Michael Burawoy was an unabashed Marxist. One could argue, in fact, that his foremost life project was to advance a Marxist sociology. This was not a project of defending Marx and extolling his benefits. As he put it in 1977, “The man [Marx] was human. He is now dead. He doesn’t have to be saved. So long as we are true to a Marxist problematique, we can be more humble and less defensive about his achievements.” Thus, one of Burawoy’s signal contributions was to develop Marxism as a tradition of social science (see Burawoy 1989, 1990). And along with that, to further what he referred to as “Sociological Marxism” (Burawoy 2003; Burawoy and Wright 2003), which sought to understand society as the basis for both the reproduction of capitalism and its overthrow. 

As a Marxist sociologist, Burawoy gave us numerous scholarly gems. He developed a sophisticated analysis of the articulations of race and class in southern Africa (Burawoy 1972, 1974, 1976a, 1981). He conducted groundbreaking studies of the labor process under both advanced capitalism and state socialism, which would have a profound impact on the field of labor studies (Burawoy 1979, 1985). He examined the collapse of state socialism and the transition to capitalism in Hungary and the Soviet Union (Burawoy 1994, 1996, 1997; Burawoy and Krotov 1992; Burawoy, Krotov, and Lytkina 2000; Burawoy and Lukacs 1992). He developed a methodological approach, known as the extended case method, which revolved around the dialectic between ethnographic observation and theoretical reconstruction (Burawoy 1998, 2009). And he developed Marxist theory through engagements with scholars such as Bourdieu (Burawoy 2012, 2019), Polanyi (Burawoy 2015), and Du Bois (Burawoy 2021a, 2022, 2023, 2024a; Meghji et al. 2024).

Amid all of these contributions, many will remember Burawoy for the idea that he promoted when he was president of the American Sociological Association: public sociology. I remember attending his 2004 presidential address on the topic in San Francisco (Burawoy 2005). I had just finished my first year of graduate school at Berkeley. I was primarily interested in quantitative studies of educational inequality at the time, and thus had not had much contact with Burawoy at that point. I was totally unaware of his many contributions, but the address was electrifying. Burawoy captivated a packed audience, scribbling on a whiteboard to convince his fellow sociologists that there was another way to do sociology—an approach that deviated from the conventional way of doing things, what he called professional sociology. For Burawoy, advancing Marxism within sociology was a crucial project that was simultaneously scholarly and political. And public sociology represented this convergence.

Much ink has been spilled on the topic of public sociology, and indeed, Burawoy and others have engaged in many debates about it (e.g., Clawson et al. 2007). In this short piece, I want to contribute to the memory and recognition of Michael Burawoy by calling attention to a specific kind of public sociology, what he called “organic public sociology.” This form of sociology is best understood, I argue, as a struggle on the terrain of sociology. And that struggle was a, if not the, defining feature of Michael’s life. In making this case, I will begin by elaborating what Burawoy meant by organic public sociology, and then turn to a few of the ways in which Burawoy, himself, carried it out. I conclude by arguing that organic public sociology represents collective struggles on the terrain of sociology.

What is public sociology, and when is it organic?

Public sociology is a sociology that engages the publics and debates taking place beyond the academy. As Burawoy (2005: 7) puts it, “Public sociology brings sociology into a conversation with publics, understood as people who are themselves involved in conversation.” This can take different forms, as I will come to shortly. But the point of departure is that public sociology is concerned with a world that is much bigger than the academy. It does not allow itself to be trapped within narrow academic debates.

