Jeffries Vincent (Editor). Handbook Of Public Sociology

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152 Chapter 9

improvement (e.g., Burawoy 2005); of providing essential information, con-

text, and/or background information to public debates (e.g., Gans 2002);

or of holding fast to scientific methods and principles wherever they might

lead (e.g., Boyns and Fletcher 2005; Tittle 2004). From any perspective,

meeting this responsibility requires the public sociologist to suffuse his or

her writing with both form and content that resonate with publics. This

does not mean that sociologists should simply yield the floor to publics

by responding only to their interests, however; on the contrary, one of the

biggest contributions of public sociology is often to reorient the public’s

focus to issues that have been neglected, or to confront publics with meth-

odologically sound research that contradicts their cherished assumptions. In

sum, accountability, however conceived, requires being responsive to one’s

chosen public’s viewpoints and debates, familiar with its key influences and

styles, and aware of its ideas and frames of reference.

Accessibility—artfully presenting arguments and findings using the

formats, stylistic devices, and narrative strategies that resonate with their

chosen public—is a key component of accountable writing, but it is not the

whole of it. Besides being accessible, accountable writing must also be in

dialogue with and relevant to publics. Dialogue is an exchange of knowledge

in which the sociologists and publics learn from each other. To achieve

dialogue, authors must mobilize knowledge of their chosen public to con-

struct their writing in ways that acknowledge the existing conversations a

public is having, engage with the terms of their debates, and open the door

to further dialogue by inviting the public to take the role of friendly critic.

A complement to dialogue, relevance involves making sociology useful

and of interest to publics by crafting arguments in relation to those issues,

voices, and ideas that suffuse the public’s life-world. Relevant sociological

writing can draw publics into sociology and reorient their current concep-

tions by demonstrating the utility of sociology to their own lives.

We begin by laying out more concretely what “accountability” implies for

the practice of writing public sociology, arguing that accountability requires

three components: dialogue, relevance, and accessibility. We then present

our positive program for writing public sociology, illustrating our theses

with selections from exemplary works of sociology. We conclude with some

thoughts about how these principles can be applied to the other interdepen-

dent forms of sociology—critical and policy sociology—and what a stronger

focus on writing for multiple publics would imply for graduate education.

FROM ACCESSIBILITY TO ACCOUNTABILITY

As a discipline, sociologists have rarely taken much time to consider how

to improve their writing. However, the issue has been of interest to those

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On Writing Public Sociology 153

invested in the idea of public sociology. Of utmost concern, it seems, is that

public sociology be made “accessible” to lay publics. In a recent symposium

at Boston College, for example, nearly all of the participants referred to

“accessibility” as a central concern of public sociology, with Charles Derber

going so far as to say that “the essence of public sociology is the quest for

knowledge accessible to the public” (Burawoy et al. 2004:119). But “ac-

cessibility,” while often extolled, is rarely defined. In most cases, however,

“accessibility” appears to boil down to “the avoidance of jargon.” This is a

central point made by Herbert Gans in his 1989 presidential address to the

American Sociological Association. In order to increase sociology’s appeal

to the lay public, Gans suggests that “the abstracts of our journal articles

and the summaries of our academic books [should] be written in nontech-

nical English . . . [and not] in ‘Sociologese;’” he further cautions that soci-

ologists should avoid “the use of jargon, too many numbers, irrelevance,

[and] academic restatements of the obvious” (Gans 1989:9).

While accessibility is doubtless necessary for successful public sociology,

it is not sufficient for effective communication to publics. Conceiving of

accessible writing in what are essentially stylistic terms overlooks how the

obstacles to effective public sociology inhere not only in our disciplinary

jargon and chosen subject matter, but in the structure of sociological writ-

ing itself, including our frames of reference and our ability to discuss our

work in terms relevant to our chosen public.

