Public Sociology and the Impact Agenda: A Case Study

This paper explores the interface between two areas of debate high on the agenda of contemporary sociology. On the one hand, there are concerns as to the relevance and significance of the discipline in the 21st century; on the other, the imperative of displaying ‘impact’ (in accord with the current neoliberal agenda demanding accountability and ‘value for money’). The concepts ‘public sociology’ and ‘impact’ are interrogated briefly but the core concern of the paper is to illustrate the complexity of operationalizing impact in a research project that demands the deep, and unwavering, involvement and commitment of a sociologist and researcher driven by the imperative of progressive social change. Deploying as a case study the attempt to use public procurement as a vehicle for promoting the employment prospects of racialised minorities (and other marginalised groups), the paper explores the dialectical relationship between various forms of social agency and disparate structural factors at macro, meso and micro-levels. It concludes that the ‘messiness’ of the demonstrable ‘impact’ mirrors that of the research process itself, and the pursuit of a ‘public sociology’ in this context conflicts with dominant characterisations in the literature.