“Well, you might say, this is all very well in ‘theory’ but what about ‘in practice’?”
(Burawoy, p. 219) 

This year at First Publics, we’ve given ourselves, our contributors, and our readers the task of thinking about the challenges and opportunities of teaching theory as public sociology. This task may sound odd, even to committed public sociologists and to instructors who have taken to heart Michael Burawoy’s assertion that students are our first and most captive public. 

Despite the fact that sociological theory anchors the research and practice of professional and public sociologists and theory courses are the cornerstone of sociology undergraduate and graduate curricula, discussions about public sociology have largely left theory out. The calls to do more and better public sociology that have swept through various corners of our discipline have, by and large, ignored theory as a target. Sociology instructors committed to service-learning and community-engaged courses do not often think of theory classes as appropriate or amenable to these public-oriented pedagogies. 

But why should this be so? As our readers may know, Michael Burawoy, whose invitation to public sociology encouraged an embrace of public-facing scholarship across the discipline and inspired so many of us, was also a masterful teacher of theory who, for decades, saw his theory students as an important public. For Burawoy, teaching theory was a form of public sociology. In what follows, we draw lessons from Burawoy’s reflexive writings on teaching we find useful for thinking through the mechanics, meaning, practice, and politics of teaching theory as public sociology. We share these lessons as an invitation to our readers to share their own ideas and experiences of teaching as public sociology. 

Lesson 1: Students are theorists in their own right

While formal sociological theory may be new to students, theorizing is not. As Burawoy reminds us, students engage in theorizing all the time by making sense of their realities. 

 “To treat teaching as public sociology is to think of students as a public, carrying a vision of who they are and how the world works. They are not empty vessels into which we pour pearls of wisdom, but living, sentient beings who are always thinking about the world around them and how they fit into it. Even if they don’t see it in sociological terms, they are always thinking about their place in the division of labor. I try to bring that thinking to the surface.” (Burawoy, p. 204-205)

To think of students as theorists in their own right is to think of theorizing as an everyday activity. Rather than a specialized, precious activity available only to professional experts, Burawoy invites us to think of theorizing as an activity available to all members of society: a kind of “common sense.” 

“As members of society, we share a common lens that we call “common sense.” Without that shared lens, that shared theory – of which language is its most basic form – we could not live together. In other words, we are all carriers of social theory. To be a social theorist is to reflect on that common sense, elaborate it, transform it.” (Burawoy, p. 198). 

Lesson 2: Theory instructors can and should challenge common sense (and doing so can be emancipatory!)

Taking students as theorists in their own right and thinking of theory as a daily activity akin to common sense thinking does not mean that students must remain unchallenged. Instructors can and should engage with students’ ability to theorize while challenging their common sense. 

Indeed, for Burawoy, teaching theory can mean helping students cultivate a new “common sense” language, one that helps them better understand and make sense of their own experiences and realities. 

“Sociological theory questions what we take for granted. It challenges common sense, showing the partiality of its truth, how in our daily lives we misrecognize what we are up to. Under the spell of sociological theory, “common sense” is transformed from something natural and inevitable into something socially constructed (and durably so), and thus artificial and arbitrary. Understood in this way, sociological theory is always public sociology, challenging the common sense we take for granted.” (Burawoy, p. 198)

When approached this way, learning theory can be emancipatory. It connects students’ ability to theorize their own experiences and realities with the language and tools to question and inquire further, looking for the public impact that different perspectives and explanations can have on how they perceive, experience, and act upon events within their lives. This is because sociological theory “is a special type of social theory. It sees the world as a problem, a world that is less than perfect, a world that could be different.” (Burawoy, p. 198). 

Lesson 3: Learning to theorize is like learning a new language 

But how should instructors teach? How can we challenge common sense and share sociological theory’s emancipatory potential with students? Here, Burawoy is again instructive. Sociology is unique in its particular attachment to the sociological canon, those 19th century “dead white men” that represent “the classics,” (Burawoy, p. 218). This makes teaching theory hard, but it need not be so:

 “Social theory is difficult. It’s not an assemblage of facts. Each theory is a language unto itself that can be learned only with discipline and practice. One learns by speaking, by applying theory to the everyday.” (Burawoy, p. 224) 

This suggests that we must focus not only on having students learn theory but also learn to use it, to talk in theory, to conjugate, and to dialogue. Our task is to teach theory like a language. We know that learning a new language is slow and can be tedious. We do it bit by bit, and by practicing with each other, through dialogue, and by relying on constant translation. Burawoy insists that Instructors can and should help students translate their own perceptions into the sociological and theoretical language, while encouraging them to build-up to a new way of thinking and talking. 

Buraowy’s classes “build theory” by working with “extracts from the original texts of each theorist, extracts that students can manageably study in the allotted time, forming “pieces of a jig-saw puzzle that are slowly assembled in the course of a dialogue between teacher and taught” (Burawoy, p. 222). These “extracts are read and reread as they are put in relation to previous extracts” while confronting them with data that comes from the “lived experiences of the students themselves.” (Burawoy, p. 222) 

Lesson 4: Engage in Dialogue (and the “Dialectics” of Public Sociology)

If theory is a language, then the goal should be dialogue. But with whom? For Burawoy, dialogue takes a number of forms between theorists, students, and instructors. 

The goal is to look for “crises,” internal and external contradictions that can showcase theories, their limitations, and allow for their reconstruction “on the basis of its core assumptions” (Burawoy, p. 223). This approach represents a pedagogy “organized on the basis of student participation, which follows its own rules, especially important when student enrolment gets into the hundreds.” “This is education for all, not just those well-endowed with cultural capital.” (Burawoy, p. 223). 

Moreover, Burawoy stresses putting theorists in conversation with each other and evaluating what each theorist offers and encouraging students to evaluate the instructor’s interpretations. 

This can infuse theory courses with a productive uncertainty, that encourages critical thinking, and gives students a space to take control over their own learning. 

“Indeed, they [students] discover flaws in my arguments, give alternative interpretations of the texts… [T]hey often have me on the ropes as I vainly try to defend each theorist in turn. The presumptively known endpoint is never reached; having learned how to think theoretically, students have collectively taken the course in new directions. Uncertainty of outcome draws students into creative engagement.” (Burawoy, p. 224)

From dialogue in theory and about theory, instructors and students can then circle back to political practice, problematizing the many and imperfect ways sociological thought can lead to social and political action. In this dialectical movement, theory emerges alive, porous to change and new ideas, and, therefore, capable of inciting transformation.  

“Here we confront the “dialectics” of public sociology: how theoretically informed political practice contributes to changes in the world that feedback into sociological theory, requiring further theoretical revision. The life of theory reflects its engagement with the changing world it describes.” (Burawoy, p. 202)