Jeffries Vincent (Editor). Handbook Of Public Sociology

Подождите немного. Документ загружается.

332 Chapter 18

communication in these other public arenas may sometimes be impossible.

When it is possible, there is often loss of sociological autonomy and influ-

ence as the analysis translates into the criteria of relevance and communica-

tion logic of the institution concerned.” Ulrich Beck (2005) makes a similar

point and notes that many of his forays into public sociology resulted in

sociological knowledge being transformed beyond recognition. He writes:

“I am not sure about the implications of Burawoy’s ideas about a public

sociology. But any realistic effort along these lines should be aware of the

fact that there is no direct correspondence between public sociology and

the public uses of public sociology.”

Nonetheless, Burawoy (2005b) draws inspiration from Beck’s comment

that various publics’—from governments to the general population—indif-

ference or resistance to sociological findings often crumble when findings

are published in the media. Burawoy also seems buoyed by public sociolo-

gists’ positive experiences with the media, even though they often occur

in conjunction with more negative ones. For example, in her thoughts

on doing public sociology, Judith Stacey (2004) recounts how legislators,

lawyers, reporters, and others selectively used her work to support their

perspectives and condemn others. However, she was heartened by a New

York Times reporter who had the interest, time, skills, and responsibility to

discuss Stacey’s research with her in some depth and write a reasoned sum-

mary of it.

Yet, as Hagan and colleagues’ experiences demonstrate, the media is

more inconsistent than Burawoy probably wishes. As noted earlier, several

“publics” responded favorably to Hagan and colleagues’ estimation efforts.

Many media outlets favorably reported on them, and several reporters con-

tacted Hagan to gather more information about the estimate. The positive

reviews of these writers appeared in an array of publications including the

New York Times and Washington Post (e.g., see Lacey 2005; Gettleman 2006).

Yet, many mainstream news services, including Reuters, United Press Inter-

national, and the British Broadcasting Service, abandoned the higher assess-

ment when the State Department issued its lower estimate.

On August 12, 2007, the New York Times published an Op-Ed piece by

Sam Dealey in its “Week in Review” section. Dealey wrote about a case

brought to the British Advertising Standards Authority (BASA) by the Euro-

pean Sudanese Public Affairs Council (ESPAC), a business group allied with

the Sudanese government. The ESPAC argued that Save Darfur breached

BASA’s codes by placing full-page advertisements that included Hagan and

colleagues’ estimate of approximately 400,000 dead or missing in Darfur.

Dealey wrote that the BASA found that Save Darfur “breached standards of

truthfulness” in reprinting the 400,000 death estimate. Dealey also drew

on the 2006 AGAO report and repeated claims that Hagan and colleagues’

Counting the Deaths in Darfur 333

data were unsound, their assumptions “unreasonable,” their extrapolations

“inappropriate,” and their estimates unsupportable.

Yet, Dealey misrepresented the BASA’s decision: BASA explicitly dis-

missed the claim that Save Darfur had breached standards of truthfulness.

As well, Dealey’s summary of the AGAO report misrepresents some of its

conclusions and ignores the issues we discussed above. Hagan contacted

the New York Times on the day Dealey’s Op-Ed piece appeared and detailed

the errors in the report. Five days later the copy editor wrote back and dis-

missed Hagan’s corrections as unfounded. Hagan replied with a second,

more detailed statement of the facts, but it was ten days after Dealey’s report

that the Times finally published a correction. It admitted Dealey’s misre-

porting and explicitly indicated that Dealey’s characterization of Save Dar-

fur as breaching standards of truthfulness was false. Save Darfur responded

to the decision with new full-page advocacy advertisements in the New York

Times and elsewhere that replaced the statement “400,000 dead” with the

observation that “as many as 400,000 are dead.”

CONCLUSION

Michael Burawoy’s call for a renewed public sociology has enlivened our

field, urging us to expand the audiences and participants involved in

sociological inquiries. Our goal in this chapter is to explore some of the

difficulties sociologists encounter in doing public sociology. Using Hagan

and colleagues’ work on the deaths in Darfur as a case study, we examined

four problems that limit sociologists’ effectiveness when they engage vari-

ous publics. Our analysis suggests that although laudable, Burawoy’s public

sociology requires strategic rethinking.

Our analysis suggests that several groups—the media, the government,

scholars from other disciplines, and other publics—easily dismiss socio-

logical contributions. The pronouncements of public sociologists probably

would be better received if sociology could improve its standing within the

academy. Sociologists and sociology departments rarely command high

status in U.S. universities, and it is not clear that public sociology activities

will provide the impetus for an increase in prestige.

