Making Sociology relevant to Society

Howard S. Becker
(Excerto da comunicação apresentada no encontro da Associação Europeia de Sociologia em Murcia, Espanha, 2003)

I'm not sure that I'm in agreement with the premise of this discussion. Or,
rather, I am pretty sure that I am not in agreement with it. While I don't think
sociology should be irrrelevant, I do think the usual ways of talking about
these questions take too much for granted, especially what sociology should be
relevant to, and how we ought to try to maximize that relevance.
My basic
fear is that trying to make sociology relevant will inevitably and necessarily
make it irrelevant. Why? Because we will look at "problems" as they are framed
by others. That will, in turn, lead us to ignore those elements of a situation
that might actually be relevant to the solution of serious problems. (...)

(http://home.earthlink.net/~hsbecker/relevant.htm)