Abstract
The Writing in the Disciplines approach encourages writing instruction in specific majors so that students learn the writing conventions of their discipline. As writing instructors, however, the role of the sociologist is problematic. Not only has standard sociological writing been jargon laden, it has privileged a clinical style of writing. Thus, we ask whether learning sociology also means learning how to write poorly or at least narrowly. Drawing from narrative sociology, we suggest that mainstream sociological writing should be viewed as a writing genre—one of many genres that students, and sociologists themselves, can choose from. Framing sociologists as both truth tellers and storytellers, we invite sociology instructors to consider at least three alternative genres for assignment in the classroom: life stories, fiction stories, and visual stories. Finally, we offer C. Wright Mills as a model for how to think like a sociologist while still writing well.
Keywords
This article focuses on a persistent question in the teaching of sociology: how should we approach writing instruction in the undergraduate sociology classroom? 1 This question has generated considerable attention in this journal, most recently a 2013 special issue on writing instruction (Teaching Sociology volume 41, issue 1). Most of that attention, however, has focused on particular techniques and assignments, and not on larger questions of the state of sociological writing. If sociology instructors assign writing, which it appears most of us do (Grauerholz, Eisele, and Stark 2013), we instructors expect, or at least yearn for, good writing from our students. But, with notable exceptions, most sociologists themselves do not write very well. Indeed, for decades, sociologists have bemoaned the state of sociological writing (e.g., Mills [1959] 2000; Reed 1989). The conclusion of many scholars is that we have learned to write without much clarity and with considerable detachment because we want to establish ourselves as legitimate social scientists (Mills [1959] 2000; Reed 1989; Richardson 2000). This tendency makes our role as the bearers of disciplinary standards quite problematic. If our task is to teach students how to write like a sociologist, are we destined to teach our students to write poorly?
In this article, we will delve into this question by considering how the current state of sociological writing came to be, and how it came to be expected in the sociological classroom. We will begin by discussing the Writing in the Disciplines (WID) movement, which encourages sociology instructors (and instructors in other disciplines) to consider writing instruction alongside their teaching of disciplinary thought. WID allows students to synthesize field-specific ideas and learn disciplinary conventions. Hence, the task of the sociology instructor is to socialize students into disciplinary ways of thinking and writing. The second part of the article examines how the scientific mode of thought came to dominate sociology, marginalizing more narrative and interpretive approaches. As such, mathematical and scientific ways of writing and reasoning came to be seen as the most, if not the only, legitimate way of doing sociology. In the 1980s, a group of sociologists, inspired by the narrative turn in other disciplines, began questioning the hegemony of scientific reasoning and the detached style of sociological writing. In their view, sociologists were not just scientists; they were storytellers who used different writing genres to speak their truth about the social world.
In the third part of this article, we use these insights to suggest a new way of approaching writing instruction in the classroom. Recognizing that science is just one language through which we narrate sociological stories, we ask the reader to consider introducing other writing genres to undergraduate sociology students, namely, life stories, fiction stories, and visual stories. In so doing, students might learn that there is not one way to narrate a story and not one way to do sociology. In the conclusion of the article, we turn to C. Wright Mills, who demonstrates how to write sociology clearly without the scientific posturing with which the field has been so preoccupied. In short, he guides the aspiring sociologist to become a kind of renegade sociological storyteller—one who knows the disciplinary rules of the game but also when to break them.
Writing in the Discipline of Sociology
When the first author began thinking about writing instruction in sociology, she joined a WID group on campus that was led by the second author, who also directs the Student Writing Center at University of the Pacific. The terrain of writing pedagogy was new and exciting for the first author but also littered with acronyms that confused rather than clarified how she might approach writing instruction in the classroom. Mastering the acronyms, and hence the approaches to college writing, helped the first author define (and later question) how we teach writing in the discipline of sociology. Thus, before tackling the writing conventions of sociologists and the teaching of these conventions to students of sociology, we begin with some background on the movements informing writing instruction at the university level and the WID movement in particular.
The WID approach has its roots in the Writing across the Curriculum (WAC) movement, which surfaced in the 1970s and is still very much in vogue today. WAC recognizes that writing is not simply a method of communication or a technical skill but a “mode of learning” (Emig 1977). That is, writing plays a central role in helping students to process, understand, and evaluate ideas (Herrington 1981). Because writing is understood by WAC to be central to learning, a key premise of the movement is that writing should not be limited to first-year composition classes and that it should occur across the curriculum and beyond the first year of college. 2 WAC, or the “writing to learn” movement, is closely connected to two other approaches to college writing, namely, “writing to engage” and “writing to communicate” (also known as WID). Writing to engage understands writing as a means to develop critical thinking skills, whereas WID views writing as a means to communicate within the conventions of a particular discipline. Mapping these approaches onto Bloom’s taxonomy, the WAC Clearinghouse associates writing to learn (WAC) with remembering and understanding; writing to engage with applying and analyzing; and writing to communicate (WID) with creating and evaluating (Kiefer et al. 2000–2018).
