This is a term coined by Michael Burawoy as a way of providing solutions to social problems. Goals are usually defined by a client, which could be the government. Policy sociology provides instrumental knowledge, that is, knowledge that can be used to solve or help a specific case in the social world. According to Burawoy, the information gathered from policy sociology is open to an extra-academic audience. It is not confined to academic boundaries. The findings of policy sociology research are likely to have an effect on the general public as they could have an impact on government policy.
Famous quotes containing the words policy and/or sociology:
“Men must learn now with pity to dispense,
For policy sits above conscience.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Living in cities is an art, and we need the vocabulary of art, of style, to describe the peculiar relationship between man and material that exists in the continual creative play of urban living. The city as we imagine it, then, soft city of illusion, myth, aspiration, and nightmare, is as real, maybe more real, than the hard city one can locate on maps in statistics, in monographs on urban sociology and demography and architecture.”
—Jonathan Raban (b. 1942)