Michael Burawoy (1947-2025): A scholar committed to taking sociology to the public

Michael Burawoy (1947-2025): A scholar committed to taking sociology to the public

When Michael Burawoy was doing his doctorate at the University of Chicago in the 1970s, he spent ten months as a machine operator in a Chicago factory, attempting to understand why workers work as hard as they do and why they routinely consent to their own exploitation, even with knowledge of this fact.The book that resulted from his doctoral dissertation, Manufacturing Consent: Changes in the Labor Process Under Monopoly Capitalism (1979), beca…

Michael Burawoy, 1947-2025: Patron Saint of Public Sociology

Michael Burawoy, whose embrace of public sociology and the public at work lead him to describe his influential academic niche as “industrial sociology,” has died at age 77. He was crossing the street in his hometown of Oakland, California the evening of February 3 when a hit-and-run driver struck him. The driver remains unidentified and at large. Burawoy, who retired from the sociology department at the University of California, Berkeley in 2023…

Michael Burawoy has died

The eminent sociologist Michael Burawoy died on Monday, after being hit by a car while walking near near his home. I’ve found a couple of tributes: this from Marta Soler Gallart which tells a story I didn’t know but surprises me not in the least, and this from Oleg Komlik. There’ll be loads of tributes to his remarkable intellectual contributions, and I’ll have nothing to add to them. So I’ll just say this. I didn’t know Michael that well really…