After reviewing the debate about public sociologies in the American Sociological Association over the past few years, we offer a response to calls for "saving sociology" from the Burawoy approach as well as an analytic critique of the former ASA president's "For Public Sociology" address. While being sympathetic to the basic idea of public sociologies, we argue that the "reflexive" and "critical" categories of sociology, as Burawoy has conceptualized them, are too ambiguous and value-laden to allow for empirical investigation of the different major orientations of sociological research and the ways the discipline can address non-academic audiences. Debates about the future of sociology should be undertaken with empirical evidence, and we need a theoretical approach that can allow us to compare both disciplines and nations as well as taking into account the institutional context of the universities in which we operate. Research into the conditions under which professional, critical, policy, and public sociologies could work together for the larger disciplinary and societal good is called for instead of overheated rhetoric both for and against public sociologies.The emergence of "public sociologies" as a conference theme, an intellectual movement and vision for the discipline is one of the most exciting, productive, and important events in the recent history of sociology. The American Sociological Association conference "Public Sociologies" in 2004 organized in San Francisco was interesting, extremely well attended, and has injected renewed energy into the discipline. We have been discussing the issue in Canada, as welP appropriately so, since Burawoy's (2005b) original notion of "provincializing American sociology" suggests a truly global vision for sociology. Certainly the exciting international presence at the annual meetings in San Francisco bodes well for the future.This movement towards public sociologies, however, is not uncontroversial. In addition to numerous dialogues and debates about the trend, there has also emerged Neil McLaughlin teaches sociological theory at McMaster University and publishes in the sociology of culture, intellectuals, and knowledge. In addition to studying both Canadian intellectual life and sociology, he is working on The Concept of the Global Public Intellectual and the issue of marginality and the social origins of creativity. Lisa Kowalchuk has done research on Salvadorean social movements around land reform and public service privitization. She is an assistant professor in the Sociology and Anthropology department at the University of Guelph (Ontario). Her latest article, "The Discourse of Demobilization: Shifts in Activist Priorities and the Framing of Political Opportunities in a Peasant Land Struggle," appears in The SociologicalQuarterly 46(2) 2005. Kerry Turcotte is a doctoral candidate in sociology at McMaster University. Her current work involves the analysis of blame-laying by public intellectuals. Her broader research agenda includes what she calls "sustainable" forms...

As American Sociological Association (ASA) president in 2004, Michael Burawoy argued 'for public sociology', sparking impassioned debate focused almost exclusively on the normative issues raised by his prescription for a more public sociology. Nearly absent from the literature is an analytical critique of his underlying model of the structure of sociological practice.The model is flawed in three ways: (1) the core concepts are ambiguous; (2) the model provides little leverage for understanding the institutional context of sociology as a discipline; and (3) comparative understanding of sociologies in different countries or between public engagement in distinct academic disciplines is not facilitated. In this article, we propose a synthetic means of relating academics, disciplines, audiences and institutional environments that forms the basis for movement toward an empirical agenda on public academics more generally. KEY WORDSacademic disciplines / Burawoy / comparative sociology / public intellectuals / public sociology / sociology of knowledge

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