Michael Burawoy
Encyclopedia
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
, sociological
Sociology
Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—which uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity...
Marxist
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
, best known as author of Manufacturing Consent: Changes in the Labor Process under Monopoly Capitalisma study on work and organizations that has been translated into a number of languagesand as the leading proponent of public sociology
Public sociology
Public sociology is an approach to the discipline which seeks to transcend the academy and engage wider audiences. Rather than being defined by a particular method, theory, or set of political values, public sociology may be seen as a style of sociology, a way of writing and a form of intellectual...
. Burawoy was also president of the American Sociological Association
American Sociological Association
The American Sociological Association , founded in 1905 as the American Sociological Society , is a non-profit organization dedicated to advancing the discipline and profession of sociology by serving sociologists in their work and promoting their contributions to serve society.The ASA holds its...
in 2004 and is presently a professor at the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
. In 2006-2010, he was vice-president for the Committee of National Associations of the International Sociological Association
International Sociological Association
International Sociological Association is a non-profit organization dedicated to scientific purposes in the field of sociology and social sciences...
. In the XVII ISA World Congress of Sociology he was elected President of the International Sociological Association (ISA) for the period 2010-2014.
Biography
Graduating as a mathematics student from the University of CambridgeUniversity of Cambridge
The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...
in 1968, Burawoy went on to pursue post-graduate study in the newly-independent Africa
Africa
Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...
n nation of Zambia
Zambia
Zambia , officially the Republic of Zambia, is a landlocked country in Southern Africa. The neighbouring countries are the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the north, Tanzania to the north-east, Malawi to the east, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Botswana and Namibia to the south, and Angola to the west....
, while simultaneously working as a researcher for Anglo American Corporation, Zambia. Completing a master's degree at the University of Zambia
University of Zambia
The University of Zambia is Zambia's largest university, founded in 1966. It has a student population of about 10,000.-Academics:The University of Zambia is divided into the following faculties:*School of Agricultural Sciences *School of Engineering...
in 1972, Burawoy enrolled as a doctoral student at the University of Chicago
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...
, finishing a sociology dissertation with an ethnography of Chicago industrial workers, later to become Manufacturing Consent: Changes in the Labor Process under Monopoly Capitalism
Manufacturing Consent: Changes in the Labor Process under Monopoly Capitalism
Manufacturing Consent: Changes in the Labor Process under Monopoly Capitalism is a scholarly book written by British, sociological Marxist author Michael Burawoy....
.
Aside from Burawoy's sociological study of the industrial workplace in Zambia
Zambia
Zambia , officially the Republic of Zambia, is a landlocked country in Southern Africa. The neighbouring countries are the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the north, Tanzania to the north-east, Malawi to the east, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Botswana and Namibia to the south, and Angola to the west....
, Burawoy has studied industrial workplaces in Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
, Hungary
Hungary
Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
, and post-Soviet Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
. His method of choice is usually participant observation
Participant observation
Participant observation is a type of research strategy. It is a widely used methodology in many disciplines, particularly, cultural anthropology, but also sociology, communication studies, and social psychology...
, more specifically ethnography
Ethnography
Ethnography is a qualitative method aimed to learn and understand cultural phenomena which reflect the knowledge and system of meanings guiding the life of a cultural group...
. Based on his studies of the workplace he has looked into the nature of postcolonialism
Postcolonialism
Post-colonialism is a specifically post-modern intellectual discourse that consists of reactions to, and analysis of, the cultural legacy of colonialism...
, the organization of state socialism
State socialism
State socialism is an economic system with limited socialist characteristics, such as public ownership of major industries, remedial measures to benefit the working class, and a gradual process of developing socialism through government policy...
and the problems in the transition from socialism
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
.
In more recent times, Burawoy has moved away from observing factories to looking at his own place of work- the university- to consider the way sociology is taught to students and how it is put into the public domain
Public domain
Works are in the public domain if the intellectual property rights have expired, if the intellectual property rights are forfeited, or if they are not covered by intellectual property rights at all...
. His work on public sociology
Public sociology
Public sociology is an approach to the discipline which seeks to transcend the academy and engage wider audiences. Rather than being defined by a particular method, theory, or set of political values, public sociology may be seen as a style of sociology, a way of writing and a form of intellectual...
is most prominently shown in his presidential address to the American Sociological Association in 2004, where he divides sociology into four separate (yet overlapping) categories: public sociology, policy sociology
Policy sociology
This is a term coined by Michael Burawoy as a way of providing solutions to social problems. Goals are usually defined by a client, which could be the government. Policy sociology provides instrumental knowledge, that is, knowledge that can be used to solve or help a specific case in the social world...
