Sociology as a public vocation.

I've been reading a really great essay from the Public Sphere Forum, discussing the importance of social scientists stepping out of the closed-loop of academia and more into open discussion. The modern fixation on closing off the university to become an intellectual safe house, or knowledge for the sake of itself, has come at a price. Although social scientists are useful informing government and corporate decisions, what ever happened to a public intellectual? Writers, speakers, debaters outside of the university? Or perhaps, we should begin to invite the local community in to listen. At any rate, here are some highlights. If you have some time, I recommend reading the whole article.

Public engagement was a strong feature of the social sciences from their birth. Could one imagine Hobbes, Locke or the Scottish moralists as mere academics? Weber, Durkheim, and the great Chicago School sociologists had university jobs but both public concerns and public audiences. Social scientists today contribute to public understanding of issues from social inequality to transformations of the family. They also inform public policy on problems from educational reform to economic productivity. But since World War II, dramatic growth in universities and research institutions not only created opportunities for social scientists, it contained much of their communication inside the academy. An ideology that opposed academic professionalism to public engagement and a prestige hierarchy that favored allegedly pure science over applied added to the tendency.

Public social science depends on addressing public issues and informing public understanding. Simply reaching a broader public is only part of the story. Certainly a social science turned in on itself fails to achieve much public significance. But more important than the desire to promulgate what social scientists know is the effort to bring knowledge to bear on pressing public issues.

But it is also true that many academic projects are driven by neither deep intellectual curiosity nor pressing public agendas, but simply by the internal arguments of academic subfields or theoretically aimless attempts at cumulative knowledge that mostly accumulate lines on CVs. To justify these by an ideology of pure science is disingenuous. To let these displace the attention of researchers from major public issues is to act with contempt towards the public that pays the bills.

More generally, the development of better theory or intellectual synthesis, better knowledge of the range of intellectual tools and perspectives developed by earlier social scientists, and better methods of research and analysis are all important. They strengthen the whole social science enterprise so that it can perform better in all ways, including when deployed to advance understanding of pressing public issues. The point is not that all social science should be harnessed to the immediate task of addressing public debates or public policy. Some division of labor is appropriate along with a diversity of tasks. But it is a crucial point that social science demonstrates its usefulness by informing public knowledge, not simply accumulating esoteric knowledge inside disciplines. The value and reward systems of social science accordingly need to encourage attention to improving understanding of the world around us.

Will we intellectual hermits come down from the mountain? Equivalent perhaps to the Bodhisattva vow, if I might make this analogy--we step down from our monasteries and actively engage, inform and learn from public involvement. It helps us in two ways: as citizens of a planetary civilization, our active involvement contributes to a mutual learning experience. As academics, we learn something new by working "in the field." The rest of the public also learns something new. They're informed by our more direct presence, encouraging them to reflect on the state of society, and in turn offering us valuable insight. We hermits could be wrong, or just plain non-integrated about our understanding.

One other point. We might do well to have a new space for collaborative investigation and public projects, because it will take away the narrow focus of competition between the school departments, opening them up to a larger picture in which they will all have to contribute to, together. Integrating the studies in a common, open space rather than fragmenting them. Here's to social science facing a major challenge in its evolution: open source sociology. Thanks for such an inspiring article!

Calls for a more public orientation to social science seek to reclaim an important dimension of the history of social science. While universities have roots in ancient philosophy and medieval monastic communities, the roots of the modern social sciences were laid outside academia or in new and reformed universities. John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Alexis de Tocqueville, David Ricardo, Adolphe Quetelet, Karl Marx, Herbert Spencer and Lester Frank Ward all made their contributions without university posts. The Scottish universities were more open than the English in the 18^th and 19^th centuries. And after the Humboltian reforms so were many of the German. In the United States too the social sciences began to gain academic footholds earlier in new universities like Johns Hopkins and especially Chicago than in older ones where classical curricula dominated through the late 19^th century.

