Comparative Sociology 15 (2016) 300-323

C OMPARATIVE
SOCIOLOGY

brill.com/coso

Sociological Imagination and Literary Intuition

Barbara A. Misztal
Department of Sociology, University of Leicester, Leicester, UK
bm50@le.ac.uk

Abstract

The paper argues that if imagination is paramount for sociologys status and if liter-
ary intuition is a source of such imagination, we should rethink the value of literary
insight for social analyses. It reviews the changing relationship between literature and
sociology and shows how sociology can draw from literature as a starting point for
understanding the social world and a way of invigorating sociological imagination. By
framing the digital age as a current moment of change that has reconfigured the rela-
tion between sociology and literature, it illuminates the impact of challenges faced by
both sociology and literature. It argues for the validity of literature for sociological use
in the digital future and calls for more reflection on the utility and scope of the link-
age. It asserts the literary inspired way of doing sociology, which takes advantage of the
chance provided by the e-revolution, is one of ways forward for sociology.

Keywords

sociological imagination literary input novels fiction digitalization

Introduction: Benefits of Using of Novels in Sociological Analysis

If sociologys colorless imagination is a one of main factors which have under-

mined sociologys public status (Abbott 2007:72), maybe it is time to rethink
how our imagination could be revitalized. Such a discussion should start with
an observation that the enduring desire for sociological imagination, as illus-
trated by C.W. Millss (1959) explicit plea, often tends to be rooted in the rec-
ognition of novelists powerful imagination, while at the same time reflecting
sociologys self image as being torn between science and literature. Of course,

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Sociological Imagination And Literary Intuition 301

sociologys lack of imagination is not only related to a decline in the central-

ity of the use of literature in sociological analysis. There are also other fac-
tors which are responsible for the fact that sociology suffers from imaginative
deficit, such as a vanishing of the use of narrative in sociological explanation,
the changing landscape of research universities in the last three decades, the
shift towards data driven research, increased demands for more specialized
publishing as opposed to monographs addressed to larger, non-sociological
audiences. Moreover, with the digitalization imagination no longer comes as
cheaply as it did in the past as it has to be, in order to leave digital traces,
embedded in much hardware and software equipment (Latour 2007:2).
This papers aim is limited to stressing the value of literary insight for socio-
logical analysis and calling for strengthening the links between sociological
imagination and literary intuition. Such limitations are dictated by the papers
assertion that works of fiction can be a source of hypotheses and ideas about
peoples experience and sense making practice that could be further worked
out by social sciences. This argument rests on the assumptions that imagina-
tion is central to sociologys task of grasping how human experiences can be
understood, shared and then communicated to others (Chernilo 2014:347)
and that literary intuition is a potential source of such imagination as litera-
ture fulfills basic human desire to express the enigma of subjective experi-
ence (Goodstein 2005:34). While understanding that literary insight cannot
be substitute for scientific research and while differentiating between qualita-
tive sociology and fiction, the paper discusses benefits of literary insight with
a special focus on the novel. The concern with the novel is connected with this
genres openness to sensitive issues, which is of the special value for sociology
interested in human experience, and also with the fact that in the digital age
the novels future is widely questioned, with many asking if screens of tablets
are designed for reading of Tolstoy and if reading of novels already is a thing of
the past (Baron 2015; Park 2014; Self 2014).
If imagination is paramount for sociologys intellectual significance and if
literary intuition is seen as one of the sources of such imagination, sociology,
to comprehend peoples experience and discover how people makes sense of
their experience, should try to take benefits of novelists visions. The appeal
of novels is connected with the fact that novels can say more, even about
the social realm, than many writings with scientific pretensions (Bourdieu
1996:32). This seduction can best be illustrated by a frequent observation that
some of the best sociology is in novels (Ruff 1974:368) and the appreciation
of the novel as a form of social inquiry (Tait 2014:38). With the complex-
ity being the essence of the novels spirit, as every novel says to the reader;

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[t]hings are not so simple as you think (Kundera 1988:18), scores of sociolo-
gists view literary fiction as a....way of making known that which one does
not wish to know (Bourdieu 1993:158) and appreciate novels for their ability
to address human experience and connected with it many complex, moral
and sensitive issues and human experience. Furthermore, the novel not only
reveals to us the complexity, the difficulty, and the interest of life in society,
so essential to our understanding of todays world, but it also best instructs us
in our human variety and contradiction (Trilling 1950:xx). As the novels duty
is to remove a magic curtain, woven of legends, hung before the world, or in
other words the veil of prejudices that blocks our view of reality, novelists,
by tearing this curtain of pre-interpretation faces the worlds ambiguity and
uncertainty (Kundera 2005:92), can help us grasp not only the complexity but
also and more hidden aspects of social reality.
Sociology can benefit from using novels not only because literature can
uncover the hidden aspects of reality and illuminate processes and features
of social life about which we have incomplete knowledge, but also because it
can shed lights on futuristic trends. The novel often discovers new things long
before any exploration of these topics by social science takes place, so literary
evidence often played the part of a pioneer who opens up new domains for
observation (Znaniecki 1968:196).
Literary themes frequently anticipate shifts in social values and attitude,
foresee some developments and changes of main principles and modes
(Trilling 1950). For example, as the first description of mass society, bureau-
cratization and industrialism can be found in the nineteenth century novels,
it can be said the artists vision lies behind such concepts as mass society,...
alienation, anomie... (Nisbet 1976:43).
To limit any questioning of the validity of the use of literature for sociologi-
cal purposes, we must be aware of the limits of the literary material and realize
that the novels is defined precisely by the fact that it does not say what it says
in the same way as the sociological reading does (Bourdieu 1996:32). Without
claiming that truth in fiction does not differ from genuine factual truth, truth
in the novel can be seen as to be like truth in all kinds of works of art, namely,
revelatory truth, aletheia (Heller 2011:89). Thus, in spite of the fact that con-
cedes that truth in the novel has a little to do with the real (Heller 2011:89),
a reflexive utilization of works of literature can assist sociology in its attempts
to deconstruct that more hidden, more profound reality. Therefore barring
entirely the use of literature for scientific purposes we would certainly deprive
ourselves of valuable sources of material (Znaniecki 1968:195). Any use of liter-
ature as a source of sociological information needs to avoid a conflict between
the radical rationalist who would like to make sociology independent of any

