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Public sociology: South African dilemmas in a global context
Abstract
Thirteen years ago I returned to South Africa at the invitation of Blade Nzimande to address what was then ASSA—: the Association of Sociologists of Southern Africa. Much had changed since my previous sojourn to South Africa in 1968. It was then 1990. Nelson Mandela had just been released from Robben Island and the ANC had been unbanned. My two teachers, Harold Wolpe and Jack Simons, both prominent intellectuals of the liberation movement, had just returned to South Africa. I, at least, had benefited from their exile but they had been sorely missed in South Africa. At Wits a talk by the mythical Harold, renown among other matters for his daring escape from jail, was advertised as: “: Harold Wolpe—: Live.”: While I was in South Africa, that July, I also witnessed the (re)launch of the South African Communist Party to a tumultuous crowd in Soweto. Notwithstanding escalating violence in the townships and civil war in Natal, the winter of 1990 was surely one of the more optimistic moments in South African history.
... Burawoy's critique of academic sociology frequently point to the fact that the historical subordination of public sociology in the American context can be set in direct opposition to the South African case – which Burawoy presents as an 'ideal type' – where public sociology has had a strong tradition and forms an integral component of the discipline itself (Burawoy, 2004Burawoy, , 2005aBurawoy, , 2005b).Thus the term public sociology is an American invention whereas, in countries such as South Africa, it forms the basis of the discipline. Burawoy (2005b) states: ...
... State's developmental agenda as well as its adoption of the Growth, Employment and Redistribution strategy (GEAR) in 1996 -a broad based neoliberal macro-economic strategy. Burawoy (2004) summarises the effects that these shifts have had on sociology: ...
... As I have discussed previously, social movements are believed to be the 'spaces' most conducive to fostering 'public sociology' in the current period – both in South Africa (Buhlungu, 2009, Burawoy, 2004) and abroad (Katz-Fishman & Scott, 2005, Brewer, 2005). Hopes for the reinvigoration of public sociology have been penned on forging collaborations between intellectuals and popular social movements. ...
... These attempts at devaluation focus on dissolving sociology into an amorphous "social science" with the purported goal of promoting the supposedly higher value of interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary work. I made the point that "social science" would reduce sociology to only one of the faces of post-apartheid sociology, the one of vocational education and commodification of research, or what Michael Burawoy (2004) calls policy sociology. Let me immediately state that I am in favour of interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary work and am involved in it myself. ...
... This distinction is reflected in Table I. Table I The Disciplinary Field of Sociology Audience / Academic Extra-Academic Knowledge Instrumental PROFESSIONAL POLICY ReHexive CRITICAL PUBLIC (From Burawoy2004: 18) Burawoy (2004) qualifies this scheme as ideal-typical in nature. Particular sociologists could find themselves in more than one camp at the same time. ...
... He furthermore stresses the interdependent nature of the four sociologies when he argues: 'We might say that the four sociologies form an organic division of labor which produces a vibrant discipline when they are in continual interaction, when each type has a relational autonomy with respect to the others. The flourishing of each is the condition for the flourishing of all' (Burawoy, 2004:18). Unfortunately the four sociologies are also simultaneously in a contradictory relationship, mainly as a result of the types of knowledge they produce, the ways in which their existence is justified and the ways in which they are held accountable. ...
Tradition, ambition and imagination are core concepts in the identity of the sociologist. This paper focuses on these three aspects in evaluating the choices and challenges facing post-apartheid sociology. The achievement of the sociological ambition and the expression of the sociological imagination are considered in terms of Michael Burawoy's (2004) distinction between professional, critical, policy and public sociology. Through this analysis the constraints and challenges facing South African sociology are exposed. It is concluded that South African sociology can best be bolstered through an active engagement with national issues and publics within a global context. In this way we can harness the sociological tradition, ambition and imagination in the creation of a better life for all in South Africa.
... These tensions were evident in Burawoy's presentation to the SASA conference. His paper begins by drawing a strong contrast between the 'hyper-professionalised American sociology' and the 'engagement of sociology, much of it Marxist, with the issues of the day' in South Africa, a contrast which casts interesting light on the 'peculiarities of American sociology' which requires 'a strange idea' -'public sociology' for something 'which in South Africa is taken for granted' (Burawoy, 2004). In his discussion of South African sociology, he draws on Webster's concepts of the social science of liberation and critical engagement. ...
... There are of course material reasons for this. The resources for knowledge production -funding and time for research, large numbers of graduate students, academic associations and conferences, journals and publishers (Burawoy 2004) -are limited in peripheral locations such as South Africa, and the practices of critical engagement in political fields tend to be all-consuming, with the result that we don't think of ourselves as producing high-level theory, and fail to devote the necessary time and resources to this task. In other words, we collude in our own domination. ...
... When Burawoy (2005) called for a more public sociology, he also importantly pushed for a more global sociological imagination. 1 That is, by considering how other nations grapple with the right mix of public, critical, professional, and policy sociology, we might see the United States less as the centre of the sociological universe, and more as one province in a much larger global dialogue of challenges facing the discipline as a whole. While Burawoy never turned his gaze to Nigeria specifically, he did consider the plight of Sociology in the global South, including South Africa, in an effort to ask what lessons might be learned from there (Burawoy, 2004(Burawoy, , 2008. He argued that a truly global sociology could not be organized from the top-down, but rather had to be organically generated from the local struggles of real publics on the ground. ...
