What Do ‘We’ Know That ‘They’ Don’t? Sociologists’ versus Non-Sociologists’ Knowledge
Canadian Journal of Sociology, Vol. 34, No. 3, 671-695.
Anne Mesny
This paper attempts to clarify or to reposition some of the
controversies generated by Burawoy’s defense of public sociology and by
his vision of the mutually stimulating relationship between the
different forms of sociology. Before arguing if, why, and how,
sociology should or could be more ‘public’, it might be useful to
reflect upon what it is we think we, as sociologists, know that ‘lay
people’ do not. This paper thus explores the public sociology debate’s
epistemological core, namely the issue of the relationship between
sociologists’ and non-sociologists’ knowledge of the social world. Four
positions regarding the status of sociologists’ knowledge versus lay
people’s knowledge are explored: superiority (sociologists’ knowledge
of the social world is more accurate, objective and reflexive than lay
people’s knowledge, thanks to science’s methods and norms), homology
(when they are made explicit, lay theories about the social world often
parallel social scientists’ theories), complementarity (lay people’s
and social scientists’ knowledge complement one another. The former’s
local, embedded knowledge is essential to the latter’s general,
disembedded knowledge), and circularity (sociologists’ knowledge
continuously infuses commonsensical knowledge, and scientific knowledge
about the social world is itself rooted in common sense knowledge. Each
form of knowledge feeds the other). For each of these positions,
implications are drawn regarding the terms, possibilities and
conditions of a dialogue between sociologists and their publics,
especially if we are to take the circularity thesis seriously.
Conclusions point to the accountability we face towards the people we
study, and to the idea that sociology is always performative, a point
that has, to some extent, been obscured by Burawoy’s distinctions
between professional, critical, policy and public sociologies.
See the article.