As Burawoy was at pains to demonstrate to us throughout his career, sociologists must be careful not to view themselves as separate from the society that they study—they do so at their own peril. The politics of the day penetrate the walls of the university, shaping the conditions of our existence and the trajectories of our research and teaching. The idea of public sociology stems from the recognition of this fact, and thus the understanding that our own actions as sociologists are entangled with the broader society. Indeed, in his 2004 presidential address, Burawoy understood the aspiration for public sociology as a reaction to trends of privatization and marketization, which threatened to dismantle public education along with other public goods (Burawoy 2005: 7). Two decades later, the threats appeared even greater: 

This adds up to one thing: sociologists are actors in the society we study. We can no longer—if we ever could—retreat to a dispassionate objectivity within the walls of academia. If politicians can set in motion forces that remove leaders of major universities; if they can remove sociology as a basic education requirement within the university; if they can ban the books we teach and abolish Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) programs; then merely proclaiming our credentials as a science will not protect us. Retreat is no defense against the political encroachment on university autonomy and, more broadly, civil society (Burawoy 2024: 1012).

And so, public sociology is about recognizing and responding to such threats. It is about a struggle by, for, and within sociology. What does this look like?

Burawoy provides us with two ideal types: traditional public sociology and organic public sociology. I tend to think of these as types of public sociology that run in opposite directions. If the former refers to the extension of the academy into the public sphere, the latter is about bringing extra-academic communities into the academy. The former, traditional public sociology, is best known. It includes writing opinion pieces in news outlets, publishing books aimed at non-academic audiences on popular presses, disseminating knowledge via journalists, and other modes of taking our research out into the world. Here, the reach of the sociologist is potentially large, but their actual engagement with, and participation in, society is rather limited. As Burawoy (2005: 7) explains, “With traditional public sociology, the publics being addressed are generally invisible in that they cannot be seen, thin in that they do not generate much internal interaction, passive in that they do not constitute a movement or organization, and they are usually mainstream.”

An organic public sociology adopts a very different orientation. It focuses less on disseminating knowledge and more on participation, engaging with communities beyond the academy, and joining their conversations. As Burawoy (2005: 8) puts it, “Between the organic public sociologist and a public is a dialogue, a process of mutual education.” It is no wonder that Burawoy’s (2009) famous methodology, the extended case method, prioritized participant observation. This method is about engaging in dialogue with extra-academic communities, and then bringing those dialogues back into the academy, using them to reconstruct sociological theory. It is a method that emphasizes developing organic connections with “visible, thick, active, local and often counterpublic[s],” such as labor organizations, faith-based communities, neighborhood groups, or other social movements. An organic public sociology recognizes that a vibrant civil society is the lifeblood of sociology, which depends on conversations, ideas, and critiques that emerge from the outside.

Burawoy (2005) usefully identifies public sociology by distinguishing it from three other types of sociology, which he refers to as the sociological division of labor. The most dominant is what he calls “professional sociology,” which is oriented toward academic debates and follows scientific norms and standards. The vast majority of sociology fits into this box, and indeed, it is typically the kind of sociology that one must master if one wants to secure an academic job. But there are two other types that also compete for space. One is “policy sociology,” which is about the provision of knowledge for a specific goal or client, such as serving as an expert witness or writing a report for a government agency. The other is “critical sociology,” which debates the assumptions that underpin professional sociology while also thrusting a normative moral vision into the discipline. If policy sociology aims to take professional sociology and put it to work in solving society’s problems, critical sociology inquires whether professional sociology has the correct solutions or even whether it is asking the correct questions.

Since his time as ASA president, Burawoy has been adamant about the mutual interdependence of the four different types of sociologies—professional, policy, critical, and public. They draw upon and reinvigorate each other. There are also affinities. Public sociology is similar to policy sociology in that both are oriented towards extra-academic communities. And it shares with critical sociology the prioritization of reflexive knowledge that “interrogates the value premises of society as well as our profession” (Burawoy 2005: 8). We might say that traditional public sociology leans towards the side of policy sociology, focused as it is on disseminating knowledge. Conversely, organic public sociology tends to lean in the direction of critical sociology, bringing external conversations into the discipline to question our questions and unsettle our assumptions. 

