of “Christian nationalism.” Despite growing media attention to Christian nationalism, partly reflecting current events along with considerable efforts to engage in public sociology on the topic, I anticipate public awareness of the term is concentrated in theoretically predictable ways. Given the growing conservative skepticism toward academics (particularly sociologists) and increasingly siloed media consumption, I theorize Americans most familiar with “Christian nationalism” would be sociologists’ “choir,” namely, those who are more educated, less religious, more liberal/Democratic, and who trust more liberal news sources. Drawing on two representative surveys fielded in mid-September and November/December of 2022, findings affirm the strongest predictors of Americans hearing/reading more about “Christian nationalism” were being more liberal, educated, being non-Christian (in one survey), and trusting more liberal news sources (in another survey). Interactions show exposure to the term among liberals, Democrats, and those who trust liberal news sources increases substantially with educational attainment. Despite the considerable amount of sociological research and public sociology addressing “Christian nationalism,” those most aware of the term in late 2022 were educated, liberal/Democratic, seculars most likely to already be exposed to and trust the work of sociologists. In other words, to the extent public sociologists have sought to inform the public about “Christian nationalism,” they have likely been “preaching to the choir” more than to those most susceptible to embracing the ideology (less educated, conservative/Republican, Christians). I conclude by discussing implications for sociology’s public impact as a discipline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In January 2024, Florida’s Board of Education eliminated the sociology course, ‘Principles of Sociology’ as one of its core requirements for obtaining a general social science education in its college and university system. Florida’s Commissioner of Education, Manny Diaz, led the charge, claiming that sociology has been ‘hijacked by left wing activists’ and is a purveyor of ‘woke ideology’. Some within the profession would agree with Diaz, and certainly, many university administrators would as well. Of course, there are varying representations of sociology, and what Diaz and others are targeting is critical sociology and its commitment to the interrogation of power. However, these political dynamics are not new. The history of critical sociology has reflected a similar pattern that it is being played out currently. The ebbs and flows of critical sociology’s place within the discipline, the state and profession’s suppression of it, its resurgence linked to external social and political forces, and its precarious existence within the university have been true of critical sociology since its origins. This paper offers a historical context for better understanding the current attack on the field of sociology and raises the question, what should critical sociologists do about it? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do the changing roles of diverse publics affect possibilities for the practice of public sociology? Having set this question in the context of Burawoy’s 2004 launch of public sociology, this analysis goes on to look at some distinguished illustrative examples of public sociology, beginning with Du Bois. The goal is to explore how the evolution of surrounding ‘archipelagos of publics’ creates challenges and opportunities for public sociology. In addition to Du Bois, the work of Edward Webster and his colleagues in South Africa, the unorthodox career of Marshall Ganz and the ethnographic public sociology of Arlie Hochschild are considered. A synoptic sketch of the evolution of publics in Brazil since the 1964 military coup and an example of contemporary Brazilian public sociology—the ‘Emancipation Network’—follow. I conclude with a ‘neo-Polanyian pessimist’ vision of what the contemporary combination of neoliberalism and reactionary authoritarianism might mean for public sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent essays have raised once again the issue of the “long-standing divide between sociology as an activist discipline vs. sociology as a science” (Turner in The American Sociologist, 50, 456–487, 2019: 456; House in Annual Review of Sociology, 45, 1–29, 2019). In this presentation, I would like to consider this issue in both its current form and its manifestations during what was perhaps the most tumultuous period in the history of American sociology, i.e. the decade from 1968 to 1977. I will first revisit the earlier period of conflict and turmoil and then turn the focus to sociology and some of the problems it faces today, not the least of which has been a decline in the number of members since the end of President Obama’s first term. Although there are indeed certain similarities between these two periods, I will argue that the differences far outweigh those commonalities which, I believe, is a result of an increased democratization within our profession. An important bridge connecting sociology’s past with our present era exists in the collective memory of the post-war, or “baby boom” generation of sociologists. Many of that generation experienced first-hand the tensions and tumult surrounding the Vietnam War and changes within the ASA that led to the eventual election in 1976 of Alfred McClung Lee as the ASA’s 67th President. As a generation, those born between 1946 and 1964 are a diverse group but the research and scholarship produced by this group has been marked largely by the ideal of the scientific pursuit of knowledge of important sociological issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We open this issue with a tribute to a former member of Contemporary Jewry's Editorial Board, a recipient of the 2009 Marshall Sklare Award for scholarly achievement in the field of the social scientific study of contemporary Jewry, and a serious, thoughtful, and thought-provoking colleague: Professor Charles Kadushin z'l. Many of us read translated work without thinking twice about the work that has gone into its selection and the care regarding what parts of the work are translated for particular audiences and what terminology is used in that translation. Leonard Saxe has written a moving, comprehensive, and personal tribute to Kadushin, with whom Saxe had a long-standing personal and professional relationship. [Extracted from the article]

The author reflects on his work on the politics of the Olympic Games and in trying to create space for activism with an ethical metric of social justice. Topics discussed include examples of high-profile athletes willing to take public stands on politicized issues, distinction between public intellectual and scholar-activists, and five lessons the author have learned through trial and error regarding public sociology. He describes his career in public-intellectual work and scholar-activism, and challenges and benefits of his work.

