Imaginative Sociology: Theoretical Methodologies of Imagination in Marx, Weber, Du Bois, and Adorno

• In Event: Theorists and Theories in the History of Sociology and Social Thought

Abstract

Sociology does not have a theoretical methodology of imagination. This article engages in a critique of the existing ‘sociological imagination’, beginning with the work of C. Wright Mills. Mills, it is argued, offers not a theory of imagination, but of connection. Young students are taught to connect the private and public, but never to imagine what else that connection could be. Imagination, this article argues, is properly a generative thing: an imaginative sociology posits new arrangements of social life, fundamentally different realities, and radical transformations.

This article charts a new, imaginative sociology. Our discipline contains the kindlings of such a theoretical methodology. Karl Marx’s writings on revolutionary transformation ought to be read as imaginative sociologies, mapping what a fundamentally different world might look like. Similarly, Max Weber’s empathetic readings of world religions should be understood as imaginative accounts of fundamentally different realities, expanding our sense of our society. These are our foundations. This article argues, further, that Du Bois’s notes on workers’ democracies and the racial wage should be read as a theoretical synthesis of Marx and Weber’s imaginative sociologies. It is Du Bois, not Mills, that we should regard as our chief theorist of imagination.

This article concludes by demonstrating the stakes of recovering the generative imagination in sociology. Drawing especially on Theodor Adorno’s contributions to the mid-century German positivism dispute, this article demonstrates that a sociology without imagination is doomed to the empty reproduction of scientific dogma. We can only hope to say something new if we imagine.

This article thus forwards new readings of classic theorists on the topic of imagination, connects these accounts in innovative ways, and challenges the commonly held understanding of imagination in sociology.

Author

• Adam Koehler Brown, New School For Social Research