In graduate school I took a year-long practicum on teaching sociology for first-time instructors. In it I read Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed while simultaneously reading The Sociological Imagination by Mills. I recalled reading both these texts years earlier as an undergraduate and being deeply influenced by them; however, the extent to which they mirrored each other was not readily evident to me as an undergraduate. It was not until I read these texts concurrently in this graduate seminar that I saw them as articulating complimentary themes. At the time, I wondered how it was possible to not be both a sociologist and a critical pedagogue.

Fast forwarding ten years or so, I still cannot understand why most sociologists are not critical pedagogues. Clearly, those who consider themselves to be critical pedagogues see the world, knowingly or unknowingly, through the sociological lens. Critical pedagogues embrace a social structural analysis of society in an attempt to identify and ultimately transform oppressive social arrangements. Sociologists, on the other hand, do not always share this commitment to social transformation and many of us are merely focused on understanding social phenomena. The notion that sociology can and should be both a method to comprehend social reality as well as a force to change it has not been fully realized by the discipline-neither through its teaching nor through its research. In this sense, sociologists are no different from the philosophers Marx admonished as having only "interpreted the world in various ways" while doing little to change it (Marx 1977:158). For proof of this critique, one need only open up a typical introductory sociology textbook to see how sociologists interpret the world through functionalist, conflict, and interactionists perspectives. How sociologists change the oppressive social structures of the world-or more appropriately, how they might change these structures-is generally absent in texts, in lectures, and in research.

If we go back to Mills and Freire--much less going back to Marx who is claimed by both critical pedagogy and sociology as a founding influence--we can see very clearly the implicit connections between understanding the world and transforming it. Both The Sociological Imagination and Pedagogy of the Oppressed are calls to action. And for both Freire and Mills the task and the promise of understanding social reality are to change social structures for the betterment of society. The social arrangements in which we live are historically alterable; subsequently, we should use the knowledge we gain from studying society to effect positive social change: "The interest of the social scientist in social structure is not due to any view that the future is structurally determined. We study the structural limits of human decision in an attempt to find points of effective intervention, in order to know what can and what must be structurally changed. . ." (Mills 1959:174; emphasis added).

While it may be easy to convince critical pedagogues that they are inherently sociological, it may not be as easy to convince sociologists that they are (or should be) critical pedagogues. My own anecdotal evidence suggests that most sociologists do not view themselves as "scholar change agents;" rather, they see themselves primarily as scholars. Many of us teach and do research about sexism, racism, social-class inequality, deviance, crime, drugs, etc., but we feel no compulsion to do anything about these social ills-much less incite our students to take action. We teach for the sake of transferring knowledge and not for the sake of fostering progressive social change. And yet, ironically, the sociological tradition is founded in part by individuals who engaged in sociological research because they were dissatisfied with the then current state of affairs and, either implicitly or explicitly, hoped to change the existing social structures. As noted in their new book Liberation Sociology, Feagin and Vera argue that "all too often sociologists choose to forget the activist and radical traditions of the discipline they practice" (2001:ix). These authors, as well as Lemert (1997), further suggest that such a praxis-oriented approach is emblematic of the "Big Three" theorists (Marx, Weber, Durkheim) as well as representative of other classical theorists such as Adams, DuBois, Martineau, Mead, and Gilman.

If there is an encouraging sign that sociologists are beginning to (re)see themselves as critical pedagogues it can be found in Feagin and Vera's aforementioned book. Liberation Sociology is explicitly and unabashedly about using sociology to effect democratic and humanistic social change. Filled with examples of current research, Liberation Sociology demonstrates that sociology cannot only describe and analyze oppression, but can also instruct us on how we might intervene in society to overcome it. In this sense, sociological research is much like the process of education Freire espouses-it is a political act that cannot be neutral. To engage in sociology without being cognizant of the liberating (as well as oppressive) potential of the discipline is to clearly miss the forest for the trees. Indeed, the very notion that sociology is (or can be) neutral in either its teaching or its research is utterly oxymoronic.

In my own teaching and research, I have been developing a four point model of doing sociology that I feel synthesizes sociology and critical pedagogy. The four points of the model are: understanding, reflection, analysis, and action.
 

Understanding is our attempt at the most basic level to grasp social phenomena. Whether we are students, teachers, or researchers, our quest is to gain some comprehension of the issue on which our attention is focused. In short, we want to know what it is we are studying. We want to be able to describe it and consider all its varieties and permutations.

