For public social science1

Sociology and categorical social science Should we be inspired by Michael Burawoy’s vision of an integrated sociology to maintain sociology’s renewed momentum? While we can value what sociologists, economists or philosophers do in their teaching and research, we can still believe universities would be better off if these disci-plines disintegrated somewhat. So we might not wish to ‘bind ourselves to the mast ’ of commitment to an integrated professional, public, policy and critical sociology with a ‘common ethos ’ (Burawoy 2005: 14). That said, Burawoy makes a compelling case that these four types of sociology can learn much from one another and that scholars who are simultaneously public, policy or critical sociologists as they are professional sociologists make special contri-butions to that end. The social sciences might benefit from the kind of shift the biological sci-ences has seen, where organization around categorical referents – like zoology (animals), botany (plants), entomology (insects), microbiology (microbes)