We present a history of Sociology in Nigeria, within the context of intellectual imperialism and the problems of the colonial library. The development of the discipline in Nigeria took place with a great deal of dependence on Western intellectual and financial resources, which led to what some critics have termed the “captive mind.” This is an intellectual posture whereby Western theory is uncritically embraced, while concepts developed internally are harshly judged or ignored. After reviewing these challenges, we turn to consider some of the most promising and innovative contributions to emerge from within Nigerian sociology, providing for “endogenous theory” that has much to offer a wider global sociological dialogue. We note that such theories can take root from pre-colonial indigenous sources, as well as finding inspiration in the current post-colonial realities that mark these times. Building on these cases, we follow Adesina’s call for a “sociology beyond despair,” arguing for the intellectual and moral imperative of building theories inside of Nigeria and outside of the mold of Western assumptions, while still using and contributing productively to global sociology. To help build on this worthy goal, we consider delimiting the role of Western theories rather than eliminating them, while utilizing the rich potential of “abductive analysis” as a route to furthering endogenous sociological knowledge.
... Nelson Mandela (Madiba), born July 18, 1918 in Mvezo, died on December 5, 2013 in Johannesburg, South Africa. Mandela has a long and honorable place in the struggle against apartheid and became the first black president of South Africa in 1994 (Burawoy, 2004;Evans, 1999). Although he was imprisoned for 27 years, he accomplished his struggle with style and Grace (Mandela, 1994). ...
Purpose
Building on the contributions of chaos and complexity theories, this paper aims to conceptualize how the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela were able to transform chaos (randomness) into order (integration). More specifically, it aims to identify the qualities by which such leadership worked in the context of conflict and cultural confrontations, which is, leading at the edge of chaos.
Design/methodology/approach
This research follows a qualitative approach in data collection and analysis; it narrates and analyses biographic data as well as literature about these three prominent leaders. Common qualities of these leaders are explored in-depth, discussed and linked.
Findings
Success in leading at the edge of chaos was attributed to the following leadership qualities: vision, non-violence and tolerance. This paper conceptualizes Gandhi, King and Mandela's embodiment of these qualities in transforming difference and disagreement to unity and how they inspired and developed their societies at home and all over the world. This paper concludes with the following results: Dr King, Gandhi and Mandela were visionary leaders; the three leaders had a vision about the future of freedom, equality and peace. More importantly, they were able to hearts and minds, and convey their visions to followers and to society at large. They struggled to achieve their goals non-violently, but knew that violence could destroy society due to unbalanced power structures. In the fight for their people's emancipation/freedom, they avoided ethnic, racial and religious discrimination. The three leaders were politically, culturally and socially tolerant.
Research limitations/implications
By identifying their leadership qualities and analyzing their leadership mechanisms, this paper stresses the necessity of the emergence and preservation of leadership as exhibited by King, Gandhi, Mandela and many other influential leaders. Leaders, committed to enrichment and sustainability of cultural diversity and nurturing of tolerance, can play a role in unifying nations. Practically put, today’s leaders need to rethink their strategies, by taking into consideration what Gandhi, King and Mandela have contributed to leadership in dealing with cultural diversity and conflict. Furthermore, leaders must extend the applicability of such leadership to include the ending of violence in every facet of people's lives, and work publicly to overcome the challenges encountering human kind such as nuclear weapons, war, poverty, racism, global warming, drugs, religious bigotry and violence of any kind. That is, today's leaders need to lead at the edge of chaos due to the ongoing conflicts around the globe.
Originality/value
This paper uniquely conceptualizes leadership qualities by analyzing and comparing literature and biographical data of the above-mentioned leaders. The study also contributes to the existing literature on leadership using an interdisciplinary approach by proving the mechanisms by which leadership transforms chaos into order within the context of cultural diversity and confrontation, where studies are rare. This research contributes to the theory of leaderships at three levels. First, it offers an interdisciplinary theory on leadership qualities by linking these qualities with chaos and complexity theories. Second, unlike the majority of literature which views leadership from a business or public leadership perspective, this research provides a new perspective of leadership for cultural diversity. Third, it highlights the role models of three exemplary leaders for each of whom previous literature is lacking.
... Initially, I proposed a single-site case study at a school in Mitchells Plain. A single case became an extended case method (Burawoy, 2004) when multiple cases of school library assistants involvement emerged in the field. The method as mentioned above became key to understanding the link between the organisation, the school library campaign and volunteer work-therefore I could not deny the flexibility in finding truths, and understanding the multiple perspectives (Rossman and Rallis, 2012:62). ...
Since 1994, policy-driven research in South Africa led by the Department of Education (DoE) and Library Information Sciences (LIS) in resource-poor schools has focused on the absence of teaching and learning the material, teacher support for poor numeracy, and literacy pass rates. In addition, research has been particularly concerned with teachers and poor literacy results across Grade 3 and 6 cohorts. I argue that "literacy" and "literacy rates" are complex political and educational concerns in South Africa. I argue further that a historical examination of the notion of a "school library" in South Africa, its deployment in education policies and programmes, and the effects of school libraries on individuals who work in them should inform our understanding of these concerns. Based on ethnographic research within a nonprofit organisation in South Africa which aims to realise a school library in every school, I develop here a framework for understanding the complex processes that shape the school library as a particular kind of policy and political object. Investigating the school library in historical and political context allows for a more in-depth understanding of the outcome of a policy campaign and those implementing the policy. Through a close examination of the policy campaign, I aim to illustrate the relations between stakeholders and role-players in the context of the school library campaign developed by Equal Education and its spin-off, The Bookery. An ethnographic approach to the literacy campaign enabled me to develop an intimate knowledge of a particular non-governmental organisation and the complex relations between volunteers, employees, and activists.
... In comparison to sociology (cf. Bassoon & Prozesky, 2015;Burawoy, 2004;Crothers, 1998;Seekings, 2001), economics in South Africa has perhaps also been less self-reflective about the development of the discipline's methodological apparatus over recent decades. A number of studies, however, have explored problems with the teaching of undergraduate economics at South African universities (cf. ...
Since the transition to democracy in the early 1990s, economic research and instruction in South Africa have become far more quantitative and technically sophisticated. In this paper, I trace and discuss reasons for these developments, and I argue that this quantification of economics should not be at the expense of exchanges with qualitative data that fail the criterion of being representative, or with other disciplines that are less quantitative. With South Africa’s complex history, persistent inequality and considerable cultural diversity, economics has much to gain from interdisciplinary collaboration and mixed methods research.