Rather than focusing on “accessibility,” therefore, we argue, building

on the work of Michael Burawoy (2004, 2005; Burawoy et al. 2004), that

public sociology should instead aspire to be “accountable.” “Accountabil-

ity” is in many respects at the core of Burawoy’s vision of public sociology

in the same way that “accessibility” is central to Gans’s program. In Bura-

woy’s (2005:16) view, public sociology’s accountability to “designated

publics” is one of the key things that distinguishes it from professional

sociology, which is accountable to academic peers. Despite, or perhaps

because of, its importance, Burawoy never fully explains what he means

by the term; here we follow this practice by leaving open to interpretation

exactly what sociology’s “responsibility” to publics is. The techniques for

obtaining accountability, nonetheless, should apply to aspiring public

sociologists of any stripe. We argue that accountability is achieved by

making a good-faith effort to engage with chosen publics in an attitude

of mutual respect, taking the position and knowledge of one’s chosen

audience into consideration. For the purposes of writing, this means

supplementing accessible language with accessible content, which in turn

requires knowing what debates and points of reference are relevant for a

chosen public. This broader approach suggests that accessibility must be

paired with two additional features that enhance accountability: dialogue

and relevance.

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Dialogue is a central feature of Burawoy’s conception of public sociol-

ogy. Public sociology, for Burawoy, is largely a matter of engaging in an

exchange of ideas with existing publics by meeting them where they are;

public sociology “strikes up a dialogic relation between sociologist and

public in which the agenda of each is brought to the table, in which each

adjusts to the other . . . [T]he goal of public sociology [is] to develop such a

conversation” (Burawoy 2005:9). For Burawoy, public sociology is dialogi-

cal precisely because it takes account of the position of its public audience.

Thus, the writing of public sociology, as well as its research, should engage

in dialogue with publics by directly engaging with their existing conversa-

tions. This means listening to those voices that are part of those conversa-

tions, acknowledging the terms and conventions of public debates, and

providing a framework for continuing the conversation.

However, dialogue is inadequate unless it is paired with relevance. Bura-

woy argues that relevance is the gold standard by which public sociology

gains its legitimacy (2005:16), and thus a prerequisite for any fruitful dia-

logue. To gain legitimacy, public sociologists must work to show publics

how sociology is useful to them and can contribute to their understanding

of those topics and issues that concern them. We can entice publics into

reading—and using—sociology by writing in a way that builds public con-

fidence in sociology, by putting abstract findings and concepts into readily

recognizable terms, and by emphasizing the strengths of the sociological

approach to understanding pressing issues.

Together, dialogue and relevance are the building blocks for presenting

sociological content in a way that maximizes the likelihood an audience

will find it worthwhile. Further, casting findings in accessible formats, free

of jargon and extraneous numbers, will make that content still more ap-

pealing. By moving from accessibility to accountability, we ensure that both

the form and the content of public sociology will be truly public-minded.

The remainder of this chapter sets forth some techniques for obtaining

dialogue, relevance, and accessibility, illustrating each with selections from

exemplary works of public sociology.

THE PROBLEM OF MULTIPLE PUBLICS

To be successful, a public sociologist must know her chosen public, in-

cluding that public’s interests and what that public considers legitimate

knowledge. Yet this raises the sticky question of how to define a public.

The question of exactly which “public” public sociologists are supposed

to be speaking to has been a source of great contention (e.g., Brady 2004;

Braithwaite 2005; Burawoy et al. 2004). For our purposes here, however,

it does not matter exactly which “public” public sociologists are writing

On Writing Public Sociology 155

to, only that the public sociologist have some “public” in mind. The points

of reference and public debates that are relevant will vary from public to

public, and it is the public sociologist’s job to assess the terrain before be-

ginning writing.