One strategy is for sociology to strengthen its professional standing by

continuing to emphasize it scientific accomplishments. Our discipline

needs to find ways of regularly reminding public audiences of the sophis-

tication and rigor of its best work. We all have our favorite examples, from

Merton’s theory of the self-fulfilling prophecy to the methods of sample

survey research. But the public knows little of what we do and what we have

accomplished. Increased academic respect will also provide sociologists

334 Chapter 18

with an important resource when they compete with scholars from other

disciplines for the public’s attention.

The need for sociology to improve its status is not simply an issue

about the discipline’s standing within the academy. It underscores the

costs incurred when sociologically informed contributions are dismissed

because of the limited respect sociology garners. Hagan and colleagues

conducted the most sophisticated analysis of the deaths in Darfur to

date; they used one of the most widely read peer-reviewed scholarly jour-

nals to communicate their findings; and they provided the media, gov-

ernment officials, activists, and others with the details of their research.

Yet, their findings have been repeatedly ignored, rejected, or attacked by

many groups.

Meanwhile, the killing in Darfur continues. The Sudanese government

approved a hybrid United Nations and African Union peacekeeping force

in January 2008, but it then used bureaucratic delays to stall its deployment

and then renewed its bombings and Janjaweed attacks (Polgreen 2008). It

is impossible to know if public sociologists’ pronouncements about the

genocide in Darfur would have been more consequential if sociology were

more highly regarded; however, sociologists’ efforts to strengthen the disci-

pline and to increase public awareness of our increasing sophistication can

only enhance our effectiveness as public sociologists.

POSTSCRIPT

In 2007, the International Criminal Court in The Hague issued warrants for

two men accused of war crimes in Darfur: Ahmad Muhammad Harun, a

member of the Sudanese government and who the prosecutor says played a

role in planning atrocities, and Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-al-Rahman (a.k.a.,

Ali Kushayb), who is accused of being a former leader of the janjaweed

militia (Simons 2007). In 2009 it issued a warrant for the arrest of Suda-

nese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir on charges of war crimes and crimes

against humanity (but not genocide). President Omar Hassan al-Bashir

responded by expelling more than a dozen aid groups from Darfur (Simons

and MacFarquar 2009).

REFERENCES

BBC. 2007. “Row over Number of Darfur Deaths.” August 20 (news.bbc.co.uk/2

/hi/africa/6951672.stm).

Beck, Ulrich. 2005. “How Not to Become a Museum Piece.” British Journal of Sociol-

ogy 56(3):335–343.

Best, Joel. 2003. “Killing the Messenger: The Social Problems of Sociology.” Social

Problems 50(1):1–13.

Counting the Deaths in Darfur 335

Burawoy, Michael. 2004. “Public Sociologies: Contradictions, Dilemmas, and Pos-

sibilities.” Social Forces 82(4):1603–1618.

———. 2005a. “For Public Sociology: 2004 Presidential Address.” American Sociologi-

cal Review 70(1):4–28.

———. 2005b. “Response: Public Sociology: Populist Fad or Path to Renewal?” Brit-

ish Journal of Sociology 56(3):417–432.

———. 2007. “The Field of Sociology: Its Power and Its Promise.” Pp. 241–258 in

Public Sociology: Fifteen Eminent Sociologists Debate Politics and the Profession in the

Twenty-First Century, edited by Dan Clawson, Robert Zussman, Joya Misra, Naomi

Gerstel, Randall Stokes, Douglas L. Anderton, and Michael Burawoy. Berkeley:

University of California Press.

Burawoy, Michael, William Gamson, Charlotte Ryan, Stephen Pfohl, Diane

Vaughan, Charles Derber, and Juliet Schor. 2004. “Public Sociologies: A Sympo-

sium from Boston College.” Social Problems 51(1):103–130.

Calhoun, Craig. 2005. “The Promise of Public Sociology.” The British Journal of

Sociology 56(3):355–363.

Clawson, Dan, Robert Zussman, Joya Misra, Naomi Gerstel, Randall Stokes, Douglas

L. Anderton, and Michael Burawoy (eds.). 2007. Public Sociology: Fifteen Eminent

Sociologists Debate Politics and the Profession in the Twenty-First Century. Berkeley:

University of California Press.

Coalition for International Justice. 2005. “New Analysis Claim Darfur Deaths

Near 400,000.” April 21 (www.cij.org/publications/New Analysis Claims Darfur

Deaths Near 400 000.pdf).

Coebergh, Jan. 2005. “Sudan: Genocide Has Killed More Than Tsunami.” Parlia-

mentary Brief. Vol. 7. Pp. 5–6.

Collins, Patricia Hill. 2007. “Going Public: Doing the Sociology That Had No

Name.” Pp. 101–113 in Public Sociology: Fifteen Eminent Sociologists Debate Poli-

tics and the Profession in the Twenty-First Century, edited by Dan Clawson, Robert

Zussman, Joya Misra, Naomi Gerstel, Randall Stokes, Douglas L. Anderton, and

Michael Burawoy. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Dealey, Sam. 2007. “An Atrocity That Needs No Exaggeration.” New York Times,

August 12 (www.nytimes.com/2007/08/12/opinion/12dealey.html?scp=2&sq=D

arfur+death+estimates&st=nyt).

