Advancing Publicly Engaged Sociology 1

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.