Imaginative methodologies in the social sciences: Creativity, poetics and rhetoric in social research

Imaginative Methodologies develops, expands and challenges conventional social scientific methodology and language by way of literary, poetic and other alternative sources of inspiration. Sociologists, social workers, anthropologists, criminologists and psychologists all try to rethink, provoke and reignite social scientific methodology.

Imaginative Methodologies challenges the mainstream social science methodological orthodoxy closely guarding the boundaries between the social sciences and the arts and humanities, pointing out that authors and artists are often engaged in projects parallel to those of the social sciences and vice versa, and that artistic and cultural productions today do not constitute a specialist field, but are integral to our social reality.

The book will be of interest to scholars and students in the social sciences and across the arts and humanities working with questions of philosophy of social science, methodology, social theory, creativity, poetics, pedagogy and related topics.