Interview with Michael Burawoy: Without understanding social and cultural history of the society, sociological analysis is impossible
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Michael Burawoy is the President of the International Sociological Association (ISA)
 and Professor at the University of California, Berkeley. He is well known as author of Manufacturing Consent: Changes in the Labor Process under Monopoly Capitalism and hissociological studies of the industrial workplace. Recently, he has lunched a discussion in title of public sociology which focuses on the way that sociology is taught to the students and how it is put into the public domain.Michael Burawoy was invited to Iran in 2008 by Iranian Sociological Association and gave 8 lectures in different Iranian Universities on various topics including ISA, Scientific Associations and his personal project: public sociology. |
How do you consider social thought relevant with sociology?
Social thought is part of the intellectual history of sociology an academic discipline
How do you consider the social thought which is rooted in cultural and religious traditions in Islamic countries, especially Middle East, relevant with social sciences and sociology?
It will be impossible to undertake informed sociological analysis of any society without an understanding of its social and cultural history.
For example on questions such as women and gender issues in Muslim societies and intellectual conditions in the Islamic world it will be necessary to have a good knowledge of religious and cultural histories of Muslim countries. My studies of position and role of women in Muslim countries including Iran reveals varying levels of patriarchal attitudes and support of segregation and veiling of women is society. These attitudes, one can argue are grounded in the history and cultures of various Muslim societies. More specifically they are a product of what I call ‘ textual authoritarianism’ resulting from the tension between the pragmatic social norms of early Islamic society and uncompromising egalitarian ethical norms of Islam in relation to women. The tension between them privileged men who were the chief interpreters of the sacred texts to resolve this tension by privileging men in public and private domains. Similarly, what factors may explain the intellectual conditions in Muslim Middle Eastern societies as evidences in the absence of world class universities in them? Is it the experience of colonialism, economic underdevelopment and lack of investment in education and research and development? Or, is it the absence of a vibrant civil society based on reason and doubt and not on conviction and truth? To explore these questions one needs a good understanding and knowledge of religious and cultural histories of Muslim societies.
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