Fiction and Critical Perspectives on Social Research

Abstract

This research note presents an overview of how and why social researchers influenced by critical perspectives are using fiction as a means of producing and disseminating research. Over the past two decades fiction has increasingly been used by social researchers as a means of building critical consciousness, unsettling stereotypes, accessing hard-to-get-at dimensions of human experience and extending public scholarship. This research note reviews how fiction has grown as a research practice within the context of the growing interdisciplinary field of arts-based research practices. The piece ends with examples of academic novels and a play written from queer, feminist, and critical race theoretical perspectives.