Q Sociological Forum
Sociological Forum, 2022 DOI: 10.1111/socf.l2851
© 2022 The Author. Sociological Forum published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Eastern Sociological Society.
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.
Advancing Publicly Engaged Sociology1
Robert Courtney Smith
This article is a version of Professor Smith's Presidential Address as delivered at the annual meetings of the Eastern Sociological Society in Boston, March 2022. Most sociologists go into the field hoping our work will help address the inequalities or injustices we study, but academic institutions and careers strongly guide most of our work away from the engagement needed to have such impacts. With others, I argue for changes in academic careers and institutions to better recognize, promote, and reward publicly engaged sociology, which would help academia honor its social contract. I briefly engage Burawoy's concept of public sociology, then propose types of publicly engaged sociology that align with how many sociologists do such work: Reframing/'Debunking Sociology, Institutionally Engaged Sociology, and Community Engaged Sociology. Next, I analyze several obstacles to publicly engaged—and especially community engaged—sociology, including epistemic assumptions and evaluative practices stemming from instrumental positivism, belief in a canonical Hawthorne effect as a clean experimental finding, and a bias against research that helps research participants or partners. Finally, I offer advice and strategies to younger sociologists wishing to do such work and recommend ways academic institutions and practices could better support publicly engaged sociology, including by training students and faculty in how to do it, creating a Journal of Publicly Engaged Sociology, and amending ASA's Code of Ethics.
KEYWORDS: community engaged sociology; disciplinary and institutional change; education; Hawthorne Effect; helping research participants or partners; institutionally engaged sociology; organizing; public sociology; publicly engaged sociology; Reframing or Debunking Sociology; service.
INTRODUCTION
This article joins others who argue for changes in academic careers and institutions to promote, value, and reward publicly engaged sociology. This view would make publicly engaged sociology an institutionally embedded part of mainstream sociology, recognized as research and not shunted into the less-valued service
1 Thanks to Joya Misra, Andres Besserer Rayas, Karen Okigbo, Margaret Vitullo, and Adam Gamoran for comments. This paper was my ESS Presidential Address. I thank the following for their work in putting on a hybrid conference in two sites: ESS Executive Officer, Jennifer McAdam; ESS interns Alyssa and Winston; Program Committee Chairs Maria Jesus "Jesu" Alarcon, Andres Besserer Rayas, Patricia Fernandez Kelly; and Program Committee members Karen Okigbo, Stephen Ruszczyk, Isa Gil, Ken Sun, Vondora Wilson-Cozen, Guille Yrizar Barbosa, and Dee Royster. Thanks to University of Massachusetts, Boston's Geoff Combs, Karissa Chute, Sociology Department Chair Reef Youngren, and UMB student volunteers; UMB Prof Carola Suarez Orozco and Chancellor Marcelo Suarez Orozco. Thanks to the Marxe School, Baruch College. Special thanks to Xuemeng Li and Demetrios Lambropoulous whose work made ESS 2022 possible. Demetrios rewrote code on our antiquated website to enable remote participation. (ESS 2023 President Fred Wherry has thankfully replaced the website.)
2 Marxe School of Public and International Affairs/Department of Sociology and Program in Social Welfare Baruch College, CUNY/The Graduate Center, CUNY Marxe School, Baruch College, Box D-901, One Bernard Baruch Way, New York, New York 10010, USA; e-mail: robsmithcuny@gmail.com
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category. In this vision, more students could take undergraduate/graduate classes in or using publicly engaged sociology, get trained in how to do it in doctoral programs, and get hired with publicly engaged sociology as a key line of work. I want publicly engaged sociology to be as central to American sociology as publishing in referred journals. Indeed, I argue for a Journal of Publicly Engaged Sociology.
I begin by recognizing I stand on the shoulders of prior scholars (noted below) and by thanking sociologists who spoke to me in developing this Presidential Address: Patricia Fernandez Kelly, Doug Hartmann, Margaret Vitullo, Rebecca London, and Adam Gamoran. Like others, I am frustrated by the systemic undervaluing of publicly engaged sociology in academic institutions and in evaluating sociological work and careers. Because I love sociology and want to make it better, this paper critiques some practices, criteria, and thinking in our discipline and institutions, and proposes ways to recognize, reward, and support publicly engaged sociology.
This vision of a better supported publicly engaged sociology invokes Weber's position that one picks the topics to study based on values but can then study them scientifically to produce useful findings.3 This vision also invokes a broader concept of social science or scholarship as a vocation—a calling, a life's work, a professional job, but not only—that also seeks to make the world better using research, per Hartmann's (2016:15) hopeful imagining. Concretely, I seek to advance the conversation about publicly engaged sociology and research, and make it better recognized, supported, and rewarded. I argue publicly engaged sociology (or other research) can be rigorous and gain insights not otherwise possible, and can benefit our discipline, our students, our universities, and our world. I also offer a brief, selective, history of publicly engaged sociology and identify some obstacles to or pitfalls in doing it. Finally, I offer concrete tips in doing publicly engaged research and recommend changes in academic careers and institutions to better recognize, reward, and support it. I hope the vision outlined here helps create institutional support and space for such a vocational path in publicly engaged sociology.
Much good work developing public sociology and publicly engaged sociology has already been done (Burawoy 2005; Calhoun 2005; Claussen et al. 2007; Gans 2009, 2016; Hossfeld et al. 2021; Jeffries 2009; Lamont 2018; Nyden et al. 2012). ASA convened a Task Force on Institutionalizing Public Sociologies (2005, 2007 and 2016), and created CARI (Community Action Research Initiative), offering small grants, and Scholar Action Network (SAN), matching sociologist volunteers and community organizations. ASA's Sociological Practice section is now its Sociological Practice and Public Sociology section. Contexts and Footnotes—[see 2022(50)1 on Community-Engaged Research]—have featured articles promoting publicly engaged sociology (Hartmann 2022; Vitullo 2022). Socius did a Special Issue on how to use research findings to reduce inequality (Gamoran 2021). Since 1985, Campus Compact (https://compact.org/who-we-are/mission-and-vision/) has advanced "public purposes of colleges and universities by deepening their ability to improve community life and to educate students for civic and social responsibility." URBAN promotes relationships between academics and community-based practitioners
3 I draw on Methodology of the Social Sciences, "'Objectivity' in Social Science and Social Policy," and "Science as a Vocation." See Gerth and Mills (1948/2014).
