Suchergebnisse

William Julius Wilson's The Declining Significance of Race -- which argued that, because of the sizable & growing black middle class, blacks were affected less by race relations than by class -- was criticized by some for an overly optimistic portrayal of middle class blacks. His subsequent book, The Truly Disadvantaged (1987), touched off a new round of criticism for presenting too bleak a picture of the urban poor, & thereby furthering conservatives' fears about the intractable pathology of inner-city crime, drugs, & fatherless families. It is argued that while Wilson has not always presented his views clearly, he has made some major contributions to the study of race & class in the US. S. Race

Erich Fromm was one of the most influential and creative public intellectuals of the twentieth century. He was a mentor to David Riesman and an inspiration for the New Left. As the rise of global right-wing populism and Trumpism creates new interest in the kind of psycho-social writing and popular sociology that Fromm pioneered in the 1930s, this timely book tells the story of the rise, fall and contemporary revival of Fromm's theories. Drawing from empirical work, this is an invaluable contribution to popular debates about current politics, the sociology of ideas and the prospect of a truly global public sociology

This article examines philanthropist George Soros's reputation in the United States, Russia and post-Soviet Lithuania from the 1990s to 2005–6. A billionaire currency speculator and left-wing philanthropist, Soros has a 'difficult reputation'. Attacks from American right-wingers and post-Soviet authoritarians circulated internationally, but his reputation was not constituted globally as extreme globalization theorists might predict. We draw on Bourdieu's analysis of the international circulation of ideas and emphasis on local context. Reputational entrepreneurs in the United States, Russia and Lithuania certainly made extensive use of internationally circulating attacks in the age of the internet. Nonetheless, Soros's reputation served domestic political needs and was interpreted within a local cultural context, suggesting the value of a 'sceptical' perspective on globalization debates on how reputational attacks travel and are received.

This special issue of CJS illustrates the international spread of an empassioned debate among sociologists about the future direction of their discipline ignited by Michael Burawoy's call to elevate the presence and status of public sociology. Burawoy's program entails a greater engagement by sociologists with civil society (non-governmental organizations, communities, movements) in the development of their research agenda, and the production of research outputs that are more accessible, relevant, and useful to non-academic audiences. Burawoy and his supporters see the emphasis on public sociology as a way to revitalize the discipline, in particular, to solve several inter-related problems that it faces, at least in the U.S: a lack of internal coherence, declining public legitimacy, public misapprehension of what sociologists do, and minimal influence on policy-making (Burawoy 2004a, Turner 2006, Boyns and Fletcher 2005). Skeptics and critics within the discipline, conversely, argue that "going public" will only hurt sociology's public legitimacy, insofar as it constitutes a kind of left-liberal moralizing that is out of sync with majority currents of opinion.

As American Sociological Association (ASA) president in 2004, Michael Burawoy argued `for public sociology', sparking impassioned debate focused almost exclusively on the normative issues raised by his prescription for a more public sociology. Nearly absent from the literature is an analytical critique of his underlying model of the structure of sociological practice. The model is flawed in three ways: (1) the core concepts are ambiguous; (2) the model provides little leverage for understanding the institutional context of sociology as a discipline; and (3) comparative understanding of sociologies in different countries or between public engagement in distinct academic disciplines is not facilitated. In this article, we propose a synthetic means of relating academics, disciplines, audiences and institutional environments that forms the basis for movement toward an empirical agenda on public academics more generally.