Jeffries Vincent (Editor). Handbook Of Public Sociology

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142 Chapter 8

personal involvement in the zealotry. To do otherwise is to risk harm to

the sociologist’s personal reputation (a risk the person may be willing to

take) and, more important, to risk harm to the reputation of sociology as a

discipline. Furthermore, I believe that public sociologists can best serve the

social movements and causes they support by maintaining enough detach-

ment to exert moderating influence against intemperate and ill-considered

activism that is ultimately inimical to the causes.

An extreme example of a public sociologist’s unwarranted (and in this

case unethical) zealotry would be the fabrication of evidence to support

a political cause. I trust that such dishonesty has never been common in

sociology and is even rarer today than it was in the 1960s and 1970s, when

some sociologists did admit privately that they had or would fabricate evi-

dence for political reasons. I am less confident that there is not a great deal

of unconscious (or perhaps even semi-conscious) bias among sociologists

growing out of perceptions that some factual and causal claims are more

politically useful than competing ones. That is, when the evidence is am-

biguous, perceptions of political utility may often lead to one conclusion

rather than to an equally plausible one or to an admission of how incon-

clusive the evidence is. A good public sociologist will guard against such

bias, because false claims are very likely eventually to be revealed as such,

to the detriment of the reputation of the sociologist, the reputation of soci-

ology, and the attainment of the movement goals the sociologist supports.

Successful social action is likely to be facilitated by valid knowledge of the

reality that the activists seek to change, and false beliefs, however politically

useful they may be in the short term, can lead to ineffective activism.

A more morally complex issue is posed when sociologists embrace fac-

tual and causal conclusions not consistent with empirical evidence in order

to avoid stigmatizing or causing feelings of guilt among such persons as

divorced parents and unmarried mothers. Some sociologists and other fam-

ily scholars have even opposed academic discussion of possible negative

consequences of nontraditional family structures, and I assume that they

are even more opposed to sociologists’ participating in public discussion

of the topic. Although the motivation for it is admirable, such opposition

is anti-scientific, and in my opinion it is shortsighted and likely in the long

run to hurt those it is intended to help. Public policies and personal deci-

sions need to be based on sound empirical evidence, and the gathering of

such evidence is hampered by making some topics off limits for discussion,

research, and theoretical treatment.

Standard 5: A good public sociologist will resist all influences, both in-

ternal and external, to make causal conclusions stronger than the evidence

warrants.

Adherence to this standard may be especially difficult, given that soci-

ologists and other social scientists are prone to make stronger factual and

Some Suggested Standards 143

causal statements than the evidence warrants even in their academic publi-

cations (Glenn 1989). Apparently many sociologists, in common with just

about everyone else, have a strong need for certainty and often have trouble

dealing with the probabilistic nature of the evidence their research yields.

We need to feel that what we do is important, and doing so is hampered by

our honestly facing the limits of what we can know. These limits grow out

of, among other things, the fact that we can rarely use randomized experi-

mentation and cannot, by use of the kind of quasi-experimental methods

quantitative sociologists use, definitively prove cause and effect. Quantita-

tive social scientists, including sociologists, have pursued the illusive goal of

rigor by employing ever more complicated statistical modeling, often based

on an ever greater number of unproven, possibly incorrect, and hard to

assess assumptions. Qualitative sociology is plagued by its own problems,

including lack of representativeness of the persons studied and the fact that

conclusions about what causes what must be based on the subjective, and

one might suspect often faulty, judgments of the researcher. Therefore, vir-

tually all causal (and many descriptive) conclusions made by sociologists

should be stated tentatively, in both academic and public discourse.

The “public discourse” part of the above rule poses special problems, be-

cause neither media representatives, policymakers, activists, nor members

of the general public are inclined to like what they consider to be wishy-

washy statements; they want pronouncements of truth. In other words,

they want from us what we cannot honestly give. The more sophisticated

of these persons can sometimes be educated to understand and accept

statements based on the “preponderance of the evidence,” and the extent

to which this task can be accomplished sets limits to what a good public

sociologist can do.

Unfortunately, it is often difficult to prevent the media, activists, and oth-

ers from distorting and misrepresenting what we say. I have found that even

the more respectable of the media, such as the New York Times, are likely to

edit out the tentative part of statements made to them, and some distortion

by activists is predictable and probably unavoidable.