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(https://urbanresearchnetwork.org/about-us/). The Frameworks Institute and Scholar Strategy Network help social scientists learn how to present research so stakeholders will use it. The W.T. Grant and Ford foundations have increasingly funded work trying to reduce inequality. The National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation have moved from mostly funding basic research to also funding engaged research (https://www.nsf.gov/geo/opp/arctic/ace/community.jsp; Balls-Berry and Acosta-Perez 2017). Some universities now recognize public sociology in tenure and promotion. (Baruch College, CUNY, plans to promote community engagement, Waisanen 2022.) ESS created Pre/Post-Tenure Public Sociology Awards in 2022 (bios: https://www.essnet.org/public-sociology-award). Finally, Sociological Forum is sponsoring a Special Issue on Publicly Engaged Sociology I am editing this year.
Not having published on it before, I offer a synopsis of my 35 years of public sociological work, which informs my thinking and describes one path for developing a publicly engaged sociological career where projects gain analytical leverage on key research and policy questions and seek to help participants. My publicly engaged work began by simply combining service and ethnography, including teaching English in migrant labor camps as a college senior, helping people apply for the 1986 legalization program, and working with shopping-cart flower vendors in New York early in graduate school. Next, I used insights from NSF-funded research with children of Mexican immigrants to cofound and then serve 20 years on the board of an educational-organizing nonprofit working with Mexican families in the Bronx. Long-term nonprofit work made me attentive to how things could be made better, and to practical difficulties in doing so. I led the Baruch College-Mexican Consulate Leadership program for years, which trained community leaders in nonprofit work and sought to make them feel CUNY was their home too (with support from the Marxe School, Baruch College and CUNY Central). I led the $1.2 million combined service, capacity-building, and research DACA Access Project (DAP, aka Mexican Initiative on Deferred Action) promoting DACA applications (DACA is Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, the Obama Dreamer policy), whose longitudinal research design can analyze long-term consequences of having, lacking, gaining, or losing legal status or DACA. This research underpinned expert witness work in three DACA-related actions: lead author in an amicus brief in the Supreme Court's 2019 DACA case; as an expert defending DACA from state challenges; and in a $20 million settlement for DACA recipients alleging discrimination by Wells Fargo. My DACA research supported passage of New York State's (NYS) 2019 Greenlight Law, enabling established undocumented residents to get driver's licenses and reducing a key cause of deportation. I was an expert for the Department of Justice in the Voting Rights Act case US v Village of Port Chester. In the pandemic, I have worked (with Andres Besserer Rayas) with "el Centro" to ameliorate pandemic impacts and advocate for New York's Excluded Workers Fund (EWF), for those excluded from federal pandemic relief acts. Finally, since getting my Ph.D., I have routinely served as an expert witness in deportation cases. All this work has required and benefitted from long-term relations of trust with participants and partner organizations, which have made the research possible, helped others, brought new insights, and supported action.
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Below, I briefly discuss Burawoy's contributions to public sociology, the resulting Matthew Effect, and why I use the term "publicly engaged sociology." Next, I define types of publicly engaged sociology, discuss why universities should support them, and how early sociology did so before its instrumental positivist turn in the 1920s-1930s. I then discuss how legacies of that turn affect publicly engaged sociology, including belief in the Hawthorne Effect. I argue publicly engaged work could strengthen sociology, and offer strategies for young sociologists. Finally, I offer recommendations for changing academic institutions and careers to better recognize, value, and support publicly engaged sociology.
BURAWOY, PUBLIC SOCIOLOGY, AND PUBLICLY ENGAGED SOCIOLOGY
ASA President (2004) Michael Burawoy's contribution to public sociology is widely and rightly recognized. While he walked a path laid down by prior ASA president predecessors (Gans 2010, 2016), Burawoy (and his collaborators) created a new category to name an old practice of publicly oriented sociological work, spurring creation of ASA's Task Force on Institutionalizing Public Sociologies and much downstream work on it, some noted above (2005, 2007 and 2016). We all owe Burawoy a debt.
Burawoy's huge impact created a Matthew Effect (Merton 1968) whereby prominent scholars are more recognized for their work than less well-known scholars doing comparable work, leading to accumulation of scholarly "wealth" or advantage. "Public sociology" is now a heuristic, a shorthand referring to work wherein scholars or students engage (and seek to change) the world outside academia. Many scholars doing publicly engaged sociology do not feel Burawoy's four categories describe their work, or that they already had better concepts. They use terms such as community-engaged sociology or research, participant action research, community-initiated student-engaged research, service learning, liberation sociology, social justice research, participatory digital sociology, and others.4 I use publicly engaged sociology because it emphasizes extra-university relationships and accommodates many types of engagement, and usually seeks to make the world better (Hartmann 2016, 2022; Vitullo 2022). I also use Burawoy's (2005) analysis in places because he got much right.
Brief Engagement with Burawoy's Public Sociology
Burawoy (2005) defines public sociology partly by contrasting it with three other (not mutually exclusive) types of sociology. Professional sociology describes training in how to do sociological research. Policy sociology is work for a client, for example, an institution or government. Critical sociologists analyze our discipline's domain assumptions and blind spots. Finally, public sociology creates a dialogue between sociologists and extra-university "publics," including "counter publics."
4 See Feagin and Vera (2009); Fine and Torre (2006); Greenberg et al. (2020); Gubrium and Harper (2014); Miller et al. (2018); Romero (2020); Torre et al. (2012); Warren et al. (2018a, 2018b).
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Public sociology is enacted in "dialogues" with different "publics," including traditional public sociologists debating public policy, and organic public sociologists working with oppressed "counter-publics."
I use several of Burawoy's key points, including arguing that being a good professional sociologist underpins your capacity for public sociological work. I like Burawoy's positing public sociology as engagement with external publics, locating scholarly authority in professional analysis.
However, Burawoy's points do not fully describe the experience of many publicly engaged sociologists nor this approach's potential. Using "publics" as a framing concept does not capture the often-close relationships developing via work with community organizations or movements that promote stronger research, even if tensions can arise when scholars remind external partners we must anchor our analyses in data. Burawoy's defining policy sociology as "for a client" (and thus fundamentally different from organic public sociology) seems far from the experience of many doing (mostly pro bono) publicly engaged work (Hartmann 2016). Moreover, changing laws, policies, practices, or budgets is a prime goal for community organizations or movements and for their collaboration with scholars. One suspects Burawoy's class conflict framing views advocating for incremental change as too little, unable to transform society. But most community organizations or movements with whom I have worked both clearly see structural problems and work in the day-to-day or medium term to change policy, law, practice, or budgets to improve their members' lives. They cannot wait for structural societal change to act, and believe changing policies helps foster deeper change.
Burawoy's framework curiously lacks a "community sociology" category. He uses "community" mainly to discuss sociological-academic communities, referring only four times to non-academic community organizing/ers. Moreover, framing public sociology as a "dialogue" between sociologist knowledge producers and their "publics" nearly echoes a producer-consumer relationship far from many scholars' experience of publicly engaged work. For example, community-initiated student-engaged research is anchored in the students-university researchers-community organizations relationship. They jointly frame and investigate questions and analyze data (Greenwood et al. 2020). Even traditional sociological research done in a community usually involves strong relationships not described by a "dialogue" with a "public."
