From public sociology to collective knowledge production

Abstract

The chapter traces the terrain of doing public sociology in contemporary Singapore. I reflect on three key issues shaping the work of doing public sociology in this context: labor and its division; the effects of a dominant U.S. Sociology; and the legitimacy of academic expertise. I argue that the work of public sociology requires sociologists to position ourselves in a larger ecology of knowledge-producers—we have to find and create communities and bring others in the academy along; we have to stretch across generational divides; we have to do collective knowledge-production not only at the point of knowledge-dissemination but also at the point of conceptualization and production. In a world where our expertise is suspect, we have to build our own communities of legitimacy-granters, create legibility for our work outside the usual anointers of legitimacy. The labor of doing public sociology is collective labor, entailing time to create knowledge and solidarity, involving bodies in and out of the academy.