Comment: States, Societies, and Sociologists: Democratizing Knowledge from Above and Below

In his presidential address, Jess Gilbert argues that big states, in alliance with social scientists, can work to democratize society. He points to two fascinating examples—the involvement of rural sociologists with local citizens for policy planning in the New Deal and similarly their role in the Farm Security Administration’s Resettlement Communities Program. Both programs, though shortlived in administrative terms, created an enduring legacy of how sociologists might engage in the shaping of progressive and participatory policy, and what governments can do to aid bottom-up community development under certain conditions. Gilbert shows that these initiatives not only made change at the time but over time they continue to contribute to the democratic imagination about the possibilities of change. One hopes that as a new presidential administration comes into office in the United States, such historical lessons will foster similar initiatives and similar opportunities for sociologists and states to join forces for progressive social change. Such change happens neither through states nor society alone, but in their interaction—through ‘‘combined bottom-up, top-down initiatives,’’ as Gilbert puts it. If this is true, then the role of sociologists in contributing to change can be on either side of the state-society equation. Sometimes sociologists may join with state reformers to use their skills to promote policy change from within the state, as we see in Gilbert’s cases. But in other cases, the role of sociologists is a more participatory one within communities, whereby they use their skills and knowledge on behalf of civil society actors, who in turn demand and create change from below. In such cases, through participatory research, they work not only to democratize society through the state but to democratize the very knowledge base on which the state makes, implements, and sustains its policies in the first place. Before coming back to discuss the role of sociologists in bringing about democratic change, I want to explore further the question of how change happens, by looking at some recent examples from outside the United States. The challenge of building responsive and accountable