I seek not to reformulate Burawoy's categories, but to propose ways to recognize, promote, and reward publicly engaged sociology and sociological careers (ASA 2005, 2007, 2016). Hence, I (1) propose three types of publicly engaged sociology focusing on common ways and sites wherein sociologists work; (2) identify institutional and professional challenges—stemming partly from sociology's instrumental positivist turn—to publicly engaged sociology; and (3) and propose changes in academic policies and practices to promote, support, and reward publicly engaged sociology.
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WHAT IS PUBLICLY ENGAGED SOCIOLOGY? BRIEF DEFINITIONS AND HISTORICAL EXCAVATION
I propose three types of publicly engaged sociology reflecting frequent ways scholars do such work, often producing actionable research informing or facilitating action on issues it studies. In Reframing and Debunking Sociology, sociologists basic research challenges accepted public narratives about a group or issue (Katz 1997, 2001, 2002). One example is Paul Attewell and Michael Levy's prizewinning 2007 Passing the Torch: Does Higher Education for the Disadvantaged Pay Off Across the Generations? analyzing how CUNY's open admission policies—widely portrayed as an educational disaster—helped more students go to college and helped their children over 20 years.
In Institutionally Engaged Sociology, sociologists work with or within larger institutions to affect structures or policies that can reduce inequality or make world better. A first example is sociologists working in non-academic institutions or government, including at ASA or in departments of education, labor, defense, or nonprofits. Other examples include Joya Misra's (Misra et al. 2021) or Heather Laube's (2021) work to change institutions of higher education; work by Julie Dowl-ing and the US Census Bureau's National Advisory Committee on Racial, Ethnic, and Other Populations to ensure the 2020 Census was done well; Jamie Small's work on loan at USAID, quietly using feminist concepts to guide US foreign aid spending to combat gender violence; or Carrie Lee Smith's coordinating the Center for Publicly Engaged Scholarship and Social Change (Millersville University).
Finally, in Community-Engaged Sociology, scholars work with social movements, community members, leaders, and organizations, or other entities to understand challenges and promote change. Community-Engaged Sociology is (here) an umbrella term including Community-Engaged Research, Participant Action Research, Community-Initiated Community-Engaged, Participatory Digital Sociology, and others.5 Such projects are often one researcher or small teams doing fieldwork. They often seek less to generalize than to analyze how things happen (Ragin et al. 2004) and promote change. Veronica Terriquez et al.'s work (2019, 2020) taught students from California's Central Valley to do research and also registered voters.
These publicly engaged sociologies seek to illuminate how inequality or injustice happen and try to promote actionable work to foster change in policy or affected persons' conditions.
Why We Should Have a Stronger Publicly Engaged Sociology
Publicly Engaged Sociology is not now properly valued in tenure, promotion, funding, or assessing scholarly careers, but should be (ASA 2005, 2007, 2016; Squires 2022). As tax-exempt institutions, all universities, especially public ones,
5 See Feagin and Vera (2009); Fine and Torre (2006); Greenwood et al. (2020); Gubrium and Harper (2014); Laube (2021); Miller et al. (2018); Misra et al. (2021); Romero (2020); Torre et al. (2012); Warren et al. (2018a, 2018b).
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have social contracts with society, which they partly keep by supporting basic research, but should also keep by using that knowledge to make society better.
Research by ASA found that undergraduates, especially students of color, go into sociology to learn about social problems and how to fight them (ASA 2001, 2013; Jones 2019; Miller et al. 2018; Spalter-Roth 2013; Spalter-Roth and Erskine 2007). But sociology excels at analyzing causes of social problems, and falters in teaching how to fix them. This bait and switch becomes heightened for graduate students and young professors: Most of us become sociologists to do research to better the world, but academic careers forcefully guide us away from such work. ASA's research suggests that having students do more publicly engaged sociology could better attract and retain them, including students of color.
Finally, rewarding publicly engaged sociology would make sociology more relevant in the world. This year I wistfully read of then Senator Walter Mondale's 1967 proposal to create a Council of Social Advisors to offer perspectives beyond the Council of Economic Advisors.
Today's growing interest in publicly engaged sociology returns to sociology's roots (ASA 2005; Gans 2009). Many American early twentieth-century sociologists did publicly engaged sociology. Albion Small argued sociology should engage with public issues (Feagin 2021). W.E.B. DuBois's Philadelphia Negro (1899/1995) and Atlanta University Sociological Laboratory reports were deeply empirical and sought to support action. Jane Addams and Hull House (1912) mapped poverty and created interventions like teaching hygiene, helping thousands of children. Such actionable sociology should be recognized as scholarly work and valued in graduate training and promotion, tenure, and funding decisions.
The Instrumental-Positivist Turn
American sociology turned away from this early public engagement in what former ASA President Joe Feagin (2021) called an instrumental-positivist turn lasting from the 1920s-1930s through the 1980s and persisting (Claussen et al. 2007; Hos-sfeld et al. 2021). Instrumental positivism sought a "values free pure science" advocated by Robert Park and others in the 1920s-1930s, standing above politics to reveal structures of social life via "objective" data and analysis. Early sociology's separation from social work (or criminology or other disciplines) was part of this attempt (Deegan 1990; Hartmann 2016; Levin et al. 2015). In practice, instrumental positivism meant prioritizing questions that could be answered using "objective" (quantitative) data, and trying to emulate physical sciences like physics, with their perceived objectivity and exactitude. (To avoid confusion, I use positivist here only with this meaning; analyses using data are empirical.) But enacting this view increasingly turned sociology to questions that offered "objective" data and could be modeled, like physics, and away from critical issues. Feagin notes that in over 2,500 articles in American Sociological Review from 1936 to 1984, only 1 in 20 dealt with major current issues, including fascism. Not analyzing fascism in the mid-twentieth century did not make American sociology more scientific, only less relevant.
Some sociologists remained engaged. Black sociologists analyzed how racial exclusion harmed Black people in America, but were marginalized by racism in
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sociology, starting with W.E.B. DuBois (1899/1995; see Wells 1895). This marginali-zation is made worse because DuBois pioneered empirical research in America, combining ethnography, interviews, surveys, and innovatively displaying data (McKee 1993; Morris 2017; Van Winkle 2022). Ida B. Well's empirical work on lynchings was similarly pioneering (1895). Lynd's (1939) book, Knowledge for What: The Place of Social Science in American Culture, argued social scientists should actively engage policymakers to improve people's lives (Mills 1959; Squires 2022). Feminist, postmodern, and other approaches rejected instrumental positivism (Collins 1991; Smith 1987, 2005; Stacey and Thorne 1985).