Because each approach to college writing is related to different types of learning, the kinds of assignments associated with each approach vary (see Table 1). Typical assignments associated with the writing-to-learn approach might be reading journals or writing one-minute papers, which offers students time and space to work through course material (Karcher 1988). These are not the kinds of formal writing assignments that demand that students produce a polished piece of writing. Rather, they are low-stakes writing assignments that help students grapple with basic concepts and ideas. Writing to engage might include more focused writing assignments, such as reflection papers and critiques. Given that WID is about teaching disciplinary conventions, WID-related writing assignments vary by discipline. They may include lab reports, case studies, literature reviews, or research proposals. Regardless of format, these assignments are intended to help students grapple with disciplinary thought as well as disciplinary language and writing conventions.
Characteristics of College Writing Approaches.
Source: WAC Clearinghouse (Keifer et al. 2000–2018).
Theoretically, writing in the sociology classroom might involve all three approaches to writing instruction. An in-class writing prompt in Introduction to Sociology, for example, might help students work through the idea of racial formation, which would typify the writing-to-learn or WAC approach. Other writing-to-learn assignments that have been documented in Teaching Sociology include focused free writing (Coker and Scarboro 1990; Hylton and Allen 1993; Kaufman 2013), informal writing (Hudd, Smart, and Delohery 2011), and journal writing (Hylton and Allen 1993; Karcher 1988; Picca, Starks, and Gunderson 2013). For the writing-to-engage approach, a sociology instructor might assign a formal response paper to a reading assignment to help students hone their reading comprehension and ready them for serious in-class discussions. Examples of writing to engage in Teaching Sociology typically come from writing-intensive courses (Grauerholz 1999). Finally, a research proposal might help introduce students to the language, style, and format typical of sociological writing. This assignment would fall into the WID camp to the extent that its purpose is to familiarize students with disciplinary conventions. In another example, Coker and Scarboro (1990) discuss a Sociology of Religion course wherein students are asked to attend a religious event and write up field notes of their observations, mimicking the kind of writing that researchers do in the field.
Of the three approaches to writing in the sociology classroom, we are concerned with the last approach. Not only does the WID approach reflect disciplinary ways of thinking and writing, but it also reflects the institutional priorities of the discipline. Articles in Teaching Sociology emphasize the crucial role of sociology instructors as “socializing agents,” teaching students how to think and write like a sociologist. According to Hudd, Sardi, and Lopriore (2013:33–34), for example, sociology instructors should help students “recognize and then replicate disciplinary discourse conventions” and offer them “guidance on the style and forms of writing that are most commonly used in the discipline.” Likewise, Anderson and Holt (1990:183) argue, “When we relegate [the responsibility for teaching writing] to English departments, we lose the opportunity to socialize students into sociological writing.” These ideas echo the American Sociological Association (2005:62), which identifies learning to “write in an appropriate social science style” as a key disciplinary objective. But what exactly does it mean to write like a sociologist?
On a conceptual level, writing like a sociologist demands “a deeper contemplation of invisible systems” (Hudd et al. 2013:36), or the invisible social forces that influence people’s life choices and life chances. On a rhetorical level, it demands a writing format and style that is conventional to the discipline. Most sociologists write academic books, journal articles, and research reports. Thus, it is not uncommon for sociology instructors to assign literature reviews, annotated bibliographies, and research papers, which mimic the look and feel of academic writing (Hudd et al. 2013:40). Each of these assignments is an example of transactional writing, which requires that students synthesize, evaluate, and analyze (Britton 1978; Grauerholz 1999).
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Transactional writing is characteristically detached from its subject matter and devoid of emotional reasoning (Grauerholz et al. 2013:48). It can also be downright stodgy and decidedly obtuse, which is why sociologists are often criticized for not writing very well. C. Wright Mills ([1959] 2000:217) offers perhaps the strongest (and most famous) critique in this regard: As you may have noticed, turgid and polysyllabic prose does seem to prevail in the social sciences. I suppose those who use it believe they are imitating “physical science,” and are not aware that much of that prose is not altogether necessary. It has in fact been said with authority that there is a “serious crisis in literacy”—a crisis in which social scientists are very much involved.
The complaints of sociological writing did not end with Mills. A 1987 editorial in the Journal of Health and Social Behavior bemoaned the manuscripts coming into the journal, observing that much of the writing in them was “verbose, jargon-laden and harder to understand than its intrinsic content requires” (Journal of Health and Social Behavior 1987:vi). “Few disciplines,” note Anderson and Holt (1990:179), “have been so frequently lampooned for their prose.”