Depoortere, Evelyn, Francesco Checchi, France Broillet, Sibylle Gerstl, Andrea Minetti,

Olivia Gayraud, Virginie Briet, Jennifer Pahl, Isabelle Defourny, Mercedes Tatay,

and Vincent Brown. 2004. “Violence and Mortality in West Darfur, Sudan (2003–

04): Epidemiological Evidence from Four Surveys.” Lancet 364:1315–1320.

De Waal, Alex. 2007. “Deaths in Darfur: Keeping Ourselves Honest.” Sudan: The Pas-

sion of the Present. August 17 (platform.blogs.com/passionofthepresent/2007/08

/deaths-in-darfu.html).

Ericson, Richard. 2005. “Publicizing Sociology.” The British Journal of Sociology

56(3):365–372.

Gettleman, Jeffrey. 2006. “Toll of Darfur Underreported, Study Declares.” New York

Times, September 15 (query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A0DE6D81231

F936A2575AC0A9609C8B63&scp=1&sq=darfur+hagan&st=nyt).

Guha-Sapir, Deborati. 2005. “Sensational Numbers Do Not Help the Darfur Cause.”

Financial Times, Letters to the Editor. May 07 (search.ft.com/ftArticle?queryText=

Debarati+Guha-Sapir&y=8&aje=true&x=19&id=050507001870&ct=0).

336 Chapter 18

Hagan, John. 2001. Northern Passage: American Vietnam War Resisters in Canada.

Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

———. 2003. Justice in the Balkans: Prosecuting War Crimes in the Hague Tribunal.

Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Hagan, John, and Bill McCarthy. 1997. Mean Streets: Youth Crime and Homelessness.

New York: Cambridge University Press.

Hagan, John, and Alberto Palloni. 2006 “Death in Darfur.” Science 313(5793):1578–

1579.

Hagan, John, and Wenona Rymond-Richmond. 2009. Darfur and the Crime of Geno-

cide. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Hagan, John, Wenona Rymond-Richmond, and Patricia Parker. 2005. “The Crimi-

nology of Genocide: The Death and Rape of Darfur.” Criminology 43(3):525–562.

Hagan, John, Heather Schoenfeld, and Alberto Palloni. 2006. “The Science of Hu-

man Rights, War Crimes, and Humanitarian Emergencies.” Annual Review of

Sociology 32:329–349.

Holmwood, John. 2007. “Sociology as Public Discourse and Professional Practice:

A Critique of Michael Burawoy.” Sociological Theory 25(1):46–66.

House of Commons International Development Committee. 2005. Darfur, Sudan:

The Responsibility to Protect. Volume 2: Oral and Written Evidence. Fifth Report of

Session 2004–2005. London: Station. Off. Ltd. (www.publications.parliament.

uk/pa/cm200405/cmselect/cmintdev/67/6711.pdf).

Kristof, Nicholas D. 2007. “The Death Toll in Darfur.” New York Times, August 14

(kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/08/14/the-death-toll-in-darfur/?scp=1-b&sq=d

arfur+hagan&st=nyt).

Lacey, Mark. 2005. “The Mournful Math of Darfur: The Dead Don’t Add Up.” New

York Times, May 18 (www.nytimes.com/2005/05/18/international/africa/18letter

.html?_r=1&st=cse&sq=may+18+2005+darfur&scp=1&oref=slogin).

Lauder, Hugh, Phillip Brown, and A. H. Halsey. 2004. “Sociology and Political

Arithmetic: Some Principles of a New Policy Science.” British Journal of Sociology

55(1):3–22.

Marlise, Simons. 2007. “2 Face Trials at The Hague Over Darfur Atrocities.” New

York Times, February 28 (www.nytimes.com/2007/02/28/world/africa/28darfur

.html?_r=1&scp=5&sq=2007%20international%20criinal%20court%20%20dar

fur&st=cse).

Marlise, Simons, and Neil MacFarquar. 2009. “Court Issues Arrest Warrant for

Sudan’s Leader.” New York Times, March 4 (www.nytimes.com/2009/03/05/world

/africa/05court.html).

McCarthy, Bill, and John Hagan. 1992. “Mean Streets: The Theoretical Significance

of Situational Delinquency among Homeless Youth.” American Journal of Sociology

98:597–627.

Nabarro, David. 2004. “Mortality Projections for Darfur, 15 October 2004.” WHO

Media Briefing Notes. (www.who.int/mediacentre/news/briefings/2004/mb5/en

/index.html).

Nielsen, Francois. 2004. “The Vacant ‘We’: Remarks on Public Sociology.” Social

Forces 82(4):1619–1627.