SELECTED EPISTEMIC AND PRACTICE LEGACIES OF 50+ YEARS OF INSTRUMENTAL POSITIVIST SOCIOLOGY THAT AFFECT PUBLICLY ENGAGED SOCIOLOGY
Fifty plus years of the instrumental positivist approach's preference for "objective" data and analysis still affect how publicly engaged sociology is viewed. Instrumental positivism bequeathed us specious epistemic "domain assumptions," in March's (1982) phrase, not "rules" for thinking but taken for granted assumptions about how the world works and how we can study it (Smith 1987, 2005). March analyzed Durkheim's explanation for why married women had higher suicide rates than married men, but widowed women had lower suicide rates than widowed men. Rather than concluding marriage was better for men than women, he argued that men were more "impregnated" by society and evolved, and hence "hard beset" by widowhood. Women's simpler nature was satisfied in widowhood by "devotional practices" and caring for animals. The man who argued an immensely personal decision—suicide—was driven partly by social currents relied on biology to explain socially produced patterns in suicide rates.
Domain assumptions of instrumental positivism affect publicly engaged sociology today via a founding myth of objective social science, the Hawthorne Effect; and via physics envy, a false dichotomy, and an epistemic bias against helping research participants.
The Founding Myth of the Hawthorne Effect
The Hawthorne Effect we are taught in universities describes how observing something/someone can change its/their behavior, thus distorting the data's representation of reality. This myth is often enacted in the epistemic belief that substantive involvement with research participants will (1) lead researchers to be "un-objective" and/or (2) affect how participants act and change outcomes, making the research unscientific (Cho and Trent 2006). I faced this position when a (non-sociologist) CUNY colleague said my long-term study of children of immigrants was "not real science" because participants "had been under my protection," changing outcomes. I did later find limited correlation of better educational outcomes with my concrete help. But this did not undermine my research because it did not seek to generalize to a larger population, but to identify a correlational pattern within my database, and
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to trace processes through different cases to show how my help did/did not help (Smith 2019). It could inform policy by showing how small mentoring interventions had large impacts on later life outcomes.
The Hawthorne Effect did not happen as commonly taught. In the canonical account, analysts tried to explain increasing worker productivity in the Hawthorne Experiments (1928-1932) as resulting from differing light intensity or other factors, but concluded later that workers, being observed, felt more important, and worked harder. Later, re-analysis of Hawthorne data found no such effects (Jones 1990). But belief in the canonical Hawthorne Effect persists as a silent domain assumption in reviews of qualitative research and proposals, especially obtrusive observation that helps participants.
I offer an alternative account drawing extensively on Gillespie's (1991) book, Manufacturing Knowledge: A History of the Hawthorne Experiments, and my paper analyzing the Hawthorne effect in long-term ethnography. Ethnography should theoretically have bigger Hawthorne effects than other research methods, due to extensive interaction with participants (Smith 2019). I argue the canonical Hawthorne Effect reflected funders' interests and analysts' ideologies and thus should not be treated as received truth. It is a dangerous domain assumption.
So, why and how did worker output increase dramatically through the 24 experimental periods, from producing just under 50 relays (electrical gadgets) per hour to about 75 per hour, while working hours dropped from 48 to 30 hours (Gillespie 1991)? The received account, and re-analyses of original Hawthorne data, go wrong immediately by not considering where or how the experiments were done. This productivity increase was not seen in the large relay room with about 100 women assemblers, nor were conditions there changed. Rather, increases happened in the "T room" (Test Room) where six women removed from the large relay room worked separately. Gillespie reports women in the T room knew they were working in scientific experiments, results were discussed with them, and they were asked for their thoughts. Counting machines were installed so they could see in real time how many relays they made per hour. Over time, the women demanded and got better working conditions, including breaks with tea and snacks, and changing their pay scheme from hourly to piece rate, so they earned more for working harder. Based on this higher productivity, they demanded and got decreases from 48 to 30 hours per week.
Some demands were made or received contentiously. Their resolutions were negotiated agreements between Hawthorne engineers doing the experiments and the workers in them. With all these accommodations and discussion of findings, the Test room women were not treated only as test subjects, but also partly as scientific collaborators. General relay room workers resentfully called the "T-room" the "Tea room." These facts paint a picture dramatically different from objective, nonintru-sive, experimental changes presumed in the canonical Hawthorne Effect. These facts support the radically different conclusion that productivity increases resulted from negotiations with workers yielding different management practices, better working conditions, a pay scheme promoting collective action and rewarding greater effort, and workers feeling respected (Smith 2019).
The domain assumptions of Hawthorne engineers doing the study and Harvard scholars analyzing the data led them (1) to different conclusions and (2) to ignore
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what the women said. The engineers kept looking for effects stemming from lighting changes because a lighting industry trade group partly funded the work. Women who "went too far" were removed the T-room women, for example for talking about forming a union or objecting to the company doctor sharing medical information with Hawthorne engineers. Elton Mayo saw these events as proof industrial work was bad for women, causing them to "go Bolshevik" (Gillespie 1991). Finally, engineers and scholars discounted what the women repeatedly told them: They worked harder because piece rate pay meant they earned more by working harder for fewer hours. The male analysts had concluded effects from changing to piece rate would wear off after a few months.
How one understands potential Hawthorne Effects can reflect the logic of science one uses—variable-oriented analysis of representative datasets to generalize to a population, or case-oriented research analyzing processes and "how things came to be" (Abbott 2001; Burawoy 1998; Ragin 2008; Ragin et al. 2004; Smith 2004, 2019). In variable-oriented research, the Hawthorne Effect is often treated as a Bias to Be Avoided, including offering tips to avoid such bias (e.g., establish rapport) in educational research studying impacts of new interventions (Adair et al. 1989). This approach may also see the Hawthorne Effect as Contaminating Artifact, using it to explain some unexplained variance in a regression (Cho and Trent 2006; Smith 2019).
Many case-oriented, fieldwork-based scholars take the epistemically distinct Everything is Data approach, tracing how even obtrusive researcher participation that changes subject outcomes can illuminate how things work (Harrington 2002; Schwalbe 2002; Smith 2016, 2017, 2019). My research team helped undocumented workers apply for NYS's $2.1 billion Excluded Workers Fund or EWF (for undocumented workers excluded from federal pandemic relief) and apply for NYS's pandemic rent relief program (PRRP; open to undocumented renters). We bettered outcomes for many. Moreover, we learned why and how the EWF's application process encouraged applications and had high acceptance rates, while the PRRP's process discouraged applicants and had low acceptance rates. Whether helping participants and changing outcomes affects research integrity depends on whether one seeks to generalize or to explain how things happened, and on how scholars factor interventions into analyses.