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data which are tainted with subjectivism and the intuitionist who stands for
the theoretic importance of a direct knowledge of reality, treats rationaliza-
tion as worthless abstract schematism (Znaniecki 1968:194). It can be argued
that by adopting a middle way in which text and society can be properly inter-
related (Hall 1979:29), it possible to see the manner in which the novel may
enable us to view social phenomena in a new light. Such a stand, which, while
asserting that literature does not provide objective knowledge about society
and recognizing that the novel is neither a reflection or mediation or mir-
ror of society, stresses the possibility of a more reflective utilization of works
of fiction in sociological investigations. It ensures that the view that novels
properly used, that is, as social referent rather than just a social reflector
(Hall 1979:38), can make sociology more sensitive to society has preserved
its validity.
Since in sociology the use of literary examples seems to be called upon espe-
cially in the moment of its crisis (Mills 1959), and since the current crisis of
empirical sociology is seen as the crisis of imagination caused by the fetish of
methods (Savage and Burrows 2007; Gane 2012), it can be suggested that now
is a good moment to talk about the restoration of the links between sociology
and literature. Furthermore, this idea is supported by a growing number of
signs that sociology is becoming more receptive to the resurrection of interest
in using literature. Moreover, the role of new social media and the fate of nov-
els in the digital age both bring to our attention a need to re-discuss the chang-
ing nature of this relationship between sociology and literature. This paper
aims therefore to develop an argument for re-opening a discussion about the
value of literary insight for social analyses. It however, also recognizes a need
for more and better sociology of literature as rescuing this now not so popu-
lar subfield could facilitate sociologists interest in making use of novels. Even
though the paper contains references to the sociology of literature as a socio-
logical subfield, its focus is not on the achievements or the status of this sub-
field but rather on the general use of novels in sociology, and particularly on
the import of the creativity and inventiveness implied in reading fiction into
our understanding of social reality. Since one way to differentiate between the
general use of literature in sociology and the sociology of literature is to pres-
ent the complexity and usefulness of sociologys relationships with literature,
our discussion will be placed within a broad historical perspective, with the
digital age being seen as a current moment of change that has reconfigured
the relation between sociology and literature.
The paper will start by presenting the ambivalence of sociologys links with
literature from the beginning of the discipline. This will be followed by analysis
of the main debate of the role of literary works in providing insights into the

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social world, which flourished in the 1960s and 1970 and declined by the next
decades. The next section will offer an examination of the impact of new tech-
nologies and new social media on the fate of the novel and its relationships
with sociology. Arguing that the background of the discussions of the relation
between literature and sociology is shaped by broader technological changes,
the paper will debate if the effects of digitalization can offer new opportuni-
ties for the revitalization of sociologys links with literature. In conclusion, the
validity of the use of literature for sociological purposes in the digital future
will be critically evaluated.

The Glory Years of Sociologys Relation with Literature

Sociology, which constituted itself as academic subject through emancipating

itself from literature (Lepenies 1985), has never stopped oscillating between an
aspiration for and rejection of literary input. The persistence of such ambiva-
lent feelings means that even today literature is seen by some sociologists as
a temptation that one should avoid and, simultaneously, an accomplishment
that one dreams of reaching (Dabaene 2014:xii). Moreover, through the nine-
teenth century literature and sociology contested with one another the claim
to offer the key orientation for modern civilization and to constitute the guide
to living appropriate to industrial society (Lepenies 1985:1). This competition
led to scores of novelists seeing themselves as elaborating a science of human
mores (Lepenies 1985:7) and many classical sociologists calling on novels to
illustrate modernitys unique features (Turner 2010). With many including
Marx, Engels and Beatrice Webb learning from and admiring Balzac,
Stendhal, Zola and Flauberts sociological novels (Fraser 2009:6381) and
with sociologys presentation of social life not much differently from motions
depicted in the literature, the distinction between sociology and literature was
not always very transparent.
With the boundaries being not so clear cut, sociology with literary aspira-
tions was seen as an art form. For example, Tocqueville, who in his writing
relied on artistic visions, viewed social theory as the art. His sociological
works were fundamentally artistic as they nourished...by precisely the same
kinds of creative imagination which are to be found in such areas as music,
painting, poetry, the novel, drama (Nisbet 1976:9). Similarly, Durkheim was
not only familiar with works of literature but he also knew how to employ
them for the sociological ends and even his works in quantitative sociology
(e.g., Suicide) are superb literary achievements (Lepenies 1985:87). Other classi-
cal sociologists, for example Weber (1978:5), whose notion of elective affinities