It is my impression, however, that the sociologists themselves are often

responsible for exaggerated and unsupported claims that are attributed to

them and that they make these claims, or allow them to be disseminated, in

order to gain media attention. If the claims appear in press releases issued

by university public relations offices or are in magazines that use fact check-

ers, it is reasonable to assume that the sociologists to whom they are attrib-

uted bear major responsibility for them. Enjoyment of media attention is

normal and usually harmless, but if one strives too much for it or becomes

addicted to it, it can prevent one from being a good public sociologist.

Standard 6: A good public sociologist will recognize, and communicate

to others, the limits of sociological knowledge, while at the same time

144 Chapter 8

believing in, but not exaggerating, the contribution sociology can make

toward attainment of social ends.

It follows from the discussion of Standard 5 above that the ethical public

sociologist will not make extravagant claims about what can be accom-

plished through applying sociological knowledge and theory. The limits of

sociological knowledge place limits on what can be accomplished through

public sociology, and unlike many proponents of public sociology, I be-

lieve that the potential accomplishments are rather modest, though defi-

nitely worthwhile. We sociologists are not wizards capable of effecting a

major transformation of society, but we can contribute to social betterment

(defined by our own ultimate values) in specific, discrete ways through the

application of our imperfect, probabilistic knowledge and our underdevel-

oped theory. We should not claim that we can do more than that.

Standard 7: A good public sociologist will be motivated primarily by

the prospect of such psychic rewards as a feeling that he/she is making

the world a better place rather than by anticipation of monetary rewards,

career advancement, professional recognition, public acclaim, and other

“extrinsic” rewards.

I have already discussed how a quest for such rewards as approval from

movement allies and media attention can lead the public sociologist astray,

and I could also discuss how seeking nonacademic monetary rewards could

have pernicious effects. I do not dwell on the latter, however, because,

contrary to what some people may believe, engaging in public sociology

provides few opportunities, and thus few temptations, to compromise

one’s integrity for the sake of money. Consulting fees and stipends that

sociologists can earn by cooperating with activist organizations and think

tanks are rarely enough to begin to compensate for the loss of academic sal-

ary (including summer salary) that participation in public sociology entails.

When I started participating in public sociology and thus devoting less time

to publishing in refereed journals, my annual salary increases went down

accordingly (and appropriately, in my opinion). I have spent entire sum-

mers doing public sociology while receiving much less in honoraria than I

could have earned by teaching a course in a six-week summer session. The

only way that public sociology is likely to be lucrative is if one publishes a

best-selling trade book, and the prospects for doing that are slim. Therefore,

public sociologists should not expect substantial “extrinsic” rewards not

only because seeking such rewards can bias their perceptions and claims

about reality but also because expecting such rewards is likely to lead to

disappointment and frustration.

Burawoy (2005) believes that the academic rewards for his four kinds of

sociology should be more nearly equal and thus, I infer, he must believe that

participating in public sociology should be more highly rewarded within

the academy with promotions and salary increases than it is. In principle, I

Some Suggested Standards 145

agree, because what pure-science sociologists do is for naught if sociological

knowledge is not applied to real-world problems (cf. Hays 2007). There are

practical obstacles, however, to increasing the academic extrinsic rewards for

public sociology. How, for instance, is the quality of public sociology to be

judged? This may seem a strange query in the middle of an essay propos-

ing standards for good public sociology, but even in the unlikely event that

widespread agreement should emerge about my or any other set of stan-

dards, gauging degree of compliance with the standards would be extremely

difficult. Although most of us who have our work judged by journal referees

and reviewers for publishers of academic books often grouse about the qual-

ity of the reviews and sometimes feel that they lower rather than increase the

quality of our work, it is hard to argue for routine rewards for work that is

not in some way evaluated by members of the academy. How, for instance,

are deans and promotion committees to judge the quality of op-ed pieces

in regional newspapers or articles in popular magazines? Even more serious,

increasing academic rewards for public sociology would almost certainly

set off internecine conflicts about the relative worth of the different causes

supported by different public sociologists and lead to inequality of rewards

based on how popular (among sociologists and other academic evaluators

of sociologists’ work) the different causes are. Imagine the dissonance that

would be felt by a feminist “pro-choice” sociologist faced with a decision

about whether or not to reward “pro-life” activism. Still another argument

against substantial academic rewards for participating in public sociology

is that they would draw too much effort and talent away from basic re-

search and theory building (cf. Stinchcombe, 2007). Activism and applied

work not based on sound evidence and theory may be not just useless but

destructive, and thus it would be undesirable for a large proportion of the

most capable and creative sociologists to devote most of their time to public

sociology during the prime of their careers.