Physics Envy
Another danger for publicly engaged sociology is physics envy, the epistemic belief in and aspiration to make social science more like physics.6 This epistemic stance values "objective" large-N datasets and analyses over qualitative data or case-oriented analysis (Cho and Trent 2006; Clarke and Primo 2012; Ragin 2008). I applaud research empirically testing theoretical models or estimating effects, for example, in experimental double-blind drug trials. The issue lies in assessing qualita-
6 This belief ignores that while the hard sciences study a material world, scientists decide what becomes a finding, which differs in different hard sciences (Cartwright 1983; Knorr-Cetina 1999; Latour and Woolgar 1986).
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tive data and case-oriented research (here, in publicly engaged sociology) scientisti-cally using criteria of experimental research design and quantitative analytical methods (George and Bennett 2005; Ragin 2008). The "gold standard" of double-blind experiments is often impossible because most big social science questions do not come with representative datasets with control groups or because doing such experiments with people would be unethical. Moreover, such analyses usually cannot tell us how an effect happened. In God Gave Physics the Easy Problems, Bernstein et al. (2000) argue social scientists err in picking physics as a hard science to emulate, because people do not behave as regularly as particles. Biology would be a better hard science analogue, because its record is incomplete and traces small changes over time to draw logical inferences, like much social science research (Brady and Collier 2004; Lieberson and Lynn 2002).
This epistemic stance can emerge when quantitative experts in a field review work by qualitative researchers in that field (Cho and Trent 2006; Small 2009). I once observed a quantitative researcher rate badly a well-developed proposal comparing two cases on six strongly documented dimensions for having "negative degrees of freedom"—only two cases to assess correlations for six variables. I explained the different logics of analysis in variable-oriented and case-oriented research in defending the proposal (which got funded; Ragin 2008). I offer tips below for pre-empting such misconstrual.
False Dichotomy: In my research, I am going to listen to and stand with the people, and not privilege "data" or "objectivity"
I have heard this refrain for two decades. It seems to draw on insights that knowledge is socially constructed and situated, and the less powerful often have insights into social life the more powerful do not. Such insights rightly challenged instrumental positivist epistemic hegemony, helping explain, for example, how discrimination against women or people of color can inhere in institutions or practices, causing harm with/without intent by beneficiaries of such institutions or practices (Smith 1987, 2005).
Problems result when this position ossifies into an epistemic dichotomy that one must either stand with the people or "with the data"; that centering people's accounts in analysis somehow diverges from scientific practice. This either/or stance is a weak epistemic underpinning for publicly engaged sociology. Perhaps useful is Harding's (1993) concept of strong objectivity, which socially situates researchers, participants, and knowledge produced, but does not define itself in an oppositional mirror to an instrumental positivist epistemic stance. Belief in an inherent conflict between working with "the people" and doing scientific research is unfounded and counterproductive to publicly engaged sociology. Most publicly engaged research does not adopt this position.
This position may emerge from frustration with analyzing social problems but being unable to use that knowledge to effect change. We all feel it. The solution is not to reject scientific methods or principles, but to ensure one's scientific practice properly recognizes, respects, and engages research participants and partners, while
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also being able to answer challenges to questions about research design, methods, epistemology, and conclusions.
Doing one's research well is what makes researchers valuable to social movements. Says Reverend William Barber: "One of the quickest ways for a movement to lose its integrity is to be loud and wrong... Researchers help to protect the moral integrity of a movement by providing sound analysis of the facts and issues at hand" (Quoted inNalaniet al. 2021).
Helping in Sociological Research
The perceived categorical incompatibility between doing research and helping participants should be rethought. Sociological research initially included "applied" work seeking to understand and ameliorate conditions of the poor or immigrants, but moved away in seeking "objectivity." For example, when the University of Chicago formed its social work program in 1920, women graduate students in sociology were all pushed or moved to social work. Many worked at Hull House with Jane Addams. The women's focus on studying and addressing conditions harming women and children were devalued in Chicago's sociology department (Deegan 1990; Levin et al. 2015). Deegan (1990) reports the women were seen as useful data-gatherers but not theorists. Their marginalization in early American sociology echoes that of Black scholars like DuBois. Their departure left Chicago's sociology department a land of men who saw themselves doing serious science (Deegan 1990; Levin et al. 2015).
This categorical opposition between doing "real" science and helping people persists in a bias against research that helps participants. This bias is curious because psychology, nursing, education, and social work reward research that helps participants (Munhall 1988; Rivera and Earner 2006). Moreover, policy recommendations based on one's sociological findings are encouraged. But policy changes based on findings would, theoretically, help those affected by better policy. Why is helping more people via policy more "scientific" than helping research participants? We return again to the overall goal of the research. If the goal is to generalize across a population, helping some participants only would distort treatments-outcome correlations (if unconsidered in the data). But most work wherein researchers help participants seeks not to generalize, but to trace processes within and across cases to explain how impacts happen. In helping people apply for a program, one learns what aids or hinders policy uptake, which could support better policies. Work seeking to generalize can also be done, if account is taken of helping interventions.
Helping participants or organizations can be a best (not mandatory) practice in fieldwork-based research. Because such research depends on researchers having authentic relationships with organizations or people, one may be asked to help, or feel one must help, or risk being seen as an "extractive" researcher caring only about data. Helping may also feel morally right. It can strengthen fieldwork relationships and lead participants to disclose more or invite researchers into previously guarded social sites, improving the research (Miller et al. 2018; Smith 2019; Warren
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et al. 2018a, 2018b; R. C. Smith, under contract). We should teach students how to develop and manage such relationships in their basic and publicly engaged research.
That sociology does not value helping research participants as a valid (but not required) part of its work, as other disciplines do, is a structural disincentive for public sociology.
PUBLICLY ENGAGED SOCIOLOGY COULD MAKE SOCIOLOGY MORE IMPACTFUL
Publicly engaged sociology could increase sociology's impact. It first rejects the tired trope closing too much sociology: Until we have major structural change in the causes of X, we cannot make real progress... This trope stops where the key work of publicly engaged sociology begins—in figuring out how to address the issues we study.
Recent research, commentary, and grants programs (W.T. Grant Foundation, Ford, NIH, NSF) seek to recognize and overcome a shortcoming in our collective practice of sociology: Our discipline has been better at analyzing causes of inequality (or X issue) than showing how to reduce inequality (or X issue). The 2021 Socius Special Issue, guest-edited by W.T. Grant Foundation President, sociologist Adam Gamoran, asked scholars to offer strategies addressing this problem. DiPrete and Fox-Williams (2021) advocated for feasibility studies assessing workability of proposed interventions. Nalani et al. (2021) identified six pathways to reduce distributional inequality (access to income, schools) or relational inequality (racial hierarchies), mostly focusing on interventions at scale or with scalable potential. I highlight four of theirs and one of mine.