Indeed, the social sciences came to the fore as part of a rebellion against exclusive study of the old disciplines. They grew along with science and technology because they were deemed forward-looking and important to ‘progress’, relevant to solving contemporary problems and furthering positive innovations. They grew along with broader enrollments as universities became less narrowly elite, expanding beyond the education of gentlemen and clergymen to training a range of professionals and members of the middle classes. The capacity of the social sciences to inform public discourse was vital to their growth.

“Public intellectual… That is to say, the individual still bold enough to put his mind and his knowledge to use in analyzing the world around us, in language that most of us can understand, and with an eye toward effecting practical improvements”.

What's out there already...?

There are a number of projects already going on right now in the same spirit of "open" or "public" sociology. For instance, Public Sociology itself has the same goal. There is also Sociologists Without Borders.
However, OSS and the "social science commons" are a bit different in the sense that these new ideas utilize the blogosphere to be the means to collaborate and network. The most powerful tool we have today is the ability to collaborate and create organizations without much hierarchy or bureaucratic structure. As Clay Shirky says, it's a matter of institution vs. collaboration, and collaboration is becoming an ever more successful model for getting things done. "Public Sociology," as its stated on the website, has the task of "Institutionalizing Public Sociologies." I'm not sure we'd want to do this. Rather, let's compliment the already existing efforts with a networked, grassroots project. Imagine even a few hundred sociologist, anthropologist and political scientist bloggers, chatting away in the blogosphere. Closer friendships, ties and even activities and research could arise from there, without the constraints of needing an "institution" first, or even an official journal. In other words, I'm arguing for us to use the social networking tools to help us create an organic collaborative community.

That being said, check out the "Sociologists without Borders: Think Tank."A good place to start!

What is open source sociology?

The purpose of this blog, as well as other blogs that join the network, is to engage in a simple but growing medium of communication. Internet communication is becoming an integral part of social communication in modern societies. As the means to express ourselves enhances and evolves, this interconnected, networked social structure emerging in the 21st century has potential to revolutionize the way society works. Many have taken the networked, decentralized structure of the internet, and used it to develop the "open source" philosophy. Originally starting as a term for sharing programming source codes, "openly" in a collaborative atmosphere, open source has become a word for a growing collaborative way of creating content. Aside from operating systems and websites, pictures, music, writing, videos and film have all become an expression of this new idea. Websites like Creative Commons offer both a community and a means to license your work for a new internet age.

The latest aspect of society to be influenced by "open source," are the scientific fields. The power of sharing scientific knowledge with other researchers across the globe can revolutionize scientific development. Researchers can cross-examine each other's work, learn the pros and cons and more efficiently. Other new technological developments means departments and organizations, no matter where they are, can share their work and collaborate. This was never possible before. The latest and greatest example is Science Commons.

What "Open Sociology," means to do is begin applying this not only to the hard sciences, but the social sciences. We seek to create the beginning of a "social science commons." The internet offers us a powerful transformative tool for communication, research, and social activism. Why not take advantage of it? That's the purpose of this blog, and the blog network in a nutshell. We aim to plant the seeds for a grassroots network of sociologists, anthropologists and other social science professors, students and advocates, to share their knowledge, collaborate on research and activism, and help the social sciences take an updated and evolved place in an ever changing civilization.

"I believe that the world needs public sociology - a sociology that transcends the academy - more than ever. Our potential publics are multiple, ranging from media audiences to policy makers, from silenced minorities to social movements. They are local, global, and national. As public sociology stimulates debate in all these contexts, it inspires and revitalizes our discipline. In return, theory and research give legitimacy, direction, and substance to public sociology. Teaching is equally central to public sociology: students are our first public for they carry sociology into all walks of life. Finally, the critical imagination, exposing the gap between what is and what could be, infuses values into public sociology to remind us that the world could be different." -Michael Buroway