Jeffries Vincent (Editor). Handbook Of Public Sociology

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342 Chapter 19

DATA AND METHODS

In this chapter I rely on both a growing body of literature about engaged

social movement scholarship, and on my research on and work with com-

munity organizing (CO). I began this work as professional sociology, con-

ducting participant-observation research on the Gamaliel Foundation and

its Northeast Ohio affiliates.

Gamaliel is one of four national networks that coordinate and provide

training for local groups (affiliates) that practice congregation-based com-

munity organizing (CBCO) (Hart 2001; Warren 2001; Wood 2002). CBCO

is a rapidly growing, progressive movement.

Affiliates consist of institutions,

primarily religious congregations but also labor unions, schools, community

development groups, and other organizations. Organizers (paid staff) train

“leaders” (persons within member organizations who become active partici-

pants) to identify, analyze, and solve community problems. Organizers and

leaders seek to build local affiliates into enduring “power organizations” that

participate in creating public policies and holding officials accountable, and

that can influence the practices of major private institutions.

Over time, I participated more fully at the local and network levels, after

my congregation joined a local Gamaliel affiliate. I also developed several

policy projects with the local group, as I will describe.

FOUR SOCIOLOGIES

In 2004, as president of the American Sociological Association, Michael

Burawoy urged sociologists to recapture what he saw as the “moral mo-

ment” of the discipline. He argued that sociology in Europe and in the

United States began with a moral commitment to help society confront

inequalities, alienation, and major social problems. As it became an estab-

lished academic discipline, however, sociology lost much of its moral and

critical dimension and its public audience.

Burawoy’s critique has catalyzed more reflection and debate than pre-

vious efforts to re-engage sociology. This is partly because he used his

institutional position to encourage and support sociologists at all levels

of academia to pursue engaged scholarship. It is also because in addition

to a critique, his work provides a useful framework for understanding and

practicing different types of academic and engaged sociology.

Burawoy’s Framework

Burawoy (2004b) identifies four types of sociology: professional, critical,

public, and policy. He builds this typology on two dimensions—intended

Engaged Social Movement Scholarship 343

audience, and type of knowledge produced. Each dimension can take on

two values, as shown in table 19.1. Audiences can be inside or outside aca-

demia. Knowledge can be instrumental or reflexive. Instrumental knowl-

edge helps solve specific problems. Reflexive knowledge focuses on ends

rather than means. It creates debates about underlying values and goals.

Professional and critical sociology address academic audiences. Pro-

fessional sociology produces social theory. Critical sociology questions

and poses alternatives to the assumptions, theories, and methods of

mainstream professional sociology. Public and policy sociology address

audiences outside academia. Policy sociology produces instrumental

knowledge designed to solve social problems. Public sociology produces

reflexive knowledge, enriching our dialogue about social values and vi-

sions of the future.

Burawoy makes a further distinction between two forms of public sociol-

ogy. “Elite” or “traditional” public sociology addresses broad, diffuse pub-

lics, typically through the mass media. “Organic” or “grassroots” public so-

ciology involves “carrying sociology into the trenches of civil society, where

publics are more visible, thick, active, and local” (Burawoy 2004b:104).

In practice, there is a wide range of public sociologies involving a great

variety of audiences or partners. Projects may combine elements of both

traditional and grassroots public sociology. Ultimately, the goal of these

public sociologies is to “nurture or shift people’s perspectives, by helping

them grasp the context within which they operate, galvanizing their dis-

persed and shattered wills into collective actors inspired by insights into

the conditions of their existence” (Burawoy 2004c:129). Although specific

projects may blur the distinctions between elite and grassroots public soci-

ology, it is useful to maintain the two categories as ideal-types.

Revising the Framework

Burawoy criticizes policy sociology as work for hire in which a sociolo-

gist becomes a “servant of power” (Burawoy 2004b:105). There certainly is

such work, and Burawoy may be correct in arguing that it dominated any

engaged component of American sociology during its post–World War II

“second wave” (Burawoy 2007). However, it would be more useful to apply

Table 19.1. Types of Sociology

Academic Audience Extra-Academic Audience

Instrumental Knowledge

PROFESSIONAL POLICY

Reflexive Knowledge

CRITICAL PUBLIC

Source: From Burawoy 2004b:106.

Instrumental knowledge looks to solve problems and focuses on means. Reflexive knowledge questions

underlying assumptions and focuses on values and ultimate goals.