An audience of grassroots progressive activists will have

very different points of reference from those of the “thin, passive, and

national” public that reads the New York Times (Burawoy et al. 2004:104),

and still different points of reference from an audience of legal and criminal

justice professionals (Uggen and Inderbitzen 2006). What matters then is

not which public one is writing for, but that one understands what exist-

ing debates and points of reference inform discussion among one’s chosen

public. It is these voices and points of reference that public sociologists

must acknowledge as they write; it is these debates that provide the starting

point for dialogue.

DIALOGUE

Writing in dialogue requires knowledge of a debate’s points of reference,

as well as to the debate’s terms, issues, and conventions. On this count,

compared to public sociologists, professional sociologists have it easy. Pro-

fessional sociology speaks to a well-defined audience of other sociologists

divided into a number of specialized subdisciplines. The referents for pro-

fessional sociology are likewise delimited, consisting mainly of sociological

books, articles in professional journals, and professional conference presen-

tations familiar (or ostensibly familiar) to other members of the discipline.

The debates among these scholars are also reasonably bounded and cast

in terms of theoretical and empirical debates made familiar to sociologists

through graduate education and other processes of professionalization.

Public sociologists, by contrast, often find themselves in unfamiliar

terrain when they venture beyond the academy. To avoid forcing the lay

public to participate in the conversations of professional sociologists, pub-

lic sociologists must cast a wider net for points of reference, identify the

terms of public rather than professional debates, and present findings and

describe methods in such as way as to promote further dialogue. In practice,

this means engaging with, and reviewing, a diverse set of “literatures,” in-

cluding a variety of voices from inside and outside academia, and a variety

of media, from written to oral to visual communication. In brief, any influ-

ential body of thought that one’s chosen public is producing or consum-

ing is potentially an important literature to review. Similarly, it may mean

engaging in debates with terms that differ from those familiar within the

discipline. Public debates and scholarly debates do not always align, either

in their terms or in the questions they ask; public sociology must speak to

the former rather than the latter. Finally, public sociology should be written

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in a way that encourages further dialogue. This means presenting data and

methods with sufficient transparency that one’s chosen public can readily

assess the strengths and limitations of one’s argument, with an eye toward

continuing the discussion.

Writing in Dialogue with Public Perspectives:

Looking beyond the Academy

Engaging with existing dialogues will of necessity lead public sociologists

into uncharted waters and require them to address voices from beyond

sociology, and indeed from beyond the academy. If important voices in

a debate hail from cable news networks, those voices ought to be recog-

nized. If they come from organizers or everyday people on the street, those

voices ought similarly to be acknowledged by the public sociologist. Public

sociology requires that the sociologist cast a wide net to capture the many

important voices that input into a given debate. One cannot dialogue with

a public without acknowledging and engaging the multiple arguments that

shape the ongoing conversation.

In their journal article about school shootings, Michael Kimmel and

Matthew Mahler (2003) nicely demonstrate engagement with a variety

of non-academic participants in a public debate where the sociological

perspective is desperately needed. They open the article by describing

a number of widely used explanations for school shootings, including

psychological explanations, violence in the media, and bad parenting. In

so doing, they address some of the proponents of these explanations, in-

cluding celebrities, politicians, and the shooters themselves. For example,

they write:

The concern over school shootings has prompted intense national debate, in

recent years, over who or what is to blame. One need not look hard to find

any number of “experts” who are willing to weigh in on the issue. Yet despite

the legion of political and scientific commentaries on school shootings, these

voices have all singularly and spectacularly missed the point.

At the vanguard of the debates have been politicians. Some have argued

that Goth music, Marilyn Manson, and violent video games are the causes of

school shootings. Then–President Clinton argued that it might be the Inter-

net; Newt Gingrich credited the 1960s; and Tom DeLay blamed daycare, the

teaching of evolution, and “working mothers who take birth control pills.”

