About the Sociology Methods Lab

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.

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.

The context

Goldsmiths Sociology has a long history of expertise in developing research methods and teaching social research. Professor David Silverman developed rigorous postgraduate training in qualitative social research during the 1980s and 1990s and published extensively in these fields. This work was developed further by Professor Clive Seale who established the MA programme in Social Research which built up training in quantitative research alongside qualitative research. This MA course is recognised by the Economic and Social Research Council for the research training of future generations of social researchers.

In the Department now there is a team of sociologists who are innovators in social research. Expertise includes: ethnography, visual sociology, biography, network analysis, the use of new media as research tools? Goldsmiths Sociology benefits from the general liberal arts nature of the College. There are strong interdisciplinary connections with fine art, media and communications, social anthropology, design, music and cultural studies. Partly as a result of this researchers are working in interdisciplinary ways and at the same time developing distinctive sociological methods. The possibility of methodological innovation results from the department's participation in the College's unique intellectual culture. Examples of this creative fusion can be found in the work on visual sociology and in particular the uses of photography and new media. There are also developments in social research that operate within a democracy of the senses and which look at cultures of sound and the embodied realm of social experience.

The initiatives

• Create a Virtual Home for the Methods Lab

In the first instance the Methods Lab would be a virtual environment for the discussion of research and critical practice. Learn.gold could be host to this space. Here we could include links to interesting methodological innovations like ESRC National Centre for Research Methods of Surrey's INCITE programme. Also, we could have a space in which we share ideas, early drafts of research papers, discussion forums or research networks. In time, this might provide a base from which to build links with industry, public bodies and other users of social research.

• Critical Practice and the Legacy of Pierre Bourdieu

A number of staff are interested in the idea of critical practice drawing particularly on the legacy of Pierre Bourdieu. We could develop an idea for a seminar series and the hosting of Bourdieu's Algerian photographs. The exhibit itself was an exploration of the practice of sociology both methodologically and politically.

• New Media and Sociological Practice

This project would aim at opening up a discussion around the opportunities that visual media and digital media offer social researchers. Part of this idea led to an application to the ESRC for funding to run a short course entitled ‘Live Sociology’, to be open to social researchers both inside and outside the academy (the proposal is included at the end of this short paper).

• Critical Ethnography Seminar

This is an idea for a cluster around the contemporary practice of ethnography. It would link to the seminar being run by Mitch Duneier at the University Princeton, NJ. It would be an opportunity to profile the approaches to contemporary ethnography at Goldsmiths and also an opportunity to develop an international link.

• (Re)Creating: Methodologies, Practices and Concepts. New Scholars Symposium

A symposium to be held in September 2005 currently being organised by a group of our PhD students, with funding from the ESRC and the Department.

• Inventive Methods: Directions in Social Science Methodology

This is a plan to produce an edited collection on new directions in social science methodology. It could be linked to the second term of the proposed MA in Geo-Sociology, and/or to a workshop in which contributors present preliminary versions of their papers. Celia Lury has begun some discussions with Sage.

• Sociology Public Lecture in Methods

The intention is to invite at least one person a year to speak on methods as part of our Sociology Public Lecture series.

Les Back

‘Live Sociology’: Application made to the ESRC, April 2005 (PDF format)