344 Chapter 19

to policy sociology the same distinction Burawoy makes for public, creat-

ing the categories of grassroots and elite policy sociology (Kleidman 2006).

These differ in terms of both partners and process.

Elite policy sociology does involve working with or for agencies of social

control and other dominant organizations, and the outcome of this work

may be to reinforce existing inequalities and power arrangements. How-

ever, many social scientists do policy work with organizations made up

of or representing non-elites, including those marginalized by race, class,

gender, and so forth. This work aims to reduce inequalities and create more

democratic structures.

In terms of process, sociologists may be hired to do a predetermined job.

However, policy work often, perhaps usually, involves a more active role in

planning, conducting, and disseminating the results of projects. It can also

center on empowering community members and training them in relevant

skills. In fact, there are long-standing traditions of grassroots policy social

science that stress empowerment, including “participatory research” (Park,

Brydon-Miller, Hall, and Jackson 1991; Park 1992; Ansley and Gaventa

1997), “action research” (Argyris, Putnam, and Smith 1985), “participatory

action research” (Whyte 1991), and “community-based research” (Strand

et al. 2003). The public sociology movement would benefit from greater

engagement with these traditions.

SYNERGIES AMONG THE FOUR SOCIAL

MOVEMENT SCHOLARSHIPS

In principle, scholarship and activism are complementary. Despite tensions,

Burawoy correctly maintains that the four types of sociology strengthen

each other.

Professional Sociology and Engaged SM Scholarship

Professional social movement scholarship can lead to engaged work in

two key ways. First, scholarship can provide the material for engaged work.

Policy and public sociology draw on professional sociology’s insights. Sec-

ond, for those who study contemporary movements, research and scholar-

ship can build relationships with activists, leading to policy and public

sociology. I will look at a few specific projects that illustrate this synergy.

Grassroots Policy Sociology

Social movement scholars can partner with movement activists to help

them address felt needs and solve specific problems—the focus of policy

Engaged Social Movement Scholarship 345

sociology. An outstanding example of this is the work of MRAP, the Media

Research and Action Project at Boston College (Ryan 2004, 2005). Since

1986, Charlotte Ryan and others have worked with movement groups to

improve their media strategies.

Ryan’s mandate was to “distill framing theories for popular use” (Ryan

2005:120). These theories had become influential in social movement

scholarship, looking at how movements present or “frame” issues (Snow

et al. 1986). Bill Gamson, a leading scholar of movements, recognized the

value of such theories for engaged work and established MRAP.

For the first five years, Ryan and her colleagues ran workshops for more

than two hundred organizations (Ryan 2005). They discovered that even af-

ter the workshops, activists felt that framing specific messages for intended

audiences was somehow dishonest. They persisted in unsuccessful efforts

to gain favorable media coverage, and blamed the media for this failure.

MRAP decided to select a few groups for more extensive training. They de-

veloped long-term partnerships with ten social movement organizations.

The focus of this work shifted from the content of the frames to improv-

ing activists’ understanding of larger strategic issues and the role of media

strategies within them.

Perhaps the most extensive scholar-activist engagement in the social

movement field in the United States is in the area of labor studies (Gapasin

1998; Juravich 1998). Like the study of community organizing, this field in-

tellectually and institutionally overlaps substantially with social movement

scholarship. Unlike CO scholars, however, labor scholars have established

university-based institutes for research and education, and a separate sec-

tion of the American Sociological Association. This close relationship be-

tween scholars and activists is unusual if not unique, and is not without its

problems (Croteau 2005), as will be discussed. It centers on engaged work,

much of which is policy sociology. Bonacich, for example, has helped sev-

eral unions create organizing campaigns by researching specific industries

(Bonacich 1998, 2005).

My policy work with community organizations emerged from profes-

sional sociology. As I did participant-observation research, I learned that

Gamaliel was creating a network-wide focus on regional “metro-equity”

organizing (Kleidman 2004). Partnering with leading urbanists including

Myron Orfield, john a. powell, and David Rusk, Gamaliel organizers and

leaders moved their focus from traditional neighborhood and city-level or-

ganizing to a regional analysis, vision, and strategy. This kind of progressive

regionalism emphasizes metropolitan dynamics, especially sprawl, socio-

economic polarization, and racial segregation, as root causes of urban and

neighborhood problems (Rusk 1995, 1999; Orfield 1997, 2002). Metro-

equity organizing seeks to build a diverse “metropolitan majority” in the

declining and at-risk communities, to promote policies that slow or stop

346 Chapter 19

sprawl, create reinvestment in the core, and provide transportation to and

housing in affluent suburbs for some moderate-income and poor people.