According to Reed (1989:4), the causes of poor writing in sociology are varied and include “not knowing how to communicate clearly” and simply being indifferent and “not taking pains.” He also suggests that sociologists are not rewarded for good writing, a claim echoed by Becker (1986:72), who notes, “Editors and professors reject papers that use statistics incorrectly, but only sigh over those badly written.” But by far the most troublesome cause, one that has been suggested by Mills ([1959] 2000), Reed (1989), and Becker (1986) alike, is that sociologists want to show that they are credible social scientists. Thus, “a clotted, ponderous, stereotyped style is a rhetorical device, a badge meant to signal that one is an initiate, entitled to speak with authority” (Reed 1989:5–6). Or, as Becker (1986:34) explains, “If we write in a classy way, then, we show that we are generally smarter than ordinary people, have finer sensibilities, understand things they don’t, and thus should be believed.” (We will turn to Mills’ thoughts in this regard later in this article.)
The idea of adopting a particular writing style to prove one’s belonging in a sociological community is critical to our discussion of sociology students, whom we have already observed as undergoing a process of socialization in the sociology classroom. If jargon-laden writing and “polysyllabic prose” are key markers of the sociological initiate, we might be equating good sociology with poor writing (hence the title of Michael Billig’s [2013] book Learn to Write Badly: How to Succeed in the Social Sciences). Indeed, Roberts (1993:320) suggests that sociology instructors are often appalled by their students’ writing precisely because students are trying to mimic us! How do we socialize students into the discipline of sociology, then, when its writing conventions are so problematic? We suggest that a focus on good sociological storytelling might offer a way out of this conundrum. For this, we turn to another intellectual movement that acknowledged the importance of narrative to the discipline.
The Sociologist as Storyteller
As the 1970s WAC movement blossomed, another intellectual movement was underfoot that has relevance for our discussion. By 1980, many academic disciplines had taken a narrative turn, which questioned scholarly ways of knowing and various methods of representation. Critiques of scientific authority and experiments in new modes of writing emerged as a result. Narrative scholarship had a decidedly postmodern bent, asserting that there was no “true” representation of reality. As Orbuch (1997:466) explains, “For narrative scholars, there is no ‘real’ event. . . . Instead, narratives are ‘real’ events as presented, and narrative analysis pays special attention to the form, coherence, and structure of these stories.” Science was, in this sense, just one way of constructing and telling a story about the world. In this intellectual milieu, narrative sociology emerged, borrowing heavily from the discipline’s symbolic interactionist and feminist traditions. 4 Narrative sociology called into question the conventions of scientific reasoning and writing in sociology, offering alternative analytic frameworks and narrative formats for representing the social world.
According to narrative sociologists, mainstream sociologists write in the scientific tradition in order to claim legitimacy or authority. As societies modernized, the state and social institutions came to view quantification and the language of science and mathematics as the most authoritative voice. In this process, stories were delegitimized, “viewed as imprecise, ambiguous, evocative, and metaphorical” (Maines 1993:19). Here, in the rationalization of Western culture and the rise of modern disciplines, we see the sharp demarcation between the social sciences and the humanities. It was not simply that these lines were drawn. A kind of hierarchy developed with the natural sciences on top, the social sciences in the middle, and the humanities on the bottom. In the words of Richardson (2000:925), “Fiction was ‘false’ because it invented reality, unlike science, which was ‘true’ because it purportedly ‘reported’ ‘objective’ reality in an unambiguous sense.” In short, the more logical, scientific, and mathematical the writing, the more credible, authoritative, and esteemed it could claim to be. Hence, in his 1935 article in the American Journal of Sociology, Read Bain asserted that “the only certainties transcending common sense in sociology . . . are statistical in nature. The degree to which such methodology can be applied to social data will determine whether sociology is to become a natural science or remain forever a bastard discipline” (p. 486).
Jerome Bruner’s (1986) distinction between narrative and logico-scientific modes of thought is useful here. According to Bruner, the logico-scientific mode of thought is rooted in verifiable truth and formal rules of inquiry to produce consistent results. In contrast, the narrative mode of thought “consists of believable stories or accounts and focuses on action, agency and consciousness, which are processed by a story structure” (Maines 1993:28). As the discipline developed, sociology embraced the logico-scientific mode of thought over the narrative. Maines (1993) argues that this was not always the case and points to Thomas and Znaniecki’s (1918–20) The Polish Peasant in Europe and America as an example of a time when the discipline once held narrative data in higher esteem. The use of narrative data was delegitimized in the 1930s, however, as the discipline tried to assert itself as a social science. After that time, the discipline adopted a particular way of thinking and writing that was grounded in numerical reasoning and positivist logic.