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comes from a literature work by Goethe with the same title, recognized the
importance of artistic intuition for understanding peoples minds.
The sociologys links with literature were also shaped by the long lasting bat-
tle between sociologists who dreamt of a highly sterilized, germ-proof system
of knowledge, kept in a cool dry place (Veblen in Coser 1972:xv) and sociolo-
gists whose ambitious was to address peoples feelings and emotions (Nisbet
1976). As this debate continued through many decades, and as the natural sci-
ence increased its successes, there was a growing aspiration to make sociology
to resemble the natural science. The push to become a discipline character-
ized by cold rationality, which seeks to comprehend the structures and laws of
motion of modern industrial society by means of measurement and compu-
tation (Lepenies 1985:13) undermined the sociologys image as a humanistic
discipline. However, it did not totally re-construct boundaries between science
and literature as debates of sociologys relationship with the novel not only did
not disappear, but they even intensified from the first decades of the twentieth
century.
These more direct discussions of the nature of literary mediation of reality
found their expression in Benjamins the idea of correspondence between
certain kinds of writing and other contemporary social and economic prac-
tices, Adornos rejection of the assumption of correspondence and Lukacss
more qualified acceptance of the superiority of realism (Williams 1981:5758).
In the post WWII period the literary debates focused around the reflection
theory, with exchanges between its three Marxist versions dominating the
field. The first strand of the reflection theory, the Marxist account of litera-
ture guided by the abstract and static formula of base and superstructure, was
confronted by the middle road perspective, which defined valuable literature
as that which reflects social reality, and its preferred method is realism, judg-
ing works of art by their fidelity to or illumination of otherwise observable
social reality (Williams 1981:55). The reflection theory was also challenged by
Lukacss inspired less rigid explanation of the relations between literature and
social reality. Lukacss totality approach while criticising the first stands too
basic view the relations between a work of art and social reality and arguing
that works of art should present a totality of meaning that is not alien to the life
of individuals (Jameson 1971) warned that the reflection of reality in the
novel may be either insufficient or deceptive. Thus, for example, what Balzac
did, according to Lukacs, was to depict the typical character of his type, while
enlarging them to dimensions so gigantic...that they never pertain to single
human beings, only social force (quoted in Sennett 1978:157). Lukacs rejected
the reflection theory as being too simplistic by arguing that the novel is not
appropriate form of epic writing for modernity as this form does not reflect

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a relation between human life and the objective social forms that constitute
mode (Lukacs [1916] 1971:59). The debates between three Marxist approaches
contributed to the development of the sociology of literature. Yet, the sociol-
ogy of literatures real chance to gain a high status and visibility did not come
until the 1970s, initially under influenced of European Marxist scholars and
later the English school, both of which put stress on the ability of literature to
offer the truth about society.
This successful and special time of the sociology of literature can be illus-
trated by the proliferation of various attempts to conceptualize the links
between literature and society, from Mikhail Bakhtins adequacy, Goldmanns
homology, Eagletons literary mood of production and Williamss attempt
to elude the casual relationship between infrastructure and superstructure
(Ferguson et al. 1988:427).
What it is interesting about the debate on the relevance of literary input for
enhancing our knowledge of the social world is that all its participants of the
debate agreed that only the first rate, great novels are worth consideration.
Within the literary field, Leavis insisted that it is the great novelists above
all who give us our social history (Filmer 1969:275). Works of literature are
great only if they enhance our awareness of the possibilities of life and show
concern with the interests of life (Leavis 1962:10). Similar to Leaviss view is
Goldmanns idea that we should be only interested in studying the greatest lit-
erature as such works of genius articulate world visions in the most of elabo-
rated and coherent way and their literary qualities, organizing categories and
structures give them their unity (Pincott 1970). Because in not so acclaimed or
inferior literature sociologists would not find the reflection of actual world
views, a full picture of peoples emotion and experience, sociology of literature
should not be not concerned with ordinary or popular literature (Goldmann,
in Williams 1971:13). Hence, it is not surprising that many sociologists tended
to drew only on the best works of fiction. For example, Coser (1972:xvi) in the
construction of his anthology Sociology through Literature, the edited collec-
tion of extracts from novels, argued that we should, appreciate a good novel-
ists imaginative power as [t]here is an intensity of perception in the first-rate
novelist when he describes a locale, a sequence of action, or clash of charac-
ters which can hardly be matched by those observers on whom sociologists
are usually wont to rely. Also several others twentieth century sociologists
searched for literary intuition in great novels, for example, Schutz (1964:136)
tried to learn from Don Quixotes adventures about ways in which we experi-
ence reality. Mills himself used novels to illustrate his sociological ideas and
concepts, for example, in The Power Elite (1956) he called on Kafka and Orwell

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and confessed that he was inspired by Balzac: I had read Balzac off and on
during the forties and was much taken with his self-appointed task of cover-
ing all the major classes and types in the society of the era he wished to make
his own (quoted in Eldridge 1983:80).
Following the intense discussion of the value of literature and the impact of
structuralism and post-structuralism as well as semiotics and deconstruction,
with Derrida arguing that writing is a form of communication in which the
meaning is always deferred and mediated and that language is not a device
for representing reality (Derrida, quoted in Rorty 1982:43), the vision of litera-
ture as the reflection of society came under attack. Both structuralists (who
concentrated on internal qualities of literature and argued that literature has
nothing to say about the larger society; Hall 1979:13), and deconstructivists
(who attempted to eliminate the author from the pages; Derrida 1988) called
for giving up the idea of language and literature as representing an external
reality. This request did further problematize the relation between fiction
and sociology. Although the social scientific study of literature continues to
enhance this subfield visibility, with many influential works produced in the
field of the history of the book and readings practice (for example, the works of
Darnton (2014), Howsam (2006), Chow (2004) and Chartiers (2008)), from the
late 1980s research in sociology of literature has been declining.

