ITHACA, N.Y. -- Michael Burawoy, who rolls up his sleeves to conduct sociological research on labor from the factory floor, will give Cornell University's 2003 Polson Memorial Lecture Oct. 3. His talk, "Public Sociology in a Global Context," will be followed by a panel discussion. The lecture, at 3 p.m. in the Memorial Room of Willard Straight Hall on campus, is free and open to the public.

Burawoy is a professor of sociology at the University of California-Berkeley and president-elect of the American Sociological Association (ASA). In his research in the United States and in Europe, he uses the extended case-study method, which involves intensive participant observation. An example of this method can be found in his book, The Radiant Past: Ideology and Reality in Hungary's Road to Capitalism ( Chicago University Press, 1992), for which he worked for a year as a furnace operator in a Hungarian steel plant. In other research projects, Burawoy has worked in a Hungarian champagne factory, spent a year as a personnel officer at a Zambian copper mine and toiled for 10 months as a machine operator on Chicago's South Side.

One of his scholarly goals is to "bring visions from the shop floor to academia, to recover visions from below that might inform alternatives in the future." His most recent book, Global Ethnography (The University of California Press, 2000), examines the relationship between global processes and the lives of individuals in local contexts.

Burawoy is concerned that sociology and social science are not serving contemporary society well. Accordingly, he campaigned for the ASA presidency on a platform of advancing "public sociology," all the while challenging sociologists to be a "mirror and a conscience for society." He believes that sociology should define, promote and inform public dialogue about critical, contemporary social issues. The post-lecture panel discussion will include several Cornell academics: Lourdes Beneria, professor of city and regional planning and director of the Gender and Global Change program; Davydd Greenwood, the Goldwin Smith Professor of Anthropology and director of the Institute for European Studies; David Lewis, professor of city and regional planning and director of the Institute for Public Affairs; and Max Pfeffer, professor of development sociology and associate director of research in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS).

The lecture is sponsored by the Polson Institute for Global Development, located in the CALS Department of Development Sociology. The institute was founded three years ago to promote theoretical and applied research related to the process of global development. It was named for Robert Polson, the late Cornell professor of rural sociology, and his wife, the late Ruth Polson, Cornell B.S. '42, Ph.D. '51. Robert Polson's career teaching rural sociology at Cornell spanned more than four decades. Ruth Polson taught English and music at Ithaca High School.