As we argued in the Introduction to the book, there are different conceptualisations of public engagement and participation, which reflect shifting policy, political and social agendas. Public engagement in higher education has tended to be framed in largely managerial terms as a question of increased transparency and accountability, involving ‘the public’ in dialogue and promoting participation and knowledge transfer. In this model of public engagement, promoting access to universities’ facilities and academic knowledge and fostering student and faculty engagement are part of an ongoing process of widening participation. In this perspective, the broader structural and policy framework affecting higher education and the effects of power upon the types of knowledge produced within universities have tended to fly well below the radar.

What the contributors in this part of the book have in common is a critical approach, both to substantive issues and to their specific area of expertise. While they all have a background in social science, a wide variety of disciplines is covered, from social policy and sociology to criminology and divergent psychotherapeutic approaches. Clearly, social-scientific research is not uniform, but informed by a variety of research agendas, interests, theories and methodologies. Provisionally extending Burawoy's concept of a public sociology to the other disciplines, we suggest that each of these contributors is concerned with moral and political concerns that reach beyond the university. The chapters in this part of the book reflect the different contexts for the application of social-scientific research; they also represent different audiences beyond the café environment, audiences and participants either as teachers and researchers, as activists, or as policymakers and practitioners.

In the first three chapters, Hunt, Clement and Fletcher address the 2011 riots, the politics of austerity and the Occupy movement, and the limits to participation. Steve Hunt, in ‘“Grab and go”: some sociological musings on the 2011 “disturbances”’, provides an overview of interpretations of the 2011 riots that were in common currency at the time and also applies the insights of classical sociology, in particular, the work of Durkheim. Does the limitless desire promoted by the consumer society result in a state of anomie? Ranging over a number of authors from Sennett to Bauman the ‘cult of individualism’ is located at the root of the problem.