1. Working closely with states or institutions to craft policies that research suggests will work. The Mexican Oportunidades Program was designed using research on what approaches work to reduce poverty and increase children's school and health outcomes (Nalani et al. 2021). Oportunidades gave mothers direct cash payments if children took actions known to reduce future poverty (regular school attendance, medical visits; Knaul et al. 2015; Smith 2019). This potentially high payoff approach requires strong institutional buy-in and funding.
2. Working within larger social movements to strengthen claims. Celebrate the Stories and Numbers Project (https://storiesandnumbers.org/about/), which uses "evidence-based resources" and makes policy and practice recommendations "to support LGBTQ youth and all youth in Texas." The Project uses research by leading sociologists like Stephen Russell and innovative doctoral students like Meg Bishop (UT, Austen) and parents/advocates/strategist like Rachel Adams Gonzalez. Stories and Numbers works with educators and the Centers for Disease Control and other institutions to recommend policies and practices. It provides a place for LGBTQ youth to tell their stories and advocate for the right to be recognized as themselves and to be as deserving of dignity as their peers. Recent work discusses why inclusive enumerated policies matter, and offers storytelling toolkits for LGBTQ youth, families, and allies (Bishop et al. 2020a, 2020b; Russell 2015, 2016; Russell et al. 2020, 2021).
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3. Analyze inequality of opportunity or exclusion in ways that will cause institutions to reflexively learn. Nalani et al. (2021) mention University of Minnesota's Mapping Racism Project that charts restrictive covenants causing or exacerbating racial segregation. Institutions that should promote, protect, or practice equality before the law—in policing, voting—can be good candidates to reflexively learn from research.
4. Participate in litigation as an Expert Witness, or plaintiff (if part of the affected class). This strategy presumes action by other stakeholders and can have high pay offs. 2022 ASA President Cecilia Menjivar and I have organized such workshops at ASA meetings.
5. Work Directly with Participants or Organizations, Schools, etc., Especially in Long-Term Relationships. While the above examples were at scale or scalable, work that directly helps research participants or organizations can also yield insights and findings that guide policy and practice recommendations that can be local or scalable, as with research from the DAP, described herein.
SOCIAL LIFE IS NOT MATH: ALL KEY CAUSES OF INEQUALITY NEED NOT BE ADDRESSED TO REDUCE INEQUALITY
In the practice of publicly engaged sociology, we should remember social life is not transitive, like math: the causes of inequality do not all need to change to affect lived inequality. Hence, reducing inequality (or addressing other issues) does not require first changing structural causes of inequality, but need only disrupt what Smith (Smith under contract; Smith et al. 2021) calls syndromic mechanism sequences—sets of processes recurring in sequence, leading to patterned outcomes, often harms. Discerning them is akin to doctors clinically diagnosing disease from clusters of symptoms; all symptoms need not be present to diagnose an illness (George and Bennett 2005). Smith et al. (2021) analyzed the Traffic Stop to Deportation Pipeline, a syndromic mechanism sequence whose steps we discerned from interviews and fieldwork (1700-person survey, 300+ interviews, 100+ ethnographic cases). The Pipeline begins with racially profiled traffic stops of "Mexican-looking" drivers (Armenta 2017; Garcia 2019). Informants say police believe these drivers are likely to be undocumented and lack a driver's license, and hence will even pay "extra" tickets for infractions not committed (e.g., for not wearing a seatbelt, while wearing one). Some sites book undocumented drivers into jail and deliver them to ICE for deportation, imposing downstream harms on their mostly (91% in our survey) US citizen children. Such harms include (1) family impoverishment, as parents sell cars and pay hundreds of dollars per month for rides or continue paying for tickets after racially profiled stops and (2) children's terror of the police (Smith et al. 2021). In some places, most children know a family member or friend who was deported after traffic stops. This research was used to support the Greenlight Campaign leading to NYS's 2019 law enabling established undocumented persons to get driver's licenses. DACA recipients can also get driver's licenses in New York.
This remedy—allowing established undocumented persons or DACA recipients to get driver's licenses—did not fix underlying causes of inequality for immigrant
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families, such as parents' undocumented status, racially profiled traffic stops, and local sheriffs' working with ICE. But it interrupted the syndromic mechanism sequence. These newly licensed drivers report still being stopped by police, but mostly not getting tickets after showing a license, decreasing inequality and downstream harms. The persistence of traffic stops not resulting in tickets confirms participants' belief that prior stops were racially profiled fishing expeditions to find unlicensed, undocumented drivers (Smith and Glazier 2022). Having a license disrupts the ensuing syndromic steps and harms.
This research on the effects of having, lacking, or gaining legal status or DACA has used several approaches outlined above, via an amici brief to the Supreme Court and two federal lawsuits linked to DACA. Moreover, Andres Besserer Rayas and I (Smith and Rayas 2022) show in a paper we are writing that how NYS funds its courts incentivizes more tickets and racially profiled traffic stops. We hope the paper leads NYS to reflexively learn and change how it funds the courts.
STRATEGIES FOR YOUNG OR FUTURE SOCIOLOGISTS
I offer advice to young scholars who want to do publicly engaged sociology.
First, doing effective publicly engaged sociology requires being an excellent professional sociologist. The recognition from good publications and other achievements strengthens one's authority to weigh in on public debates or via actionable research (pre or post tenure).
Second, think seriously about how and when you want to do public sociology, including the pros-cons of two strategies discussed in a 2022 ESS Conversations With session with Adam Gamoran and myself. Adam advised establishing yourself professionally before turning to publicly engaged sociology after tenure. This approach makes sense, especially for quantitative researchers whose work mostly does not rely on relationships with participants. A second approach often taken in fieldwork-based work is integrating publicly engaged research into one's career from the start. The approach emerges from fieldwork relationships, which also may make it feel difficult or wrong not to help those affected by inequalities or injustices we study (Smith 2019, under contract; Warren et al. 2018a, 2018b). It often also resembles Hart-mann's (2016) wished-for engaged vocational path. My career falls squarely into the second approach (though I warn younger sociologists away from some youthful enthusiasms, especially cofounding a nonprofit).
I offer specific advice for fieldwork-based publicly engaged sociological projects. First, get Certificates of Confidentiality from the National Institutes of Health for all projects you can. Certificates offer federal legal protection against forced disclosure of identifiable information.