The Years of Questioning

Since the beginning of the 1990s the relevance of the sociology of literature
in terms of shedding lights on sociological problems and providing a cru-
cial complementary perspective for many areas of sociology has been ques-
tioned. As its competing paradigms and visions of literature came under
attack, the visibility and research agenda of the sociology of literature have
been transformed. From that time, with the growing recognition of the lim-
its of sociological reading of literature and with sociologys aspiration not to
be between literary and science but be rather scientific, the sociology of lit-
erature has stopped to be perceived as a field of much significance (Ferguson
et al. 1988). Additionally, the rise of private means of watching visual media
and their negative impact on the readership have also meant that research in
sociology of literature has been less central in the 1990s and early 2000s. The
growing skepticism of the value of fiction was also a result of sociologys inter-
nal developments, with its focus on research and methods advancement. All
these trends undermined the status and focus of the sociology of literature, and

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consequently they led to studies of literature as merely an object for sociology.

Sociologists and psychologists, together with scholars of literature, started to
develop the empirical study of literature as a cultural practice, including study-
ing work of fictions reception, their effects on readers, the production pro-
cess, the role of literary critics (Steen and Schram 2001). Alongside of research
on the reader-reception, the publishing industry, studies of collective repro-
duction of culture, mapping system of literary production, review, and ref-
erence, there were attempts to reconceptualize readers as creative agents,
while the author was deconstructed to oblivion (Griswold 1993:457 and 465).
Following the development of cultural studies and the impact of Bourdieus
ideas of cultural capital, the relationship between cultural consumption and
class, and his studies of the French literary field, the research agenda of the
sociology of literature was further transformed in the direction of studying
literary works as products of human action subjected to the ordinary treat-
ment of ordinary science (Bourdieu 1996:xv). Generally, in the last decades
the majority of sociologists did not show much interest in literature, the use
of fiction as a material for social analysis was not very common and not many
believed that sociology is an art form.
Yet, today things are changing as not only social scientists but also econo-
mists have started making use of artistic imagination and intuition, for exam-
ple, Thomas Pikettys (2014) in his popular book Capital in the Twenty-First
Century refers to Balzac and Jane Austen to illustrate his points. Of course, phi-
losophers always in their process of exploration of the possibilities of values
and reasons tend to look to art. For instance, Nussbaum (2013) assumes that
the art can help us to find out about a changing world and discover peoples
ethical concerns. More importantly, in sociology there is a growing support
of the argument that by exploring the literary perspective and embracing
power of the metaphor, this discipline could address really significant issues
(Turner 2010). To illustrate this new trend we can point to ongoing attempts
to rethink the boundaries of sociology and its relations to works of fiction
(Chong 2013, Santana-Acuna 2014; Rusu 2014) and new efforts to overcome
sociologys imaginative deficit by looking to genres that are otherwise ignored
in the discipline. For example, Sennetts (2009) vision of sociology as a form
of literature and Baumans (2008) reliance on metaphors are best known lit-
erary inspired ways of doing sociology. Also new sociological studies, such
as works by Boltanski (2014), Daly (2000), Harrington (2002), Fraser (2012) or
Heller (2011), Illouz (2014), Lahire (2003) and Ruggiero (2003), recognize the
explanatory power of literature in relation to some aspects of social life. For
instance, Lahire (2003:353) illustrates his main thesis that individuals are

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plural by drawing from Marcel Prousts novels which laid the groundwork for
a theory of the plurality of egos in every individual, while Ruggieros (2003)
Crime and Literature offers a close look at what literary fictions brings to our
understanding of crime and deviance. Additionally, the task of bringing the
humanities back into sociological inquiry by demonstrating the usefulness
of literature as a complement to scientific knowledge of human behaviour
has recently been undertaken by Edling and Rydgren (2011) in their edited
volume, Sociological Insights of Great Thinkers: Sociology Through Literature,
Philosophy, and Science. They, like Coser (1972) attempt to show the benefit
of using literature in sociology, while stressing that literary insight cannot be
substituted for scientific research. However, while Coser allowed the selected
literary texts to speak for themselves, Edling and Rydgrens (2011:8) volume is
a collection of commentaries extracting sociological analysis from great liter-
ary works which are seen as capable to shed light on aspects of social reality
about which sociologists have incomplete knowledge. Apart from a growing
number of sociologists relying on literary means, referring to works of fiction
and analyzing literature in search for ideas and concepts, there is a renewed
interest in the sociological study of literature (Chong 2013; Harrington 2002,
Moretti 2011) as well as in studies of the social conditions of literary produc-
tion, such as Lahire and Wells The Double Life of Writers, and the publishing
industry, for example, John Thompsons Merchants of Culture.
Todays re-emergence of debates of the relations between literature and
sociology can be seen as result of several factors. Among them, one of the
most important is the realization that sociology rests on inputs from a variety
of sources, including literature (Carter and Carter 2014). This comes with the
growing understanding that, even though attempts to invent theoretical con-
cepts or metaphors adequate to the task of relating literature to society have
been discredited, sociologys choice is not necessarily between scientific rigor
and literary insight. Such a recognition of the plurality of source increases the
probability of the acceptance of literary insight, without seeing it as replac-
ing scientific and analytical knowledge (Carlin 2010; Gane 2012). Also now,
as some sociologists argue for viewing literature as the most appropriate site
for the process of ethical theorizing (Dromi and Illouz 2010), the rediscovery
of the moral and ethical dimensions of literary texts brings social scientists
closer to literature. A similar support for the reduction of incompatibility of
literary and sociological perspectives has been enhanced by sociologys narra-
tive and cultural turns, while sociologists of emotion appreciate the literatures
ability to engage emotions of the reader. For instance, Abbotts (2007:70) lyrical
sociology, which looks at a social situation, feels its overpowering excitement