... In the article, I draw from my experience over a period of 10 years working on a project to transform the functioning of a public hospital in South Africa. I start my account using Burawoy's model for thinking about the field of sociology by dividing it into four quadrants -professional sociology, critical sociology, policy sociology and public sociology (Burawoy, 2004(Burawoy, , 2007. I show how our mode of work entailed a movement over time from public sociology to policy sociology to critical sociology and back to policy and public sociology again. ...
In this article, the author argues that socially engaged sociology cannot be understood as a practice isolated in the quadrant of 'public sociology' as suggested by Michael Burawoy's organization of sociology into four distinct quadrants but that it is closely associated with critical policy sociology as well as critical professional sociology. The author uses a case study of hospital transformation in post-apartheid South Africa to demonstrate the way sociological activism cycles through public, policy and professional sociological fields and to explore the nature of each of these fields as contested fields of power characterized by dominant and subordinate sociologies. The author resurrects Eddie Webster's concept of critical engagement and expands its scope to suggest that the stance of the progressive - or radical - sociologist, who is engaged and committed to subaltern publics but retains a critical independence, is reproduced in the field of professional sociology in the form of what Burawoy calls critical sociology and in the field of policy sociology as critical policy sociology. The latter is a possibility that cannot be entertained in the Burawoy model, where policy sociology occupies a quadrant constituted by instrumentality and a lack of reflexivity. The practice of critical engagement, then, has to be understood as combining public sociology, policy sociology and critical sociology in a practice that may produce new knowledge that enables a more complex comprehension of domination across these fields, the better to challenge it.
... A Burawoy által bizonyos fokig példaértékűnek tekintett, a vitában csak említett szovjet/orosz peresztrojka-szociológia, illetve a dél-afrikai apartheidellenes szociológia lényeges pontban különbözik az előzőektől (Burawoy 2004). Az apartheidellenes szociológia egy olyan mozgalomhoz kapcsolódott, amely általánosítható, egyetemes értéket képviselt, ahol tehát a konkrét társadalmi törekvés egybeesett a szabadság általános érdekével (a régi kritikai elmélet nyelvén szólva). ...
Burawoy kezdeményezése sok más mellett az amerikai szociológia egyik klasszikus formulájához is kapcsolódik. A 'közérdekű' vagy 'köz-' (public) szociológia kap-csán Burawoy C. Wright Millsre utal, aki szerint a szociológia feladata "közügyet (public issues) teremteni a magánproblémákból (private troubles)". "A baj (troub-le) magánügy: az egyén úgy érzi, hogy a neki kedves értékeket valami fenyegeti. … Az ügy közös dolog (public matter): úgy érezzük, hogy a nekünk fontos értékeket valami fenyegeti" (Mills 1959: 8). Mills meglehetősen vázlatos elképzelésében két olyan dolog van, amit ki kell emelni. Egyrészt úgy véli, hogy a magánbajok igenis összefüggnek közügyekkel, vagyis az egyének sérelmei és szenvedése olyan folya-matokkal, állapotokkal függnek össze, amelyek egyénfeletti, 'társadalmi' szinten értelmezhetők, kollektív cselekvés révén befolyásolhatók. Másfelől egyértelmű, hogy az a szociológia, amely az ilyen értelemben vett közügyekkel foglalkozik, nem lehet értékmentes. Nem állhat meg ott, hogy megállapítja, okságilag hogyan függ az érzékelt magánnyomorúság a 'társadalmi' tényektől, hiszen a közösen val-lott értékek felől értelmezi a magánszenvedést. Mills röpiratszerű tanulmányának megjelenése óta majd' egy fél évszázad telt el. A válto-zások lenyomata ott van Burawoy cikkében is. 1 Amikor arról ír, hogy az igazságosság, egyen-lőség és jobb világ utáni vágy, amely generációját a szociológia felé terelte, átalakult tudo-mányos címek hajszolásává, nem a tudományos értelmiség pszichológiája érdekli. Számos, a közszociológia programjával foglalkozó cikke 2 egyikében részletesebb képet ad az itt közölt írás 1. tézisében jelzett problémáról. A hatvanas, hetvenes évek radikális, kritikai szociológi-ájának sorsáról van szó – az amerikai 'egyetemi marxizmus' sorsáról. Ez szerinte nem kudarc volt, ellenkezőleg: ez a szociológia meglepően sikeres volt, "állás állás után került a rohamozó erők kezére": polgárjogot nyert az osztályelemzés, az elidegenedés és a nemi (gender) uralmi viszonyok tanulmányozása, a forradalmak és az ideológiák kutatása, Marx a kánon része 1 Többek közt abban, hogy a Mills által megvetett és nevetségessé tett Talcott Parsonst Burawoy mekkora tisz-telettel kezeli. 2 Tizenhárom, 2001 és 2005 között megjelent ilyen témájú cikkét találtam meg.
... Since its inception South African sociological thought has displayed a strong focus on the social problems of the day. It could be argued that South African sociology has cultivated a tradition of what Burawoy (2004) calls public sociology, albeit in different incarnations. This is demonstrated by the initial focus of sociological research being mainly on poverty, development issues and race relations, with an eventual shift to other social problems such as 'prostitution, alcoholism and crime' (Pauw, 1958(Pauw, : 1095Peterson, 1966: 35). ...
Exclusion and inclusion are probable outcomes of struggles over resources, power and social space, and social capital and citizenship are useful constructs to understand these processes. The core of our argument is that it is necessary to explore the various ways in which social groups deal with exclusion by accessing citizenship through employing their particular sources of social capital. In our view therefore the three concepts are related in interesting ways that are not always apparent in debates about the drivers of social change in the global South.