We can view the numerical reasoning that sociologists came to favor not simply as a particular way of thinking but also as a literary device or rhetorical choice. Historically, of course, scientific writing was seen as distinct from rhetoric. Gusfield (1976) points to the “windowpane theory,” which held that scientific writing was just about representing the world as it was, as if seen through a clear windowpane. Rhetorical devices, in contrast, were seen as belonging to the world of politics, advertising, and literature. But scholars came to question the distinction between research and rhetoric, exposing scientific writing as a kind of literary genre with its own rhetorical conventions. In the words of Gusfield (1976:17), To be scientific is to exercise a definite form over the language in use, to write in a particular way, which shows the audience that the writer is “doing science.” The writer must persuade the audience that the results of the research are not literature, are not a production of the style of presentation. The style of non-style is itself the style of science. There is a literary art involved in scientific presentation.
To write scientifically was (and is) to write for peer-reviewed journals, to highlight methods and data, to document institutional affiliation and credentials, and to adopt a clinical and detached tone. Describing the tone of the social scientist, Gusfield (1976:21) writes, “His [sic] language must not be ‘interesting,’ his descriptions colorful or his words a clue to any emotion which might be aroused in the audience. . . . The language is flat, prosaic and descriptive without imagery.” Gusfield also emphasizes how social scientists write passively, taking themselves out of the text in ways that make invisible how their own biases and choices influence research. And this is not simply in studies of a quantitative design; it also occurs in qualitative writing. As Richardson (2000:928) notes, ethnographers historically have used third-person voice to distinguish their studies from travelers’ and missionaries’ reports. The authors exist only for a brief moment in the preface of the study to establish their “‘I am a researcher’ credentials” (Richardson 2000:928). Acknowledging the rhetoric of science, argues Gusfield (1976:31), does not render science “corrupt and useless.” It simply recognizes that science frames and represents the world in a particular way, and this “interpretation involves theater—it involves a performance” (Gusfield 1976:32).
Sociologists, then, are not simply truth tellers, devoid of personal, methodological, and rhetorical standpoints. Narrative sociology views sociologists more as storytellers, as “spinners of professional tales that we call theories,” and as “practitioners who are skilled at arranging narrative elements into what we call journal articles and research reports” (Maines 1993:32). And if journal articles and research reports are but one way of telling a story, they may not be the only form the sociological story can take. An approach to sociology grounded in the narrative rather than the logico-scientific tradition might look like some subgenres of ethnography or life history, which depart from the hypothesis-driven and theory-building orientation of mainstream sociology (Maines 1993:34). The narrative approach holds that the scientific and narrative modes of thought are equally valid. That is, both are “‘rational’ ways of making meaning” (Richardson 1990:118) and an “interpretive process, which differ only in how those processes are formatted” (Maines 1993:28). Richardson (2000:927–28) admits that the scientific conventions of sociological writing “hold tremendous material and symbolic power over social scientists,” increasing the “probability of one’s work being accepted into ‘core’ social science journals.” But, she continues, “they are not prima facie evidence of greater—or lesser—truth value or significance than social science writing using other conventions” (Richardson 200:928).
If the scientific and narrative modes of thought are equally valid, they are also equally suspect. Both are just as good, but neither can fully capture the truth. For this reason, Maines (1993) argues that sociology can only be a science of interpretation. Indeed, one of the values of the narrative turn in sociology is that it exposes how knowledge gets constructed. It peels back the curtain on scientific production to show that everything is just an interpretation, a representation, a story. Some narrative sociologists take this to the extreme, arguing that there is no objective reality—just different ways of representing reality. Like Reed (1989:9), who describes himself as “just an old, country positivist,” we would like “to stop well short of that.” One does not have to be a postmodernist to appreciate what narrative sociology can teach us, which is that there are many ways of figuring out the story and many ways of telling it. In any event, an emphasis on storytelling might help orient our students to the fact that even the most advanced statistical pieces published in the American Journal of Sociology are just “stories” that we tell about the world. And those stories might take other forms.
The Stories We Tell
If sociologists are storytellers who are theoretically and rhetorically equipped to tell different kinds of stories about the social world, what other writing styles and formats might we explore? To put this more directly, if we are not constrained to writing research reports and using a detached, clinical style of writing, what other kinds of writing might we ask of ourselves and of our students? Richardson (2000:929) gives us some ideas that fall under what she calls “creative analytic practices.” As opposed to expressive and transactional writing, these practices would constitute a form of writing that Britton (1978) calls poetic writing, which engages both creative and analytic modes of thought. Grauerholz (1999) argues that poetic writing may be even more beneficial for developing a sociological imagination than transactional writing because it requires that students connect the personal and the social, and that they develop a more empathetic and culturally aware stance. Yet in their analysis of what types of writing are assigned in the sociology classroom, Grauerholz et al. (2013) found that less than 1 percent focused on creative writing. Below, we provide an overview of three alternative writing formats that might develop students’ analytic and creative abilities. Then, we suggest how these formats provide sociology instructors the opportunity to engage students in open dialogue about how to write and how to do sociology.
