Why Sociology Matters

Thinking Allowed

BBC

Society & Culture, Science

4.4 • 997 Ratings

🗓️ 19 January 2022

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Laurie Taylor explores the meaning and purpose of public sociology with Michael Burawoy, Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley and author of a new book which describes his own contribution to reshaping the theory and practice of sociology across the Western world. He argues that social scientists should engage with the world they inhabit, rather than refusing to take positions on the most pressing issues of the twenty-first century. They're joined by Celine-Marie Pascale, Professor of Sociology at the American University, Washington, whose research advocates for, as well as describes, the daily lives of people in communities marked by poverty, racism, violence and misogyny. From Appalachia to the Standing Rock and Wind River Reservations and Oakland, California, she spoke to the self described 'struggling class'. She suggests that their stories can't be reduced to individual experience but illustrate a nation's deep economic and moral crisis and the collusion between governments and corporations that prioritise profits over people and the environment.

Producer: Jayne Egerton

Transcript

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0:00.0	Take some time for yourself with soothing classical music from the mindful mix, the Science of
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0:14.4	to share that science with you.
0:16.1	And just one thing, deep calm with Michael Mosley.
0:19.4	I want to help you tap in to your hidden relaxation response system and open the door to that
0:25.4	calmer place within. Listen on BBC Sounds.
0:30.3	BBC Sounds, music, radio podcasts.
0:36.6	This is a Thinking Loud Podcasts from the BBC and for more details and much, much more about
0:42.4	thinking aloud, go to our website at BBC.co. UK.
0:47.0	Hello on the whole I blame rats for turning me into a sociologist. You see my evening degree course in
0:54.7	psychology at Birkbeck College only offered sociology as a subsidiary subject but
1:00.0	at that time well the late 1950s and early 60s, several of the psychology lecturers
1:05.3	were at Hock to Skinnerian psychology, endeavoring to show that human behavior could be
1:10.9	understood by simply extrapolating from the behavior of laboratory rats.
1:16.0	Well, it was all quite banal enough to lead me to embrace the far more subtle sociology lectures being given by Ronald Fletcher.
1:24.7	Pretty soon Skinner and his bar-pressing rats have been replaced by the intricacies of
1:29.7	Derkheim on suicide, Weber on bureaucracy, and Marx on class conflict.
1:36.0	Now at that time sociology was very firmly allied to ideas of social change and that meant practice as well as theory.
1:45.6	Indeed sociologist at that time were almost as likely to be found walking on a
1:50.3	protest march as standing behind a lectern. Some of these sociologists stayed true to
1:55.6	their causes, but others were soon caught up by academic professionalism, the need to publish
	...

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