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and its deeply affecting human complexity, aims to stimulate and engage the
emotional imagination of the reader. For Abbott (2007:73), sociology should
be about communicating an emotional sense of reality with a help of single
image. Moreover, the sociologys renewed concern with literature can be seen
as a result of this disciplines continuous interest in analyzing peoples experi-
ences and interactions in order to provide a better explanation for their behav-
ior (Lahire 2003). Finally, contemporary sociologys fascination with stories,
inspired by attempts to capture details of peoples experiences and identities
(Polletta et al. 2011), and its attempts to address society as text (Brown 1987)
also bring back to our attention works of fiction as a way to overcome limita-
tions on the ability to observe social interaction and relations.
These new stands, without either understanding sociology to be between
literary and science or calling for the social sciences to take a literary turn,
reassert the importance of literature to sociology. While remembering that
[n]ovels are sociology to the extent that their authors make them (Runciman
1985:21, italics in original) and that the novel refuses to exist as illustration
of an historical era, as description of a society, as defense of an ideology,
and instead puts itself exclusively at the service of what only novel can say
(Kundera 2005:67), they suggest that sociology should not give up on seeking
ways in which literary input could enhance richness of its social analyses. These
new approaches, in contrast to the previously dominant concern with the
great literature, are interested in studying not only works of creative geniuses.
For instance, researchers interested in popular cultures focus on hard-core
romances (Illouz 2014) and popular fiction (Plamer 1991; Daly 2000). Moreover,
works of popular fiction are also analyzed by scholars interested in specific top-
ics, such a crime (Ruggiero 2003) or nationalism (Corse 1996). However, what
sociologists of literature from both periods have in common is a lack of inter-
ested in aesthetic considerations and they do not express aesthetic judgments
(Eastwood 2007:166). For example, Heller (2011:96) directly declares that her
judgments are not aesthetic, while Bourdieus reading Flauberts Sentimental
Education overlooks matters of aesthetics (Eastwood 2007:166).
The re-opening of debate of the links between sociology and literature is
also necessitated by the evolution of their relationships in the face the digita-
lization and hybridization of all artistic genres. A recent success of a television
series The Wire, which offers the best ethnography of contemporary American
society and inspires the sociological imagination by taking materials from the
social sciences, literature and journalism and presenting it in a compelling
fictional form (Penfold-Mounce et al. 2011:156), provides a good illustration of
challenges facing this relationship. The achievement of The Wire as a visual

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novel, by pointing to the fate of novels in the digital age and the role of the digi-
tal media as means of enriching sociological analyses, also brings to our atten-
tion the changing nature of sociologys links with artistic genres generally.

The Digital Era: New Challenges and Opportunities

The innovations of the digital age (which include both information communi-
cation technologies and modes of product dissemination) have had implica-
tions for the autonomy of the artist, how texts are disseminated for readers and
analysts, the decline of reading as cultural activity, and research activity. The
literary field is especially influenced by such new trends and developments as
digital technologies effect on the future of books, especially novels, the read-
ers expanded choices, the book publishing industrys re-orientation towards
a multimedia entrainment business, the status of libraries and the emergence
of self publishing business. Many trends in social science, such as the rise
in quantitative studies, the uses of vast quantitative data, digital databases,
automated data retrieval, which all point out to the arrival of the era of big
data with its digital overload of information, may also be perceived as signal-
izing the end of the social sciences need to reach for literary input. In other
words, the new developments could suggest that literature is no longer central
to our culture and that in the social sciences there is no scope for concern with
features of literary fiction.
Yet, although at the first sight todays literature and social science may
seem to be more incompatible than in the past, the effects of digitalization
could offer new opportunities for the revitalization of sociologys links with
literature. Moreover, if we remember not to conflate between qualitative
sociology and fiction and take into account other trends (for example, the
emergence of new methods to analyse the text and the development of lit-
erary digital collection or the success of visual novels), we can see that the
decline of centrality of fiction in the digital age is only shifting, not eroding,
the ground on which the relationship between literature and sociology
(whether qualitative or quantitative as both are inscribed in language) are
based. This means that literature and sociology continue to be involved in
negotiation of their boundaries, which are always ambiguous, flexible, histori-
cally changing, contextually variable, internally inconsistent and sometimes
dispute (Gieryn 1983:792). What is new in this boundary-work process is that
it takes place in the new cultural environment within which both disciplines
negotiate their definitions, evaluations, judgments and procedures (Chong

