The Modern Prince and the Sociological Imagination. Michael Burawoy in Conversation with Riccardo Emilio Chesta

Riccardo Emilio Chesta; Michael Burawoy

doi:10.6092/issn.1971-8853/9392

Authors

Riccardo Emilio Chesta Center on Social Movement Studies, Scuola Normale Superiore in Florence (COSMOS)
Riccardo Emilio Chesta is a Post-Doctoral Researcher and member of the Center on Social Movement Studies at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Florence (COSMOS). He holds a BA in Sociology from the University of Trento, an MA in Social Sciences from the Ecole des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales – École Normale Supérieure (EHESS-ENS) in Paris, and a PhD in Political and Social Sciences from the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence. His main research interests concern sociological theory, social movements, economic sociology, the sociology of ideas and expertise, and science and technology studies. He is currently investigating the implication of Industry 4.0 and digital capitalism on labor and contentious politics.
Michael Burawoy University of California, Berkeley
Michael Burawoy, British sociologist, currently Professor of Sociology at University of California, Berkeley, is one of the leading scholars in labor process theory. His book Manufacturing Consent (University of Chicago Press, 1979) has been translated in several languages. In 2005, as President of the American Sociological Association (ASA), he launched the “public sociology” program which stimulated a world-wide debate on the state and mission of the discipline. His work ranges from race and class (The Colour of Class on the Copper Mines, Manchester University Press, 1972), the sociology of work, the transition from socialism to capitalism (The Politics of Production, Verso, 1985; with Janos Lukács, The Radiant Past, University of Chicago Press, 1992) and globalization (Global Ethnography, University of California Press, 2000). In The Extended Case Method (University of California Press, 2009) he has proposed a new structural approach to ethnographic work. He has been President of the ASA (2003–2004), President of the International Sociological Association (ISA) (2010–2014) and founding editor of the ISA magazine, Global Dialogue (2010–2017).

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.1971-8853/9392

Keywords:

Bourdieu through Gramsci, Capitalism, Intellectuals, Public Sociology, Social Movements, Sociological Imagination, Theorizing

Abstract

In this conversation, Michael Burawoy discusses how he discovered the sociology of Gramsci in radically diverse contexts — from a vibrant post-colonial Zambia to Analytical Marxism in Chicago. The British sociologist reconnects the travels of these debates to contemporary public sociology, updating Gramsci’s key sociological concepts with the critical scholarship of Pierre Bourdieu, the social anthropology of Jaap Van Velsen and Raja Jayaraman, and the political economy of Karl Polanyi. These somehow real and imaginary conversations with social theorists bring Burawoy to stress the importance of reflexivity in sociological research. This means that sociological imagination is fostered through a constant dialectical relation between the art of theorizing and the “concrete phantasies” of social movements, which are well exemplified in Wright’s “real utopias.” Moreover, in Burawoy’s view, a new “Modern Prince” is urgently needed today and it is a public sociology which recognizes the mission of his critical knowledge against marketization.

References

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The Modern Prince and the Sociological Imagination. Michael Burawoy in Conversation with Riccardo Emilio Chesta

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