Michael Burawoy liked to shout “BB!”—“bloody brilliant!”—when undergrads nailed an answer. But for his graduate students, there was an entirely different kind of BB—Think Big, Act Bold.  

Think Big: I learned from Burawoy that even the most minute aspects of our social world potentially reveal the larger whole. Burawoy’s Manufacturing Consent showed how closely looking at seemingly mundane factory work provides a lens for comprehending the ways capitalism harnesses consent. Before coming to Berkeley Sociology, I had been an overworked, unhappy lawyer, living the very problem I hoped to understand. I entered the PhD program determined to study the causes of overwork among U.S. professionals. Burawoy’s mentorship challenged me to think bigger, not just about overwork, but the deeper structures of capitalism that shape our lives. The specifics of cases are important. But even more important is participating in the collective enterprise of theorizing—situating the case in the broader context of the social world and its often invisible institutions. I went on to explore how the structures of capitalism organize the experience of unemployment into various types of games, some of which reinforce a consciousness of self-blame and internalized stigma. 

Act Bold: If thinking big meant reimagining the scope of our questions, acting boldly meant reimagining how we might answer them. Professional sociology written for other sociologists has its role, but so does engaging wider audiences and constituencies. We are trained to write for the former, but for the latter, we have no scripts and few precedents. Engaging wider audiences often requires bold and creative action. Burawoy’s focus on Public Sociology encouraged a whole generation of sociologists to reimagine our roles, and for me, this included how to do research. For my recent book on long-term unemployment, I took BB to heart—not only in the research questions I posed but in how I pursued them. I began by recruiting career coaches and counselors as my collaborators. Together, we formed a non-profit organization that provided free, sociologically-informed support to unemployed job-seekers. This project turned the tools of sociology that help us understand the power of institutions into a form of “sociological coaching” to help push back against the tendency to self-blame and internalize stigma. The collaboration led to trainings for trainers and a broader push to change the way that support is provided to unemployed workers in a sociological direction. The same tools are also at the core of an undergraduate class I teach called “The Sociology of Aspirations: What Do You Really Want to Do When You Grow Up?” It helps students examine internalized social forces to understand past experiences in new ways and provides the space to reimagine future directions.  

The untimely and devastating loss of Burawoy leaves a huge hole. But I can still hear him—leaning forward, eyebrows raised, shouting “BB!” with that unmistakable mix of provocation and joy. If he were here, he’d be urging us to think bigger, act bolder, and never stop trying to understand and change the social world.