[Fwd: Letter concerning Michael Burawoy's resignation fromPublicationsCo

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> Dear Colleagues,
>
> I thought it might be constructive for me to circulate a letter I wrote to Alejandro Portes concerning the controversy over Michael Burawoy's decision to resign from the ASA Publications Committee and make his letter of resignation public. 
>
> -----------------------------------------
>
> July 3, 1999
>
> Dear Alejandro,
>
> I am sure that you are being besieged by letters, commentaries, reactions to Michael Burawoy's letter of resignation and the subsequent controversy it has sparked. I thought that it would be worthwhile for me to express my views, both on the events which precipitated this action and the issues directly involved in the public circulation of the letter of resignation.
>
> The source of the controversy
>
> In your two letters you seem to suggest that Burawoy's resignation, and the subsequent decision to publicize this, was an act of protest against the specific choice of editors for the ASR. While it is, of course, the case that Burawoy -- along with the majority in the Publications Committee -- supported other candidates, and that he opposes the decision that was made, the protest is over how the decision was made, not the decision per se. It is therefore, I believe, a distortion of the conflict to describe Michael as part of a disgruntled minority that lost in a democratic process, which is what you imply when you wrote in your letter to Michael: "Extensive disagreements can be expected in many important matters.....The fact that an individual or group find themselves in the minority does not entitle them to unilaterally  break standing rules established by a democratic process."  This statement suggests that you see Burawoy as raising these issues because of the "extensive disagreements" over the choice of editor and his unwillingness to gracefully accept the status of being a minority. This is simply not the central issue.
>
>
> What then is the central issue? Michael insists that the issue is the problem of substantive democracy. He is not denying the formal legal rules in which the ASA Council has the power to choose the ASR editor. If the Publications Committee were simply a subcommittee of the Council and appointed by the Council   a proposal that was defeated by the Association as a whole   then its status as a purely advisory body which could be overridden without serious consultation might make sense. But the Publications Committee is itself a democratically elected body and one with a high level of recently reaffirmed legitimacy because of the referendum's rejection of the proposal to turn the Publications Committee into a simple arm of the Council. Given this, the action of summarily disregarding the Publications Committee's choices and selecting an alternative without any sustained consultation and  dialogue between these two elected bodies is, prima facie, a violation of the substantive, ethical content of democracy. 
>
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> You wrote in your letter, commenting on the inevitable disagreements in an association like the ASA, "The crucial consideration is whether they are resolved in a democratic manner and according to legal rules."  I agree  -- as I presume so does Michael Burawoy -- that this a crucial consideration, but I would emphasize the seriousness and primacy of the "democratic manner" as the basis for interpreting and acting within the "legal rules". As every political sociologist knows, formal, legalistic rules of democratic procedure can be used by  powerful actors to block the arduous process of the formation of democratic consensus and  compromise. And, of course, in such contexts, "legal rules" becomes the way of legitimating an action that may, at its core, be an exercise of power rather than democracy. Imagine a somewhat analogous situation in an academic department: a department brings five people in for interviews for a professorship and sends two rank-ordered  names to the Dean for approval, but the Dean offers the position to a third person on the list without ever discussing the matter with the department. This would be legal in many universities, but surely would be a violation of norms of a democratic culture.
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> What does all of this mean in the concrete instance of the present controversy? If the Council found the two nominees of the ASA elected Publications Committee to be unacceptable, the proper procedure from the point of view of democratic conflict resolution would have been to have entered into a serious dialogue over the issues in contention.  This would have given the Council an opportunity to explain to the Publications Committee why they felt the Publications Committee's recommendations were unsound, and it would have given the Publications Committee the opportunity to explain the rationales and trade-offs in greater depth. Through such dialogue there is every reason to believe that compromise, if not consensus, would have been possible. And if, after such serious deliberation, a majority of the Council still felt that their choice was sufficiently better than those proposed by the Publications Committee to warrant overriding the Publications Committee's recommendations, then this could be regarded as the outcome of a substantively democratic process. If such a procedure had been followed, then I have no doubt that Michael would have shrugged his shoulders and accepted the decision without fuss, even if he remained unconvinced about its merits.
