ABSTRACT
One very valuable aspect of Michael Burawoy's approach is the acknowledgement that "professional sociology" is the necessary center and source of strength for public, critical, and policy sociology. His search for the relevant publics for public sociology is a good idea, but the relevant publics need to be understood as parts of an emerging global civil society. The pace of global social change accelerated dramatically with the late eighteenth century industrial revolution. The contemporary wave of global industrialization based on fossil fuel may have already led to a substantial overshoot in the ability of human society to sustain a livable biosphere. At the University of California-Riverside (UCR) the Research Working Group on Transnational Social Movements has undertaken a study of the participants in the World Social Forum to cooperate and collaborate with each other in forming a credible and effective political force in world politics.