Regrettable though it may be, substantial participation in public sociol-

ogy by early-to-mid-career persons is likely to carry large financial penal-

ties—a sacrifice that persons with heavy family responsibilities may not,

and arguably should not, be willing to make. Consider, for instance, the

penalty for a person 30 years from retirement who gets an annual salary

increase $4,000 less than he or she would have received had the time de-

voted to public sociology been spent writing journal articles instead—not

an unlikely occurrence. The long-term penalty for this participation will be

$120,000, though somewhat less in, say, 2008 dollars when future infla-

tion is taken into account. In contrast, for a person only five years from

retirement, the penalty would be only $20,000. The latter person might be

able to recover most if not all of the penalty by earning consulting fees and

nonacademic honoraria, but the former person would have little chance of

recovering even a small proportion of his/her loss.

146 Chapter 8

Therefore, the most active public sociologists are likely to be relatively

old, to have independent sources of income, to not have dependent off-

spring, and/or to have unusual commitment to the causes they support.

These characteristics have some potential for biasing perceptions of reality

and lowering the quality of participation in public sociology, but it seems

to me that the danger of such bias is relatively small in the total array of

threats to good public sociology. Indeed, some of these characteristics may

promote effective and appropriate participation in public sociology. For

instance, the older sociologist may have reached the point of perceiving the

ultimate unimportance in the long run and in the greater scheme of things

of such goals that occupy so much attention of sociologists as departmental

rankings and personal citation counts. This sociologist may have reached

the point of wanting to feel that his or her life’s work has resulted in more

than largely ignored academic publications and the ephemeral symbols

of success, realizing how little anyone will care about the latter in years to

come. If so, he or she is likely to be a more dedicated and single-minded

practitioner of public sociology than most younger sociologists would be.

Standard 8: A good public sociologist will empathize with the persons

he/she wishes to influence and thus will, among other things, communi-

cate in clear, jargon-free language and avoid postures likely to be irritating

to non-sociologists.

Sociologists, of all persons, should be able to “take the role of the other,”

but it seems to me that some become so immersed in their intellectual

and ideological in-groups that they lose their ability to perceive how they

come across to outsiders. Language that may be appropriate for in-group

discourse—including terms such as “hegemonic,” “subaltern,” and so

forth—are likely to evoke ridicule when used in public discussions, even,

and perhaps especially, in intellectual circles. The meaning of these terms

can and should be expressed in more widely understood and less ideologi-

cally loaded language. Some sociological terminology has become widely

understood outside of the field, “significant other” being a good example,

and may appropriately be used in communicating to well-educated publics.

However, a good rule of thumb is, when in doubt about the appropriate-

ness of a term, avoid its use.

A related point is that the mantle of victimhood is not attractive when

donned by persons such as tenured full professors in major universities,

who are perceived by most others (correctly, in my opinion) as being

among the most privileged persons in the society. Personal grievances may

relate to the causes one supports with public sociology, but they are best left

out of public discussions because they are unlikely to attract support for the

causes and may have the opposite effect. It is wise to follow the rule, dwell

as much as you like on the negative consequences of a social condition on

others, but refrain from whining about its effects on you.

Some Suggested Standards 147

Standard 9: The good public sociologist will be mindful of how his/her

participation in public debates, discussion, and activism will affect the

reputation, public image, credibility, and respectability of sociology as a

whole and will avoid statements and actions that will unnecessarily tarnish

the image of the discipline.

