The term ‘public sociology’ is widely thought to be first introduced by Professor Herbert Gans in his presidential address to the American Sociological Association (ASA) in 1988, and subsequently championed by Professor Michael Burawoy in his 2004 presidential address to the ASA. The idea behind public sociology is that it should expand the disciplinary boundaries of sociology in order to engage with non-academic audiences in contrast to what Burawoy calls ‘professional sociology’, which he thinks is concerned primarily with addressing other academic sociologists. (This is not John Abraham’s view of professional sociology). Another idea behind public sociology is that the discipline should engage with matters of significant political/policy importance and consider how society should change in relation to those matters.
Although, ironically, the concept of ‘public sociology’ may not have been theorized until 1988 within the presidential echelons of ‘professional sociology’, in practice, in 1987 John Abraham and his sociology colleague Colin Lacey co-founded a major 5-year experiment in public sociology, known as the Education Network for Global Environment and Development at the University of Sussex. The idea was precisely to expand the discipline of classical sociology of education to engage the mass media, industry, and government, as well as schools and academics, in order to dynamically generate a new collective intelligence about one of the greatest political challenges of our time, namely, the global environmental crisis and its implications for human development. John’s work in the field of Public Sociology of Global Environment and Development is exemplified by the following publications:
John Abraham, Colin Lacey and Roy Williams (eds) Deception, Demonstration and Debate: Toward a Critical Environment and Development Education, 197pp, Kogan Page, 1990.
John Abraham, Ian Bride and Colin Lacey (1990) ‘Can media educate about the environment?’ Media Development 37 (2): 6-8.
John Abraham and Colin Lacey (1988) ‘The argument for an Education Network’ Education Network Newsletter, 1: 13-15.
John Abraham (1992) ‘Television Coverage of Second World Development’ Education Network Newsletter, 6: 20-24.
John Abraham (1990) ‘Global Problems Become Local: The increasing challenge for the collective interest’ Education Network Newsletter 4: 7-8.