These policies typically require action at regional and state levels. The vi-

sion is of an environmentally sustainable region, preserving its natural and

architectural heritage in a compact urban core, with increasing economic

and racial integration and equality.

Working with Ameregis, Orfield’s research institute, Gamaliel affiliates

had partnered with universities and other institutions to produce studies

of specific metropolitan regions. Recognizing the need for such work in

Northeast Ohio, I worked closely with the local Gamaliel group to gain sup-

port and funding from my university and local foundations for a regional

study and report (Orfield et al. 2001) and to conduct a series of small

seminars and a major regional conference. My limited background in urban

sociology allowed me to lend some expertise to these projects, but more

important were the urbanists at my university whom we recruited. Scholars

sometimes overlook our capacity to use our institutional resources to help

our community partners, although movements like service learning and

public sociology are encouraging more of this work.

Grassroots Public Sociology

Public sociology uses social science theory and research to create a dia-

logue centered on fundamental values and the quality of social life (Bura-

woy 2004b). A slightly broader definition brings us to a central concept

in political sociology and social movement scholarship, that of ideology.

Although sometimes dismissed as rigid or mystifying thinking, a neutral

definition of ideology sees it as a worldview with three key elements (Oliver

and Johnston 2000). First, a vision of a future society shaped by core values.

Second, a penetrating analysis of the present that puts individual problems

and specific social issues in a broader critique of systems and cultures.

Third, a long-term, comprehensive strategy for how to move from present

systems to future visions.

For social movement scholarship, grassroots public sociology involves

creating dialogues between scholars and activists around vision and values,

analysis, and strategy. More so than policy sociology, it involves a critical

examination of the practices and cultures of movements. Critiques can

come from professional social movement scholarship, from more informal

observation including the knowledge gained in policy projects, and from

activists’ own reflections.

The Grassroots Policy Project (GPP) began with the critical assessment of

contemporary American movements as “caught up in efforts that are short-

term, fragmented and reactive” (Healey and Hinson 2005:57). Similarly,

Ryan found in her work with MRAP that “While conservative movements

Engaged Social Movement Scholarship 347

are often explicitly ideological, US progressive movements are not” (Ryan

2005:119). After observing a national organizing conference in which both

progressive and neo-conservative speakers were warmly received, I likewise

concluded that CBCO’s nebulous populism limits its transformative poten-

tial (Kleidman 2004). Each project therefore included efforts to encourage

our community partners to address these problems by developing more

explicit visions of the future, a deeper, more sociological analysis of the

present, and more comprehensive, long-term strategies that see their efforts

in the context of a larger progressive movement.

The GPP works with social movement groups to help them orient their

short-term activism so that it builds toward more long-term fundamental

change. Drawing on Steven Lukes’s (1974) theory of power, Healey and

Hinson concluded that this meant two things—building movement capac-

ity or infrastructure, and developing and promoting a more systematic, pro-

gressive “worldview” that can challenge dominant conservative language

and frames. In their workshops, while preserving its core content, they

translate Lukes’s theoretical work into a more pragmatic language.

MRAPs long-term partnerships have a very similar dual focus to help

activists integrate media strategy into a larger organizing strategy. First, they

seek to build movement capacity by improving activists’ analytic, visionary,

and strategic skills. Second, they emphasize how “collective action fram-

ing practices create a counternarrative that forwards a counterhegemonic

worldview” (Ryan 2005:133).

Lacking the institutional base of an MRAP or a GPP, I have made more

modest ventures into public grassroots sociology. I have asked organizers

and leaders whom I thought would be receptive to read my critiques of

organizing. This has led to some interesting, mutually challenging con-

versations, and to some plans to create programs to deepen the political

education component of leadership development.

Grassroots Policy Sociology and Grassroots Public Sociology

My engaged work and that of MRAP began as policy sociology and came

to include the deeper conversations of public sociology, illustrating another

synergy between forms of sociology. The two connect mainly through the

relationships and knowledge developed through professional and policy

sociology.