This article explores the emerging agenda in relation to concussion in sport to illustrate the threats and opportunities currently faced by the sociology of sport as an academic sub-discipline. The article begins by delineating aspects of the “crisis” in sociology, Burawoy’s call for an enhanced public sociology as a (part) solution, and responses to these ideas within the sociology of sport. It then identifies how the engagement of sociologists in this terrain must be understood in relation to the recent medicalization of sports-related concussion, and illustrates the impact of this on sociologists of sport through an examination of recent social scientific scholarship in relation to concussion. It argues that a successful public sociology of sport should be predicated on the subdiscipline’s distinctive contribution to the production of knowledge. To this end, the article concludes by reporting the findings of an empirical study of concussion in English professional soccer, to outline a framework for sportrelated health research, and thus the basis on which a socially influential sociology of concussion in sport could develop. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on two examples of sociological writing that have attracted wide public interest: Didier Eribon's best-selling memoir about his working-class origins, Returning to Reims, and Hartmut Rosa's door-stopper work of social theory, Resonance, featured on the cover of the German news magazine Stern. These two very different works – one indebted to Bourdieu and Foucault, the other located in the tradition of the Frankfurt School – share certain qualities. First, a formal feature I'll call scale-shifting: a leavening of theoretical claims with vivid examples and resonant details. And second, a commitment to doing justice to the phenomenological depth of ordinary persons' self-understanding. Both writers, in other words, approach the world as deserving of a poet's attentive and appreciative eye as well as a theorist's critical gaze. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The value of fiction for public sociology and within qualitative research is well established. However, questions about process remain. Drawing from three contemporary projects – a novel, a series of short stories, and a collection of micro-fiction – this article focuses methodological attention on how sociological imagination may be crafted in and with fiction. In particular I discuss the poetics and aesthetic form of a story: the language, mode of storytelling and voice(s) with which a story is told; and the imagery and sensory qualities which bring a story-world to life. By bringing conceptual considerations together with practical concerns, this article aims to extend the considerable body of work on the value of fiction for the production and dissemination of social research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental sustainability and ecological aesthetics experience a turbulent affair when academic language is replaced by an artistic register: can we articulate contemporary crises stemming from uncontrolled mobilities, such as hyper-consumption, hyper-automobilities, and technological pollution, better by replacing sociological analysis with affective poetic language? The following poem (unpublished but belonging to the theme of Altermodernities: A Traveller's Notes, book 1: Anthropocene Entanglements) explores what this transition offers to a "public sociology" of modernity that relays theory to multiple publics in alternative visual and textual styles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

B Jesse Smith b is a PhD candidate in Sociology and Demography and the Pennsylvania State University. B Tracy Adams b is a postdoctoral fellow in the Center for Cultural Sociology at Yale University and a research associate at the Weiss-Livnat International Center for Holocaust Research and Education, University of Haifa. Her areas of interest include reproduction, medicine, gender and sexualities, cultural demography, science and technology, and economic sociology. B Kassandra Roeser b is a Sociology PhD student at Stanford University. [Extracted from the article]

The problem stems from considering the classic proposal of Michael Burawoy (2005) regarding the complementarity between academic and public sociology, seeking to take small steps towards science and popular sociology, as a return of the knowledge generated to its inspirers by making public the issues regarding to private problems. With the objective of applying it to understand the particular development of a local critical sociology and its possibilities, contemplating certain processes from certain theoretical criteria and relative categories constructed for its analysis. For this purpose, the four sociologies in exercise defined by Burawoy (2005) have been included as conceptual tools, as well as the discussion between the context of discovery and justification associated with his idea of social commitment, and his normative position about their reciprocal interdependence that, in their interrelation, they give the discipline its integral and complex meaning. Likewise, central to the discussion raised is the contribution of Max Weber (1977; 1985) about technical rationality and evaluative rationality. As findings, it is evidenced in a historical contextual way to have reached a reasonable time of disciplinary maturation and its institutionalization, according to certain complex processes identified theoretically and categorized. On the other hand, the detection in the practice of sociology of the tension between reflective knowledge versus the hegemony of instrumental knowledge. However, while Burawoy (2005) clearly defends that reflective knowledge must normatively interrogate the value of the premises of society as well as our profession. Finally, that reflexive and critical public sociology constitutes precisely the area where values and positions within the disciplinary field are settled and polished, making communicative action possible, reciprocity that allows conversation between its various audiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In plotting the course for the discipline of sociology, sociologists over the past two decades have called for the practice of "public sociology" (Burawoy in American Sociological Review, 70(1), 4–28, 2005), for disciplinary convergence around a critical methodology (Carroll in Canadian Review of Sociology, 50(1), 1–26, 2013) and the devotion of our scholarly efforts to issues of social justice (Romero in American Sociological Review,85(1), 1–30, 2020). While public, critical, and social justice-oriented work is important, these disciplinary mandates can serve to marginalize other types of sociological work that are valuable as well. In this climate, work coming from perspectives that are not as left leaning politically, or that does not seek to advance any political agenda may be seen as less valued or legitimate, and scholars who choose to separate their political agendas from their research may experience marginalization (McLaughlin in Canadian Journal of Sociology, 30(1), 1–40, 2005; Pawluch in The American Sociologist,50, 204–219, 2019). Inspired by the work and doctoral mentorship of Dorothy Pawluch, this paper seeks to both understand the historical development of the field of Canadian sociology and consider the value and place of the interpretive tradition within it. Through reflecting on the research of others and my own experiences as a graduate student, I argue that the "chilly" climate Dorothy (Pawluch in The American Sociologist,50, 204–219, 2019) alludes to for scholars who operate outside of a politically informed "social-justice agenda" does exist, but that mentorship can help mediate this chill for interpretive leaning students. Finally, I suggest that the branch of the interpretive tradition which asks researchers to suspend their own perspectives and privilege the position of others still has value for Canadian sociology. It can both produce deep, meaningful research contributions and provide students with tools for engaging in productive intellectual debate and transformative encounters with difference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]