Although the South African and Indian transitions have been examined extensively by many scholars, none of them have interrogated the juxtaposition of issues around social exclusion, citizenship and/or social capital during these transitions. The book breaks new ground by providing analyses of these three concepts within each country that makes a contextual comparison between them possible. What is also important is that the overarching processes of inclusion and exclusion are subject to dynamic change as different social groups struggle to negotiate and ultimately alter the conditions of their existence. The analyses in the volume are grounded in empirical illustrations using case studies that cover a wide range of issues and contexts. These case studies are important in their own right as they provide fresh information and insights into the transitions in India and South Africa that our readers might not have had access to previously.
... The new labour studies that emerged in South Africa in the 1970s had, from its inception, a close relationship with the emerging labour movement. I have called this, critical engagement; more recently, Michael Burawoy has described it as public sociology, to distinguish if from the inward-looking hyperprofessionalism dominant in the United States (Burawoy, 2002). From our perspective in the 1970s and 1980s, publishing locally was a choice we made so we could engage in a dialogue with the social movements struggling for the rights of working people, rather than something imposed on us from outside. ...
... With regard to the different purposes (teleology) of sociology, Burawoy (2004) conceptualises four types of sociological scholarship: professional, critical (serving an academic audience), policy and public sociology (serving an extra-academic audience). He argues that, in South Africa, due to its close ties with political agendas (pro-or anti-apartheid), sociology has tended to serve an extra-academic audience. ...
This article aims to address a theoretical question, ‘what is the relationship between knowledge structure and curriculum structure?’, by answering an empirical, context‐specific question, ‘what drives and legitimates the curriculum in one sociology department?’, with an emphasis on surfacing the ‘recontextualising rules’ at work in this particular institutional context. These questions were explored by conducting a case study in the wake of a departmental review. The conceptual framework for the article is based on Bernstein's sociology of education and on those who have developed his work further. The findings support Bernstein's characterisation of sociology as a discipline with weak external boundaries, a horizontal segmental structure and a ‘weak grammar’, and, it is suggested, with knowledge claims that tend to be legitimated by social rather than epistemic relations. In this particular case study, the horizontal, segmental structure of the discipline was seen to be reflected in a curriculum that currently lacks coherence and cohesion.
... The challenge involves both litigation and direct action, both being understood as means of grassroots mobilisation. The main demand is for decommodification of water which makes this a Polanyian type struggle (those defined by need opposing commodification in the market) as opposed to Marxist type struggles against exploitation in production (Burawoy, 2003). ...
At the core of the crisis of social relations in contemporary South Africa is a privatisation of the public sphere which is forcing individu-als to seek private remedies to socially produced problems. The way access to clean and adequate water is threatened by both pri-vatisation and pollution illustrates this process. The article argues that resistance to these processes has the potential to 'resocialise' the crisis, and could be strengthened by the involvement of sociolo-gists.
Die südafrikanische Soziologie zeichnet sich durch mehrere Merkmale aus. Sie hat eine eigene Strömung entwickelt, die sich aus der Kolonial- und der Apartheidzeit entwickelt hat. In den verschiedenen Phasen ihrer Geschichte – Kolonialzeit, Apartheid und Demokratie – durchlief die Soziologie des Landes schwierige Zeiten. In der Zeit der Apartheid sind die politischen Bedingungen für eine integrierte Soziologie antagonistisch. Die einen unterstützen das separatistische Apartheidregime, die anderen lehnen es ab. Einige Soziologen stehen an vorderster Front, wenn es darum geht, die Apartheidpolitik mit Unterstützung der Disziplin zu fördern. Es gibt gegensätzliche Auffassungen über den Zustand der Soziologie in den drei deutlich gekennzeichneten Phasen. In diesen Jahren haben in Südafrika verschiedene Formen der Soziologie nebeneinander existiert. In diesem Kapitel werden einige der charakteristischen Merkmale der südafrikanischen Soziologie vorgestellt, die in diesem Buch untersucht werden.
In diesem Kapitel wird eine Bestandsaufnahme der heutigen Lage der südafrikanischen Soziologie vorgenommen. In ihrer 100-jährigen Geschichte hat sie schwierige Zeiten durchlebt. Die Apartheid trennte die Gesellschaft und die Soziologen. Die Soziologen sind parallel verlaufende Wege gegangen. Die Afrikanisierung ist für die südafrikanische Soziologie relevant geworden. Der demografische Wandel in der Disziplin hat nicht das erwartete Ausmaß erreicht. Die Mobilität der Soziologen im neuen demokratischen Südafrika ist deutlicher zu erkennen. Sie verlassen die akademische Welt, um in die Regierung zu gehen und Berater zu werden. Dies geht zu Lasten des Wachstums des Fachs. Dennoch ist die Soziologie in Südafrika zum Wachstum bestimmt. Die Zahl der Studenten nimmt zu, und neue soziologische Erkenntnisse erscheinen nicht nur in nationalen, sondern auch in internationalen Fachzeitschriften. Die Soziologen werden ermutigt, ernsthafter als je zuvor zu forschen.
Die Apartheid trennt die südafrikanische Gesellschaft entlang der „Rassen“ grenzen. Die Soziologie ist von dieser Spaltung nicht frei. Einige nutzen die Disziplin, um den Interessen des Staates zu dienen, während andere sich weigern, sich daran zu beteiligen. Unter der Apartheid existieren verschiedene Soziologien nebeneinander. Zwei antagonistische Berufsverbände haben ihre eigenen Publikationskanäle gegründet. An den Universitäten ist die Soziologie in eigenständigen Fachbereichen fest etabliert. Als Lehrfach setzt sie sich im Land durch und entwickelt sich in parallelen Strömungen. Die Universitäten sind unterschiedlich ausgestattet, und die besser ausgestatteten sind die weißen Afrikaans-Universitäten. Die Soziologie wird von Weißen dominiert. Die Forschung unter der Apartheid ist mit großen Herausforderungen verbunden. Wissenschaftler werden verhaftet, eingesperrt oder getötet, weil sie sich der Apartheid widersetzen. Nicht nur Soziologen, sondern auch andere Sozialwissenschaftler tragen zur Produktion von soziologischem Wissen in Südafrika bei.