Life Stories
Having students write life stories, in which they sociologically analyze pieces of their biography, has a counterpart in the sociological literature, namely, autoethnography. Autoethnography is defined by Ellis, Adams, and Bochner (2011) as “an approach to research and writing that seeks to describe and systematically analyze (graphy) personal experience (auto) in order to understand cultural experience (ethno)” (para. 1). 5 Autoethnographies are equal mix autobiography and ethnography but are distinct from both to the extent that they reflect systematically and analytically on some autobiographical experience. Autoethnographies have oft been associated with postmodern approaches to sociology. But as Anderson (2006) argues, autoethnographies need not forsake theory-building and knowledge claims. Indeed, elements of this genre have a long history in the discipline. In the Chicago School of Sociology, for example, many ethnographers studied cultural settings and workplaces of which they were members, though they rarely featured themselves in their texts (Anderson 2006). Given this history and the possibilities for this genre, Anderson distinguishes between “evocative” and “analytic” autoethnography. The former rejects the traditional objective of developing theoretical insight, instead focusing solely on developing an emotional experience for the reader. Analytic autoethnography, in contrast, is committed to analyzing and theorizing about social phenomena, using one’s personal experience as a point of departure.
Autoethnographies are rarely assigned as texts in the sociology classroom. But Teaching Sociology documents many instances of using some rendition of the autoethnography as a writing assignment (Adams 1986; Cook 2014; Ingram 1979; Kebede 2009; Nichols 2004; Powers 1998; Ribbens 1993; Riedmann 1991; Stephenson, Stirling, and Wray 2015; Stoddart 1991). Though the authors do not always refer to these writing assignments as autoethnographies—Stoddart (1991), for example, calls them “lifestories” and Kebede (2009) “sociological autobiographies”—all of the assignments involve applying sociological ideas to one’s life history. In almost all cases, the authors are drawn to assigning sociological biographies because it allows students to practice sociological thinking using data with which they are most familiar, namely, their life story. These assignments appear not simply in Introductory Sociology courses (Adams 1986; Riedmann 1991; Stephenson et al. 2015, Stoddart 1991) but in courses like Sociology of Religion (Ingram 1979) and Sociology of Education (Powers 1998). The specific details of the assignment vary. Adams (1986), for example, has students construct a literal timeline in which they connect their personal and family histories to larger sociocultural trends. King (1987), in contrast, assigns a retrospective autobiography, wherein students imagine themselves at age 72 to probe how their family and work lives might evolve. Finally, Stoddart (1991) has everyone in the class write their life stories, which are then distributed to other students in the class (with names redacted) to analyze sociologically.
Among the advantages of the life story assignment is that it often sparks interest in the course material (Ingram 1979). On a broader level, the assignment helps students move beyond individualist and psychological explanations of human behavior to consider social-structural forces at work in their lives and the lives of others (Cook 2014; Powers 1998; Stephenson et al. 2015). Finally, the assignment allows students to write dramatically and in first person (Ribbens 1993). As Richardson (2000:931) explains, autoethnography requires “such fiction-writing techniques as dramatic recall, strong imagery, [and] fleshed-out characters.” These techniques give life stories a literary quality that makes them typically more compelling to write (and read) than a clinical research report. In this regard, the sociological autobiography assignment may contain elements of both the evocative and the analytic autoethnography described by Anderson (2006). Grauerholz and Copenhaver (1994:321) caution that it may be unethical and unwise to ask students to write about their life experiences when it means disclosing and dealing with traumatic parts of their past. There is also the related concern of how to ensure confidentiality in the assignments (Grauerholz and Copenhaver 1994). As such, Stephenson et al. (2015) require students to complete the ethical approval process so that students do not risk overexposure in their autobiographical study. In any case, the life story assignment offers a way for students to exercise their sociological imaginations while honing a personal and creative writing voice.
Fiction Stories
As Rinehart (1998) contends, fiction can often convey lived experience far better than scientific language can, making fiction a fertile ground for sociological analysis and writing. Though there is a long history of studying fiction in the discipline, fewer sociologists have tried their hand at writing sociological fiction. Among the exceptions is Patricia Leavy, who has written novels (e.g., Low-fat Love, American Circumstances, Blue) that draw on sociological research and themes. Leavy also edits the series Social Fictions, which includes fiction pieces that are informed by sociological research. Finally, fictional stories have been used by Diversi (1998) to explore the lives of Brazilian street children and by Richardson and Lockridge (1991) to explore the intersection of ethnography and fiction. Sociological writers of fictional stories usually set their stories in a cultural setting with which they are ethnographically familiar. Stylistically, they may use “devices such as alternative points of view, deep characterization, third-person voice, and the omniscient narrator” (Richardson 2000:923). But, again, it is more common to find sociologists studying fiction than writing it. Sociologists, for example, have argued for the use of literature as a means to reflect on theoretical questions and even confirm theoretical insights (Beer 2016; Coser 1972; Longo 2016).
