Research practice and "public sociology": a discussion on possible and not-so-possible intersections

Abstract

This article is a direct reaction to Michael Burawoy's For Public Sociology (2005). It discusses the implications of that manifest in terms of a research practice that assimilates the dialogical component of the proposal and intends to present its limitations, which result from concessions both to professional sociology and policy sociology. These limitations are exposed based on some examples from fieldwork, in which the reflexive element of the research requires a problematization of the power relations between the interviewer and the interviewee. The article refers to Touraine's sociology of action and the methodology of sociological intervention to demonstrate that the tradition of the discipline has faced issues of that kind before. In the end, the article concludes for the relevance of "public sociology", but it takes into consideration the methodological incompatibilities with other "types" of sociology, characterized by the author in the above-mentioned text.