2 results
II.7 - Dialogue II: ‘Really Useful’ Public Sociology Knowledge
- Edited by Eurig Scandrett, Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh
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- Book:
- Public Sociology as Educational Practice
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 02 March 2021
- Print publication:
- 14 September 2020, pp 217-224
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- Chapter
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Summary
This dialogue includes an engagement between the author and two of the case contributors, both of whom are operating at the boundaries of policy sociology. Whilst this has perhaps underrepresented those working in other spheres of knowledge co-production – research, art, behaviour – it has allowed a focus on the kinds of knowledge that find their ways into the process of policy development and, more generally, what knowledge is valued in the public sphere.
The section starts with Jan Law's case study of a particular practice of sociology, driven by the needs of policy. Policy formation and implementation, with its associated discourses of politics, influence, interests and media narrative, constitutes an important public sphere in which public sociology might occur, as well as a branch of sociology with the particular combination (according to Burawoy's (2005) categorisation) of instrumental knowledge aimed at an extraacademic audience. Jan's experience of the challenge to the academic integrity of the sociologist in this context, especially from sponsor capture, leads her to ‘cross the quadrant’ towards public sociology. The key issue that this policy-to-public sociology raises is not so much sociological practice as knowledge – who is able to control the knowledge generated by sociological practices. By contrast, Laura Lovin's experience of policy sociology accounts for a context in which that challenge has been met, relatively successfully, by the integration of the knowledge contribution of refugee and asylum-seeking women into a gendered and racialised policy discourse which otherwise seeks to devalue that knowledge. The combination of a conducive policy context (the Scottish Government's ‘New Scots’ integration strategy) and implementation by NGOs sensitive to dialogical practice within ‘invited participation’ (Cornwall, 2002) has achieved a degree of affirmation of the knowledge contribution of refugee women. This is an unfinished and ongoing project and, as Laura acknowledges, constitutes ‘first steps toward policy change’, unlike in Jan's case where she encountered fierce resistance to policy change from clients with vested interests in existing sexual health policy. The contrast between these cases may suggest a dynamism in the relationship between policy and public sociology, contingent on power relations and appetite for policy change amongst key stakeholders, requiring sociologists to cross back and forth across Burawoy's quadrants in response to political opportunities and challenges.
II.2 - Recreating Knowledge for Social Change: Convergences between Public Sociology, Feminist Theory and Praxis of Refugee and Asylum-Seeking Women’s Integration in Scotland
- Edited by Eurig Scandrett, Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh
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- Book:
- Public Sociology as Educational Practice
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 02 March 2021
- Print publication:
- 14 September 2020, pp 135-152
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- Chapter
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Summary
Introduction
The explorations in this chapter are guided by shared affinities between public sociology and feminist theory. Whereas public sociology is committed to dialogic knowledge production, bringing sociological theory into conversation with the voices of marginalised groups, feminist examinations of social, political, economic and cultural practices that produce racialised, gendered and sexualised subject positions have produced analytical categories that enhance understandings of relations of domination and subordination as well as subsequent policy making and service delivery. Together, public sociology and feminist theory share a commitment to unveiling power structures through knowledge that is collaborative, inclusive and relevant to individual and collective efforts to create social change. In my explorations, I use textual data gathered from project reports produced by the Scottish Refugee Council (SRC) and the Refugee Women's Strategic Group (RWSG) between 2011 and 2016 to analyse their efforts toward refugee and asylum seeker integration in Scotland. The SRC's commitment to grounding their services and policies in participatory knowledge production is visible throughout their projects. This methodological orientation has enabled the SRC to capture the links between sociocultural and economic structures and the personal problems experienced by refugees and asylum seekers in their everyday lives and, most importantly, it has foregrounded the intersectional analytics articulated by the refugee and asylum-seeking women participating in SRC programmes. The RWSG was thus formed by the SRC in 2015 following the realisation of the significance of the inquiries, concepts and visions for social change put forth by refugee and asylum-seeking women. RWSG's main goal would ultimately become the development of a strong collective voice that would impact refugee and asylum policy making and politics. To illuminate why the goal of impacting policy change is yet to be achieved and as a way of framing the particular trajectories of the SRC, the RWSG and their partners, the first part of the chapter revisits the exclusionary relations that have shaped conceptualisations and practices of citizenship historically. The second part of the chapter unfolds by following the work of SRC and the RWSG and tracing the connections among their praxis, public sociology and feminist theory: frameworks of participatory knowledge production, intersectional analysis, women's experience centred analysis, and the employment of women's voice toward transformative change.