Live sociology: social research and its futures

• Published in: The Sociological review (Keele) 2012-06, Vol.60 (S1), p.18-39
• Main Author: Back, Les
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Capitalism; Culture; digital culture; Digital technology; Empirical Methods; ethics; History and organization of sociology; History, theory and methodology; Interconnections; methodological innovation; Multimedia; Organization of profession, research and teaching. Deontology. Sociology of sociology. Epistemology; Organizational Research; Organizational Sociology; politics of knowledge; Research methodology; Research methods; Researchers; Social Reality; Social relations; Social research; Sociological methodology; Sociological research; Sociology; Sociology of organizations; sociology of the senses; Space and Time
• ISSN: 0038-0261; 1467-954X
• DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-954X.2012.02115.x

The article draws on recent debates about empirical sociology's methodological crisis that results from the emergence of sophisticated information-based capitalism and digital culture. Researchers face the challenge of ‘newly coordinated social reality’ in which social relations and interconnections exist across time and space. However, this challenge co-exists with an unprecedented opportunity to use digital multimedia to reimagine social research. In the face of these developments it is argued that the sociological craft needs to be invigorated by a renewed focus on its political purpose. Digital culture offers researchers the opportunity to develop new methodological devices. This vision is contrasted with a critique of dead sociology that is characterized as objectifying, comfortable, disengaged and parochial. The article argues for a live sociology, able to attend to the fleeting, distributed, multiple and sensory aspects of sociality through research techniques that are mobile, sensuous and operate from multiple vantage points. If researchers enact reality rather than simply reflect it, there is an opportunity to create sociological forms of representation that are more knowing and innovative than their antecedents.