Reflection refers to the activity of making connections between the subjective and the objective, between what we are experiencing and what we are studying. Reflection also incorporates the call for reflexivity made noteworthy by Gouldner (1971) and more recently by Bourdieu and Wacquant (1992). To engage in reflection is to contemplate our own position in the larger constellation of forces that we are considering. In this sense, reflection is an important component for action because in order to act on something it may be useful to have a grounded sense of how we are affected by it.

Analysis involves moving beyond a basic comprehension and embarking on a more rigorous understanding of the issue. Here, we try to apply sociological theory and insight so that we may recognize how this phenomena functions and malfunctions, who it affects and disaffects, how it came to be and why, what is producing and reproducing it, etc. Analysis involves using sociological theory and knowledge not as ends in themselves but as a means to praxis.

Action occurs when we address the social phenomena and attempt to achieve some form of social change. Action may be manifest in many different ways. For example, we may decide to engage in further research, to broadcast our knowledge to a wider audience, to promote or engage in collective action, or to work within our own specialized milieu and effect change locally. Whatever form it takes, action encompasses doing.

The need for meshing reflection and action is at the heart of the intersection between sociology and critical pedagogy and the material in this volume has been selected to reflect this synthesis. Implementing critical pedagogy in sociology cannot be "simply reduced to feel-good dialogue or critical thinking for its own sake" as Harold Jacobs notes in his essay. Nor, as Peter McLaren notes in his comprehensive syllabus, is critical pedagogy a methodology or a recipe that one applies to the classroom setting. Instead, when sociology becomes meshed with critical pedagogy the classroom becomes a location of praxis. The transformative potential of the classroom becomes realized such that learners and teachers struggle to rethink and reconfigure their relationship to oppressive social structures.

This handbook is unlike most instructional sets published by the ASA. Whereas the majority of instructional sets have a large number of syllabi, this volume has only a few syllabi. The main reason for this distinctive format is that critical pedagogy is not a class we are likely to teach but rather a perspective that we will hopefully embrace through our teaching. Consequently, the bulk of the submissions are essays that detail the implementation of critical pedagogy in the sociology classroom. These essays provide a behind-the-scenes glimpse of what happens when sociologists strive to become critical pedagogues.

In the true fashion of critical pedagogy, I see this handbook as a modest step toward achieving praxis within the discipline of sociology. All of the submissions in this volume should be read as part of an on-going dialogue among instructors and students alike regarding the transformative potential of doing sociology. I hope that after reading through the essays and exercises in this book instructors will engage in their own personal praxis whereby they reflect on these ideas, act upon them, and subsequently transform the manner in which they do sociology. Further, it is my goal that the essays and exercises in this handbook will serve as a model for instructors to adapt and amend. Ideally, future editions of this handbook will have an increasingly higher number of exercises and perhaps even syllabi that reflect the full integration of critical pedagogy into the sociology classroom.

I intend this handbook to be useful for all sociology instructors who may be interested in fusing sociology and critical pedagogy-regardless of the subject they are teaching. To this end, the materials in this volume span a wide range of courses and course settings. Represented here are essays and exercises that can be used in large introductory-level courses as well as material that is appropriate for smaller upper-division seminars. Essays and exercises come from instructors teaching courses in social problems, social movements, social change, sexuality, gender, race, social inequality, social theory, political sociology and even statistics. With the exception of two introductory pieces--Peter McLaren's syllabus and Mary Boyce's essay on praxis and resistance--all of the material is specific to sociology. I included the works of McLaren and Boyce because they, along with the essay by Harold Jacobs, offer a thorough introduction to critical pedagogy.

I would like to thank all of the contributors to this volume both for their contribution and for their dedication to critical pedagogy. I would especially like to thank Dan Brook who helped spread the word about this volume to ensure that enough submissions would be received. The ASA Teaching Resource Center should also be commended for embracing this project as soon as I proposed it. Initially, I was unsure if such a volume would be welcomed by the ASA but Carla Howery quickly endorsed the project and set me to work, for which I am most grateful.

Bourdieu, Pierre and Loic J. D. Wacquant. 1992. An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Feagin, Joe R. and Hernán Vera. 2001. Liberation Sociology. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

Freire, Paulo. 1993. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. NY: Continuum.

Gouldner, Alvin. 1970. The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology. NY: Basic Books.

Lemert, Charles. 1997. Social Things: An Introduction to the Sociological Life. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.

Marx, Karl. 1977. Selected Writings, edited by David McLellan. NY: Oxford University Press.

Mills, C. Wright. 1959. The Sociological Imagination. NY: Oxford University Press.

Shor, Ira and Paulo Freire. 1987. A Pedagogy for Liberation: Dialogues on Transforming Education. Granby, MA: Gergin & Garvey Publishers.