This chapter contributes to debates on decolonization by focusing on the decolonization of sociology in Southern Africa. In the past few years, the call to decolonize universities, pedagogy, and curriculum has gained traction. From the time of its emergence, sociology has always been implicated in processes of colonial empire-making. In fact, sociology is deeply rooted in Eurocentric epistemological and ontological canons. Drawing on research done in Zimbabwe and South Africa, the chapter focuses on the decolonization of sociology in those two countries. It examines the ways in which sociology academics are responding to calls to decolonize curriculum and pedagogy. Utilizing Nyamnjoh’s concepts of “incompleteness” and “conviviality,” it makes a case for a decolonized sociology that embraces incompleteness as a normal way of being and border thinking. It is asserted that decolonized African sociology should be conceived of as a permanent work in progress and as a space of convivial knowledge production.
This paper investigates the epistemic politics at work in radically contrasting academic representations of African university futures. Euro-American policy entrepreneurs and research funders call for major investments in Africa’s scientific research training capacity to strengthen the continent’s integration into a global knowledge system. Meanwhile, African social scientists and humanities scholars critique the epistemological hegemony of ‘Western’ models of the academy, and call for the decolonisation of African universities.
This paper sets out a three-step approach to dealing with the politicisation of ‘academography’ (Thorkelson 2016) in this decolonial moment. The first step is to acknowledge how epistemic power relations shape all analytical moves. The second is to recognise that ‘generative antagonisms’ (Burawoy 2004) are inherent to disciplinary knowledge production. The third is to develop an ethnographic sensitivity to everyday academic practice within these institutional worlds and epistemic cultures. Together these moves offer space for dialogue between different visions of African higher education.
This paper engages with the recent discourse on decolonization of knowledge in South Africa from a sociological perspective. It interrogates the position and relevance of both sociology and sociologists to the development aspirations of South Africa. Its basic assumption is that sociology as a discipline is invaluable to the current needs for social reformation and reconstruction in South Africa. While the relevance of sociology as a discipline consistent with unravelling the complex and complicated dynamics of social formations remains unquestioned, its value as the embodiment of social aspirations and development has been undermined by the unquestioning assumption of the superiority of knowledge systems from outside and the glaring failure to promote sociology that is both contextualized and responsive. There is no arguing the prominent role of sociology in the liberation struggles and initial encounter with imperialism; there is also no doubt that sociologists nowadays have found comfort in an uninvolving study of society and the generation of knowledge that hardly functions as an adequate anchor for the existential needs of society. This paper therefore argues for the emergence of “frontier” sociologists and sociology of relevance which interrogates knowledge from outside and critically builds conviviality between outsider and African ontologies and epistemologies.
Starting from fundamental acknowledgment of Julian Go’s core argument that scientific pluralism permits multiple objectivities, my comment first includes a complementary argument: to complement Go’s standpoint approach, I suggest not an analytical but a practical strategy towards alternative approaches in sociology. Second, I put forth a few minor criticisms. And third, I formulate two more fundamental questions that go beyond Go’s text: in international scholarly debate, what criteria do we have at hand to differentiate between knowledges and to dismiss those we consider false? Furthermore, what is the relationship between different standpoints and different theories?
Drawing on ethnographic research with social movement networks in Spain, this article explores the challenges and possibilities of research collaboration. My project focused on the emerging logics and practices of collective action, the ongoing re-definition of grassroots politics. The engagement with social movements as reflexive communities – not simply objects to be studied, but subjects actively producing their own analysis and explanations, their own ‘knowledge-practices’ – deeply transformed the in-fieldwork encounter. Through a series of co-analysis workshops, designed and implemented together with the research subjects/collaborators, this research became an open-ended dialogue of reflexivities. The shift from working on social movements to working and thinking together with social movement activists as co-researchers produced new scholarly knowledge, advancing our understanding of contemporary collective action, while simultaneously making research useful for the activists. Moreover, locating epistemic and methodological questions at the centre of the project, I addressed salient debates in social science, exploring collaborative frameworks in order to problematize traditional forms of knowledge production and validation.
This article presents a critical analysis of Michael Burawoy’s model of public sociology, discussing several of its epistemic and methodological limitations. First, the author focuses on the ambiguity of Burawoy’s proposal, problematizing the absence of a clear delimitation of the concept of ‘public sociology’. Second, the author links the academic success of the category of public sociology to the global division of sociological labour, emphasizing the ‘geopolitics of knowledge’ involved in Burawoy’s work and calling for the decolonization of social science. Then, the author expounds his concerns regarding the hierarchy of the different types of sociology proposed by Burawoy, who privileges professional sociology over other types of sociological praxis. Reflecting upon these elements will provide a good opportunity to observe how our discipline works, advancing also suggestions for its transformation. Along these lines, in the last section of the article the author elaborates on the need to go beyond a dissemination model of public sociology – the unidirectional diffusion of ‘expert knowledge’ to extra-academic audiences – and towards a more collaborative understanding of knowledge production.
This chapter takes stock of the position of South African sociology today. It has passed through challenging times in its 100-year history. Apartheid segregated society and sociologists. Sociologists followed paths that run parallel. Africanization has become relevant to South African sociology. Demographic transformation in the discipline has not reached the levels expected. Mobility is more obvious among sociologists in the new democratic South Africa. They leave academia for government and to become consultants. This is to the detriment of the growth of the discipline. However, sociology is destined to grow in South Africa. Student numbers are increasing and new sociological knowledge is appearing not only in national journals but also in international journals. Sociologists are encouraged to conduct research more seriously than ever before.