Political pundits and media commentators also have offered a host of possible

explanations, of which one of the more popular answers has been violence

in the media. “Parents don’t realize that taking four-year-olds to True Lies—a

fun movie for adults but excessively violent—is poison to their brain,” notes

Michael Gurian. (Kimmel and Mahler 2003:1441)

On Writing Public Sociology 157

By looking to voices beyond the academy, Kimmel and Mahler are able

to give readers a point of reference through which to enter the article and

then be exposed to the sociological contribution held within it. It is worth

noting that Kimmel and Mahler address these voices in order to refute

them, showing that this strategy need not lead to the “pandering” pathol-

ogy characteristic of some public sociology (Burawoy 2005). By describing

commonly held beliefs about what causes school shootings, Kimmel and

Mahler enter into current public debates; by then pointing to the flaws in

these beliefs, they are able to use the sociological toolbox to improve the

lay reader’s understanding of issues of public importance.

Addressing the relevant interlocutors in public debates will sometimes

mean reviewing “literatures” that are not, strictly speaking, literature: televi-

sion, movies, music, radio, and so forth. Patricia Hill Collins’s book Black

Feminist Thought (2000:16) provides an excellent example of this technique:

For example, rap singer Sister Souljah’s music as well as her autobiography No

Disrespect certainly can be seen as contributing to Black feminist thought as

critical social theory. Despite her uncritical acceptance of a masculinist Black

nationalist ideology, Souljah is deeply concerned with issues of Black women’s

oppression, and offers an important perspective on contemporary urban cul-

ture. Yet while young Black women listened to Souljah’s music and thought

about her ideas, Souljah’s work has been dismissed within feminist classrooms

in academia as being “nonfeminist.” Without tapping these nontraditional

sources, much of the Black women’s intellectual tradition would remain “not

known, and hence not believed in.”

Here, Collins includes the rap music of Sister Souljah as a relevant “lit-

erature” to the discussion of black feminism because it is an important,

influential voice in the public debate about how to understand the lives of

black women. In so doing, she makes her work both more accessible and

relevant to her public, and more comprehensive in its scope.

Collins’s work is exemplary as a model of public sociology, in this exam-

ple and elsewhere, in that she is an avid proponent of incorporating public

conversations into sociological work and using sociology to contribute to

public debates. In the preface to the first edition of Black Feminist Thought,

Collins argues against only incorporating sociological voices and theory

into her argument. Instead, she makes a case for including a wide range of

voices in a varied set of styles. She argues that including these voices offers

a necessary mixture of viewpoints and highlights the ability of all black

women—from contemporary academics to nineteenth-century slaves—to

contribute to black feminist thought. By incorporating ideas from a wide

range of black women, Collins not only “highlights the diversity, richness,

and power of Black women’s ideas” (2000:viii), she also enters into and

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makes a contribution to a conversation black women were already having.

By including not only written literatures but also music, art, oral histories,

and speeches, her work achieves a fullness and relevance that it would not

have otherwise.

Writing in Dialogue with Existing Conversations: Engaging with the

Terms of Public Debates

Just as public sociologists should incorporate a wide variety of public

voices into their text as a way to create dialogue, they should also engage

with public debates as they are, not as sociologists might wish them to

be. Despite their apparent similarities, many academic debates have terms

and conventions that differ greatly from those of the public debate. But

speaking to the terms of public debates is essential to dialogue because it

provides lay readers with a point of access that they can immediately grasp.

At the same time, it provides an opportunity to reorient those debates by

bringing in a sociological perspective or presenting sociological research

that challenges publicly accepted knowledge.

Andrew Greeley’s (1994) essay in The New York Times Magazine offers

an excellent example of contributing to public debates. Greeley’s essay ad-

dresses the question of why American Catholics, who are notorious for dis-

agreeing with the church hierarchy, continue to affiliate with Catholicism.