Patterson, Orlando. 2007. “About Public Sociology.” Pp. 176–194 in Public Sociol-

ogy: Fifteen Eminent Sociologists Debate Politics and the Profession in the Twenty-First

Counting the Deaths in Darfur 337

Century, edited by Dan Clawson, Robert Zussman, Joya Misra, Naomi Gerstel,

Randall Stokes, Douglas L. Anderton, and Michael Burawoy. Berkeley: University

of California Press.

Polgreen, Lydia. 2008. “Scorched-Earth Strategy Returns to Somalia.” New York

Times, March 2 (www.nytimes.com/2008/03/02/world/africa/02darfur.html?_r=

1&scp=2&sq=darfur&st=nyt&oref=slogin).

Prunier, Gerard. 2005. Darfur: The Ambiguous Genocide. Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univer-

sity Press.

Reeves, Eric. 2005. “Darfur Mortality Update: June 30, 2005.” Sudan Tribune (www

.sudantribune.com/spip.php?article9364).

———. 2006. “Quantifying Genocide in Darfur.” Sudan Tribune (www.sudantribune

.com/spip.php?article17646).

Reuters. 2005. “Over 180,000 Darfur Deaths in 18 Months—U.N. Envoy.” March

15.

Silverstein, Ken. 2005. “Official Pariah Sudan Valuable to American War on Terror.”

Los Angeles Times, April 29, A1.

Smith-Lovin, Lynn. 2007. “Do We Need a Public Sociology? It Depends on What

You Mean by Sociology.” Pp. 124–134 in Public Sociology: Fifteen Eminent Sociolo-

gists Debate Politics and the Profession in the Twenty-First Century, edited by Dan

Clawson, Robert Zussman, Joya Misra, Naomi Gerstel, Randall Stokes, Douglas L.

Anderton, and Michael Burawoy. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Stacey, Judith. 2004. “Marital Suitors Court Social Science Spin-sters: The Unwit-

tingly Conservative Effects of Public Sociology.” Social Problems 51(1):131–145.

Tittle, Charles R. 2004. “The Arrogance of Public Sociology.” Social Forces

82(4):1639–1643.

U.S. Government Accountability Office. 2006. Darfur Crisis: Death Estimates; Death

Estimates Demonstrate Severity of Crisis, but Their Accuracy and Credibility Could Be

Enhanced: Report to Congressional Requesters. Washington, DC: U.S. Government

Accountability Office. (purl.access.gpo.gov/GPO/LPS77420).

U.S. State Department. 2004. Documenting Atrocities in Darfur. Publication 11182.

Washington DC: Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor and Bureau of

Intelligence and Research.

Vaughan, Diane. 2006. “NASA Revisited: Theory, Analogy, and Public Sociology.”

American Journal of Sociology 112(2):353–393.

Wallerstein, Immanuel. 2007. “The Sociologist and the Public Sphere.” Pp. 169–

175 in Public Sociology: Fifteen Eminent Sociologists Debate Politics and the Profession

in the Twenty-First Century, edited by Dan Clawson, Robert Zussman, Joya Misra,

Naomi Gerstel, Randall Stokes, Douglas L. Anderton, and Michael Burawoy.

Berkeley: University of California Press.

World Health Organization (WHO). 2004. Retrospective Mortality Survey among the

Internally Displaced Population, Greater Darfur, Sudan. Geneva: WHO.

SPECIAL FIELDS AND

PUBLIC SOCIOLOGY

341

Inspired by the progressive social movements of the 1960s, the field of

social movement (SM) scholarship began to expand rapidly in the 1970s.

SM scholars have produced a wealth of theoretical insights and empirical

knowledge. Despite the intellectual vibrancy of the field, however, scholars

and scholarship have grown increasingly detached from engagement with

activists and movements (Croteau, Hoynes, and Ryan 2005).

SM scholars have been influenced by recent initiatives to promote “pub-

lic sociology” that “seeks to bring sociology to publics beyond the academy,

promoting dialogue about issues that affect the fate of society” (Burawoy

2004b:105). In conferences and publications, SM scholars have examined

the state of the field and discussed how to promote more public SM schol-

arship. In this chapter, I will address the question of how SM scholarship

and activism can improve each other.

I will start with Michael Burawoy’s typology of four sociologies, two aca-

demic (professional and critical) and two engaged more directly with so-

ciety (public and policy) (Burawoy 2004a, 2004b). I will revise the frame-

work to develop more fully the category of policy sociology. The revised

framework will inform my analysis of relationships between and among

the four sociologies in terms of social movement scholarship. I will look

first at synergies and then at tensions and strategies to manage them. The

underlying question is how can social movement scholarship and activism

inform and improve each other.

Engaged Social

Movement Scholarship

Robert Kleidman