In doing participant-observation research on organizing, I found most

organizers and leaders to be supportive of the work or at least tolerant. Sev-

eral, however, were either uninterested or even somewhat hostile, believing

that I would either waste their time or air their dirty laundry. The policy

projects we did transformed these relationships. I realized that by taking

seriously the felt needs of organizers and leaders, and by delivering new

348 Chapter 19

resources, I had gained an important measure of trust. This trust is essential

for the work of grassroots public sociology, in which scholars and activists

challenge each other around our work and underlying assumptions.

In reflecting on this process of building relationships and trust, however,

I realized there is a second key connection between policy and public soci-

ology. To the extent that scholars have choices in the nature and process of

policy projects, we can try to influence the work of our community partners,

combining their felt needs with what our professional scholarship suggests

may be their more fundamental interests. In other words, grassroots policy

sociology can be a strategic intervention in the work of movements and

other community partners.

In terms of the four sociologies framework, this synergy illustrates the

value of using a complex multidimensional concept of policy sociology.

In addition, all the projects discussed show the importance of maintaining

the analytic distinction between policy and public sociology. Although they

overlap, public sociology contains a critical dimension that policy sociology

lacks, and that can be easy to ignore in otherwise-fulfilling engaged work.

Engaged Scholarship Informs Professional Sociology

Engaged work should improve professional scholarship in terms of data,

methods, and theory. At the level of data, working with activists and com-

munity groups in policy and public sociology partnerships gives us access

to more information about these groups. We see more of them under more

varied circumstances. Taylor and Rupp (2005), for example, drew on the

traditions of participatory action research and feminist scholarship to create

a research project on drag queens. They collaborated closely with their re-

search subjects in developing the project, collecting and analyzing data, and

disseminating the results. In doing so, they learned much more about their

subjects than they would have through more traditional, less participatory

methods. Similarly, through the policy partnerships in which I participated,

I learned a great deal about the worldviews of organizers and leaders.

Engaged scholarship can improve our methodology and capacity to ap-

preciate other worldviews. Knowing that our work will be read by those

whom we study encourages us to be more accurate in observations and

notes, and to produce accounts that are authentic. It can also challenge our

worldviews. Working more closely with organizers and leaders helped me

recognize a somewhat elitist attitude that I think is partly based in academic

training and culture. This attitude helps us critique the long-term impact of

our community partners, but may lead us to overlook or dismiss the chal-

lenges and rewards of their everyday work. A more balanced attitude can

produce better scholarship, I think.

Engaged Social Movement Scholarship 349

A final synergy involves improving movement theory by applying it.

Ryan’s work with movement groups helped her understand not just how to

translate framing theory for popular use, but also how to improve it at the

level of theory. Through MRAP’s workshops and partnerships, Ryan devel-

oped a more sophisticated framing theory as she observed the process of

movement activists learning, adapting, and using the theory (Ryan 2005).

Engaged Scholarship Informs Critical Sociology

Engaged work contributes to critical sociology. For social movement

scholars, it confronts us with the question of why our partners and audi-

ences outside academia rarely look to social movement scholarship for

guidance. It leads us to critical sociology, a critique of current theory and

research, as a step toward developing more useful scholarship. I will take

up some current critiques of movement theory as part of a larger discussion

of tensions and strategies.

TENSIONS AMONG THE FOUR SOCIAL MOVEMENT

SCHOLARSHIPS AND STRATEGIES TO MANAGE THEM

Professional, critical, public, and policy sociology can be synergistic. How-

ever, there are tensions among and between them, some inherent and some

based in contingent arrangements. I will look at three areas of tension and

some strategies to manage them: institutional arrangements and cultures

in movements and academia, the nature of professional social movement

scholarship, and relationships between scholars and activists.

Institutional Arrangements and Cultures—Social Movements

Richard Healey and Sandra Hinson see parallel problems in the cultures

and institutional arrangements of scholars and activists. Both encourage

fragmentation—academia in terms of specialization, activism in terms of

single-issue work. Both are reactive and focused on the short-term. Scholars

tend to follow the latest trends in theory, while activists look to respond to

immediate threats.

However, just as public sociology and other initiatives may be changing

parts of academic culture and institutions, so too are progressive move-

ments changing, partly out of frustration with continued setbacks. In 1998,

Randy Stoecker and I worked with two funders to convene a meeting of

community organizers, scholars, and funders, as part of a CBSM theory

workshop (Kleidman and Stoecker 1998). We found that many organizers

350 Chapter 19

want academics to help them understand the changing global and national

environment in which they work. In their work, Healey and Hinson have

found that “some activists relish opportunities to engage in critical analysis

and to be challenged to move beyond their usual approaches” (Healey and

Hinson 2005:57).

