Publicly, over the Atlantic
On December 18th the latest video conference as part of the Master’s programme on ‘The Sociology of the Public Sphere and Social Communications’ took place at the Higher School of Economics. You can watch a video of the event here.
The meeting, which took place at the HSE Department of General Sociology, was dedicated to perspectives of public sociology, as well as to the public role of sociology and sociologists in the contemporary world. Professor Michael Burawoy of the University of California, Berkeley, one of the most notable contemporary sociology professors and a representative of the world public sociologists'professional community, was a guest at the meeting. Prof. Burawoy is the founder of theory and practice of public sociology and Vice President of the International Sociological Association.
Students had the opportunity to listen to Professor Burawoy's lecture online, which was dedicated to problems of the correlation between professional, critical, public and applied branches of sociology and particularly to issues of public sociology. During the meeting, the main ideas of Burawoy's article published in American Sociological Review were discussed in greater detail. Michael Burawoy is well-known beyond the frames of the scientific community not only thanks to his active public profile, but also because of he provides open access to videos of his lectures . This lecture is no exception:The Professor has kindly agreed to let us use the video on the HSE website.
The video conference lasted about an hour and a half. During this time, the audience, led by Nikita Pokrovskiy, Head of the HSE Department of General Sociology, asked many questions, each of which were answered fully. The thousands of miles separating the participants did not prove an obstacle to a natural atmosphere of scientific discussion. And this is not surprising:according to the experience of the Department of General Sociology, virtual communications are becoming a standard format of both the educational process and research programmes. For example, over the past year, online master classes with sociologists John Urry and George Ritzer have taken place. And the next open lecture (January 20th) by Jeffrey Alexander, researcher from Yale, will be dedicated to discussion of the public sphere.
Alexey Boklin
Michael Burawoy's master-class on public sociology