Public Sociology With Social Impact: Methodologies and Mechanisms to Better Connect Science With Society

• In Event: 3124 - Section on Sociological Practice and Public Sociology Open Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 min): Section on Sociological Practice and Public Sociology Roundtable #1: Methods, Perspectives, and Engagement

Abstract

In a context where the SSH have been questioned given that research and academia have often turned its back on the needs of society failing to communicate and talk with the broad non-expert publics, social scientists and sociologists are thus at the very center of this debate. Among others, the first challenge that our community faces, is to discern ways of better communicating, transferring and co-creating scientific knowledge among and with diverse and wide publics, putting sociological expertise at the serve of the publics’ needs. The second challenge is theoretical and methodological, related to the conceptualization of social impact, and how to advance towards the creation of methodologies and mechanisms that allow researchers to take into account society’s demands and views in the evaluation of social impact of research, while including lay people into this process of research evaluatio. More research needs to be done in order to unveil how social impact of research can be better achieved, shared among different publics and evaluated involving them as active agents and not only as mere spectators. Meanwhile, many sociologists around the world have been working directly with the publics doing research not “on them”, but with them, using methodologies that allow this joint creation of scientific knowledge. This is the topic on which the discussion of roundtable will be focused: the existing methodologies and mechanisms that are being used worldwide to both advance towards public sociology with social impact, as well as to conceptualize it. We welcome examples of existing methodologies that are being used in doing public sociology, as well as real cases where there have been on-going collaborations between academics and publics from which we can all extract lessons and reflect upon.

Authors

• Emilia Aiello, Harvard University

• Tinka Tabea Schubert, Stanford University

• Ana Vidu, University of California, Berkeley