The Trouble with Burawoy: An Analytic, Synthetic Alternative

As American Sociological Association (ASA) president in 2004, Michael Burawoy argued `for public sociology', sparking impassioned debate focused almost exclusively on the normative issues raised by his prescription for a more public sociology. Nearly absent from the literature is an analytical critique of his underlying model of the structure of sociological practice. The model is flawed in three ways: (1) the core concepts are ambiguous; (2) …