Engaged scholars and activists can help each other change our respective

institutional cultures to encourage more collaborative work. There needs to

be a material base to these projects. Just as scholars lack time for collabora-

tive work, activists lack time for reading, reflection, and writing. Creating

institutional space and finding funds for sabbaticals for activists would

be one important way in which scholars could further truly collaborative

work.

Institutional Arrangements and Cultures—The Academy

For sociologists in most academic settings, faculty roles and rewards

center on professional sociology. Policy and public sociology are seen

primarily as community service. Sociologists are discouraged from spend-

ing much time on them. This problem is particularly acute for those who

wish to develop strong relationships with community partners, a process

that usually requires a substantial investment of time. Collaborations, es-

pecially when more than one partner is involved, may pay off only slowly

or not at all in terms of publications (Ryan 2004). As a result, note Healey

and Hinson (2005), most social movement scholars tend to react more to

trends in research and theory than to developments in the actual practice

of social movements.

Brady (2004) supports the public sociology movement, but he fears it

may fail partly because there has been little discussion of creating profes-

sional incentives for engaged work. The movement would be stronger if it

connected more consistently with major initiatives from outside sociology

that focus on precisely this issue. The most important of these has been

from the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Ernest

Boyer, its president, led a task force to examine the relationship of academia

to society.

In Scholarship Reconsidered (1990) he reported that the task force found

institutions of higher education to be far too removed from the rest of

society. To redress this problem, he called for an expanded notion of schol-

arship. In addition to the traditional scholarship of discovery, we should

recognize and reward the scholarships of integration, teaching, and what he

later called engagement (Boyer 1996).

Since the book’s publication, Carnegie and other organizations have

sponsored conferences, workshops, publications, and other means to

promote engaged work ranging from service learning to community-based

Engaged Social Movement Scholarship 351

research. The American Association of Higher Education (AAHE) Forum

on Faculty Roles and Rewards sponsored a series of important conferences

in the 1990s, leading to several valuable publications (Driscoll and Lyn-

ton 1999; Lynton 1995; Rice 1996; Glassick, Huber, and Maeroff 1997).

Some of this work addresses individual scholars, providing guidance and

models for treating engaged work as scholarship that can be published in

peer-reviewed journals. Other work looks to institutional changes. With

hands-on help from AAHE and other institutions, several colleges and

universities have revised their tenure and promotion rules to recognize

engaged work.

The call for public sociology has catalyzed a strong response within the

discipline. There has been a spate of publications, including three edited

volumes (Blau and Smith 2006; Barlow 2007; Clawson et al. 2007). Bura-

woy’s term as ASA president also saw the establishment of the Task Force on

the Institutionalization of Public Sociology. Within the ASA, the section on

Collective Behavior and Social Movements (CBSM) has also responded to

the public sociology initiative, devoting substantial time at recent meetings

to workshops and presentations on public social movement scholarship

(Ryan, Kleidman, and Maney 2007). An important volume on engaged

social movement scholarship (Croteau et al. 2005) includes many excellent

chapters, some of which I have drawn on substantially for this essay.

Despite these promising developments, it is too early to tell whether there

will be any lasting efforts to help scholars manage the tensions between the

roles and rewards of professional sociology and those of engaged work.

Discussions within sociology still tend to ignore the wider initiatives cited

above. This increases the chances of the discipline marginalizing engaged

work. Some division of labor is necessary and may be good, as Burawoy

and others argue. However, identifying and applauding a few scholars who

do engaged work is no substitute for critically examining the system of roles

and rewards that limits its practice. Such marginalization, moreover, leaves

professional sociology relatively unexamined and unchanged. For engaged

work to be more common and effective, however, we must look critically at

the kinds of theory being produced by professional sociology.

Professional Social Movement Scholarship

The content of scholarship may create obstacles to engagement. The

public sociology movement has reenergized a critical sociology that ques-

tions key aspects of sociological theory. Burawoy (2004b, 2008) reminds

us that C. Wright Mills’s (1959) critiques of “grand theory” and “abstracted

empiricism” in mainstream sociological theory are still relevant, although

the current “third wave” (Burawoy 2007) in sociology incorporates a more

public dimension.