Second, prioritize research design in your proposals, making sure you have concrete hypotheses that are falsifiable, and say that (see Ragin et al. 2004). Otherwise strong fieldwork-based proposals founder in review because they say they will "use Nvivo" to analyze their data, or cite research about why interviews or case studies are good, but never explain how their design and methods give analytical leverage on their question. Some ethnographers eschew early hypothesizing, arguing they clear
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their minds and only form hypotheses after being in the field, using grounded theory (Charmaz 2014). I suggest a somewhat different approach: do enough fieldwork before writing a proposal so you can develop concrete, falsifiable, hypotheses, making the proposal more fundable. Make theoretical points using concrete examples reviewers will understand. If the data later show your hypotheses were wrong, write that (Ragin et al. 2004).
Third, write fieldwork-based proposals as if explaining your research to quantitatively oriented colleagues (who often work with extant datasets). Reviewers often ask how feasible fieldwork-based research is—Will you be able to do the proposed interviews or surveys? Preemptively answer such questions by explaining how and why you will be able do the work. What are your relationships with informants or organizations? Avoid falling into the How Many Cases Do I Need! trap, where case-oriented researchers use the language and logic of representative, variable-oriented research, to try to present their study as more representative than its research design can support (Small 2009). Make the case for your case/s by both properly limiting the claims you will make with the data and design, andby explaining clearly and una-pologetically the analytical leverage your research design, data, and methods generate.
Fourth, good case studies should use all available data. Hence, do draw on insights on how processes work from your fieldwork and interviews, but also do, or read research on and use, all data and methods or publications you can that analyze administrative or census data, including research estimating effects. These are complementary tools.
Finally, as possible, use the same social infrastructure from one ethnographic project to another. Long-term relationships can facilitate future collaboration if maintained, lowering costs of new/re-entry into the field, deepening longitudinal insights, and offering more chance to help. Use institutionally supported relationships (especially via your university) with organizations or policymakers if possible.
HOW CAN ACADEMIC INSTITUTIONS PROMOTE, REWARD, AND SUPPORT PUBLICLY ENGAGED RESEARCH AND RESEARCH CAREERS?
What should we do to promote, recognize, and reward publicly engaged sociological work and careers, especially for younger sociologists? (See Gans 2009). Some recommendations below will need funding, but others can be done without it or with very little.
Make Publicly Engaged or Public Sociology Research and Work Part of Undergraduate and Graduate School Training; Offer Professors Such Training Too
We should make publicly engaged sociology a regular part of our curriculum. In this vision, all graduate students in sociology would get training in theory, methods, publicly engaged sociology, and their relevant fields. Integrating publicly engaged sociology into the curriculum will normalize and valorize it, and help students believe their research can improve the world. ASA's research argues this belief
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would help recruit more students, especially of underrepresented groups, into sociology and graduate school.
Universities should also offer professors (at all stages) training in doing publicly engaged sociological work. Trainings by the Frameworks Institute or Scholar Strategy Network I have attended were helpful, but are scarce extras. Widespread training would decrease resistance to publicly engaged sociology, making it a common experience for sociologists. Moreover, review committees should be given guidelines in how to evaluate and weigh publicly engaged sociological work, and instruction that they should value it. Training should include use and navigation of social media and online platforms (says the man without a Twitter account).
Academic Institutions Must Cultivate and Maintain Ongoing Relationships with Stakeholders to Support Publicly Engaged Scholarship
A key finding from W.T. Grant funded and other research is that it is not the quality of the research that determines whether it is used in policy making, but rather the quality of the relationships with stakeholders (DuMont 2015; Gamoran 2018, 2021; Tseng 2013). Research is more likely to impact policy or practice, especially of governmental or institutional actors, within an ongoing relationship of trust. The belief one will write an Op-Ed with one's findings and the scales will fall from policymakers' eyes is wistful or delusional. The necessary trusting relationships can happen in several ways. In fieldwork-based research with a school district, researchers themselves can develop and maintain this relationship. Where one works inside or gets "loaned" to an institution, trust can develop directly. A problem emerges when the research does not require or support cultivation of such trusting relationships, and researchers must "cold call" by sending stakeholders their findings. Early career professors and researchers live in a front-loaded, high-stakes world. Their early publications can set their career trajectory; taking time to develop external relationships may be impossible or contraindicated. Child-rearing is also front-loaded, putting extra pressure on young sociologists with young families.
Two types of institutional entities would help. More universities should create centers to support engaged scholarship (see Campus Compact). For example, Carrie Lee Smith coordinates the Center for Engaged Scholarship and Social Change (https://www.millersville.edu/ccerp/cps/index.php) at Millersville University. A key focus is working with children of incarcerated parents and promoting parents' positive re-entry after incarceration. In this work, Carrie serves as the Center's Coordinator, including navigating the relationship with local county officials and nonprofits; is on the Board of a nonprofit advocating for children of incarcerated parents; and directs research and evaluation projects on which her students work directly. Developing the relations of trust with local authorities and community members took years but has yielded significant successes in getting the authorities to be reflexive about their practices, based on that research (Nalani et al. 2021; Smith et al. 2021). More universities need such Centers, which improve the lives of people in the local community, give students concrete research experience and experience in the issues of working with institutions (Smith et al. 2021). Such centers should be
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properly funded and supported (including remuneration for faculty and students) and not exist as paper (or website) tigers that have a good mission statements but lack real institutional support.
Second, more universities should create offices dedicated to the publicly engaged use of research. Having a university-wide office that cultivates relationships with stakeholders at the local, state, and federal levels, in various institutions, will help the university be relevant and help scholars get their analyses to those who can use it to improve the world. This lessens the burden on individual scholars to cultivate and maintain such relationships. The Rice University Houston Educational Research Consortium is an impressive example in jointly developing research and policy agendas and working long term to promote educational equity and excellence (https://herc.rice.edu/). Penn State's Research-to-Policy-Collaboration, part of its Evidence to Impact Collaborative, offers another example of ongoing institutional support for such work (https://evidence2impact.psu.edu/). To those saying universities, especially public ones, cannot fund such offices, I reiterate that the mission of universities, and especially public ones, includes both creating knowledge and using it for good in society.
Change How Publicly Engaged Sociology Factors into Assessments in Tenure, Promotion, Teaching, and Service
Publicly engaged sociology could be better recognized, promoted, and supported in sociology through changes in how tenure, promotion, teaching, and service are assessed and rewarded (ASA 2005, 2007, 2016; Gans 2009). In addition to creating a curriculum for public sociology, public sociology classes that involve substantive engagement with external organizations or actors by professors and/or students should be awarded extra teaching and course credit, like hard sciences laboratory classes, to recognize the required extra work (Greenberg et al. 2020).
