The “bloody brilliant” sociologist’s unfinalized heresy: Resolving Michael Burawoy’s tensions to reconstruct the social sciences
Abstract
Through workplace ethnographies on three continents, as well as methodological and theoretical interventions, Burawoy transformed the social sciences. In his last years, he wrote extensively on race and colonialism. He also encouraged his students to apply the lessons of his earlier work to labor in education. These strands of his scholarship sat uneasily alongside one another, and he did not develop an explicit framework to resolve the apparent contradictions between, and within, them. The unfinalized tensions in Burawoy’s late work lay the groundwork for a reconstructed scientific practice. https://doi.org/10.21747/08723419/soc53a1
Fields of Study & Subjects
Contemporary Sociological Theory and Practice
Qualitative Research Methods and Ethics
Anthropological Studies and Insights
Publication details
- Journal / source
- Sociologia Revista da Faculdade de Letras da Universidade do Porto
- Volume
- 53
- Pages
- 13–39
- Publication date
- 4 February 2026
- Language
- PT