Just as professional sociology depends on public sociology, and, in turn, civil society, so traditional public sociology depends on organic public sociology. As Burawoy (2021b: 20) explains, “traditional public sociology develops a compelling alternative politics if and only if it is also rooted in the lived experience of concrete communities. Such organic connections also infuse sociology with new missions, keeping its research programs in touch with reality and upholding a flourishing discipline.” We can read Burawoy’s own practice, as a sociologist, as rooted in a search for precisely these kinds of organic connections. 

Burawoy’s organic public sociology

Burawoy saw himself as an advocate for public sociology, but not necessarily an example of it. In an interview just before his passing, he remarked: “I think I would describe myself as an evangelist for public sociology. There may have been times in my life when my work more closely resembled public sociology, for example, when I was working in Zambia. But since then, I think I have been more a critical and professional sociologist” (Burawoy and Benson 2025). Indeed, much of Burawoy’s work is oriented toward an academic audience, which is a point that I will return to below when thinking about his field of struggle. But my contention here is that Burawoy did, indeed, practice a kind of public sociology—an organic public sociology—through his research, his teaching and mentoring, and his activism.

The roots of Burawoy’s public sociology lay in his early research on workplaces across the globe. It is through these experiences and through dialogue with his students that Burawoy (1998, 2009) would develop the idea of the extended case method. According to this approach, the researcher begins with a theory, and then sets out into the world to see if it fits. Upon discovering anomalies, the researcher must then reconstruct the theory to better fit the reality that they discovered during their participant observation. In his case, Burawoy began by observing the workings of the personnel unit at the mining company Anglo American, in Zambia, where he witnessed the reorganization of the racial division of labor after independence (Burawoy 1972). He subsequently turned to ethnographies of the labor process in Chicago, Hungary, and Russia (Burawoy 2013). Fumbling his way on the shop floor, Burawoy encountered a public that was markedly different from his own middle-class positioning: blue-collar workers. It was through a dialogue with workers, whom he worked alongside in the factory, that he was able to develop his groundbreaking theories about the generation of workplace consent (Burawoy 1979) and the politics of production (Burawoy 1985).

We might say that Burawoy’s labor studies represent an embryonic public sociology, an early attempt to engage with publics beyond the academy. But it was back in Berkeley, in the classroom, where Burawoy would develop perhaps his most important practice of organic public sociology. From the beginning of his evangelism about public sociology, Burawoy envisioned students as one of the most crucial publics, noting that, “As teachers we are all potentially public sociologists” (Burawoy 2005: 9). At Berkeley, where he taught for 47 years, Burawoy’s course on Social Theory became legendary. He gave vibrant lectures and facilitated discussions in rooms full of hundreds of students. And it is here, in Burawoy’s pedagogy, that the distinction between traditional public sociology and organic public sociology truly comes into focus. A traditional public sociologist seeks to impart knowledge to their students, treating them as empty vessels awaiting wisdom. Conversely, an organic public sociologist views their students as “carriers of a rich lived experience,” and thus treats education as “a series of dialogues … between ourselves and students, between students and their own experiences, among students themselves, and finally a dialogue of students with publics beyond the university” (Burawoy 2005: 9). As he affirmed in the 2025 interview, “This requires considering the form teaching takes: engaging with students’ lived experience, rather than just pouring knowledge into the students. That is how I have always tried to teach” (Burawoy and Benson 2025).

This practice extended into Burawoy’s mentoring of graduate students. During his time at Berkeley, he chaired 80 dissertations and served as a committee member on many more. As one can see from his writing, Burawoy learned as much from his graduate students as they learned from him. As he transitioned from workplace ethnographer to Marxist theorist, spending more time in the office and less time on the shop floor, and subsequently serving in professional leadership positions, it was his dialogues with students that formed the basis for his own theorizing. This was especially evident in the two volumes that Burawoy produced with his students, Ethnography Unbound (Burawoy et al. 1991) and Global Ethnography (Burawoy et al. 2000). Burawoy was such a great mentor and teacher because he was also a student. So curious and eager to learn, he frequently sought new perspectives and invited critical feedback. 