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2013). Hence, to comprehend the shifting bases of the relationship between

sociology and literature, a variety of boundary-work that happens in sociologi-
cal and literary fields should be analyzed in the context of changes taking place
in the digital age. In order to discuss what is new for the relationships between
sociology and literature in the digital age and how the changes in both fields,
independently or in combination, are changing the relationship between how
analysts think or use the novel, we need to acknowledge the challenges faced
by both sociology and literature in the digital age, especially the decline in the
validity of fiction as social texts and the nature of the current crisis in socio-
logical sensitivity. The recognition of complexity of the interrelationship and
implications of these changes for the sociology-literature link, while rooted in
the understanding that our engagement with culture has always been shaped
by technologies, avoids any kind of technological determinism.
Digital technologies engender new platforms for both novelists and social
scientists, thus the relationship between sociology and literature faces new
opportunities and challenges. The digital age opens a possibility for more
autonomy for the artist as distributor of the content and it offers more pos-
sibility to more interdisciplinary and digital scholarship concerns with culture
not limited by geographical boundaries.
One of those new trends positively affecting the relation between sociology
and literature is connected with the increase in the use of digital technologies
not only as a means of communication but also as new methods of study texts
which combine technological and scholarly imagination and expand the tra-
ditional objectives of studies in both social sciences and humanities. The sec-
ond more specific development that concerns us here refers to the emergence
of literary genres that drift at the one side of the spectrum in the space
in between mainstream literature (i.e., the novel) and nonfiction and at the
other side of the scale between fiction and science fiction.
The first trend, the spread of reliance on the digital means of communica-
tion, from emails to social media, brings to our attention consequences of the
development of new social media and use of digital instruments for research.
It is commonly agreed that this development affords unprecedented oppor-
tunities for the collection of both experimental and observational data on a
scale that is at once massive and microscopic (Golder and Macy 2014:131).
With people around the globe increasingly interacting with a help of digital
devices that provide detailed record of social interactions and daily activities
and offer new forms of participation in culture, sociology is presented with
an unique chance to overcome its limitations to observe social interactions.
The digitalization and the availability of Big Data have also an effect on social

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Sociological Imagination And Literary Intuition 313

science by shifting social research towards data driven research (Savage and
Burrows 2007) and, at the same time, by expanding its reach as, for example
now is possible to explore subjectivities which used to be the inner sanctum
where social sciences had to stop and dismount in order to shift to other, less
reliable vehicles (Latour 2007:2). Big Data offer new opportunities for social
research as the precise forces that mould our subjectivities and the precise
characters that furnish our imaginations are all open to inquiries by the social
sciences (Latour 2007:2). However, these data also raise some methodologi-
cal challenges, the range or scale of ethical and epistemological questions and
concerns about potential of empirical work of this type in terms of its capabil-
ity to explore meaning and explanation (Tinati et al. 2014; Lewis 2014).
The digitalization offers new potential for empirical work also for research-
ers in the literary field. As a result of the internet, which has brought us such
developments as Project Gutenberg and Google Book scanned books (a for-
profit book digitalization project undertaken by the Internet Archive and Hathi
Trust) and other technological advances, many researchers in humanities and
social science can more easily investigate not only language, style but also
novels plots and models of presentations of social relations. Within literary
studies the amount and the speed of this type of studies increased beyond all
expectations: today, we can replicate in a few minutes investigations that took
a giant like Leo Spitzer months and years of work (Moretti 2011:80). With the
growing interest in ebooks and with the increasing popularity of Kindle books,
we are offered new ways of carrying the contextual analyses of texts and new
methods to analyse the novel. Apart from the content analysis, the digital era
also offers tools to view and record readers reactions and to search whole texts
of work fictions available electronically in new, simplified and efficient ways.
For example, new methods led to the recent investigation of more than five
million novels which aimed to show that our ways of presenting the world are
conditioned by a given social and historical context (Bentley et al. 2014). This
investigation into use of mood words in the novels of the depression peri-
ods, from the 1920s until the recent financial crisis, discovered literary misery
and economic misery follow cycles (Bentley et al. 2014). The study found that
an increase in frequency of miserable language in the novels of the depres-
sion decades correlated to the economic misery of the respective previous
decade. This type of studies and the emergence of new centers devoted to digi-
tal textual studies contribute to the development of new investigative instru-
ments. By utilizing computational methods or digital technologies, scholars
specializing in text analysis and computational approaches to the study of
large text collections offer social scientists a chance to expand a scope of their

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314 Misztal

involvement and material to work with (http://nationalhumanitiescenter

.org/digital-humanities).
The initial use of digital methods to analyze literature focused on language
and style and did not go into the narratives themselves, where imagination
would be most inspired. While it has enhanced our understanding word recur-
rence or connections between certain concepts in a given corpus, it has not
contributed to the sociological imagination. The promise that now with the
rise of quantitative evidence...its probably going to be different, because
this time we have digital databases, and automated data retrieval (Moretti
2011:80) still awaits evaluation. Its realization depends on the nature of fur-
ther cooperation between digital humanities and social science, with new
methods and tools that scholars in both fields use to study work of fictions
or investigate social interactions serving as a platform for their new coopera-
tion. However the new opportunities also pose some challenges to sociologys
relation with literature. Generally, the growth of computational social science,
which reflects the growing recognition that these new tools can be used to
address fundamental puzzles of social science (Golder and Macy 2014:132),
can lower an motivation to search for literary inspirations. Yet, at the same
time the emergence of open file formats, such as EPUB, which allow books to
be read on any device (Kindle, laptops, tablets, mobile phones), means that
printed novels compete not just with e-books but also with email, social media
and gaming. Now, as the popularity all types of books rates below emails, news,
games, and social networks sites (Baron 2015), there is the growing number of
studies focusing on readers preferences, attention, fatigue and their percep-
tion of the difference between pages and screens (Mikics 2013). Apart from
the behavioural data, another source of information about the fate of reading
in the digital era comes from the increasing collection of statistics and infor-
mation about the popularity, the publication and sale trends of books (Jacobs
2011; Piper 2013).
With all these new facts and developments, the digital era for many means
the end of the novel as for younger generations blogging and vlogging on
YouTube, Instagram, Tumblr, Snapchat, Facebook, and other new social media
have become more important that reading great works of fiction. In this spirit,
a novelist Will Self (2014), states that with the advent of digital media literary
fiction is not anymore central to our culture. While the novel was the prince of
the art forms in the last century, now the novel is dead and this time its for
real (Self 2014). Of course, the number of people who read declines, with forty
per cent of the people in the US read one book or less in 2010 (Auletta 2010),
while the UK survey discovered that nearly a fifth of adults surveyed (18%) said

