Public sociology and the social crisis

At the core of the crisis of social relations in contemporary SouthAfrica is a privatisation of the public sphere which is forcing individu-als to seek private remedies to socially produced problems. Theway access to clean and adequate water is threatened by both pri-vatisation and pollution illustrates this process. The article arguesthat resistance to these processes has the potential to 'resocialise'the crisis, and could be strengthened by the involvement of sociolo-gists.Keywords: Crisis, privatisation, water, pollution, resistance, public sociology.