Finally, Burawoy demonstrated organic public sociology through his activism. The blending of activism and teaching became evident when he brought students to protests. He was a frequent supporter of student and worker struggles on campus, but he hated to cancel class, and so was known to hold his class on a picket line or at a building occupation. I don’t think Burawoy thought of himself as an activist. When he was a student at the University of Zambia in the late 1960s, he joined the student movement and was arrested with fellow students (Burawoy 1976b). But protest and organizing were not central activities or sources of identity, even if he was always supportive of students for whom they were. Yet, he remained committed to social transformation and challenging injustice. He often fought these battles within academic institutions, such as through his role as co-Chair and Secretary of the Berkeley Faculty Association (BFA).

In the last year of his life, Burawoy was deeply engaged in activism in support of Palestine. This put him into dialogue with movements both within and beyond the academy. And it saw him returning to his roots as a researcher in southern Africa, where he developed a critical analysis of racial capitalism. In one of his last articles, Burawoy (2025a) examines the similarities and differences between South African apartheid and contemporary Palestine/Israel, and on that basis calls for a global struggle against settler colonialism. He implores sociologists to take a stance and speak out on Palestine. He was an active supporter of the Sociologists for Palestine (S4P) movement within the ASA (Burawoy 2024), which pushed for the professional association to support the Palestinian cause. And at the time of his passing, he was engaged in similar efforts within the ISA. In the fashion of organic public sociology, Burawoy was working from the outside in, starting with dialogues beyond the academy and seeking to bring them into sociology.

The point is to change it – a struggle on the terrain of sociology

Marx famously remarked that, in addition to interpreting the world, philosophers should also seek to change it. In the first semester of his legendary Social Theory course at Berkeley, Burawoy focused on Marx, Lenin, Gramsci, and Fanon. All were deeply engaged in struggles on the ground, resembling what Gramsci called organic intellectuals. Indeed, we might say that Burawoy’s distinction between traditional public sociology and organic public sociology mirrors Gramsci’s distinction between traditional intellectuals and organic intellectual—the former detached from class struggles, assuming a professional role as intellectuals within society; the latter maintaining a close connection to classes and helping to articulate their lived experiences. But this raises further questions. If the organic public sociologist sustains a close connection to dialogues beyond the academy, where does their effort at social change begin? And what is the relationship between their scholarship and their activism?

Just 11 days after Burawoy left us, another great social scientist, the anthropologist James Ferguson, passed away as well. They were similar in that both Burawoy and Ferguson drew inspiration and insight from southern Africa, which led both to groundbreaking critical analysis. As I reflect upon Burawoy’s own organic public sociology, I am reminded of a crucial point that Ferguson makes in his classic book, The Anti-Politics Machine. After spending the entire book deconstructing Western-led “development” in Lesotho, Ferguson (1994) comes in the end to the question of what progressive-minded individuals in the West should do. If promoting so-called development in the Global South does not work, as Ferguson convincingly shows, what is the alternative? He suggests that individuals in the West would do well to focus less on intervening in low-income countries, as in traditional development projects, and focus more on engaging in politics in their own countries, for example, on issues of foreign policy. The point, as I take it, is that rather than seeking to intervene and reshape others, one should focus first on transforming one’s own community, with the hope that positive consequences will resonate outward. 

I believe that Burawoy followed this logic in his own life. His community was the discipline of sociology, and he fought his struggles on this terrain. This, we might say, is what organic public sociology is all about: bringing outside debates into sociology, using them to reinvigorate our critical theories and, in turn, our mainstream and professional ones as well. Burawoy did not do much policy sociology. To the extent that he did, though, it was largely oriented towards the sociological profession or its base, the university. We can see this in his struggles within the BFA, the ASA, and the ISA—for example, in his struggle to get the latter two associations to adopt resolutions on Palestine.

