Public Sociology in Print: A Comparative Analysis of Book Publishing in Three Social Science Disciplines
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Much discussion surrounding Burawoy’s (2004) argument for public sociology has focused on concerns about the model’s normative and political implications while failing to empirically analyze current practices of public academic work. The debate thus risks devolving into competing rhetorical claims about what public sociology should be. We offer a preliminary comparative analysis of one type of public academic work — the writing of books — by sociologists, political scientists, and economists in Canada. In the hope of encouraging more empirical research on the current status of public academic work in Canada, books are put into one of six categories determined on the basis of 1) the publisher’s characteristics; 2) the book’s intended audience; and 3) the book’s intended intellectual/political purpose. We find that sociology lags behind political science in producing books intended for a public audience; however, other evidence suggests Canadian sociologists are attempting to open a public dialogue in a more “organic” way through small presses. Questions are raised about the status and rewards structure of professional sociology in Canada and how it influences public academic work. Les discussions à propos des arguments de Burawoy sur la sociologie publique se concentrent principalement autour des implications normative et politique du modèle. Mais ces discussions omettent de tester empiriquement les travaux académiques publics contemporains. Il existe donc un risque que le débat s’égare en discussions rhétoriques autour de ce que la sociologie publique devrait être. Nous proposons une analyse préliminaire d’un type de travail académique public, soit la production de livres par des sociologues, politologues et économistes au Canada. Dans l’espoir d’inciter les recherches empiriques sur le statut actuel des travaux académiques publics au Canada, nous avons classé les ouvrages en six catégories sur les bases suivantes 1) les caractéristiques institutionnelles de l’éditeur, 2) le public visé par les livres, 3) l’usage intellectuel et politique attendu pour le livre. Les résultats de nos recherches montrent que la sociologie accuse un retard face à la science politique quant à la production de livres commerciaux grand public. Cependant, d’autres preuves suggèrent que les sociologues canadiens tentent d’ouvrir un dialogue public d’une manière plus « organique » au travers de la publication chez de petits éditeurs. Nous nous posons des questions quant au statut et à la structure de valorisation professionnelle de la sociologie au Canada et à leur influence sur les travaux académiques publics.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.022 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.015 | 0.034 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.005 | 0.006 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.015 | 0.008 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.018 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".