Who Sociology Is

Abstract

C. Wright Mills said developing a sociological imagination meant considering the link between history and biography. Drawing stylistically from David Markson’s This is Not a Novel, this textual experiment presents biographical fragments without a coherent narrative or clear purpose. Questions that might emerge: how is sociology related to its creators and practitioners’ biographies? How do details on individual sickness, mortality, and character affect an understanding of others and the self? How might biographical fragments compel reading, pauses, and further reading? Who counts as part of a field, and why? What effect does sequence have on information? Whose contributions, and/or lives, are valorized, remembered, marginalized, or forgotten? What do people say, and what do they do? How does the selection, representation, and categorization of sociologist’s biographical and demographic details, and life histories (key elements in sociological research), help re-imagine those concerned with generalizing about others?