In his last book, Public Sociology, Burawoy (2021c) reflects that he was naïve to think that his efforts to develop a critical, Marxist sociology would change the world. The forces of capitalism and their political corollaries were strong, and they were way too much for a sociological Marxism to counter. But one has to start somewhere. And indeed, over the past six decades, Burawoy has helped to reinvigorate sociology and push it in compelling directions. Hopefully, years from now, the residents of Earth will look back upon 21st-century sociology as a beacon of inspiration and forward movement. When they do, we will have Burawoy to thank for helping to set us on this path, not least by inspiring us to practice an organic public sociology.

References

Burawoy, Michael. 1972. The Colour of Class on the Copper Mines: From African Advancement to Zambianization. Manchester: Manchester University Press. 

Burawoy, Michael. 1974. “Race, Class and Colonialism.” Social and Economic Studies, 23(4):521-50. 

Burawoy, Michael. 1976a. “The Functions and Reproduction of Migrant Labor: Comparative Material from Southern Africa and the United States.” American Journal of Sociology, 82(5): 1050-87. (Reprinted) 

Burawoy, Michael. 1976b. “Consciousness and Contradiction: A Study of Student Protest in Zambia.” British Journal of Sociology, 27(1): 78-98. 

Burawoy, Michael. 1977. “Marxism and Sociology.” Contemporary Sociology, 6(1): 9-17. 

Burawoy, Michael. 1979. Manufacturing Consent: Changes in the Labor Process Under Monopoly Capitalism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Burawoy, Michael. 1981. “The Capitalist State in South Africa: Marxist and Sociological Perspectives on Race and Class.” Political Power and Social Theory, 2: 279-335. 

Burawoy, Michael. 1985. The Politics of Production: Factory Regimes Under Capitalism and Socialism. London: Verso.

Burawoy, Michael. 1989. “Two Methods in Search of Science: Skocpol vs. Trotsky.” Theory and Society 18: 759-805.

Burawoy, Michael. 1990. “Marxism as Science: Historical Challenges and Theoretical Growth,” American Sociological Review 55: 775-793. 

Burawoy, Michael. 1994. “Why Coupon Socialism Never Stood a Chance in Russia: The Political Conditions of Economic Transition.” Politics and Society Vol.22, No.4: 585-594. 

Burawoy, Michael. 1996. “The State and Economic Involution: Russia through a Chinese Lens.” World Development 24(6):1105-17.

Burawoy, Michael. 1997. “The Soviet Descent into Capitalism.” American Journal of Sociology 102 (5): 1430-44.

Burawoy, Michael. 1998. “The Extended Case Method.” Sociological Theory 16(1): 4-33.

Burawoy, Michael. 2000. “Marxism After Communism.” Theory and Society 29(2): 151-174. 

Burawoy, Michael. 2001 “Transition without Transformation: Russia’s Involutionary Road to Capitalism.” East European Politics and Societies 15(2): 269-290.

Burawoy, Michael. 2003 “For a Sociological Marxism: The Complementary Convergence of Antonio Gramsci and Karl Polanyi.” Politics and Society 31(2): 193-261. 

Burawoy, Michael. 2005. “For Public Sociology.” American Sociological Review 70(1): 4-28. 

Burawoy, Michael. 2009. The Extended Case Method: Four Countries, Four Decades, Four Great Transformations, and One Theoretical Tradition.

Burawoy, Michael. 2013. “Ethnographic Fallacies: Reflections on Labor Studies in the Era of Market Fundamentalism.” Work, Employment, and Society 27(3): 526-536.

Burawoy, Michael. 2015. “Facing an Unequal World.” Current Sociology 63(1): 5-34.

Burawoy, Michael. 2019. Symbolic Violence: Conversations with Bourdieu. Durham: Duke University Press.