In the sociology classroom, it is not uncommon to assign fictional literature as a way to illustrate sociological concepts (Clowers and Mori 1977; Cosbey 1997; Hendershott and Wright 1993; Laz 1996; Moran 1999; Sullivan 1982). Many scholars examining the value of literary fiction in sociology focus on science fiction in particular since both science fiction and sociology probe problems of the social world and visions of a better future (Gerlach and Hamilton 2003; Laz 1996). In most cases involving fiction in the sociology classroom, literature acts as a kind of sociological data with which students might apply concepts learned in class (Sullivan 1982). Fiction can also help bring sociological ideas to life (Gordy and Peary 2005; Moran 1999). Weber (2010:353–54), for example, integrates literary fiction into a social theory course, arguing that “literature provides a passionate entryway into the theoretical texts that can initially feel devoid of the energy and emotion that matter to students.” Finally, fiction can confirm sociological evidence of inequality and introduce a broader diversity of life experience to the classroom, thereby allowing “students to transcend the limits of their particular biographical situation” (Moran 1999:112). In general, reading literature in the sociology classroom has been shown to enhance student learning (Cosbey 1997; Hendershott and Wright 1993; Laz 1996; Sullivan 1982).
There are far fewer instances of instructors assigning students to write social science fiction, though there are some exceptions. Grauerholz and Scuteri (1989), for example, ask students to write in journals as if they were individuals from a group to which they do not belong, such that they learn how to take on the role of the “other.” Lackey (1994), in turn, assigns students to write short stories of science fiction. Finally, Gordy and Peary (2005) ask students in a Sociology of Work course to write fiction about themselves as employees 10 years in the future. In this assignment, students are asked to develop themselves as a character, explore the future workplace in detail, and apply concepts like alienation, occupational prestige, and work–family conflict. As Gordy and Peary (2005:396) ask, “What better way to show one understands a discipline and a society than to use sociological knowledge to create a context in which characters interact, reflect and observe their social context?” Asking students to focus on character, setting, and dialogue helps students hone their observational skills as well as their appreciation for how people are caught up in webs of social relationships and meaning (Gordy and Peary 2005; Lackey 1994). Arguably, writing fiction pushes students even further. “Writing fiction,” writes Lackey (1994:166), “requires more than familiarity with sociological knowledge and the situations which illustrate that knowledge. The student-as-author must put herself or himself into the characters’ shoes and live imaginatively in their world. In short, the student-as-author must take the role of the other.”
Visual Stories
Visual stories are careful observations of the social world through visual means. Often referred to as “visual essays” (Grady 1991; Pauwels 2012) or “visual ethnographic narratives” (Harper 1987), visual stories can take the form of photographic essays, documentary film, or interactive webpages that utilize the visual to document the social. Like the autoethnographic genre, visual sociology has a long but lesser-known history in sociology. Photographs, for example, occurred often in early articles of the American Journal of Sociology (e.g., Bushnell 2001). They disappeared from the journal by 1920, however, as the discipline attempted to establish itself as a “legitimate” science (Chaplin 1994; Harper 1988). In most cases, the visual essay is not just a collection of images. It is sociologically informed, intentionally curated, and analytically annotated in such a way that the images constitute a sociological analysis. As Pauwells (2012:10) explains, images, words, layout, and design all “add up to a scientifically informed statement.” Douglas Harper’s (1982) study of tramps, for example, contains a large number of photographs, not as illustrations but as key elements of Harper’s analysis. And his visual material is enhanced—in much the same way that a statistical analysis might be—by text surrounding the images that offers up a keen sociological analysis.
The time for a visual sociology may well have arrived, given that our current culture is saturated with visual imagery. Knowles and Sweetman (2004) note some of the forces leading to this saturation, including the development of inexpensive digital technologies and the proliferation of accessible ways of distributing visual material (e.g., social media platforms). For this reason, there have been numerous published reports of incorporating visual material into the sociology classroom in recent years. By far the most popular classroom exercise that utilizes visual material is the analysis of magazine advertisements to understand gender stereotypes (Curry and Clarke 1983). 6 But a growing number of courses are incorporating photography into classroom assignments, as well (Eisen 2012; Grauerholz and Settembrino 2016; Mount 2018; Sargent and Corse 2013; Whitley 2013). Most of these photography assignments have taken place in large survey courses, though Eisen (2012) and Sargent and Corse (2013) suggest ways that their assignments may be modified for advanced seminars. All of the assignments involve students using photographs to illustrate some course concept or idea. With the exception of Grauerholz and Settembrino (2016), students must annotate these pictures, providing a sociological analysis of the scene, object, or person depicted in the photo. In most cases, students are expected to take the photographs themselves (e.g., Grauerholz and Settembrino 2016), although Whitley (2013) allows students to find photos on the Internet if they cite them properly.
