James R. Pennell

Civic Engagement and Public Sociology: Two “Movements” in Search of a Mission

While the tools of civically engaged higher education (service-learning, community-based research, etc.) existed in sociology classes well before the onset of what some call the “civic engagement movement,” they have quickly shifted from margin to center as key building blocks for sociology’s own trend toward public sociology. While we examine the precarious rise of both civic engagement and public sociology, we argue that lacking strong social movements as shaping forces, the social justice potential for both civic engagement and public sociology must come from practitioners’ links to community-based politics and social movement organizing. Such connections still ground teaching and scholarship in the real politics of everyday life: people, institutions, and communities.

Whom Will Sociology Serve? Transforming the Discipline by Engaging Communities

This article examines the debate on public sociology through the community-based work of the authors and their students. Critiquing the continued focus of public sociology on policy makers, funders, and other sociologists, we argue that sociologists must reorder their priorities by serving the public itself. Although large-scale studies play an important purpose in the discipline, sociology must once again value smaller-scale “organic” research grounded in local communities to remain relevant. Furthermore, a “critical constructionist” theoretical framework offers a conceptual approach that counters the distanced, ameliorative standpoint of mainstream sociology. We offer programmatic ways sociologists can combine their teaching, research, and community service to engage students in learning the discipline through change-oriented work.

Teaching Humanist Sociology

Most members of our association were drawn in large part to academia because of teaching. We have watched with despair and heartache as teaching at many institutions has become a distant priority. The specter of ‘‘publish and perish’’ that haunted ‘‘research one’’ institutions for the last few decades of the 20th century now has liberal arts colleges firmly in its grasp. Likewise, in some of the institutions where teaching was most sacrosanct, service and grant work now have measurable weight. In an age of changing expectations where education has simply become a cost–benefit analysis and spending for the humanities and social sciences is constantly being reexamined by trustees, teaching in a way compatible with our humanist beliefs is increasingly difficult to do. At the same time, we are witnessing the corporatization of the academy. Consequently, we are constantly pressured to ‘‘prove’’ our value in quantitative and cost– benefit assessments. For many of our colleagues, teaching has become a means to some evaluative end. The sociology for people (Lee 1978) that we cherish has increasingly become the ‘‘sociology for the institution.’’ For the humanist sociologist, dedicated to social activism and public sociology, these trends have placed serious constraints on what we do and who we are. Rather than retreat, however, many members of the Association for Humanist Sociology have continued to ask the question ‘‘sociology for whom’’ by finding new ways of teaching sociology to ‘‘solve problems and improve lives,’’ thereby

Doing Change Work: The Many Paths That Come Together AS AHS*

This article, presented as the presidential address at the 2009 Association for Humanist Sociology Annual Meeting, in New Orleans, LA, describes different ways AHS serves as a resource for doing change work, drawing heavily on the authors experiences with the association since 1993. It concludes by calling for members to fully utilize these different resources the Association offers, and to reach out to colleagues and students and, in the process, expand the Associations potential as a resource for doing change work.