With public sociology: reasons and perspectives of a proposal

In recent years, interest in the perspective of public sociology has grown in Italy, alongside a renewed focus on the relationship between sociology and the public sphere. Michael Burawoy's well-known proposal has become, from this point of view, a source of inspiration for a variety of approaches and practices. Following this trend, we propose to highlight the possible connections between public sociology and other approaches by working with some common distinctive elements. In this sense, we favor an extensive practice of the approach rather than a strict delimitation, aiming to embody an effort to think "with" and "through" public sociology. The essay begins by revisiting some aspects of the relationship between sociology and the "domain of the possible," which, according to Burawoy, is the foundation of the discipline. Subsequently, after clarifying the processual dimension of "public," we attempt to leverage the possible convergences between public sociology and other approaches. These approaches focus on the relationship between social research and critique, the capacity of social actors to contribute to the latter, and the conditions of transformative possibilities that social actors and researchers can cooperate to activate.