Michael Burawoy is a British-American sociologist known for his ethnographic studies of factory work and for his advocacy of public sociology. In Manufacturing Consent (1979), based on his own employment inside a Chicago machine shop, he examined how workers come to actively participate in and even enjoy the games and routines of the labor process on the shop floor, arguing that this participation helps manufacture consent to capitalist production relations in ways that coercion alone cannot explain. As president of the American Sociological Association, Burawoy became a leading advocate for public sociology, urging the discipline to engage directly with publics and social movements outside the academy alongside its professional, critical, and policy roles, a position that shaped an ongoing debate within the discipline about the proper relationship between sociological knowledge and public life.
Facts
Nationality / Culture Defining ContributionAdvocated public sociology, dividing the discipline into public, policy, professional and critical sociology in his 2004 ASA presidential address, and expanded the extended case method through ethnographic participant observation in industrial workplaces. 1 Notable WorkManufacturing Consent: Changes in the Labor Process Under Monopoly Capitalism (1979) 1 In the Other Atlases
Sources
1. Michael Burawoy (Wikipedia)
WikipediaLife and career section, opening sentence (birth date)
Burawoy was born in England on 15 June 1947; his parents had fled Russia and Ukraine, met as students in Leipzig
Life and career section, opening sentence (birth year)
Burawoy was born in England on 15 June 1947; his parents had fled Russia and Ukraine, met as students in Leipzig
Life and career section, opening sentence (birthplace)
Burawoy was born in England on 15 June 1947; his parents had fled Russia and Ukraine, met as students in Leipzig
Life and career section, final paragraph (death date)
Burawoy was killed in a crosswalk in Oakland, on 3 February 2025, by a speeding driver who fled the scene.
Life and career section, final paragraph (death year)
Burawoy was killed in a crosswalk in Oakland, on 3 February 2025, by a speeding driver who fled the scene.
Life and career section, final paragraph (death place)
Burawoy was killed in a crosswalk in Oakland, on 3 February 2025, by a speeding driver who fled the scene.
opening paragraph, first sentence
was an American sociologist who worked within Marxist social theory
opening paragraph, first sentence (notable work)
the author of Manufacturing Consent: Changes in the Labor Process Under Monopoly Capitalism
Life and career section, public sociology paragraph
His work on public sociology is most prominently shown in his presidential address to the American Sociological Association in 2004, where he divided sociology into four separate (yet overlapping) categories
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