“Visionary” Sociology: Diversions of Public Sociology and Audiovisual Solutions

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

12-5-2014

Abstract

“Public sociology” has flourished as an idea with limited success in practice. We argue that movement towards the consensual goal of public engagement is more likely using audiovisual than text-based communication. We briefly review the history of the idea with a focus on the post-Burawoy era and its central debates. We argue that such disputes over politics, activism, disciplinary identity, and theoretical coherence are diversionary, with little hope of resolution and even less of providing the engagement sought by public sociology. Sadly and wrongly, they assume that only educated and literate audiences possess interest or capacity to engage scholarly knowledge of the social world. Advances in audiovisual technologies, familiarization, and routinization during the past decade suggest a solution that does not involve significant structural or cultural changes to the discipline. In this essay we offer two illustrations of audiovisual practices in sociology and provide an overview of video ethnography as an option in graduate methods training. This proposed course is a reasonable, low cost, and implementable solution to the problem of public sociology.

Publication Source (Journal or Book title)

American Sociologist

First Page

412

Last Page

431

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