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Sociological Imagination And Literary Intuition 315

they never read physical books at all, and 45% prefer television (Flood 2014).
Furthermore, 56% said they believe the internet and computers will replace
books in the next 20 years and this figure rises to 64% among 18 to 30-year-olds
(Flood 2014). Moreover, the findings warn that 27% of all respondents (with
this proportion rising to 56% for 18 to 30-year-old respondents) preferred the
internet and social media to reading books (Flood 2014). However, the novel
has been declared to be on its death throe ever since its beginning and despite
the continuous pronouncements it seems to be able to evolve and persist. For
example, the global success of such works as Harry Potter series or Fifty Shades
of Grey suggests what even with the advent of social media, literary fiction, but
especially one with links to films, is still popular.
In the digital age we witness not only the decline but also change in type
of readership and the increased importance and reliance on images. As the
technological advances have made everybody to photographer, images, which
we use to tell stories, are now taking on the function a message/communica-
tion (Kelsey and Stimson 2008). As sending a picture through social media
slowly replaces a text or verbal communication, videos and photography also
become a means for construction of reality. With images being easy to con-
struct, manipulate and distribute, their creation more than ever hovers in
zone between fiction and fact. A clear indicator of these new trends is also
the emergence and popularity of visual novels and televisual, which all sug-
gest that the novel does not exist independently of the conditions in which
it is enjoyed (Park 2014) and as all digital media competing for people
attention the hardcover book and ebook need to be reimaged as multime-
dia entertainment (Auletta 2010). Moreover not only contemporary fiction is
adapting by reaching in the direction of visual novels but we also see the spread
of blogs novels (for example, Teju Coles work), Twitterfiction (for example,
works of Nick Belardes or David Mitchell). As these new types of writing go
even further in adjusting its content to the medium and creating bases for
dialogues and eliciting responses (Jamison 2014:19), social science has a lot of
material describing the world through the eyes of a particular individual.
Todays new importance of works of fiction for sociologists can be also dis-
cussed in terms of the potential of new genres combining fiction and non fic-
tion to inform sociological imagination. The new types of genre, indicative of
the decline of the separation between mainstream literature and science fic-
tion and the decline of the clear boundaries between fiction and non-fiction,
could make sociologists more confident in treating these books as a valid
source of representation of peoples experience. They also could offer social
researchers a new opportunity to build on works that are able to capture the

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316 Misztal

modern worlds complexity, fluidity, chaos and confusion in various creative

forms. With the growing popularity of these new genres, one overcoming the
boundaries between mainstream literature and science fiction and the other
increasing novels reliance on nonfiction, these two trends could reshape
the relationship between sociology and literature. In the context of an over-
all decline of readership, a special publishing boom is enjoyed by a genre
known as transrealism, that is, works of science-fiction and fantasy fictions
(Mullan 2014; Walters 2014).
The transrealist approach refers to writing novels that start with a detailed
and realistic depiction of reality, which as the plot develops- is shattered
by some science fiction type horrors or predictions of futuristic scenarios. By
weakening consensus reality with a help of futuristic ideas (for example,
aliens or flying saucers, ect.), transrealism aims for a very specific combina-
tion of the real and the fantastic, for a very specific purpose, that seems to
have become tremendously relevant for contemporary readers (Walter 2014).
As Margaret Atwood and Stephen Kings works illustrate it is an approach to
writing novels basically rooted in reality enriched by futuristic fantasies which
allows for explorations of social issues related to technological change and
unknown future. This literary genre not only offers some escapism and fan-
tastic plots but it also presents the psychological reality of a society being
profoundly disrupted by technology (Mullan 2014). Transrealism, while
employing metaphors of science fiction, also addresses today readers feelings
and anxieties (Walter 2014). Since this literary type explores, by drawing on
science fiction and referring to real events, social issues and peoples emotions
and views, sociologists find this genres speculative thoughts interesting for
discussing changes in the conditions of peoples experience and their views of
alternative futures. For instance, Lilley and Papadopolus (2014:981) assert that
Ursula le Guin, Samuel Delany and Philip K. Dicks works could be seen as a
hybrid of social science and science fiction as they deconstruct present social
order by creating alternative visions of society. Thus, social science fiction or
transrealism writings could be use in social science to interrogate the limits of
current social organization and social relations and experiment with creating
an immediate experience that allows other alternatives to be imagined as pos-
sible (Lilley and Papadopolus 2014:981).
Also the second popular genre, that is, one that combines fiction and non-
fiction, can re-vitalize sociologists interest in literary input. One of the best
recent example of this non-conventional novel is Karl Ove Knausgaards six-
volume work My Struggle. This successful combination of fiction and non-
fiction, or lightly fictionalized memoir, sold 450,000 copies in Norway alone,
one copy for every nine adults of the population (Brockes 2014). My Struggles