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> This is how most people, I think, will view the issues once the matter is fully aired. In this context, therefore, I think it is a serious mistake to aggressively attack Burawoy, questioning his integrity and treating the issue as if he is just a spoiled sport, a sore loser.
>
> The circulation and eventual publication of the letter of resignation
>
> A number of people, including you, have argued that Michael's decision to circulate the letter of resignation was a serious, unethical breech of confidentiality.  I have discussed this matter with a number of my colleagues, and no one thinks that this is really an issue here. The letter does not mention the names of any of the ASR editor nominees of the Publications Committee, nor does it discuss the substance of any of the discussions of the merits or demerits of particular people. Indeed, I do not have a clue about who these nominees were. Of course the letter does reveal the simple fact that the Council reversed the decision of the Publications Committee and, therefore, that Camic and Wilson were not the on the Publication Committees nomination list. That is an unfortunate by-product of publicly raising an objection to a use of power in the Association, but I do not see how Michael had any alternative under the circumstances. 
>
> I do not think that this will taint the editorship of Camic and Wilson. They were both completely unaware of any special circumstances of their appointment, and this  fact can easily be made known. They will certainly do a superb job as editors, and that will quickly neutralize any ill-will generated by the public revelation of the process by which they were selected. The one thing which might create a more enduring problem for their tenure as editors is if the conflict significantly escalates and gets couched in terms of factions of the association who are either for or against their being the editors of the journal. Burawoy, at the end of his letter of resignation, affirmed his own confidence that in fact Camic and Wilson will be excellent editors: "I have every confidence that Professors Wilson and Camic will do an excellent job as editors of the American Sociological Review but, through no fault of their own, it will not be one that reflects the Publications Committee's efforts to carry out its mandate."  I imagine that most people who share Michael's priorities for the ASR also share this opinion. This is another reason why I feel it is important not to frame the controversy as over the people actually selected for the editorship but over the procedure adopted. 
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> What's to be done?
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> I think a broad based discussion  both of  issue of democratic  procedure for these two committees and the issue of the character of the ASR is now inevitable and, in the end, desirable. I personally doubt if the former will end up being that contentious: a majority of the ASA has already affirmed the desirability of a democratically elected publications committee and I think a majority believe this implies it being a real partner in the editor selection process. The latter issue, in contrast, will be contentious because Sociology, as always, contains rival visions of the discipline and thus of the appropriate character for its leading journals.
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> In my judgment it would be very desirable for this wide-ranging discussion to be separated from the pragmatics of the present situation and the current editorship.  That is, I think it would be a big mistake if this general discussion over the ASR became a discussion over the merits of the actual choice made for the current editors. One way to avoid this would be for there to be a frank acknowledgment that while the Council did have the formal power to make this decision, there was an error of judgment in the process: in light of the elected status of the Publications Committee, there should have been serious dialogue and consultation between the two elected bodies before a final decision was reached and that this will be the procedure followed in such instances in the future. With that admission on the table, then I think the discussion can move on to the future rather than dwell on the present editorship. If, on the other hand, the debate is waged in a polemically strident manner defending the procedures and actions of the Council, then I think this will increase, rather than reduce, the extent to which the controversy contaminates the current ASR regime.
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> I hope these thoughts are of some use to you.
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> Sincerely,
>
>
> Erik 
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>
>
>
> _______________________________________
>
> Erik Olin Wright
> Vilas Professor
> Department of Sociology
> University of Wisconsin
> 1180 Observator Drive
> Madison, Wisconsin 53706
>
> tel:   608-262-2921 (office)   608-255-6454 (home)
> Fax: 608-265-5389
>
> http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/~wright/
> email: wright@ssc.wisc.edu 
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