File spoon-archives/bourdieu.archive/bourdieu_2002/bourdieu.0205, message 39


From: "Daniel Beland" <dbeland-AT-ucalgary.ca>
Subject: Re: NY Times article on Riesman
Date: Mon, 20 May 2002 12:01:05 -0600



Hiro:

> (1) Has American sociology ever produced "public intellectuals" or "social
thinkers" (e.g., Bourdieu in France and Habermas in Germany)?

During the 1950s and early 1960s, Wright Mills was certainly a "public
intellectual"! I could also mention Glazer and Moynihan and, in a different
vein, Marcuse. The latter was not really a sociologist, but his perspective
was more or less "sociological".

Today, my understanding is that sociologists involved in the US public arena
are mostly policy experts such as Skocpol and Wilson. Since the 1980s, no
living US sociologist has been as preeminent as Bourdieu in France or
Habermas in Germany.

How can we explain this trend? Perhaps the tendencies described in Mills'
Sociological Imagination, especially the dominance of "abstracted
empiricism", is an important factor to take into account. Regression models
are not really useful in the public arena! What you need is provocative -
critical - ideas related to key political issues. Moreover, the
structuration of the US academic field - in sociology - provides little
incentives to participate in "public debates". The only exception: policy
experts who can develop a so-called "professional discourse" on social and
political issues. But a "public intellectual" is by definition someone who
transcends academic boundaries and rejects the logic of expertise!
Basically, they can publicly discuss issues that are not directly related to
their research areas (cf. Bourdieu during the 1995 strikes!).

Daniel Béland

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