“Unnecessarily” is a key term in the preceding statement. I certainly do

not mean that a good public sociologist must gauge the appropriateness

of what he or she says in terms of how many people will disagree with

it or have their sensibilities offended by it. If the statement or action is

essential to making an important point, the fact that some people will

not like it is not relevant. However, one may question the necessity of

some public statements and actions by sociologists. These include, but are

not limited to, some of the bad forms of public sociology that I discuss

above, such as making exaggerated and unsupported factual and causal

claims and making sensationalist statements to gain media attention. The

“media hound,” the sociologist who seeks media attention for its own

sake, is likely to be to some degree an embarrassment to the discipline as

well as an ineffective public sociologist. Sociologists who engage in such

high-profile behavior as appearing on television, giving radio interviews,

and writing for mass circulation publications have a special responsibility

to avoid reinforcing the negative stereotypes of sociology that are wide-

spread even among highly educated and intelligent persons, both inside

and outside of the academy. Who among us except the most insular

and isolated within our ivory towers has not heard such terms as “soft-

headed,” “overly ideological,” and even more derogatory terms applied

to sociologists? (Finding out just how widespread these negative images

of sociology are would be an appropriate task to be undertaken by the

American Sociological Association.)

Although concern about reputation and the position of sociology in the

hierarchy of academic prestige may strike some sociologists as unseemly,

we can ill afford a lack of concern. The respectability and credibility of soci-

ology provide not just psychic rewards to sociologists but also the resources

we need to accomplish the tasks we set for ourselves, including especially

effective participation in public discourse. If we lack credibility in the public

arena, who will listen to us? Furthermore, credibility and similar qualities

are depletable, and once lost they are not easily regained. Therefore they

should not be squandered in the pursuit of short-term goals.

I disagree, however, with an argument occasionally made against public

sociology, namely, that sociologists should try to protect our reputation by

keeping our internal disagreements concealed from outsiders. Sociologists

do not speak in one voice, and trying to create the illusion that we do strikes

me as deceptive and unethical. We are a discipline in which debate and

disagreement are encouraged rather than suppressed (usually), and it seems

148 Chapter 8

to me that our reputation is best enhanced by putting that characteristic of

the discipline on display.

CONCLUSION

The above list of suggested standards for good public sociology is far

from being comprehensive of all of the relevant issues. I have deliberately

avoided some of those issues, both because my views on them are not well

crystallized and because there is not space is this short essay to cover them

adequately. Examples are those raised by Burawoy’s advocacy of teaching

as a form of public sociology (Burawoy 2007). How, if at all, can using the

classroom as a laboratory for developing techniques of public sociology, as

Burawoy advocates, be justified? How can this use of teaching be accom-

plished without engaging in political and ideological indoctrination, while

respecting the diversity of the ultimate values of the students, and without its

being an abuse of power and authority? Are there acceptable forms of ideo-

logical indoctrination, given that encouraging students to view reality from

a skeptical, scientific perspective might in itself be viewed as indoctrination?

These are difficult questions to which there are no simple answers, and thus

they deserve treatment in a separate essay. I will only say here that the kind

of public sociology practiced through teaching and textbook writing is so

different from the kind of public sociology that I discuss above that it needs

its own, more constraining set of standards—ones that take into account

among other things the power difference between professors and students.

I conclude with a couple of caveats. First, my suggested standards are

ideals, not rules to which any public sociologist is likely to adhere at all

times in all situations. In my practice of public sociology, I have not always

adhered to all of the standards, their being based perhaps as much on what

I now think I should have done as on what I have done. Second, although

I have included only standards about which I have strong opinions, my be-

lief in their correctness is not absolute, and I welcome dialogue with those

who think that they should be revised.

NOTES

1. I use essentially the same definition of public sociology that Burawoy (2004)

uses, except that my distinction between public sociology and policy sociology is

slightly different from his. To Burawoy, work commissioned by a client is policy

sociology (although he says that such work may eventually enter the public realm),

whereas I consider such work to be public sociology if the primary motivation for it

is to further a cause rather than to earn a fee and if the goal of the work reflects the

values of the sociologist and not just those of the client.

Some Suggested Standards 149

2. Beyond such mundane activities as clerical work and providing transportation

to the polls, a sociologist’s participation in activism will almost inevitably bring his

or her professional image, knowledge, and skills into play. When that happens, the

distinction between sociologist and citizen tends to dissolve.

3. The distinction between ultimate and derivative values in real world situa-

tions is not quite as clear-cut as my brief discussion makes it seem. For instance,

the same value may be ultimate to one person and derivative to another, and activ-

ists may become so committed to derivative values that those values become ends

in themselves, in other words, ultimate values. Furthermore, there are multiple

layers of derivative values, the higher order of which are linked to ultimate values

by more than one judgment about empirical reality. To make things even more

complicated, the object of a derivative value may relate to more than one ultimate

value and have contradictory consequences for the different ultimate values of one

person. For a more elaborate, but still incomplete, discussion of these issues, see

Glenn (2001).

