SOCI 601: Proseminar in Public and Applied Sociology

SOCI 601-001: Prosem Public/Applied Sociolgy
(Fall 2016)

04:30 PM to 07:10 PM R

Section Information for Fall 2016

This graduate pro-seminar is a core course for all graduate students in the Sociology Program.  This course is typically taken in the student’s first semester in the Program.  The course examines diverse theories and practices of public sociology, as well as debates over the meaning of the concept.  Inevitably, we will confront and discuss the nature and purpose of sociological inquiry, the relationship between commitments to ethics, law, and social justice and to modes of science and “knowing.”  The intent is to help us better grasp how and why differing communities of scholarship in sociology have responded as they have to the call for more public sociology.

The meaning of Public Sociology is contested terrain. Long before Michael Buraowy’s stimulating and provocative 2004 ASA Presidential Address that catalyzed the past decade of Sociology’s reflexive and collective inquiry into the discipline’s relationship to “the public,” Sociology has periodically addressed many aspects of the roiling debate that has ensued.  Some suggest that it is simply about presenting the sociological findings and perspective of our research for audiences beyond our own disciplinary boundaries. For others it is about deliberately engaging matters of consequence and working to influence public policy from positions informed by our sociological research – getting our alternative sociological discourses into the public mix, so to speak.  Some question whether we should strive to become public sociologists at all. Some suggest we already are, and always have been. Still others claim that there is no meaningful “public” anymore, while others (agreeing with this assessment) maintain that Sociology should strive to re-assert one – or even create one (or many) anew.   In this course, we will explore a wide variety of perspectives on what it means (or should mean) to practice public sociology.

Public sociology is also inherently embedded in a more general – even global-- production of knowledge. Its meaning, in part, emerges from the relationships that our disciplinary field’s practitioners (empirical, sociologically informed researchers) establish with their research subjects through the methods that they use to co-produce knowledge.  It is not limited to getting one’s perspective into the existing institutionalized media, but also includes the creation of new, alternative media, the social organization of which embody, reflect, or demonstrate the alternative value commitments that we wish to (or are attempting to) institutionalize. How does the way in which we organize our own production of knowledge as individual or collaborative researchers reflect our own value commitments – or our own alternative media (a word which derives etymologically from the Latin, meaning “community,” “publicity,” or “public”)?  Thinking in this light about the ways that we organize our research might lead us to be more self-reflexive in our methods courses.  We are not simply “learning the tools of the trade,” but rather learning about tools that others created and used in the production of knowledge while embedded in particular socially structured contexts in specific times and places.  The development and practice of these methods, and the data that they “produce” (or “collect”) has not occurred in a political vacuum.  What are the politics, histories, geographies, biographies, and sociologies behind their making?  Can we imagine and create new sociological methods to address the particular challenges that we want to confront and relationships, collective identities, and institutions that we want to generate through our own research? Whether we acknowledge it or not, we are embedded (in various ways) in the process and relations that constitute our own efforts to produce knowledge through the research projects that we co-create, organize, coordinate, represent, take money and/or credit for, derive pleasure and/or satisfaction from, screw-up or improve lives or change worlds with.

But meaning of public sociology is not reducible to the methods of its practitioners. The meaning of public sociology also emerges from the aspects of knowledge production that related to the testing of reality – that is, the formulation of our research questions often posed as some sort of intellectual tension -- paradox, puzzle, contradiction, problematique etc -- in short, a “mystery” that we have since the Mid-20th Century referred to as the sociological imagination at work.

By the end of the course, you should be better prepared to begin forging your own position as a sociologist amidst the call for a more public sociology, and to explain what you mean by the concept, and why you take the position that you do.  Undoubtedly, your position will continue to develop, possibly in completely new directions, by the end of your graduate studies.  But my hope is that this course will have prepared you well for the fundamental challenges of this journey.

Course Information from the University Catalog

Credits: 3

Core course devoted to the philosophical, historical, theoretical, and methodological dimensions of public and applied sociology within the United States. Traces the evolution of the field during the 20th century, from its inception in the Chicago school and the studies of W.E.B. DuBois to more recent formulations, as these bear on the interplay between social scientific knowledge and public decisions and debates. May not be repeated for credit.
Registration Restrictions:

Enrollment limited to students with a class of Advanced to Candidacy, Graduate, Junior Plus, Non-Degree or Senior Plus.

Enrollment is limited to Graduate, Non-Degree or Undergraduate level students.

Students in a Non-Degree Undergraduate degree may not enroll.

Schedule Type: Seminar
Grading:
This course is graded on the Graduate Regular scale.

The University Catalog is the authoritative source for information on courses. The Schedule of Classes is the authoritative source for information on classes scheduled for this semester. See the Schedule for the most up-to-date information and see Patriot web to register for classes.