While there is a vigorous debate in the sociology of religion about the fac-

tors that contribute to denominational commitment and apostasy, Greeley

does not present his essay in terms of that debate. Instead, he chooses to

approach the question from the terms of the public debate:

[T]he question persists. In its most naked form it demands to know, “How

can someone who is intelligent and well educated continue to be a Roman

Catholic in these times?” The question is not a new one. It has been asked

by anti-Catholic nativists for 150 years. Often the latent subtext is, “How can

anyone who is intelligent and well educated believe in any religion, especially

Catholicism?” (Greeley 1994:38)

The question Greeley poses casts the issue of Catholic retention in terms

of the basic sanity and intelligence of Catholics—the terms on which his

public (the educated, probably agnostic general public of New York Times

readers) sees the debate. The fact that Greeley does not bring up the terms

of the sociological debate (for example, to what extent the church may be

“strict”) is an asset here. Having engaged his audience on the terms of the

public debate, he can give his sociological answer: it is the power of narra-

tive and heritage that keeps them in the church. Greeley’s attention to the

terrain of public debates allows him to tell his story in a way that is mean-

ingful to his audience, and therefore truly dialogical.

On Writing Public Sociology 159

Writing as Invitation to Further Dialogue: Providing Transparency

Dialogue does not stop with the sociologist’s contribution, since publics

will hopefully react to public sociology through approbation or construc-

tive criticism. Public sociology should lay the groundwork for the continua-

tion of dialogue by presenting findings in ways that maximize transparency

about data and methods such that the chosen public can assess the validity

and applicability of the sociologist’s contribution. In short, through clear

explanations of methods and findings, public sociology should invite the

reader to adopt the role of friendly critic, with an eye toward improving

both public debate and future research.

While transparency is standard practice in professional sociology, public

sociologists should take particular care to present data that illustrates the

full contours of the issue being explored, and enough information about

methods to suggest the strengths and limitations of the argument put for-

ward. There are a number of ways to achieve these goals. The most extreme

form can be seen in Bob Blauner’s Black Lives, White Lives (1989), which

includes interview transcripts in their entirety. Rather than incorporating

data and analysis in one narrative, he offers his analysis separately in in-

troductions and the conclusion. By using this strategy, Blauner allows his

readers to develop their own interpretations of his research independently,

facilitating future dialogue. While Blauner’s approach is extreme (and in

many respects contradicts other features of public sociology, such as the

use of familiar narrative and conventions, discussed below), the principle

behind it could be applied in a more moderate form, opening the door to

further dialogue with the audience.

Besides presenting data in a way to let publics evaluate it themselves, public

sociologists can also encourage dialogue by describing their methods clearly

and by demonstrating an openness to public feedback. These two techniques

are demonstrated in an exemplary fashion in Arlie Hochschild’s The Second

Shift (1997). Hochschild is also extremely transparent about her methods,

and literally walks her audience through the research process as she follows

her subjects into the home. In so doing, she allows her chosen public to see

exactly how she came to her conclusions, and to evaluate the strengths and

weaknesses of her argument. Furthermore, Hochschild writes much of her

book as a dialogue between herself and her interviewees, demonstrating a de-

sire for dialogue. For example, in her description of her methods, she writes:

We asked members of working couples raising children under six and working

full time jobs if they would be willing to talk to us in greater depth. Interviewed

from 1980 through 1988, these couples, their neighbors and friends, their chil-

dren’s teachers, daycare workers and baby-sitters, form the heart of this book.

When we called them, a number of baby-sitters replied as one woman did,

“You’re interviewing us? Good. We’re human too.” Or another, “I’m glad you

160 Chapter 9

consider what we do work. A lot of people don’t.” As it turned out, many day-

care workers were themselves juggling two jobs and small children, and so we

talked to them about that, too. (Hochschild 1997:5)

Here, she shows a willingness to listen closely to her interviewees and how

this listening helped improve her methodology. This willingness to engage

in dialogue invites further conversations.