(which has an extra-academic audience), professional sociology
Professional sociology
This is a term by Michael Burawoy. It provides the conceptual frameworks and bodies of knowledge without which public sociology nor policy sociology could function. Professional sociology is restricted to an academic audience, which one can enter after one is trained in the discipline. Professional...
(which addresses an academic audience familiar with theoretical and methodological frameworks common to the discipline of sociology), and lastly critical sociology which, like public sociology, produces reflexive knowledge but which is only available to an academic audience, like professional sociology.
Author (or Co-Author)
- The Colour of Class on the Copper Mines: From African Advancement to Zambianization. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1972
- Manufacturing Consent: Changes in the Labor Process Under Monopoly Capitalism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979
- The Politics of Production: Factory Regimes Under Capitalism and Socialism. London: Verso, 1985
- The Radiant Past: Ideology and Reality in Hungary's Road to Capitalism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992 (With János Lukács)
- The Extended Case Method: Four Countries, Four Decades, Four Great Transformations, and One Theoretical Tradition (University of California Press), 2009
Collaborative and Edited Books
- Marxist Inquiries: Studies of Labor, Class and States. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Supplement to the American Journal of Sociology. Edited with Theda SkocpolTheda SkocpolTheda Skocpol is an American sociologist and political scientist at Harvard University. She served from 2005 to 2007 as Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. She is influential in sociology as an advocate of the historical-institutional and comparative approaches, and well-known in...
, 1983 - Ethnography Unbound: Power and Resistance in the Modern Metropolis. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991 (With ten coauthors)
- Uncertain Transition: Ethnographies of Change in the PostSocialist World. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. Edited with Katherine Verdery, 1998
- От Деревянного Парижа к Панельной Орбите: Модель жилищных классов Сыктывкара. (From Timbered Paris to Concrete Orbita: The Structure of Housing Classes in Syktyvkar). Syktyvkar: Institute of Regional Social Research of Komi, 1999 (With Pavel Krotov and Tatyana Lytkina)
- Global Ethnography: Forces, Connections and Imaginations in a Postmodern World. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000 (With nine coauthors)
Articles
- “Dwelling in Capitalism, Traveling Through Socialism.” pp. 21–44 in Baldoz et al. (editors), The Critical Study of Work (Philadelphia: Temple University Press.)
- “Neoclassical Sociology: From the End of Communism to the End of Classes.” American Journal of Sociology 106(4): 1099-1120, 2001
- “What Happened to the Working Class?” pp. 69–76 in Kevin Leicht (ed.), The Future of the Market transition (New York: JAI Press), 2002
- “Sociological Marxism.” pp. 459–86 in Jonathan Turner (ed.), The Handbook of Sociological Theory, 2002 (Plenum Books) (With Erik Wright)
- “For a Sociological Marxism: The Complementary Convergence of Antonio Gramsci and Karl Polanyi.” Politics and Society 31(2): 193-261, 2003
- “Revisits: An Outline of a Theory of Reflexive Ethnography.” American Sociological Review 68(5): 645-679, 2003
- “Public Sociology: South African Dilemmas in a Global Context.” Society in Transition 35(1): 11-26, 2004
- “The Critical Turn to Public Sociology,” pp. 309–322 in Rhonda Levine (ed.) Enriching the Sociological Imagination: How Radical Sociology Changed the Discipline, New York, 2004
- “The World Needs Public Sociology.” Sosiologisk tidsskrift 12(3): 255-272, 2004
- “Antinomian Marxist,” pp. 48–71 in Alan Sica and Stephen Turner (eds.), The Disobedient Generation: Social Theorists in the Sixties (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), 2005
- “For Public Sociology.” American Sociological Review 70(1): 4-28, 2005
- “Provincializing the Social Sciences.” pp. 508–525 in George Steinmetz (editor), The Politics of Method in the Human Sciences: Positivism and its Epistemological Others (Durhman, NC: Duke University Press), 2005
- “The Return of the Repressed: Recovering the Public Face of U.S. Sociology, 100 Years on.” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 600: 68-87, 2005
- “Public Sociology vs. the Market.” Socio-Economic Review 5(2): 356-367, 2007
- “Private Troubles and Public Issues,” pp. 125–133 in Andrew BarlowAndrew BarlowAndrew Nicholas Barlow was a cricket Test match umpire.Barlow was born at Newport, Victoria. He umpired eleven Test matches between 1931 and 1951...
(editor), Collaborations for Social Justice (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield), 2007 - “A Public Sociology for California.” Critical Sociology 34(3): 339-348, 2008