Sociology & Literature
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Sociology & Literature
Things We Say in the Dark: A Sociological Response from Laura Harris
This post is part of The Sociological Review’s exploration of what it means for something to be ‘sociological literature’. In this strand of the work, practice-researchers and sociologists reflect on sociological encounters with contemporary poetry and prose. Laura Harris ‘Girls are Always Hungry When all the Men are Bite-Size’ is a short story nestled in the middle […]
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A Sociological Encounter: Kayo Chingonyi interviews Jay Bernard, author of Surge
This interview is part of The Sociological Review’s exploration of what it means for something to be ‘sociological literature’. In this strand of the work, practice-researchers and sociologists reflect on sociological encounters with contemporary poetry and prose. Surge is ‘a fearlessly original exploration of the black British archive: an enquiry into the New Cross Fire […]
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Queer Time and Space in Yelena Moskovitch’s Virtuoso
This post is part of The Sociological Review’s exploration of what it means for something to be ‘sociological literature’. In this strand of the work, practice-researchers and sociologists reflect on sociological encounters with contemporary poetry and prose. Clare Fisher “True capitalism was all about names on stuff, on clothes, on notebooks, on cars, on backpacks, […]
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“Our Brains and Souls on Art”: U. Melissa Anyiwo interviews Patricia Leavy
U. Melissa Anyiwo: You’re a sociologist turned arts-based researcher turned novelist. Tell us about this journey. Patricia Leavy: Sociology is my home discipline, and that training has served me well, providing a lens through which I see and tools to use in my research. But I think once we have our core training, sometimes we […]
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The Far Field: Sociological Reflections from Priya Sharma
This post is part of The Sociological Review’s exploration of what it means for something to be ‘sociological literature’. In this strand of the work, practice-researchers and sociologists reflect on sociological encounters with contemporary poetry and prose. Priya Sharma “I am thirty years old and that is nothing”, writes Shalini, the protagonist of Madhuri Vijay’s […]
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Sociological Literature: a Series of Engagements
Sociologists and practice-researchers explore literature longlisted for this year’s The Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize.
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A mere literary woman: on illegitimate texts
By Katie Collins In the twelfth part of our special section on Sociology and Fiction, Katie Collins reflects on the transgressive nature of Social Science Fiction. I’m doing a creative writing workshop at the moment, and while my fellow writers intrigue me with the fragments of fictional lives they create from the brief prompts, all I can […]
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Showing, not telling: some thoughts on social science and (science) fiction
By Paul Graham Raven In the eleventh part of our special section on Sociology and Fiction, Paul Graham Raven reflects on the resources offered by fiction for the communication of sociological ideas to diverse audiences. Given the venue and topic, I should be probably writing this piece as a sociologist of technology (albeit a predoctoral one), and using the […]
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Uncertainty, Sociology and Fiction
By Miranda Iossifidis In the tenth part of our special section on Sociology and Fiction, Miranda Iossifidis considers what we inevitably leave out of sociological accounts and how fiction might help us to recover it. I wouldn’t have finished my PhD if it weren’t for fiction. I had to finish in time for my scholarship’s deadline, and I […]
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You wake up and suddenly, a story is right in front of you
By Kip Jones In the eighth part of our special section on Sociology and Fiction, Kip Jones reflects on the pleasures of physical books and our emerging culture of analogue nostalgia. A very formal email from the Editor of the International Encyclopedia of Communication Research Methods greeted me first thing this morning: it’s their pleasure to officially accept my manuscript for […]
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Grand Designs
By Phil Thomas In the penultimate part of our special section on Sociology and Fiction, Phil Thomas experiments with fiction as a method for doing research after the ‘ontological turn’. Upon our time, a widower there was in rural France, who had strangers crossfingered to claim his home when he died. Neither had squeezed, softly […]
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Imagining Futures: From Sociology of the Future to Future Fictions
By Richard Tutton In the first part of our special section on Sociology and Fiction, Richard Tutton from Lancaster University explores the significance of fictional futures for Sociological engagements with possible futures. Since the early twentieth century, sociologists, especially those seeking to challenge the orthodoxies of their time have found fiction to be an effective way to imagine radically […]
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The Future Perfect
By Greg Goldberg and Robyn Autry In the second part of our special section on Sociology and Fiction, Greg Goldberg and Robyn Autry from Wesleyan University reflect on an innovative course they ran which sought to bridge the methodological gap between the social sciences and the humanities. Sociology is typically preoccupied with the present and, […]
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Writing Fiction and Writing Social Science
In the third part of our special section on Sociology and Fiction, Rob Kitchin talks to our Digital Fellow Mark Carrigan about scholarly writing, fictional writing and the relationship between them. Have you always written fiction? Or is it something that began once you were an established academic writer? I wrote my first novel when I was twenty one. I […]
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Telling stories to help understand what sociology is about
By Claudia Vallve In the ninth part of our special section on Sociology and Fiction, Claudia Vallve considers the power of stories for making Sociology accessible. I love story telling. I love hiking too. This is a story about hiking and, also, about telling stories about society. As I said, I love hiking. And I’m fortunate to live […]
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