Partisan, scholarly and active : arguments for an organic public sociology of work

Brook, P; Darlington, RR

Abstract

Despite a thriving tradition of critical scholarship in UK-based sociology of work, Burawoy’s call for a partisan organic public sociology that is part of ‘a social movement beyond the academy’ and Bourdieu’s plea for committed scholarship in the service of the social movement against neo-liberalism have received scant attention. This article seeks to stimulate debate by presenting a framework for a left-radical organic public sociology of work based on Gramsci’s concept of the connected organic intellectual rather than Bourdieu’s expert committed scholar. The latter, it is argued, is incompatible with activist partisan scholarship based on democratised relations between researchers and researched. Participatory Action Research is offered as a methodological orientation that underpins and enables organic scholars of work to engage actively with the marginalised and labour in the co-creation of knowledge that aids their struggles for change.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Online Publication Date: Feb 27, 2013
• Publication Date: Apr 1, 2013
• Deposit Date: Mar 22, 2013
• Publicly Available Date: Aug 23, 2021
• Journal: Work, Employment and Society
• Print ISSN: 0950-0170
• Electronic ISSN: 1469-8722
• Publisher: SAGE Publications
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 27
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 232-243
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0950017012461838
• Publisher URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0950017012461838
• Related Public URLs: http://wes.sagepub.com/
• Additional Information: Access Information : Users who receive access to an article through a repository are reminded that the article is protected by copyright and reuse is restricted to non-commercial and no derivative uses. Users may also download and save a local copy of an article accessed in an institutional repository for the user's personal reference.