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Sociological Imagination And Literary Intuition 317

form is different from the serious fiction of the past. Although Knausgaards
work is categorized as a novel by its publishers, the author himself thinks
about his project as as a kind of experiment in realistic prose (Lerner 2014:21).
Others see it as an autobiography (Wood 2012) or as a document of life (Smith
2013), or view it as the detailed description of the authors childhood which is
like reality TV (Lerner 2014:21). Thus My Struggle, as the combination of fic-
tion and non-fiction, can offer sociologists eager to develop their understand-
ing peoples minds both an artistic intuition and access to an autobiographic
material.
Presently sociologists can build on works that bring new type of ideas and
thoughts to social science research. For social researchers the fact that the
technology of the printed novel is replaced by the digitalized provisions and
that every move in the virtual world leaves behind traces, means that inner
workings of private worlds have been pried open (Latour 2007:2). In the digital
era social scholars could focus on new artistic genres able to capture the mod-
ern worlds complexity, fluidity, chaos and confusion in various creative forms.
With the boundaries between mainstream literature and science fiction, fic-
tion and non-fiction, between novels and visual novels becoming more flexible
and not so clear cut, these new genres could offer social scientists escape from
debates over the uniqueness of science among knowledge producing activi-
ties. The difference between the novel of the past and works of fiction written
in the digital, speeding, connected, globalized networked society is itself a sig-
nificant social theme. With the ebook increasing its share of the market and
with people attention being fragmented and divided between various digital
media, the centrality of the novel will continue to be questioned, while its form
and shape will persist to evolve. Although these developments challenge soci-
ologys relationship with literature, however, they do not weaken our argument
in favor of brining literary intuition to sociological imagination. Sociology still
can take advantage of literary insights as the scaling down of the novels sta-
tus does not necessarily undermine this literary genres ability to explore the
diversity and complexity and hidden aspects of social reality and as the new
methods can facilitate exchanges between sociology and literature.

Conclusion: The Value of the Novel for Sociology

Literature can enrich sociological investigation by suggesting ideas and

hypothesis to be further developed and tested by social scientists. It can serve
as an alternative vehicle of the expansion of sociologys understanding of peo-
ples search for meaning. Taking into account current sociologys attempts to

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318 Misztal

recover the power of its generalizing narratives (Savage 2010), we may appre-
ciate the role literature as a medium of sociological thinking (Harrington
2002:59, italics in original). Todays re-emergence of calls for a consideration of
literatures unique and distinctive contribution to our understanding of some
aspects of societal life in general and to the reaction of individuals to their
society in particular are indicative of the fact that for some the novel still mat-
ters (Bauman 2008; Boltanski 2014; Harrington 2002; Sennett 2009).
Without insisting that without relaying on literary insight sociologists are
blind to the fullness of a societys life (Hoggart 1970:20), it can be argued
that the value of novels for sociological investigation is connected with liter-
ary works ability to invigorate sociological imagination by penetrating and
dramatizing their insights by means of a unique relationship with language
and form (Mills 1959; Hoggart 1970; Nisbet 1975; Coser 1972). The significance
of the relevance of works of fiction for sociology is connected with its abil-
ity to identify the wide ranges of experience and with the fact that the liter-
ary imagination can enhance our understanding of human potentialities and
moral judgments. The novel as the art form which extends our experience
and makes to reflect and feel about what might otherwise be too distant for
feeling (Nussbaum 1992:47), can help to grasp the experience that is deeper,
broader and sharper, less confined and less parochial (Hall 1979). Literature
can benefit sociology because its ideas and images often anticipate many soci-
ological theories and observations and therefore can be of the great service
for hypothesis and provisional orientations. Moreover, the novel not only can
shed lights on subjective experience and new trends but it can also enrich our
capacities of moral discrimination. Expanding Nussbaums (2013) advice for
philosophers and lawyers, we can say that sociologists too should read fiction
to cultivate their imaginative and moral capabilities as well as to improve their
sense of perspective.
The digital era provides a context that is likely to be challenging to
sociologys relationship with literature over the coming decades. The effect
of the digital overload of information on social sciences as well as the digital
and global contexts impact on the novels hybridization demand rethinking
sociologys links with literature. While maybe the future of sociology is deter-
mined by its alliances with computational sciences (Tinati et al. 2014), this,
nevertheless, should not prevent sociologists studying the issues of subjec-
tivity from reaching beyond disciplinary boundaries. Although in the digital
age, both sociology and the novel are faced with challenges, it can be noted
that there are several reasons why sociologists should be interested in ensur-
ing input from works of fiction and other artistic genres, such as visual novels
or televisual novels. The digitalization presents opportunities for sociologys
links with literature as it provides a chance to bring them closer to each other

comparative sociology 15 (2016) 300-323

Sociological Imagination And Literary Intuition 319

by offering new methods and instruments for new types of investigation. Also
the rise of the visual culture, the impact of technologies on ways and methods
of participation in culture, from blogging to the rise of self-publishing, as well
as the emergence of new digital methods of studying tests and readership all
can make todays literature and social science more compatible than in the
past. The literary inspired way of doing sociology, which by responding to
the new global and digital context takes advantage of the opportunities
provided by the e-revolution, maybe is one of ways forward for social science
today. The papers consideration of digital platforms which enables different
forms of fictions and different forms of sociology, raises many issues for further
discussion. Such questions as whether using computational sociology for the
study of literature can be beneficial or undermine the importance of imagina-
tion, what are the specific merits of the digital age in enhancing or obscur-
ing the sociological imagination, can be only answered thorough engagement
with existing work in digital humanities and sociology.

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