RELEVANCE

Non-sociologists need to be enticed into reading sociology; consequently,

public sociology must be written in a way that shows that sociology is

relevant to its chosen public. Publics read books and articles because they

are engaged in public debates of interest or importance to them. They read

to identify information that helps them to understand issues relevant to

these debates, and they seek to glean knowledge from their reading that

will enable them to contribute to these public debates. Unlike professional

sociologists, publics are not necessarily already convinced that the socio-

logical perspective will be particularly helpful to them as they engage in

these public debates (cf. Scott 2005). The key question in the lay reader’s

mind is not, “why this particular study,” but “why sociology at all?” In a

world of competing voices and perspectives, publics must be convinced to

spend their time reading sociological writing by highlighting its relevance

to that public.

Relevant writing has two primary characteristics. First, it builds public con-

fidence in sociology by emphasizing the utility of the sociological perspective.

Rather than heavily critique past research as is done in professional sociol-

ogy, relevant public sociology will construct public confidence in the value

of sociology by focusing on how a work builds on past sociological work,

or how the sociological perspective improves our understanding of a given

social phenomenon. Second, it offers concrete examples of abstract concepts.

Sociological knowledge is relevant to publics when presented in a way so

as to allow the reader to relate abstract concepts and figures to their lives in

a concrete, everyday manner.

Building Public Confidence in Sociology

Public sociologists should not assume that their public is already con-

vinced of the virtues of the sociological perspective. Many Americans see

social concerns, such as poverty or crime, in purely individual terms. Part

of the challenge of speaking to these publics is to get them to see the world

in social terms. Other groups, such as radical activists, may already have

On Writing Public Sociology 161

a sociological imagination, but may nevertheless be skeptical of the value

of academic knowledge to their activist concerns. Part of the challenge of

speaking to these publics is to convince them of the virtues of academic

knowledge. Thus, a central difference between professional sociology and

public sociology is that the latter is also frequently a project of building

public confidence in the value of sociology. While professional (as well as

critical and, to a lesser extent, policy) sociology must of necessity adopt a

largely critical stance toward existing sociological work, public sociology

should instead emphasize how it builds on past work and increases public

knowledge of a given topic.

Wade Clark Roof’s (1993) book A Generation of Seekers, which looks at

the spiritual practices of the Baby Boom generation, illustrates this “critique

less, build more” approach very well. Rather than dwelling on flaws in pre-

vious scholarship, Roof portrays his work as building upon previous work.

In his introduction, he writes:

Many years ago sociologist Karl Mannheim wrote about generations and their

importance in bringing about social change. . . . [T]he years of youth and early

adulthood are a critical period for learning about the larger society; memories

arising out of the intersection of personal and national history during these

years live on in our lives. Thus because they have quite differing pasts, the

generations see and act toward the world differently: A Depression generation

is frugal, a Vietnam generation is wary of war.

Timing is right for a look at the boomers. The oldest members of the gen-

eration are now in their forties, many of them are in their mid-to late thirties.

Today, they are reshaping our national life. (Roof 1993:3)

Rather than critiquing sociologists for failing to address generational as-

pects in their previous work, Roof instead leaves the critical moment aside

and frames his work as building on Mannheim, posing new questions and

bringing this approach to a broader audience.

Roof also helps to build public confidence in the value of sociology by

speaking positively about previous sociological work. In addition to identi-

fying Mannheim as a sociologist in the above quote, Roof (1993:6–7) refers

a few pages later to one of the seminal works of sociology of the period:

Hence our concerns are similar to those of Robert Bellah and his associates

in Habits of the Heart. These commentators concentrate primarily on white,

middle-class Americans, looking at their individualism and struggles to com-

mit themselves across broad sectors of personal and public life. . . . We have

been inspired by their work, yet our focus differs in three important ways:

One, we look only at religion and spirituality and thus are more concerned

with what is happening within this particular realm. Two, by examining a

broad cross-section of the boomer population, we explore more the diversity,

the strains, and tensions surrounding religious belief and practice in America