Publicly engaged sociology and linked work should treated as research. Professors' work includes duties of teaching, research, and service, but research matters most. There has been progress in considering public sociological publications and work towards tenure (see Campus Compact's repository: https://compact.org/ tenure-and-promotion-repository/). The ASA Council published (2007) Standards of Public Sociology: Guidelines for Use by Academic Departments in Personnel Reviews (https://www.luc.edu/media/lucedu/curl/pdfs/pubsocstandards20090402. pdf). Though not widely used, good recommendations are offered, such as peer review of public sociological analyses after publication or use and defining "peer" to include practitioner experts. Universities in North Carolina-Greensboro and Portland State have long weighed publicly oriented work in tenure review (ASA Task Force 2005; Squires 2022).
UCLA and UC Berkeley promote themselves as publicly engaged universities and have taken steps toward engagement, but institutional practices discouraging publicly engaged research persist (Ozer 2021). UCLA treats policy reports or publications as non-peer-reviewed research, and public work not producing a permanent product (website, new program design) as service (Staub and Maharramli 2021). I
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understand peer review underpins scholarly authority and applaud specifying criteria to evaluate publicly engaged scholarship. But why value all publicly engaged publications/documents like book chapters? This undervalues publications or work that can significantly impact the world.
For example, I drafted and recruited 12 other scholars to sign an Amicus brief defending DACA in the 2019 Supreme Court case. In preserving DACA, the Court's 2020 decision cited our argument (made by others too) about the reliance interests of DACA recipients and their US citizen children or family members. I also served as an expert witness for MALDEF in defending DACA against Attorneys General seeking to end it, and in a $20 million settlement (no culpability admitted) where DACA recipients alleged discrimination by Wells Fargo. It seems wrong to treat a Supreme Court Amicus brief that helped over 620,000 DACA recipients like a book chapter, or to treat the expert witness work of writing declarations and sitting for depositions as "service" akin to serving on a committee.
We should develop criteria to evaluate publicly engaged sociology focusing not only where one's publications place a scholar in an established hierarchy of honor (Appiah 2010), but also considering how much their work helped and/or promoted the dignity of research participants or other stakeholders. If a Supreme Court brief helping protect so many people is not valued at least as a top journal article, or helping stateless persons get asylum is not treated as more than committee work (see below), we must reevaluate the intellectual and ethical criteria for evaluating scholarly careers and practice. We could ask if this work helps those fighting policies and practices hurting, and supports policies and practices helping, those we work with? While such criteria are more complex than counting publications, reviews for tenure, jobs, or funding should evaluate each case in context and in totality. ASA's (2007) proposal to include post-hoc review by peer practitioners for publicly engaged work fits here.
ASA Should Create Journal of Publicly Engaged Sociology
Socius, Contexts, and SAN reach wider audiences but, having a peer reviewed, fast, open access journal would further validate publicly engaged sociology.
Change the ASA Code of Ethics to Affirm Helping Research Participants or Partners as an Affirmative Good
ASA's Code of Ethics treats informed consent as its central ethical concern. It rightly focuses on properly getting informed consent and doing research scientifically, but are these the only ethical questions we should ask?
ASA's Code of Ethics should be changed to affirm the value of publicly engaged sociological work, including helping research participants, doing expert witness testimony, working with organizations or government agencies, etc. Helping subjects should not be a duty—as it could be in nursing or social work—because much research offers no chance to help, and some sociologists cannot help. But ASA affirming the value of such publicly engaged work and of helping participants would support department chairs or deans advocating for candidates doing such work.
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Oscar Gil wrote one article (2018) about helping 26 Central Americans get asylum in Mexico, after living stateless for two decades (Gil Everaert 2021). His work defending participants' dignity and transforming their lives via asylum should count more than service on a university committee (as it would in ULCA's guidelines) in assessing his career. ASA's Code of Ethics could be amended to promote recognition of such contributions.
America's Epistemic Divide and How Sociologists and Sociology Can Help Overcome It
Finally, I raise challenges, especially for younger publicly engaged sociologists, for which I have no answers, only suggestions. America lives in an epistemic divide on what is real—Who won the 2020 election? Are Covid vaccines life-saving medicines or government tyranny? Was the Covid pandemic real or a "plandemic" created to enhance state control? With large parts of America believing either the Fox News version of reality or the mostly different mainstream media version (usually hewing to facts), how can we work together to address common challenges?
Adam Gamoran argues the opposite of polarization is partnership. Forming partnerships with people or institutions on "the other side" of issues or the epistemic divide could help. In this vein, I propose programs for students and professors to study "abroad" in the United States in places across the epistemic divide. Even if some partnering failed, it would be worth trying.
We also need work that not only understands the embrace of anti-democratic leaders and norms, but recommends how to take governmental or institutional action to address the epistemic divide and threats to democracy America now faces. A strong example of such work is Weinberg and Dawson's (2021) analysis of how narratives of division are weaponized via the algorithms that drive hate and polarize America. They chart how narratives filtered and amplified by social media algorithms have redefined patriotism from defending America from foreign enemies to defending America against the government and Democrats. Their proposals merit long quotation.
In light of the COVID-19 pandemic and the assault on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, understanding narrative as a weapon of influence and the process through which people become engaged with and mobilized by divisive content has significant policy implications. To counter or prevent the proliferation of weaponized and radicalizing narrative content, we must monitor the network of narratives, in particular the pathways leading to violence and hate. In addition, we must ensure that social media algorithms direct people away from radicalizing groups rather than feed them leads for new recruits. No company should be able to profit off of promoting the destruction of democratic norms and institutions. To this end, the social media companies' algorithms should be opened to public scrutiny and federal regulation. Social media platforms also must demonetize and remove from algorithmic recommendations any individual, group, or page that weaponize narratives which undermine civil society and national security. We need more privacy protections to prevent malign actors from microtargeting vulnerable individuals. And, finally, we must concentrate on telling true and inspiring stories about the United States of America that draw us together instead of tearing us apart.
Such research implies social media companies must be better regulated, given America's compelling interest in restoring belief in a common reality as a prerequi-
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site or concomitant to addressing key issues. We need more work on the construction and proper management of life online.
I would propose a National Service Corp requiring most young adults to do 1-3 years of decently paid public service (with funds for college or investment at its end) working with others from around the country. One goal would be to ensure that "we" work with "them" toward common goals, which makes it harder to believe "they" are the enemy. Enabling renewals to 3 years would help early adults to gain work experience and launch into adulthood, which has been harder in recent decades and since the pandemic. Finally, create a Council of Social Advisors, who could advise on many issues, including on the epistemic divide and safeguarding democracy.
In closing, I thank younger sociologists who will work on these and other unanswered questions and make a stronger publicly engaged sociology.
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