The Sociological Marxism of Michael Burawoy

Michael Burawoy’s idea of public sociology instigated a heated debate about the purpose of sociological research and bestowed its author an important place among contemporary social thinkers. The article presents the intellectual path that led Burawoy to formulate his well-known idea. Starting from his first book, he developed a coherent and original theory that was indebted to Marxism but was reaching beyond its horizons. Through grounding his conceptual work in sociological field research, Burawoy created his own understanding of such concepts as class, interest or production. By linking the participant observation of workplaces’ local regimes with the global political dynamics of social systems, the theory of sociological Marxism paved the way to formulating the new idea of sociology. Burawoy’s sociology aims at combining a realistic investigation in the interests and dispositions of social actors with utopian imaginaries of contemporary culture.