Welcome to Methods Lab, Department of Sociology
But you may ask, how do ideas come? How is the imagination spurred to put all the images and facts together, to make images relevant and lend meaning to facts? All I can do is talk about the general conditions and a few simple techniques which seemed to increase my chances to come out with something.
C. Wright Mills The Sociological Imagination
Goldsmiths Sociology is committed to developing inventive ways of doing sociology. This new initiative aims at constructing a laboratory for the practice of sociological imagination. The aim is to make social research responsive to social life, to bring it alive. As C. Wright Mills alludes above ideas are often elusive and they don't announce their arrival in advance. This initiative hopes to build a laboratory to stimulate creative debate about the ways in which the practice of sociology is changing, what social research should look like today, and how sociology can best respond to the demands of users of social research.
Methods Lab Latest News
Engaging Tactics Stream @ The British Sociological Association Annual Conference !
Location: BSA Annual Conference, Grand Connaught Room, London.
Time: Wed 3rd April
- 16.30-18.00: Live Sociology//Engaging Tactics (w/ Noortje Marres, Nrimal Puwar, Alison Rooke and Michael Guggenheim).
- All Day: Revealing Secrets//Engaging Tactics (with interventions and screening by: Tansy Spinks, Madli Maruste, Kata Halasz)
With Support from the Methods Lab!
Click on the image to find out more!
Janis Jefferies - Crocheted Strategies: Out of the archive women crafting their own communities.
Location: 142, Richard Hoggart Building
Time: 14 March 2013, 17:00 - 19:00
This presentation explores the relevance of Su Richardson's methods of making in the context of the recent resurgence in craft particularly amongst the indie crafters. Janis Jefferies
Upcoming Events
More events coming soon, please check back regularly.
News and Events
New Publication 'Live Methods' edited by Les Back and Nirmal Puwar - click HERE for more details.
Past Events
NEW PODCAST: Veena Das' Postgraduate Masterclass (Fri 22nd February 2012). You can listen to the podcast here!
A video recording of her Annual Methods Lab Lecture is on it's way!
About the Methods Lab
The danger that every researcher faces is that the process of analysis and investigation can inadvertently execute that which is vibrant in his or her object. Here the sociologist becomes like a coroner who presides over social life as if it is a lifeless corpse fit only for autopsy. We are arguing for a vital sociology that both connects to the social world, yet at the same time aspires to forms of sociological representation that are in themselves alive. This is the challenge of putting images and facts together, a compound of imagination and craft that will contribute to the development of social theory while opening out to an engagement with society at large.
The Lab is intended to provide a space for us to question and develop our own methods of sociological reasoning, to be open to the possibilities of practicing a sociological imagination in a world in which the fundamental co-ordinates of social life are held to be undergoing change.
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