Apartheid segregates South African society along racial lines. Sociology is not free from this division. Some use the discipline to serve the interests of the state while others refuse to be any part of it. Different sociologies co-exist under apartheid. Two opposing professional organizations opened their own channels of publication. Sociology at universities is firmly established in independent departments. As a teaching discipline it gains ground in the country and develops through parallel streams. Universities are differentially resourced and the better resourced are the white Afrikaans universities. Sociology is dominated by whites. Conducting research under apartheid poses great challenges. Scholars are arrested, imprisoned or killed for opposing apartheid. Not only sociologists but also other social scientists contribute to the production of sociological knowledge in South Africa.
South African sociology has several distinctive features. It has developed a strand of its own, transforming from the colonial and apartheid periods. Under different phases in its history—colonial, apartheid and democratic—sociology in the country passes through exacting times. The political conditions are antagonistic towards an integrated sociology in the apartheid period. Some support the separatist apartheid regime while others oppose it. Some sociologists are in the forefront of promoting apartheid policies with the support of the discipline. There are contrasting views on the state of sociology in the three clearly marked phases. Different forms of sociology co-exist in South Africa over these years. This chapter presents some of the characteristic features of South African sociology that are examined in the book.
http://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/85807 The thesis investigates the research methods employed by South African sociological researchers, as published in academic peer-reviewed journals during the period 1990 to 2009. Specific attention was given to the trends in terms of qualitative and quantitative methodologies and related methods employed. Methodological pluralism, the viewpoint that a mature sociology should incorporate explanatory, predictive and humanistic methods, has been the focus of various authors internationally and locally. A concern that has been reiterated in the literature is that an over-emphasis on one methodology or one type of method is unhealthy for the development of the social sciences in a country. No recent review of the methods and methodologies employed in sociology in South Africa has been conducted, and with no clear view of the recent and current situation, no strategy can be formulated to address this potential concern. This thesis aims to address this issue by describing the situation in South Africa from 1990 to 2009. The empirical research presented in this thesis employed a content analysis design and quantitative methodology. Data were obtained from a sample of research articles collected from various online databases. Probability sampling was conducted, by making use of the method of stratified systematic sampling with a random start. Data analysis was both cross-sectional and longitudinal, and made use primarily of descriptive statistics, but bivariate analysis and chi-square tests were also employed. Various aspects of the research reported in the articles were analysed, which included methodology, research design, sampling methods, data collection methods, data analysis methods and author collaboration. The main findings of the thesis are that, during the past two decades both quantitative and qualitative methodologies have been employed to an equal extent, but that the use of non-probability sampling methods was higher than anticipated. Both local and international collaboration has increased over the past 20 years, and a quantitative methodology was significantly more likely if international collaborators were involved in the research. The thesis concludes that research methods in general, and sampling methods in particular, are poorly reported in published sociological research.
This paper focuses on the ambiguous, contradictory and montaged space of Dimbaza in the former Ciskei bantustan of the Eastern Cape, figured simultaneously as homeland resettlement village, betterment rural township, decentralised industrialisation showcase, site of political banishment, international symbol of apartheid difference and as graveyard of the racially discarded, among others. Drawing on empire as the dependent space to command sovereignty, the paper considers Dimbaza in terms of South African empire. While it is suggested that as a means to re-figure the South African political, the bantustan may be read as a mark of a South African empire ‘project’, the paper is more concerned to ‘think with empire as a theoretical concept’. The paper draws on the elements of knowledge susceptible to being assembled by historical imagination – written documents, letters in the International Defence and Aid Fund (IDAF) Collection, contemporary testimonies, and visual sources (including the important film documentary Last Grave at Dimbaza) – and which constitute or resist the native/racial/ethnic/African subject (and thus are seen to exemplify the racial spatial command of the sovereign). We assemble these in relation to seemingly antagonistic historical formulations, particularly ‘colonialism of a special type’ and the politics of exile and liberation. We propose that, rather than returning us to South African ‘empire’ as a totality, the term offers us multiple singularities that allow us to consider the imaginative formulation of the ‘empire of liberation’ as a dependent space that continues to command sovereignty within the ‘native question’.
South African sociology has a long and varied past. Over a period of nearly a century it has gone through several phases. Sociology as a course of study is offered widely in the country and sociologists - mainly at universities - have made a significant contribution to the development of the sociological literature through their research. The major outlet for this research is the South African Review of Sociology (SARS), which is the official journal of the association of sociologists in the country. Although there is some understanding of what South African sociologists are currently studying, there has been no systematic or scientific attempt to examine their endeavors. Using a novel bibliometric approach, this article analyzes the research articles that have appeared in SARS in the post-apartheid era over a period of 18 years. The findings relate to the backgrounds of the authors (race, gender, sectoral, institutional and departmental affiliation) and to the nature of the articles (collaboration, methodology, and topics). The inferences that are drawn from these could assist in determining the directions sociological research is taking in the country.
This article traces the rise and fall of radical praxis in South Africa and offers a critique of the prevailing practices of former Marxists under post-apartheid conditions. Western Marxism emerged in the 1970s in South Africa and Marxist activists became deeply involved in the liberation movements. With the unravelling of apartheid, the main liberation forces made a social pact with capitalist forces and former Marxists embraced a statist project. In the context of the rise of ‘new’ social movements, radical thinking of a more Libertarian kind is emerging in contemporary South Africa.
Marxism was central to the understanding of South Africa’s struggle for freedom. This article provides a critical analysis of Marxist literature on South Africa since the 1970s, drawing out its relevance for contemporary analyses of the post-apartheid state and for radical politics today. It suggests that while the literature offered important insights into the character of the apartheid state, it failed to provide a critical appraisal of the state per se. Moreover, the capturing of state power by the liberation movement was not grounded in an understanding of the oppressive character of the state-form. The undermining of mainstream Marxism under neo-liberalizing conditions in post-apartheid South Africa has opened up the prospects for anti-statist radical libertarian thinking (including autonomist Marxism), and this thinking is consistent with the practices of certain autonomist popular politics currently emerging. Social theorizing on South Africa has had a complex relationship with Marxism. This article is interested in drawing on this experience in an effort to understand its implications for the ‘new’ South Africa where, 20 years after apartheid’s formal ending, social transformation remains caught in the logic not of Marxism but neo-liberalizing capitalism.
