Public Sociology
Series Editors: John Brewer, Senator George J Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice, Queen's University, Belfast, Northern Ireland and Neil McLaughlin, Department of Sociology, McMaster University, Ontario, Canada
This series addresses public and community engagement and the relationship between sociologists and their publics. The books in the series explore not only what sociologists do, but what sociology is for and focus on the commitment to enhance understanding of the social condition so that the lives of people are materially improved.
The series showcases the wide diversity of sociological research that addresses the many global challenges that threaten the future of humankind in the 21st century. The relevance of sociology to what C. Wright Mills preferred to call the human condition is highlighted in works that address these challenges as they feature in global social changes, but also as they are mediated in local and regional communities and settings. The series thus features titles that work at a global level of abstraction, as well as studies that are micro-ethnographic depictions of global processes as they affect local communities
Download the proposal guidelines.
Topics may include but are not limited to the following
- What is public sociology?
- Engaging policy in sociology
- Empowering people for drive change
- Sociology of the future
- Social justice under neo-liberalism
- Building social justice from below
- Refugees, migrants and the humanitarian crisis
- Is humanitarianism in crisis?
- Peace studies in crisis?
- War and militarism
- Rethinking the public university
- Debating and re-envisioning the family?
- Is health a human right?
- The sociological geography of health and wealth
- Food security and global hunger
- Sociology and human dignity
- The future of social media
- Is multi-culturalism working?
- The future of class
- Intersectionality and inequality
- Sociology and climate change
- Religion in the 21st century
- Transformation in work
- What is the future of housing?
- Modern masculinities
- Sociology outside academia
- What is the future of youth?
- The gender agenda in the 21st century
- Social harm and intergenerational memory
- Rethinking community for the 21st century
- Developing co-produced knowledge with communities
- Human rights versus human dignity in disability research
- Does social mobility have a future?
Call for proposals:
If you would like to submit a proposal, or to discuss ideas, then please contact the series editors: John Brewer: j.brewer@qub.ac.uk and Neil McLaughlin: nmclaugh@mcmaster.ca.
Find out more about writing for Bristol University Press on our Information for authors page.
International editorial advisory board:
- Michael Burawoy, University of California, Berkeley, US
- John Brown Childs, University of California Santa Cruz, US
- Craig Calhoun, London School of Economics, UK
- Frances Fox Pivan, City University of New York, US
- John H Hall, McGill University, Canada
- Katie Hughes, Victoria University, Australia
- Linda McKie, Durham University, UK
- Ann Nilsen, University of Bergen, Norway
- Elisa P. Reis, International Panel on Social Progress, Brazil
- John Scott, Exeter University, UK
- Ari Sitas, University of Cape Town, South Africa
- Linda Woodhead, Lancaster University, UK
Critical Engagement with Public Sociology
A Perspective from the Global South
Involving four generations of Global South researchers, this book provides a theoretical and empirical critique of Burawoy’s model of public sociology. It offers a bridge between debates on public sociology and decolonial frameworks.
A Public Sociology of Waste
Critically analysing how waste is currently configured as a ‘household’ issue, this book illuminates the implications of these framings and how public sociology can engage critical publics to reorient waste as a global socio-ethical issue.
Erich Fromm and Global Public Sociology
As the rise of global right-wing populism and Trumpism creates new interest in psycho-social writing and popular sociology, this timely book tells the story of the rise, fall and contemporary revival of the theories of Erich Fromm, a 1930s influential and creative public intellectual.
The Public and Their Platforms
Public Sociology in an Era of Social Media
Cutting across multiple disciplines, this book maps out a new role for the public sociologist in the post-COVID world. It envisions a new kind of public sociology that brings together “the digital” and "the physical” to create public spaces where critical scholarship and active civic engagement can meet in a mutually reinforcing way.
Public Sociology As Educational Practice
Challenges, Dialogues and Counter-Publics
Leading academics reflect on concepts and aspects of public sociology education in this perceptive collection of case studies, linked by critical dialogue between contributors. They consider publics, practices and special knowledges in the field, and go beyond academia’s boundaries to explore the purposes and targets of sociological knowledge.