Assessments of the above assignments suggest high student enthusiasm, appreciation for the creative nature of the assignment, and better understanding of sociological concepts and their application to the real world (Eisen 2012; Mount 2018; Sargent and Corse 2013; Whitley 2013). One of the drawbacks of photography, however, is that the ethics of photographing other people can be murky. These ethical challenges have been resolved by not displaying the photographs publicly, restricting students to photographing objects rather than people, and having class discussions about the ethics of photographing (and doing research on) marginalized people (Eisen 2012; Grauerholz and Settembrino 2016; Sargent and Corse 2013; Whitely 2013). Another issue with using photography in the sociology classroom is that it is seen as unsociological, owing perhaps to the fact that photography has an evocative element (Becker 1995; Rose 2016). Like more narrative approaches to sociology, it uses character, scene, and drama to tell a story and does not always “provide the kind of closure and determinacy that sociologists’ image of science requires” (Grady 1991:35). But this is precisely why photography can be an invaluable tool to the sociological storyteller. In short, it does something different than a large quantitative data set, or even a more conventional qualitative analysis, by “evok[ing] lived experience and augment[ing] a sociologist’s own storytelling abilities” (Wynn 2009:450).
Richardson (2000:930) suggests that these and other genres (e.g., drama, museum displays, etc.) may become “the most valid and desirable representations, for they invite people in; they open spaces for thinking about the social.” Narrative writing, however, need not replace more conventional social science writing, with which students should become comfortable if they are to become consumers of social research or even social researchers themselves. Instead, narrative genres should be taught and assigned alongside scientific genres such that students begin to consider questions of audience, objective, and word choice across these genres. Richardson (2000), for example, urges instructors to ask students to analyze different types of sociological writing—articles published in mainstream sociology journals, articles published in qualitative journals, and pieces presented in alternative outlets. Who is the presumed audience? What is the author’s objective? And how is language used? If we consider Richardson’s suggestion at the curricular or departmental level, we can see how different storytelling conventions might be introduced in different courses such that students do not learn to write scientifically or narratively. Rather, they learn how to write well and to use different writing conventions to engage different audiences.
There is another rationale for including a larger diversity of writing genres in the sociological classroom, namely, that it helps demystify the social sciences. As students consider different genres of sociological writing, they might begin to question the methodological and rhetorical choices of sociologists, to peel back the curtain on social science research. And by interrogating the scientific discourse of mainstream sociology, science becomes less a monolithic authority that students do not think to question or engage. Students learn better how science gets done—how it is practiced, written up, and polished into “facts.” It involves making choices about whom or what to study, how to study it, and how to interpret the results. Its messiness and construction become altogether clearer to the student of sociology. By teaching students that science is simply one type of story, we do not have to forsake our quest for truth or objective representation. We simply have to admit that social science has individual sociologists’ handprints all over it.
The Legacy of C. Wright Mills
In “Toward a Sociology of Writing,” Keith Roberts (1993) uses the ideas of C. Wright Mills to orient student writing in the sociology classroom. Using Mills’ distinction between personal troubles and public issues, Roberts encourages instructors to help students write for an audience or, in a symbolic interactionist sense, to view their writing from the vantage point of the “other.” As Roberts (1993:322) explains, “This is precisely what writers do in transforming and revising their work.” In short, writing is like any other social act; it is “shaped by the norms of writing and by the social context in which it is produced” (Roberts 1993:319). These norms include rules about grammar and syntax. But in sociology, it also means conforming to particular norms of scientific writing and, in some cases, mimicking the verbose, jargon-laden writing style of many sociologists. We argue that the first of these is acceptable, even recommended, so long as students are exposed to and experiment with other, equally acceptable ways of telling about society. The second of these, however, is problematic, since sociologists should expect and adhere to good writing, be it narrative or scientific.
Understanding writing as an act of symbolic interaction and the sociological discipline as a culture with norms imposed on student writers means accepting that norms can be broken in the process of social change. Roberts (1993:323) himself acknowledges this point, although he does not carry it through to its logical conclusion: Although we sociologists often are quite iconoclastic and sympathetic to deviants, we are also uncompromising enforcers of the current structure when it comes to composition. Our red ink blazes across the page and we complain bitterly about the nonconformity of our students to writing conventions. How much more tolerant we are of other types of deviance!