Sociology has been a subject of extensive debate in South Africa, especially over the last two decades. Central to the debate on sociology as a discipline and practice were efforts to document its history and paradigmatic shifts that characterized it, as well as topical themes that defined its research. One key observation in its evolution pointed to a historical shift from being a service discipline to the previous racially segregatory political regimes, especially between the early 1900s and 1960s, to a multi-paradigm discipline that challenged the racial order and inequalities in the 1970s onwards. This period marked the height of public sociology. Recent observations, however, especially in the post-apartheid period, projected a scenario of the discipline in a state of decline. Counter-evidence was nevertheless also presented suggesting not only the renewal of sociology in South Africa but also its active interest and involvement in the struggle against inequalities as part of the voices of the poor. This article calls these observations as the decline thesis and the renewal thesis, and contrasts them. The latter, I argue, is more compelling than the former. Notwithstanding this, the article argues however that the extent to which sociology in involved in struggles against inequalities is under question since public sociology, unlike in the 1970s and 1980s, is underdeveloped.
Burawoy provides a useful analytical history of South African sociology by suggesting a movement during the apartheid period through the four sectors of his matrix, in anti-clockwise direction from policy sociology to professional, critical and public sociology (Burawoy, 2004). His suggestion that in the post-apartheid era sociology has been forced to shift from a reflexive engagement with publics and a critical engagement with societal goals to a defence of the very idea of sociology, is persuasive. ‘We are witnessing’, he concludes, ‘the instru-mentalization of sociology, turning it away from an integration of ends to an obsession with means, often its own survival. The post-apartheid state … has little patience for public and critical sociologies that articulate the disparate interests to be found in society. The assault on sociology becomes part of a broader offensive against active society’ (Burawoy, 2004: 15).The response of South African sociologists to this unprecedented interest by the President of the American Sociological Association in their history was one of bemusement. Why is he interested in the self-evident fact that South Africa has a tradition of public sociology? While it may be self-evident to South African sociology, by naming some of its activities ‘public sociology’ Burawoy was giving these activities legitimacy. As a participant in the symposium on Public Sociologies at Boston College last year wrote, ‘In giving public sociology a name, perhaps Burawoy's enduring gift is to confer it with legitimacy’ (Vaughan, 2004: 118). ‘Naming’ public sociology as a legitimate activity brings to the surface a whole range of activities that are not normally accepted as the domain of a professional academic.Other South African sociologists challenged Burawoy's categorisation of types of sociology suggesting that he was drawing artificial boundaries at a time when these boundaries were breaking down. Surprisingly, some even denied that sociology is a distinct discipline or that it has any distinct role to play in the social science project. Sociology's historic role, Burawoy has made clear in a separate paper, is quite distinct within the broader social science project. ‘We are not political scientists who identify with state power and political order. Nor are we economists who identify with the wonders of the free market. We are sociologists who identify with the resilience of civil society. But in defending society against markets and states, we do not claim that this is some harmonious communitarian terrain. To the contrary, racial fissures, scattered hegemonies of sexuality and gender, cover it, it is suffused with deepening inequalities and disciplinary regimes — themselves the product of plundering states and invading markets. Working with the positive moment of civil society, sociology defends its own very existence, but at the same time defends the interests of humanity’ (Burawoy, 2003: 3).These are inspiring and stirring words. What implications do they have for the practice of sociology in South Africa? I have divided my comments on Burawoy's article into three parts: firstly, I have used his analytical categories to examine the development of sociology in South Africa; I then draw out the lessons that I have learnt from practising public sociology in South Africa; and then, in the third part, I examine the erosion of a public sociology in contemporary South Africa. I conclude by suggesting that, while restructuring threatens to undermine our proud public and critical role, it has also opened up opportunities for South African sociology to strengthen its professional role.
In 2003 Michael Burawoy, former president of the American Sociological Association, delivered an important address to the South African Sociological Association (SASA) Congress in Durban. He spoke of four sociologies, professional, critical, policy and public. Professional sociology is what is taught and researched at institutions of higher education while critical sociology uncovers the assumptions and values upon which it rests. Policy sociology is conducted for specific clients who determine the problems to be researched, whereas public sociology addresses issues of national significance and makes its findings available to the population at large. It interrogates the goals of those in power and examines the means they use to try to achieve them (Burawoy 2004:14-17).
Burawoy maintained that professional sociology had become dominant in America, whereas in South Africa critical sociology gradually emerged in the 1970s. And, he continued:
…the Durban strikes unexpectedly exploded onto the political scene in 1973, followed by the Soweto uprising of 1976. Blacks had found their own voice to break through the repressive apartheid order. A new industrial sociology, rooted in the analysis of the labour movement, flourished in academic debates and in pages of the new South African Labour Bulletin.
From the outset the Bulletin epitomised what Burawoy meant by public sociology. Academics and other intellectuals were - and still are - writing clear and easy-to-understand articles in the Bulletin that are aimed at the broader public, specifically at the Black African working class. But the Bulletin was from the outset more than merely a vehicle for public sociology. It also provided what Eddie Webster has called a 'social science of liberation'. By this Webster meant the linking of theory with practice by giving people who had been denied a higher education the opportunity to learn from their own practice (Webster 1982:7-8). The practice was to be provided by active involvement in emerging trade union organisation while the learning was facilitated by the Bulletin that helped them to conceptualise and use their experience in furthering their own struggle for economic and, eventually, political liberation. It is a process similar to what Paulo Freire termed the 'pedagogy of the oppressed'. Through this pedagogy the oppressed acquire power springing from their weakness that makes them strong enough to liberate both themselves and their oppressors (Freire 1973:21). The power they acquired was a collective power emanating from their weakness as isolated individuals in the workplace.