Burawoy, Michael. 2021. Public Sociology. London: Polity Press.

Burawoy, Michael. 2021a. “Decolonizing Sociology: The Significance of W.E.B. Du Bois.” Critical Sociology 47(4-5): 545-554.

Burawoy, Michael. 2021b. “Going Public with Polanyi in the Era of Trump.” In The Routledge International Handbook of Public Sociology, edited by Leslie Hossfeld, E. Brooke Kelly, Cassius Hossfeld. New York: Routledge.

Burawoy, Michael. 2022. “Walking on Two Legs: Black Marxism and the Sociological Canon.” Critical Sociology 48(4-5): 571-586.

Burawoy, Michael. 2023. “W.E.B. Du Bois’ Indian Romance.” Sociological Bulletin 72(3): 282-293.

Burawoy, Michael. 2024a. “The Making of Black Marxism: The Complementary Perspectives of W.E.B. Du Bois and Frantz Fanon.” Pp. C56.P1-C56.N21 in The Oxford Handbook of W.E.B. Du Bois, edited by Aldon D. Morris, Michael Schwartz, Cheryl Johnson-Odim, Walter R. Allen, Marcus Anthony Hunter, Karida L. Brown, and Dan S. Green. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Burawoy, Michael. 2024b. “Sociology Faces the Question of Palestine.” Critical Sociology 50(6): 1011-1014.

Burawoy, Michael. 2025. “Why and How Sociologists Should Speak Out on Palestine?” The Sociological Review 73(2): 249-260.

Burawoy, Michael and Michaela Benson. 2025. “Michael Burawoy in Conversation.” The Sociological Review Magazine, March 25. https://thesociologicalreview.org/magazine/march-2025/michael-burawoy-in-conversation/.

Burawoy, Michael, Joseph A. Blum, Sheba George, Zsuzsa Gille, Millie Thayer, Teresa Gowan, Lynne Haney, Maren Klawiter, Steve Lopez, and Sean O’Riain. 2000 Global Ethnography: Forces, Connections and Imaginations in a Postmodern World . Berkeley: University of California Press 

Burawoy, Michael, Alice Burton, Ann Arnett Ferguson, Kathryn J. Fox, Joshua Gamson, Leslie Hurst, Nadine G. Julius, Charles Kurzman, Leslie Salzinger, Josepha Schiffman, and Shiori Ui. 1991. Ethnography Unbound: Power and Resistance in the Modern Metropolis. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Burawoy, Michael and Karl von Holdt. 2012. Conversations with Bourdieu: The Johannesburg Moment. Johannesburg: University of Witwatersrand Press.

Burawoy, Michael and Pavel Krotov. 1992. “The Soviet Transition from Socialism to Capitalism: Worker Control and Economic Bargaining in the Wood Industry.” American Sociological Review 57(1): 16-38. 

Burawoy, Michael, Pavel Krotov and Tatyana Lytkina. 2000. “Involution and Destitution in Capitalist Russia.” Ethnography 1(1): 43-65.

Burawoy, Michael, and János Lukács. 1992 The Radiant Past: Ideology and Reality in Hungary’s Road to Capitalism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Burawoy, Michael and Erik Olin Wright. 2003. “Sociological Marxism.” Pp.459-86 in Jonathan Turner (ed.), The Handbook of Sociological Theory. Plenum Books.

Clawson, Dan, Robert Zussman, Joya Misra, Noami Gerstel, Randall Stokes, Douglas L. Anderton, and Michael Burawoy. 2007. Public Sociology: Fifteen Eminent Sociologists Debate Politics and the Profession in the Twenty-First Century. Oakland: University of California Press.

Meghji, Ali, Michael Burawoy, Fatma Muge Gocek, Jose Itzigsohn, and Aldon Morris. 2024. “Why Now? Thoughts on the Du Boisian Revolution.” Sociology Compass 18: 1-11.