4. Occasionally, the accumulated evidence from replications and triangulation

support a degree of confidence in causal conclusions that is near certainty. How-

ever, this rarely happens in sociology, and even when it does, “near certainty” is not

absolute certainty.

REFERENCES

Burawoy, Michael. 2004. “Public Sociologies: Contradictions, Dilemmas, and Pos-

sibilities.” Social Forces 52:1603–1618.

———. 2005. “2004 Presidential Address: For Public Sociology.” American Sociologi-

cal Review 70:4–28.

———. 2007. “The Field of Sociology: Its Power and Its Promise.” Pp. 241–258 in

Public Sociology: Fifteen Eminent Sociologists Debate Politics and the Profession in the

Twenty-First Century, edited by D. Clawson et al. Berkeley: University of California

Press.

Clawson, Dan, Robert Zussman, Joya Misra, Naomi Gerstel, Randall Stokes,

Douglas Anderton, and Michael Burawoy. 2007. Public Sociology: Fifteen Eminent

Sociologists Debate Politics and the Profession in the Twenty-First Century. Berkeley:

University of California Press.

Glenn, Norval D. 1989. “What We Know, What We Say We Know: Discrepancies

between Warranted and Stated Conclusions in the Social Sciences.” Pp. 119–140

in Crossroads of Social Science: The ICPSR 25th Anniversary Volume, edited by H.

Eulau. New York: Agathon Press.

———. 1997a. Closed Minds, Closed Hearts: The Textbook Story of Marriage. New York:

Council on Families.

———. 1997b. “A Critique of Twenty Marriage and Marriage and the Family Text-

books.” Family Relations 46:197–208.

———. 1997c. “A Reconsideration of the Effect of No-Fault Divorce on Divorce

Rates.” Journal of Marriage and the Family 59:1023–1025.

———. 2001. “Social Science Findings and the ‘Family Wars.’” Society (May/

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Hays, Sharon. 2007. “Stalled at the Altar: Conflict, Hierarchy, and Compartmen-

talization in Burawoy’s Public Sociology.” Pp. 79–90 in Public Sociology: Fifteen

Eminent Sociologists Debate Politics and the Profession in the Twenty-First Century,

edited by D. Clawson et al. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Mannheim, Karl. 1936. Ideology and Utopia. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Massey, Douglas S. 2007. “The Strength of Weak Politics.” Pp. 145–157 in Public

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First Century, edited by D. Clawson et al. Berkeley: University of California Press.

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Patterson, Orlando. 2007. “About Public Sociology.” Pp. 176–194 in Public Sociol-

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151

In a Social Forces symposium on public sociology, David Brady (2004:1632)

argued, “For public sociology to make a real impact, we need a concrete set

of proposals. We need practical steps that individual sociologists and de-

partments can implement. . . . Without realistic means by which to achieve

the goals of public sociology, I am afraid it will not make much of a differ-

ence. For public sociology to have an impact, we need a plan.” Brady’s com-

ment highlights an ongoing problem in the emergent debate about public

sociology: far more has been written about the goals of public sociology

than on how to pursue it, practically.

This article takes up Brady’s challenge to identify “successful strategies

for the public presentation of sociology” by introducing a series of concrete

proposals about how to write public sociology. Those sociologists who have

addressed writing for audiences beyond the discipline have tended to focus

on how to write in an “accessible” manner, generally arguing that sociolo-

gists should abandon their jargon and abstractions and write in “plain Eng-

lish” (Gans 1989:6). This is most definitely a helpful suggestion. However,

writing in plain English is only a necessary, not a sufficient, component of

successful public sociology. Sociologists will more effectively engage with

publics and enrich society by making our writing not just accessible, but

accountable to publics. A focus on accountability will provide greater payoffs

in bringing the sociological perspective to diverse audiences than a focus

on accessibility alone.

To be “accountable” to publics means to be responsible to them. Exactly

what that “responsibility entails” is the subject of heated debates among

public sociologists. For the purposes of our chapter, it is not important

whether one conceives of that responsibility as one of advocating for social

151

On Writing Public Sociology:

Accountability through

Accessibility, Dialogue,

and Relevance

Damon Mayrl and Laurel Westbrook