The aim of this paper is to explore the strategies adopted by the South African Labour Bulletin to survive the hostile environment within which it operated during the 1970s and 1980s. The remarkable achievement is that it succeeded against all odds and is now in its 35th year of publication. This achievement is all the more noteworthy as none of the other oppositional journals that were started during the 1970s managed to survive.
This paper is based on three sources of information. The first is participant observation as a member of the Bulletin's Editorial Board for 28 years. I was elected chairperson of the Board for 24 years in succession and thus had a very good opportunity to learn a great deal about all its operations and activities. The second source of information is the private collection of primary Bulletin material that I collected from even before my tenure as Editorial Board member up to the time I stepped down from the Board in 2004. The third source of information consists of published articles and other intellectual writing pertaining to the Bulletin.
This article examines four key strategies that the Bulletin adopted that enabled it to survive and remain sustainable. The first was to achieve its autonomy after being established by the Institute for Industrial Education in 1974. The second was to draw university-based intellectuals onto its Editorial Board. They helped to provide a flow of continuous copy for the Bulletin and to establish an important subscriber base in the universities in addition to its trade union readership. The third was to ensure the financial viability of the Bulletin, first by broadening its base of subscribers, then by obtaining regular funding from overseas donors. The fourth strategy was to publish material that...
The prospect of public sociology is beginning to be widely discussed and debated. Critics put forth several reasons for skepticism, one of which is that the program of public sociology, under the leadership of Michael Burawoy, will infect sociology with a Marxist drift. This paper examines whether this drift in fact comports with Marx's ideas on the relationship between scientific knowledge, the role of intellectuals in the class struggle, and the type of political action he advocated. It finds that critics are fundamentally mistaken about the extent to which Marx's ideas are expressed in public sociology's program.
The concept canon is increasingly used to refer to the core concepts, texts, theories and authors in scientific and artistic disciplines. This article examines the appropriateness of this term when used in the social sciences generally and in sociology specifically. It argues that in terms of a strict definition of ‘canon’ sociology does not have a canon and cannot be regarded as a canonical discipline. The concept of a ‘compilatory’ discipline is introduced and discussed via references to the sociological catalogue and the knowledge/power relations that account for the form and structure of the catalogue. Arguments for regarding sociology as a compilatory rather than a canonic discipline are advanced and some consequences of this are explored through a discussion of the debates and struggles that were waged over the sociology curriculum during the apartheid years and more recently. The paper concludes with a call to South African sociologists to recognise the compilatory nature of the discipline and to meet the challenges this implies in the contemporary context and for the renewal of sociology and social transformation in South Africa.
Research, with a capital ‘R’, is a subject of considerable concern within South African ruling circles. There's not enough of it. and it's not the right kind, or so the argument runs. Recognising the importance of the material conditions of the researchers and the need for a bottom-up approach to developing research priorities, this paper focuses on the state of sociology research in South Africa today. It demonstrates that, over the past twelve years, a marked increase in the output of masters and doctoral graduates has been accompanied by a decline in the level of completed research by qualified sociologists. In terms of publications, there has been a significant increase in the proportion produced by women, but a negligible change in the number by black scholars. The paper rejects pessimistic assessments of the state of South African sociology. It concludes by arguing that the discipline should place itself at the centre of an integrated and engaged social science by drawing diverse strands together at a local level.
The theme of this year's meeting of the powerful 13,000 member strong American Sociological Association (ASA) was ‘public sociologies’. The term public sociology was invented in the United States to criticise and counter mounting professionalisation. In many countries of today the term public sociology is not necessary as sociology is presumed to be public. In order to illustrate this point the ASA invited representatives from different regions of the world to discuss the distinctive configurations of national public sociologies and the issues they address. Seven panels were drawn from East Asia, India, Latin America, Palestine, post-communist societies, the United States and South Africa.
En este trabajo se realiza un análisis de la corriente llamada «sociología pública» surgida recientemente en los EE UU en el entorno de la American Sociological Association. Para ello se utiliza el enfoque de la sociología de la ciencia. Se estudia a la sociología pública como un movimiento organizado en el ámbito de una disciplina, a saber, un conjunto de ideas y conocimientos que pretenden ocupar un espacio de atención y que están sustentados por redes de trabajadores intelectuales situados en contextos sociales concretos. En el primer apartado se define qué es la sociología pública acudiendo a sus principales nociones en la historia de la disciplina y se apuntan las corrientes más actuales. En el segundo apartado se especifican sus características como movimiento intelectual sustentado sobre todo en los escritos de Michael Burawoy. Seguidamente, se describen las principales ideas, se analiza el contexto social en el que surge y se señala su proceso de institucionalización. El último punto se ocupa de las reacciones críticas a las que ha dado lugar este movimiento.
Based on a nationwide survey, this article focuses on the perceptions of Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) members on two of the central issues that have dominated debates on the South African labour movement: the advisability of COSATU's Alliance with the African National Congress (ANC) and the extent of internal union democracy. The survey revealed that the ANC-Alliance continues to enjoy mass support, while internal democracy remains robust. At the same time, the federation faces the challenges of coping with - and contesting - neoliberal reforms, retaining and re-energizing rank and file in the post-apartheid era, and in reaching out to potential members in the informal sector and other areas of insecure work. Copyright (c) Blackwell Publishing Ltd/London School of Economics 2008.
Higher Education transformation and Academic Exterminism
- C L S See
- Chachage
See C.L.S. Chachage, "Higher Education transformation and Academic Exterminism," Codesria Bulletin, I & 2 (200 I), pp.3-l 0.
The Impossible Science
- Stephen Turner
- Jonathan Turner