Mills, of course, was hardly one to enforce the sociological conventions of his day; he detested most sociological writing, becoming what Gane and Back (2012:405) call a “thorn in the flesh of the thoroughly conformist sociological establishment.” To this extent, he is a role model for how to be embedded in the sociological discipline but remain critical of its conventions, including its penchant for clinical and “polysyllabic” writing. In an appendix to The Sociological Imagination, in an essay titled “On Intellectual Craftsmanship,” Mills ([1959] 2000) offers advice on how we might deviate from the more problematic conventions of sociological writing while staying true to our sociological imagination. It is worth revisiting some of this advice in this conclusion since it supports our insistence that sociologists should think about how we tell about society just as much as what we tell about society.
First, the question of audience is crucial to Mills. “To write,” he writes, “is to raise a claim to be read, but by whom?” (Mills [1959] 2000:221). In sociological writing, we always have a particular audience in mind, though sociology instructors rarely coax students into considering who that audience is or might be. Proponents of public sociology (Burawoy 2005) and narrative sociology (Reed 1989), not to mention C. Wright Mills himself, contended that our audience must be broader than simply other sociologists. Mills suggested writing for an educated lay public. But as Burawoy (2005) points out, there are many types of publics—from an informed national public of the ilk that Mills imagined to specific groups, organizations, and movements to whom a sociologist might speak. Each public represents a different audience who has a different set of expectations about writing. To write effectively for an audience, then, requires that students be exposed to different types of sociological writing—journal articles and research reports but also life histories, fictional stories, and visual essays. Sociology instructors might consider drawing on these different types of writing as both reading and writing assignments.
Second, Mills urged the sociologist to commit to clear prose. He was, of course, a critic of unintelligible writing that used big terms and convoluted sentences to get a point across. Like others, he contended that sociologists write this way in order to bolster their authority and legitimacy as scientists. Thus, for Mills, sociologists had to reject academic posturing. “To overcome the academic prose,” he wrote, “you have first to overcome the academic pose” (Mills [1959] 2000:219). Indeed, the problem with scientific writing is not that it is scientific but that it is often scientific in order to legitimate both the sociologist writing the article and the argument he or she is trying to make. As sociology instructors, then, we must engage in open conversation about sociological writing, identifying its characteristic qualities, discussing why it is the way it is, and imagining different ways it might be presented and written. In other words, we need to nurture students’ identity as writers as much as their identity as sociologists. One suggestion is to have students read and deconstruct an academic journal article, then articulate the same argument using one of the narrative approaches discussed here (e.g., life story, short fiction, visual essay). Such an assignment might legitimate these narrative approaches while encouraging students to become more sensitive to issues of style, audience, and objective.
Finally, Mills encourages us to develop a voice. In this regard, he acknowledges two voices in writing. One is “a man who may shout, whisper, or chuckle—but who is always there” (Mills [1959] 2000:220). The other is “not a ‘voice’ at all. It is an autonomous sound. It is a prose manufactured by a machine” (Mills [1959] 2000:221). Of the two, Mills encourages the former, which gives writing both a personality and a sense of authorship. It makes the writer consider his or her words and own the argument; it makes the reader consider the writer and entertain the argument. Whereas this recommendation obviously applies to narrative writing, with its dramatic and evocative elements of style, it also applies to scientific writing, for which there is no rule that we write in passive voice or erase ourselves from the text. Comparing and contrasting the ambiguity of narrative approaches with the definitiveness of scientific writing might get students to consider and question how we make scholarly arguments. And encouraging students to write research reports with the same candor and insight as they would write a life story might get them to see that scientific truth is not definitive but ever evolving.
In the end, Mills called on sociology to have literary ambitions—to fuse the creative and critical mind. Lest we think a sociology with literary ambitions would ruin the discipline, Reed (1989:13) points out that the vast majority of the most persuasive and well-received books in the discipline’s history have been as much “literary as scientific.” Hence, Reed (1989:9) encourages us to feel free to be “good writers,” “to express ourselves clearly, to be interesting, even entertaining.” As for Mills, he celebrated a study of the social world stripped of its disciplinary conventions and professional preoccupations. There is, of course, nothing wrong with such conventions. Given the trends of our day, most students and the university administrators that cater to them demand professional skill sets that students can list on their résumé. Running statistical analyses, deploying social scientific vocabulary, and writing a research report are skills in high demand in the workplace, and our students would be well served to master them. But learning to simply mimic the language of science without understanding who our audience is and what the numbers can and cannot tell us is mastering only the crudest part of the social scientific enterprise. Ultimately, how we represent the social world is open for discussion and experimentation. As Howard Becker (2007:285) explains at the end of his book Telling about Society, “I’m convinced that there is no best way to tell a story about society. Many genres, many methods, many formats—they can all do the trick. Instead of ideal ways to do it, the world gives us possibilities among which we can choose.”
Footnotes
Editor’s Note
Reviewers for this manuscript were, in alphabetical order, Liz Grauerholz and Suzanne Hudd.